Prologue: My Little Overdue Existential Crises

Disclaimer: I do not own MLP:FiM all characters, names, ponies, and so forth belong to Hasbro.

As I laid in bed awake, I came to the same revelation that I had the night before, and the night before that: Equestria after dark sucked.

While I’m pretty sure Manehattan or Vanhoover, or even Canterlot was still a pretty cool place when the sun went down, small towns with only the bare minimum of electricity like Ponyville basically shut down upon nightfall. On top of which, without electricity, the internet, or any modern convenience that I had given up on ever seeing again while hooves were my main mode of transportation, there wasn’t much to do after dark except stargaze.

However, that particular activity was one of those 100% nonsensical things about Equestria I had sworn never to touch beyond simply looking up at the night sky. Twilight might not have liked it that I didn't want to use her telescope and share in another one of her interests, but keeping my sanity in check by not asking how physics and certain universal constants could just be thrown out the window kept me from turning into...well, Lesson Zero Twilight.

All I could really do upon nightfall was be alone with my thoughts, and even those were things I didn’t like to talk to these days. Thanks to everything that had happened recently, my denial was having a hard time convincing the rest of me that everything was okay. The truth was, I was an emotional wreck and not getting any better.

I tried to clear my mind of the past two weeks as I felt Twilight climb into bed and snuggled close to me from behind. The contact of the princess against my pony coat made me tense, as I could feel from the way was she was nuzzling my neck what was about to happen thanks to both the emotional and physical smell of arousal coming from the Goddess of Magic. She wanted sex.

While a week ago I would have literally jumped on the chance to make love to the woman curling up next to me, those times had come and gone since the death of the last changeling queen and my ascension to the empty insect throne. Things had changed, and not for the better in some areas.

I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Although changelings didn’t really sleep, whenever I went into the hive mind before, I left it feeling at least somewhat more sure of myself and confident in my abilities. It might of well have been sleep with the way I usually woke up refreshed and confident in my decisions. Hell, most of the time it was better! However, all I had been getting from sleep since Chrissie died was the physical part of the rest, and a complete lack of reassurance.

Now, the idea of being with Twilight just made me depressed.

So for the third night in a row and eight time in the past few days, I turned her down.

“Not tonight Twi.”

There was a pause in her movements, which was awkward. Every time before when she had put the moves on me and been shot down, the alicorn had gracefully backed off with an okay and a shrug. However, this time, Twilight shifted around, and the next thing I knew, the library’s little bedroom was lit up by a purple glow. I rolled over to look up at the Goddess of Magic to see a confused, and slightly pained look on her face that made me feel as if someone had stabbed me in the gut.

“Fae, what’s wrong? Ever since we got back from the Crystal Empire, you’ve been…different.”

Crap, I thought before letting out a sigh and slowly pushing myself up in bed to face her.

What was wrong? Well, that was going to take a bit of an explanation. Long story short, over the past few days that I rode home from the Crystal Empire, talked to the others and got a new disguise that allowed me to use my magic while retaining my wings, my body had come to the inescapable conclusion that I was safe in Ponyville. It was a somewhat new experience for me to be honest. When I had lived in the town before, a little voice had always whispered in my ear that I was constantly surrounded by enemies. I needed to keep my guard up, watch everything I said, and made sure that nothing I told the ponies was too suspicious. Considering all the stuff I had messed with early on, I was a little surprised I hadn’t been caught in a lie much sooner.

Since I didn’t have the threat of being found out by the ponies anymore, that had allowed me to relax, and my mind to concentrate on other problems, things I really just didn’t have time to think about before.

The biggest thing being that I was now a sexy pony princess…or regent for a princess that had taken up stewardship of her kingdom to keep her from being overburdened by all that bureaucracy crap that most rulers had to deal with. I did it mostly to try and keep Twilight happy, although if anyone ever asked, I would have said the Element of Magic had more important things to do than play politics and babysit a bunch of country bumpkins. It kind of kept me busy, but not enough so that I couldn’t find time to think about how much of a girl I had been turned into.

Not in the ‘you’re such a girl, man’ kind of sense, but in the female reproductive parts where something is inserted kind of girl. I had quite literally been turned into the female variety of my current species. Even the fact I could use magic while flying again didn't negate the fact that I was doing so as a girl.

“Twilight, look at me!” I told her with a frown before throwing off the blankets covering my body.

It wasn’t my real body of course, the one I had gotten since coming to Equestria anyway. My real body was covered in a black shell that made cuddling with a pony, not to mention the more enjoyable stuff, impossible. No, what I looked like at the moment was probably what I would have looked like if I had been born the same species as what Twilight currently was: an alicorn.

Like Twilight, I had wings, a horn, and my fur was the color of dark chocolate, with green eyes and hair that was the same shade as my mother’s had been. It was almost as if I had been turned into a alicorn version of Chrysalis, and I stress the almost part.

The alicorn just ran her eyes over me in confusion. “I don’t understand. You’re beautiful. Is this about your cutie mark?” she asked before her eyes wandered down to my naked posterior. “I’m sorry, but the spell Celestia tweaked just makes you look like a you version of a pony. Since you’re not really an Equestrian, you can’t get one. I don’t see why that’s so upsetting to you though.”

“Twilight, I’m a girl!”

And thus, we came to the bit of the problem I was having. Back when I had just been your run of the mill changeling queen-to-be, I had been able to put off my whole existential crises thanks to a hefty amount of denial and need for survival. With everything else that was going on, I had managed to convince myself that while I may have been turned into a shape shifting emotional vampire, I was at least, still a guy. Hell, I even kinda looked like one according to the ponies. So despite the fact I was stuck in pretty ponyland, I was at least male.

Then Twilight Sparkle and Princess Trollestia came along with a spell to help me fit into pony society and I went from a slightly masculine, yet biologically asexual creature that laid hatchable eggs without a male to fertilize them to…a little girly pony. On top of which, I was apparently pretty hot. Whenever I went out into the village that had become my home, every guy around along with a couple of the girls would take notice of the new mare on the block and offer a compliment, or try and strike up a conversation. The lack of a cutie mark or actual princess title had been the obvious choice for the first two days, but now the guys knew enough about me to talk about other things. The changeling mind control that told them not to notice my blank flank also helped.

And to top THAT off, they were genuinely friendly and caring. Even Cloud Kicker, who made it NO secret whatsoever that she wanted to get under my tail, showed genuine concern when I was upset and backed off when I wanted her to. I couldn't even be mad at them because...all the ponies around town were just too fucking nice, even with half of them secretly wanting to sex me up.

Twilight looked down between my legs where I was gesturing to with my hooves. “Oh-kay,” the alicorn drawled while she looked down at my girly parts for a few seconds before meeting my eyes again, still confused. “You’re female. I kind of figured that out a few days ago when we were in the Crystal Empire. It was pretty obvious with all the changelings calling you Queen Omnifarious.”

The mention of her brother’s kingdom gave me flashbacks of a pink pony that were better left forgotten in my subconscious. I didn’t think Cadence could have ever been that scary. She was a pretty pink pony princess for crying out loud!

As for Twilight, I stared at her. It was all I could do for a few seconds. I mean, seriously…do I have to spell it out for her?

“Fae, please tell me what’s wrong,” she asked. With her voice so soft and kind, I couldn’t bear to meet her in the eyes anymore and just hung my head. That was the problem with having the perfect girlfriend and knowing you're not good enough for her: she'll never call you on it.

“Why am I still here?” I asked before realizing that was way too vague a question, especially considering we were currently in Twilight’s house. “With you, I mean. Why are you still with me even though I’m…like this.”

“…I don’t understand,” she mumbled. Her eyes did that thing that let me practically feel the guilt in her body well up, as if there was something she had done to make me upset. All it did was remind me why I had avoided talking about this whole thing up until now.

Although she was all around best pony, Twilight had a developed a bad habit of taking responsibility for things that were in no way her fault and trying to shoulder a lot of burdens on her own. It was something new she had acquired since picking up her wings, and I just knew Equestria was going to do its best to show her just how much of a bad idea it was to shoulder everything yourself. Hell, it nearly killed me when I tried it just a week ago!

I let out a groan and leaned my head back against the headboard. “Why are you still with me, even though I’m a girl?”

“Because I love you,” Twilight explained to me as if she was telling me the sky was blue. “Wait…this is one of those, I used to be a human things, isn’t it?” She let out a sigh and reached over to put a hoof on my thigh…or fetlock, I suppose. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. You’re upset, because you’re a mare when you used to be…male? I’m trying to come up with an expansion of the spell we used to change your species, it’s just…without something to test it out on, I can only go so far so fast.”

Twilight’s question had me frozen in indecision on my emotional state. On one hand, I wanted to tell her yes. I was having a problem with the 100% confirmation that the universe as a whole decided to put girl on my ID card. But when it came down to it, when I really deep down thought about it, I could have dealt with that problem by just slapping a new face on and going about my business…if not for Twilight.

Being a shape shifter, I could have just taken the form of some random pony in the street, but…that had problems of its own. For one, I was actually starting to feel guilty about running around for a week as Flash Sentry; no matter how much he deserved being stuck in a cocoon and being fed on by psychic vampires that messed with his mind so much he couldn’t remember anything that had happened while in my captivity. But, the thing about taking on a false body that wasn’t just a variation on my changeling self like I had on at that moment, then sleeping with Twilight when I was like that…like I had done before…it just felt…wrong.

There was the fact that doing so would have made what was going on a lie. It would have been Twilight being with some other stallion, and I wanted Twilight to be with me, not…some mask I was wearing.

I wasn’t as inconsiderate as to think I needed to go around full changeling queen. My little Ponyville rampage to get Celestia's attention still had some of the ponies nervous there were shape shifters behind every door and we were just waiting to come and eat them. But the disguise I had was at least me as a pony…if a female me. That made it doable.

So I wasn’t as upset with the fact that I was kind of a female, I was upset because I was a girl, and Twilight didn’t seem to care about it. It didn't make sense! If she had been into girls, then the nerd would have been going out with one of her friends a long time ago.

“Why are you still with me, even though I’m a girl?” I asked while trying harder to organize my thoughts. “I know you’re not gay or anything, but…so…why are you still keeping me around?”

Twilight’s eyes widened for a moment. “What do you mean? I am happy, you make me happy and I’ve never been happier,” she told me in confusion with pain and desperation showing in her voice. “That’s why I wanted us to stay together.” That, and I know for a fact I was Twilight’s first serious relationship. I had no illusions this whole thing would have ended days ago if I had been boyfriend #2 or #3.

As for what she said, it actually took me a minute to process that one. Although humans and ponies had what was basically the same written language, our verbal languages and how those letters were arranged made things completely different. Some human words had pony equivalents, and could be swapped out easily enough like hay and hell. However, I had found during my stay in Equestria that there were some words, and even some human concepts that ponies just didn’t have.

Mostly, it was the darker stuff that they were better off without.

I thought it was a little odd, but…it was also probably the reason Celestia didn’t leave me to die in the arctic waste. Despite everything that had gone on before, when I had decided to rescue Twilight, I had crossed into her inner circle. Ergo, I couldn’t simply be left to die. Ideas like betrayal and cutting her losses didn’t pass through the goddess’s mind at all.

Apparently, the homosexual connotation for gay was another one of those things that was lacking in pony-land. Considering I couldn’t think of the correct pony word for lesbian, I tried to think of a better way to explain things to her.

“Is is because I can’t figure out the spell?” the Goddess of Magic continued. “Just give me time. Until then, you can change your shape to anypony you want. We…we can even go to Canterlot tomorrow, or Cloudsdale if you want to find a pegasus body to imitate. It'll be somepony you'll never run into on the street, I promise!"

The sigh I gave managed to hold her off for the moment, and I looked up at her. “That’s just it Twilight, it wouldn’t be me. This,” I said, gesturing to my pseudo-alicorn form, “this is me, or the closest thing to me that you can be with without everything just turning into a total lie, and…I know you’re not attracted to mares.”

And with that, everything just seemed to click in Twilight’s head. Hell, I even saw a small tick in her head when the information just kind of hit her.

However, instead a look of recognition or her usual exclamation when she figured something out, Twilight’s face twisted into an angry frown. “What? Who told you that?” the irate alicorn demanded. “Just because I’m from Canterlot doesn’t make me a snob!”

“Wha-”

“How in the hay could you even think that?” she grumbled before looking away. “I’m not even a noble, and even if I was, it would have been Shiny who would have been set to inherit the title! My parents wouldn’t have cared how many fillies I fooled around with.”

Completely lost, I just gave the usual, ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about’ response. “Huh?”

“I can’t believe you of all ponies, Ms ‘I’ve seen every adventure you’ve been on’ actually thought I would-wait, is this about that gossip column the Cutie Mark Crusaders ran last year?” she asked. “Because that’s all it was, gossip! I am not a snob!”

Before she could do something like kick me out of bed, or banish me to the moon, I used my magic to close her mouth with a snap and held up my hooves in surrender. Considering I hadn’t eaten in days, it was about all I could manage. “Uh, Twilight…maybe we should start from the beginning…actually, screw it. Just…what’s a snob?” I asked before her magic dispelled mine and her glare of irritation turned to one confusion.

“A mare that only wants to be with stallions,” Twilight said explained. “Why? What did you think it meant?”

I frowned in thought. “Umm, I thought it meant a pony who thought that they were better than anypony else.” Hell, that was even the description my changeling-implanted dictionary gave me. “And what do you mean only stallions? That’s the norm!” Despite several of the differences between our societies, that little fact of life remained the same. Most of the couples I had seen going around were your classic guy/girl kind.

Hell, aside from Vinyl and Tavi, Lyra and Bon-Bon, Cloud and Blossom, all of the other pairings out there were heterosexual couples like…well, there were the Cakes of course, and The Doctor had Derpy…except that didn’t count because he was Time Turner and not really with the pegasus, so there was always…Cheerilee and Mac! They were a couple…sort of. So that made it…3 to 2 in favor of the girl on girl?

That didn’t seem right. I really needed to look into the whole Ponyville dating scene more closely.

“Actually, if you factor in the gender discrepancy, a stallion and mare relationship is the exception to the rule,” she explained. “Although the nobles of Canterlot usually rely potions to help make sure their first foal is male, most of the other ponies are left to the law of averages that give us a five to one shot in favor of having a filly. So, with five mares to every one stallion, the vast majority of relationships in Equestria are mares being with other mares.”

Then how the hell do they have enough kids to keep the population going? I wondered. I knew there wasn’t something like ‘love babies’ or huge multiple partner groups with something approaching two guys and seven girls. I’m pretty damn sure I would have noticed if there were!

Stopping that line of thought before it gave me a headache, I looked over to Twilight. “So…what you’re saying is…you like being with mares?”

“And stallions of course,” she added. “Wait…is that why we haven’t had sex since Celestia found that old spell? You thought I was just…humoring you?”

I looked away from the alicorn and nodded. “I thought…well…I mean, you never showed any interest in mares before so…yeah.”

Apparently, that was beyond the wrong thing to say, as Twilight quickly lowered herself to something approaching my level of hesitance. “Well…that’s because nopony’s ever shown any interest in me…until you.”

All of a sudden, a huge weight felt as if it had been lifted off my chest, and I nearly collapsed with relief. The fact the one pony I could really depend on at the moment, the one pony I needed more than the others wasn't just going through the motions with me...it made me... “You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that,” I mumbled before leaning over to lay against her for support of an emotional nature more so than the physical kind. Although just who was supporting whom was kind of up for debate.

Unfortunately, the moment was ruined when I was reminded of the limits to how human a pony could be, and I found myself continuing to lean over, even when pressed up against Twilight. She let out a squawk of some kind, and we both ended up tumbling out of her bed. As Twilight rolled off of our small love next, I tried flapping my wings to get away, only to feel a hard yank on my tail that brought me tumbling down after the alicorn.

As the vertigo cleared and I found myself able to see straight again, I noticed that I had landed on top of Twilight, and judging by the feeling of movement beneath me-

“Fae,” the muffled voice of the alicorn called out.

-her face was directly under my ass.

The next thing I knew, I felt myself wrapped in the tingling glow of Twilight’s magic, and the world turned upside down as she picked me off the ground and hung me upside down in the air. “Okay, one…you are going to spend the next month getting lessons in pony society from me!”

Oh joy, I told myself in a sarcastic manner. Although history was a good subject for me, Twilight’s teaching methods were a little…dull and tended to involve more Starswirl than I thought possible. I mean, she had long since surpassed the old fart what with gaining wings where he failed to do so, but I didn’t want to know what to try pointing that out when the last guy who ended up messing with one of her idols was probably living in a hamster cage these days.

“And two,” she continued after drawing in a deep breath, “if there’s something bothering you, bucking tell me about it! I’ve been watching you mope around for days, DAYS! All this time thinking it was my fault for not figuring out how to alter genders with that transformation spell! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW THAT’S MADE ME FEEL?”

Although it was pretty hard to cower while floating upside down in the grip of your demi-goddess of a girlfriend’s telekinesis, I managed to do it. “Sorry,” I squeaked out.

With the glow of her horn the only light in the room, Twilight got back up on the bed, and sprawled out until she was in position for sex. “Now come on and let’s go, you haven’t had anything to eat in three days, and if I have to go one more night without any attention from my fillyfriend, then I think I’ll go insane!”

As she lowered me back down onto the bed, I looked across Twilight’s body from where my head rested between her legs and sighed. “Twilight?”

The alicorn’s expression softened a bit at the tone of my voice. “Fae? Is there something else that’s bothering you need help with?”

“Yeah but…we can deal with it tomorrow morning, I just want to say…thanks…for everything. After everything that’s happened, I really don’t deserve you.”

Twilight smiled, then rolled her eyes and shook her head. “And stop putting yourself down so much,” she told me. “There’s a big difference between modesty and what your doing. So stop it, understand?”

“I’ll do my best,” I assured her with the best smile I could manage under the circumstances.

“Good, because Spike is due back the day after tomorrow, and you already wasted three days with your moping, so we've got to make up for lost time.”

I snickered. “…we’re not leaving the tree house at all tomorrow, are we?”

“The tree house? Fae we’re not leaving the bed.”

Chapter 1: My Little Adventure in Fillysitting

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My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield…oh wait, that’s the other smarmy guy who uses magic and has more trouble with mythological creatures that he knows what to do with. My name is…Omnifarious, although thanks to one of my friends it got shortened to Fairy…and after a bit of work and some mind control I got it changed to Fae since having the nickname if Fairy is just so many levels of gay.

Once upon a time, I was your average guy, living your average life until I woke up in the magical land of Equestria as some kind of bug-fairy-pony thing…and a princess. So I got the freaky sex change on top of my species alteration. Or at least half a sex change, sort of. It was umm…kinda disturbing. But I dealt with it like a man! Meaning I cried a lot over the loss of my manhood and found anything else to focus on to forget the fact that I no longer had the right kind of plumbing.

Then I had a magical pony adventure in which I lied to a bunch of my future friends, kind of accidentally manipulated this one girl into falling for me, then nearly bore witness of the destruction of Equestria. I still say that last part totally wasn’t 100% my fault, because my mom was to blame for most of it, and I just went along for the ride until I managed to get in a lucky shot and cleaned up my mess.

And if my girlfriend can get godhood for cleaning up a mess she made in the first place with some thousand year old book, I think a little forgiveness and understanding from others isn’t too much to ask. Hell, I beat myself up worse than anyone from My Little Pony ever has.

Yeah, that’s the other freaky thing. When I woke up, I was apparently in some kind of cartoonish world. Everything was real and 3D, with all the details and realness, but…the place I’m in has a freakish resemblance to a child’s cartoon show even down to everything being about 20% brighter, and a princess running everything despite their being no queen in their monarchist system.

But I adapted, as best I could without going insane anyway. Still had some pretty hard moments, but well…when you’re surrounded by an entire species that’s learned how to deal and move on with shit better than any other member of your old race, you learn pretty fast how to get over things.

So, being in some weird cartoon land…didn’t bother me one single bit.

Nope! Not even the littlest, tiniest, slightest itty bit.

I had other, more pressing matters to deal with like ruling a kingdom of monsters and babysitting.

Yeah, babysitting.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders are evil.

Not the good kind of evil either. I’m the good type of evil. I’m the type of evil that takes the moral low ground for the good community. Case in point, about a week ago, Applejack had a vampire fruit bat infestation. This group of overgrown locusts showed up and started eating all her stuff. Of course, being a logical mare, she wanted to get rid of them rather than letting the giant parasites eat her out of business and possibly cause a famine. Her farm’s doing better than when I first moved in thanks to a few changes in the production, but their traditional ways means there’s a limit to the amount of cider they can make every day. The Apple family couldn’t simply hand over a fourth of their trees and survive. And that’s if the devouring swarm didn’t decide to grow and eat all the apples come next season. Which they would, I know this from personal experience, what with being a vampire creature that belongs to a race of monsters that has wiped out two species that we used to eat.

But of course, Applejack’s logical solution that would have saved her family and prevent the town from succumbing to a massive apple shortage was countered by Fluttershy’s argument of 'just give them your trees'. And after some mishandled magic and a good amount of Fluttershy guilt stares, Applejack abandoned one of her orchards to a parasitic infestation that would grow faster than the seeds they spit out turned into full-grown trees.

Okay sure, ponies were the caretakers of nature in Equestria and all, but that whole experience was making me start to understand why they were having population growth problems if they had to abandon farming communities when the newest pest moved in and decided to just take everything. That, and the vast majority of the population is female. It’s kind of hard to get a large population when only one in five babies is a boy.

But then how did AJ stay in business? Well, I snuck into the orchard one night with about five hundred some predatory monsters that can look like any pony they want, and exterminated the bats.

All of the bats. Bodies were easy to get rid of when you had magic.

Then we just told Fluttershy they must have gotten creeped out by Twilight’s magic or something and migrated somewhere else. The farm was saved, Fluttershy was happy, and nopony else had to deal with a group of roaming pests trying to eat their food.

That’s what you call a win in my book.

Sure I was lying to her, but more than half the town still had no idea I was a changeling queen. The types of lies that kept the ponies happy, I could deal with.

But, getting back on track, the Cutie Mark Crusaders are evil, but not the good type of evil. They’re more like…well, you know how you have these two kids, and they’re both really good kids, but when they get together…they tend to do stuff like release inter-dimensional horrors on an unsuspecting populace and then not tell anyone about it? That’s the type of evil they are.

The kids aren’t bad, it’s just when the group gets together, the Equestrian destiny stuff that this world I’m in seems to run on just decides to fuck everyone up the ass within a hundred mile radius.

So when I showed up at Rarity’s place the day before her and the girls were set to go to Manehattan, and the three little fillies ended up standing there with smiles on their faces without a scene from a disaster movie occurring behind them, the only think I could think was… My spider sense is tingling.

“Ah Fae, good to see you darling,” Rarity greeted me as she hauled enough luggage to hold orchestra’s worth of equipment into her boutique’s main room. “You really must come into town more, I haven’t spent any time with you in over a week!”

I sighed and looked away from the foals as they simply stood off to the side, acting a little too behaved for my tastes. Then I focused on the marshmallow unicorn. “You know what happens when I come into town Rarity,” I told her. “Besides, I see you girls enough.”

“Oh, you’re just being silly darling,” she assured me. “The stallions are just being nice to their newest…well, alicorn I guess. I’ve been meaning to ask, why is it you never took a crown, anyway? You’re certainly capable of doing the job.”

The question had me shrugging my shoulders. “Please, if I wanted that much paperwork and responsibility, I would have stuck with…” I paused and looked over to the children, unsure of how to continue.

About a month ago, when I had gotten this great idea to mess with an evil object known as the Alicorn Amulet for extra magical power. Then, I kind of went on a little ego trip, and might have scared some ponies around Ponyville by going a little overboard while causing a scene to get Celestia’s attention. For a race of creatures that forgave Discord of all things, they knew how to hold onto their fears. But because of that, and I think she wanted to be a dick, Celestia had decreed that me and the other changelings couldn’t walk around in pony society without a special transmogrification spell that turned ponies into another creature.

While the whole changeling thing kind of points to our shape shifting abilities, its limited in the fact that we can’t just mix and match physical traits from ponies that we see walking around to create something original. Tia’s version of the spell didn’t copy traits, but turned the target into the pegasus/unicorn/earth pony version of themselves. Although I got an alicorn disguise being the leader of my race and all. The spell was a long way from perfect. It wasn’t meant to be used on us and there were now a hundred ponies in Equestria that looked identical to one another, with the exception of what species they ended up as.

But it did help ponies around town ignore the fact I was the same creature who terrorized them not too long ago. Hell, some of them didn’t know about my actions at all, and just thought I was the newest princess, here to handle Twilight’s royal duties so she could take care of all the weird shit that happened around Ponyville every few weeks.

“Uh Rarity, do they know I’m a…xeno-morph?” I asked, using the code work for changelings I had come up with.

“A what now?” Apple Bloom called out.

“I think it’s a fancy word for changeling princess,” Sweetie told her.

“I thought she was their queen,” Scootaloo added.

“Well of course they know you’re a changeling, Darling,” Rarity told me. “I wouldn’t have hidden that from them when you’re going to be watching over them for the weekend.”

I froze. In fact, the news nearly had me changing back into my natural form for the extra protection it provided. I mean, I knew Rarity had a little problem with just roping her friends into doing a few favors for her new and then, in fact all the Bearers had a weird habit of expecting everyone else to think just like them when I came to their Elements, but this seemed a bit much.

A few hours? No problem.

An afternoon…doable.

A weekend? Well…that left me fearing for my safety.

These were the Cutie Mark Crusaders. A sadistic spirit of chaos had caused less trouble around Ponyville than these three children! I didn’t want to touch them with a ten foot pole, much less have to take care of them for a whole weekend!

On top of which, I did have an actual job…sort of. Five days a week I heard minor cases involving any local disputes from the citizenry of Ponyville, then went back to cleaning out the rebuilt castle. The first wasn’t that big a deal. Being ponies, the biggest dispute I had to settle for them was ownership of a pie. The castle wasn’t that big a problem either, just the discovery and storage of this or that dark magical thingy that Tia had left laying around when she decided to just abandon the place after the Nightmare Moon incident.

But I didn’t want ponies to know the place was full of things like the Necronomicon, and in the hands of a race that had wanted to do nothing more than eat ponies a few months ago.

So I decided to try and get out of it without actually seeming like I was. “What about their parents?” I asked before remembering Apple Bloom’s lack thereof and Scootaloo’s well…I had no idea really. Sure there were plenty of theories regarding the filly, but you just don’t go around asking whether some kid is an orphan or not. Even then, it was still pretty tactless with Bloom in the same room.

“Out of town,” Scoots explained.

“Mother has come down with a cold I’m afraid,” Rarity explained. “Usually, I would have had to risk it, but since Twilight told me you didn’t want to come to Manehattan with us…why is that is that anyway? I would have thought one last hurrah before you’re trapped in that Canterlot school would have been good for you.”

I gave the mare I tired expression, as I had explained this little fact about my changeling biology to her and the others more than once when I caught some of the stallions around town looking at me a little too long. “Pheromones, remember?" I asked retoically while tripping over the new word in pony that had to be invented to explain my unnatural ability to attract other ponies. "There’s no way I’m walking around a crowded city until I get this thing fixed.”

Like 90% of the equine populace, Rarity simply rolled her eyes at my explanation as she took her bags in her telekinesis. “Ah yes, the supposed magical scent that makes stallions fall head over hooves in love with you,” she told me. “I thought Twilight has been trying to give you more confidence these past few weeks. You really should just admit to yourself you’re attractive and get it over with.”

How is it that Twilight knows about the speed of light and the theory of relativity but nopony knows jack about pheromones? I asked myself before looking back to the unholy trinity for moment before the door closed. It was then I realized that Rarity had managed to get away with me still holding the CMC caretaker bag. Crap.

I wanted to chase after her to continue the conversation, but… denying ponies anything, at least to their faces, was my one great weakness. Stupid Equestrian society and its perfect inhabitants. My ability to resist their charms had only diminished without a life threatening mind bond that promised death should I turn against the greater whole of my race.

Well, as long as I keep an eye on things…I suppose nothing bad can happen, I told myself. I mean, they hadn’t burnt down the town or anything since I had been living in Ponyville. So they couldn't have been as bad as I feared.

With a sigh of defeat I looked back to the fillies. “Come on girls, let’s go say goodbye to Twilight and the others.”

I also needed a meal. If I was going to be watching over the three fillies of the pony apocalypse, Twilight was going to be sleeping for most of her ride to the big city.

Five hours later, I was nervous as hell.

The reason for this was simple: everything was going just fine.

With me staying behind to take care of the library, Spike had gone along with the girls for a much needed vacation, or to carry their bags, it really wasn’t all that clear to me. So that left me to defend Ponyville from the horrors of the CMC! However, those horrors involved the girls doing their homework, looking through books to find a special project Twilight promised to help them out with before she left, Sweetie Belle trying to talk me into showing her how to do magic, and the girls taking a childlike interest into what I was looking through.

All in all, it was a bit less…frantic than when they met me for the first time and saw an adult pony without a cutie mark. It was one of the few times my conscience didn’t nag me about using mind altering magic to make ponies think there was nothing out of the ordinary about an alicorn not having a tramp stamp. Well, perception filter was probably a better way to put it since the magic was centered more around me than in the minds of the ponies.

“So what’cha lookin at Princess Fae?”

Skipping my usual line that I was a regent and not a princess, I closed the history book and turned my attention over to the little earth pony at my hooves. “Researching other alicorns like Twilight.”

“You mean like Princess Luna and Celestia?”

Scootaloo’s question got a shake of my head before I held up the book I had been scanning through. It mostly revolved around Hearts and Hooves Day, but the mention of the princess in it was what had been my focus. “No, like Twilight and Cadence. Normal ponies who have been elevated to alicorn status for one reason or another over the years.” Nothing in the books was all that clear on the subject, really.

Putting down her own her own tome entitled ‘So You Want to Be a Playwright’ Sweetie Belle spoke up. “There’s been others?”

“A few, but…there’s not really that much in the way of actual information beyond a word about them here or there in passing,” I told them. The mentioning of other alicorns throughout history was almost on accident really. When it came to full information, Equestrian history was pretty…lacking. It was one of the reasons Twilight had been so excited I had been into it, nopony else cared all that much. Even princess Luna didn’t have much written about her besides the Mare in the Moon fairy tale.

Hey now there’s an idea, I thought to myself before looking around at the books on the shelves. Considering I was in a land of magical talking ponies, just how much of the stuff that was in those old wives tales was actually real?

“Why’d you be wantin' to learn about princessin' anyway?”

“Because she is a princess, duh!” Scootaloo explained.

“I thought you said she was a-”

I put my hooves between the three of them to stop the coming argument. “Okay girls, that’s enough of that. We need to get going if we’re going to make it to the castle before sundown.”

The statement only seemed to excite the fillies, not calm them down. But it did stop the argument. However, it wasn’t until we had gotten all packed up and ready to go that the true horror of what I was about to experience was to be revealed. I led them out of the library and after locking the door behind me, I turned to the children and-

“CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS CASTLE EXPLORERS! YAY!”

-managed to keep my body from vibrating after they finished shouting in my ear.

As the ringing died down, I looked over to the children and sighed as good naturedly as I could while contemplating my options. The easiest and most guaranteed method for dealing with the trio would probably be to just take them back to my castle, knock them out, slap them in cocoons so they would stay that way and just wait for their sisters to come home. They had stuck me with the damn job anyway, so they couldn't really complain about the quality of the work, right?

But I was pretty sure my growing conscience was going to have a problem with assaulting children, especially well-meaning ones like the CMC. So that idea was out, and I wasn’t about to tell them they couldn’t go looking around the rebuilt castle since my IQ was above that of your average raisin. I knew they’d try sneaking away as soon as my back was turned if I said no.

“I’d be happy to give you a tour, girls,” I told them with a smile. Since I doubted any attempts to stop them would amount to anything, I could just take control of the situation and make sure nothing went wrong. “Now come along, we need to get moving.”

The trip through the Everfree was, thankfully, without any problems. But I had spent my first three real weeks in Ponyville carving out my territory at the cost of nearly two hundred changeling drones that started with the death of the biggest creature I could find, so the other creatures of the forest know to give my kind a wide berth. The end result was a good safety buffer around Ponyville and the trails my kind had set up for the Red Grove, as well as the castle. However, the rest of the forest had become a bit rowdier with less room to share.

Zecora had even moved from her normal hut into Everfree Castle for safety and quick access to changelings to gather herbs for her. A roof that didn’t constantly leak was probably another bonus. Unfortunately, it meant I had to put up with her speech patterns all the time. I would never understand why she spoke only in rhyme. It was one of those questions that just made her look at me like I was stupid or something.

Unfortunately, with the children around, I decided to keep my disguise on so they wouldn’t be freaking out. The journey through a part of the woods that was unknown to the fillies made them nervous enough despite my assurances that nothing in the area was going to hurt them. It kind of annoyed me that I had to stay in fake alicorn mode, but...it was better than frightened children, if marginally.

“So Princess…umm…just how many changelings are living at your castle these days?” Sweetie Belle asked me nervously as we made it to the bridge that joined the two separate sides of the chasm.

The wooden monstrosity that stood before us had been built better than the mess of rope and planks that had been there before, but it still looked pretty bad compared to the mass of towers beyond it. However, changelings weren’t the best at construction, and I only had what Ponyville could provide in the way of labor and materials when it came to certain parts of the rebuilding process. Tia may have been helping with the castle itself, but the area around it was another matter.

“Just three hundred, not counting the ones that are asleep,” I told her. We were actually spread pretty thin.

Although only about one hundred changelings were capable of interaction with pony society for any long length of time without causing any problems, that still left a good 1300 that were kept awake with other jobs to do; all of whom were smart enough to speak. For the most part, they just went around our area of the forest, making sure a manticore or hydra didn’t wander into my underpopulated area without warning.

After remembering stories about the foals last encounter with changelings, I looked back to give them a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry girls. I promise everything is going to be just fine.”

With that promise, I brought them all across the bridge and onto the castle grounds.

Okay, calling it the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters a castle was a bit of a stretch. Sure, it was a big stone building with four towers built at the north, south, east, and west corners, archways, and some fancy architecture that Luna had helped slap together over the past month. A real castle had walls, and was made to keep out invaders. The thing I was living in was more like an oversized house with twelve too many secret passages and enchanted objects of dark magic hidden beneath the floorboards.

It’s also kind of lonely.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not some pathetic loser who constantly needs the input of his friends to get out of the dumps. I had outgrown that little problem two weeks ago. But when the place you live in gives an echo just from walking on the floor and the only creatures around have the conversational abilities of a robot, or a rhyming obsessed zebra, things either become very dull, or very annoying very fast.

“So girls, where do you think we should start?” I asked.

A grumble of their stomachs was their answer, and Sweetie looked up at me unexpectedly. “How about dinner?”

The question caught me off guard, and I laughed nervously. After living as a changeling for a few months, things like the hunger of other ponies tended to slip my mind. Even my natural hunger didn’t work like a normal person’s, it was determined by how much magic I had stored away. If I were to just lay down and not move, I could theoretically go the rest of my life without a meal.

It was also why I didn’t store much in the way or food at the castle. Actually, I didn’t store any food, it was all Zecora’s.

“Let’s go see what Zecora has to eat, shall we?”

With any luck, I could even dump them off on her.

Being able to smell food and not get hungry, or eat it was an interesting experience. After all, there’s a biological imperative present in all humans to eat. This is usually triggered when said person wanders around outside their local Burger King and smells the ventilation from the kitchen are pumped into the air.

But not us changelings! Which I suppose is a good thing, as smelling pony food would actually make me want to eat pony souls. Not that all pony food smelled good, or was eatable even before my intestinal tract was replaced with a goo sack mind you, but unfortunately, the food my annoying castlemate was cooking up would have been edible before my sex/species change.

“So, we’re having vegetable stew Zecora?” the little earth pony asked as she jumped up to try and look into the over-sized chamber pot that the zebra cooked everything in. And by everything I also meant her potions. I was more than a little worried that the girls would end up growing extra legs or something.

“Indeed my dear Apple Bloom,” Zecora assured her. “So you’d best have plenty of room.” A poke to the stomach with the dry side of her oversized ladle knocked the filly down.

As the zebra continued to mess with the food, I felt a tug on my tail and looked back to see Sweetie Belle standing behind me. “Can we go see the dungeon now?”

“Patience little one, the food is almost done,” Zecora told them.

Thankfully, before the children could counter the zebra’s reply about how they wanted to see the dungeon, or Celestia’s old bedroom, or Luna’s old observatory that very second, a hideous, vampiric monster strode through the doorway to confront me. It’s very appearance made the children freeze in terror, while I sighed in relief.

To the non-changeling observer, the creature wouldn't have looked any different than its thousands of identical twins. But after living with him for weeks, I tended to notice the minor differences that separated different changelings aside from their personal scents. The armor he was wearing helped too. Only ten changelings wore it, and he was the only one of them at the castle at the moment.

“Number 1,” I addressed the changeling before following its gaze for a moment. “Ignore the foals. Why are you here?”

“We found another secret panel Highness.”

I frowned at the declaration. Whoever designed Sister/Everfree Castle must have been half-insane. Even a month after reconstruction of the upper levels, we were still finding stuff hidden behind this corner or that tapestry to open secret doors, panels, and just about every other little kind of hidden entryway there was. For the stuff that was just a trapdoor to a normal room, we gunked up the gears with our resin and left it in the closed position. For entrances to secret rooms that hid stuff, I had to clear the place out, then we either made it into something resembling a normal room, or just sealed it away.

It was actually kind of disturbing just how many dark artifacts were hidden away in the castle. I didn’t know enough about magic constructs to safely dispose of them, or if they could be disposed of at all. Even Tia was hesitant to get rid of the things. Apparently the destruction of magical artifacts didn’t always go in a non-combustible way like the Alicorn Amulet had. Maybe science finally trumped magic in the idea that energy couldn’t be used up, only converted.

“So seal it up, I thought you had enough brains to decide stuff like that for yourself,” I grumbled. I didn’t like the fact my #1 assistant had just scared the hell out of the kids. Stupid thing should have known better considering it was supposed to be the leader of my top ten changelings that I could trust to do things without me having to look over their shoulders.

#1 tilted his head before asking, “and secret room it leads to?”

I grit my teeth at the question and didn‘t bother to hide my anger. “You found a room and you’re just telling me this now?” I shouted before heading for the door at a fast trot. “Show me!” In this castle, hidden rooms that were dead ends meant there was some kind of magical object hidden inside them, usually protected by some kind of trap.

In all honesty, I didn’t want to have to let the kids out of my sight. But I didn’t want to just leave ancient magical artifacts just laying around either. So I assured myself that they had Zecora looking after them, and it shouldn’t take long to transport the mystical whatever it was down to the old treasury vault where all the rest of my magical stuff was stored.

Oh, and avoid the trap or two that the thing probably had installed to protect it. No mystical object in Sister Castle was complete without a hidden deathtrap just waiting to be set off. As I had yet to die from any of them, the only words I could say to sum up Tia’s security measures were: EPIC FAIL.

Celly's death-trap architect really sucked.

So I followed my #1 minion down some stairs, through a hallway, around a corner, down another step of stairs to head back across another hallway and float down a spiraling set of stairs until I finally got to the hallway that led to a little indentation in the wall flanked by a pair of changelings, where the artifact was being stored. I walked past a door, and then another door after half-a-dozen steps, and another half-a-dozen more, and then…I stopped at where the hole had been knocked in the wall, and frowned before looking further down the hallway to see three more doors spaced about half a dozen steps apart.

I looked back to the hole in the wall with several bits of debris surrounding it, where there was supposed to just be a door, opening up to a small room. “How exactly did you guys find this place?” I asked before looking in, lighting up my horn as I did so. The air still smelled stale and the room had a complete set of thousand-plus year furniture just sitting around consisting of a small a single bed, and a tiny dresser with a mirror on top, and a basic armoire.

“We heard a rustling of the wind coming from the wall Highness,” #1 explained.

I nodded as I walked into the sealed off chamber. “Oh, I guess that makes…wait, what do you mean wind? We’re underground. Having a breeze flow this deep makes absolutely no sense at all!” I said as I rounded to glare at the changelings, and froze in shock at the three additional presences I found standing there.

“Cool! A chamber of secrets!”

“That’s secret chamber Scootaloo.”

“Ah don’t know, looks like an old storage room ta me.”

I just stared at the three little fillies standing behind me, my jaw going slack. “It…wha…you…WHAT ARE YOU THREE DOING HERE?”

“I was looking for the bathroom!” Scootaloo proudly declared.

“I was-hey you stole my excuse!”

“Ah was following yah with the others!” Apple Bloom told me, earning a glare from the other two fillies. “What? Applejack says always tell the truth!”

Sweetie Belle groaned. “Is that why I had to be the one to tell Zecora we were about to wet the carpet if she didn't let us go pee?”

Ignoring the munchkins for the moment, I stormed over to the room’s exit and glared at the lead changeling in the hallway. “And what the hay were you thinking just letting them waltz in here like this?”

“You ordered me to ignore them Highness,” #1 replied in a simple manner. If I hadn’t of known any better, I would have called him on being a smartass; but one of the reasons I gave the changeling in front of me the rank of #1 was because he followed my order to the letter when I gave them without opening anything to interpretation.

So I just groaned and-

“AHHH!”

-spun around quickly at the scream to see what the girls had done now…and went wide-eyed when I could only count two of them in the room with me: an earth pony, and a unicorn.

A shiver ran down my spine, and I looked all around the tiny dormitory and found that the little pegasus hadn’t suddenly learned how to fly so well she created a hole in the ceiling. So I turned to the only other occupants in the room and gave the CMC a wide-eyed look. “What just happened?”

“Ah don’t know!” Apple Bloom exclaimed as she stopped looking around the room frantically for a moment to give me a glimpse of her panicked eyes. “One second she was there, and the next there was this scream, and then she was gone!”

Sweetie Belle was being a bit more productive in her panic. She was trying to open up the ancient clothes cabinet and calling out for the filly. “Scootaloo, are you in there?”

Just to make sure, I pulled the filly away from the armoire with my telekinesis and set her down between me and the ancient bed. Then after wrapping the doors of the portable closet in my magic, I opened it to find…just a bunch of stupid old clothes. Judging from the colors of dark blue and gold, they had probably been old palace livery that the servants had worn. Making the room we were in an old servant’s apartment.

There was a slight ringing in my ears, and then I heard a rather melodious scream come from right beside me. By the time I looked over a second later, Sweetie Belle was gone.

I grit my teeth and looked around as fast as I could. Shit! Shit! Shit!

Scootaloo I could lose. She was an annoying orange little brat with no good family connections except to Rainbow Dash (sorta) and I knew the pegasus would forgive me.

Sweetie on the other hand? Rarity would murder me in my sleep!

Nearly gone into full panic, I looked around the room again. “Sweetie! Can you hear me?”

“T-The bed!” Apple Bloom’s declaration drew my attention to the little filly, and then I followed to where her hoof was pointing at the ancient mattress. “S-Something pulled her under the bed!”

Without wasting any time, I scooped Apple Bloom up in my forelegs and spread my wings to try and take to the air for a second before the claustrophobia-inducing living space told me I had no room to move with a wall smacking my plot. Then I used my magic to slide the bed across the room towards me and…

…frowned at the complete lack of giant holes, secret passages, or magical portals. While part of my mind noted that this would have been time for a snarky comment about it never being that easy, I was a little too frantically enraged that somehow, two innocent little children had been snatched from right under my nose to voice the words.

“W-Wut?” Apple Bloom mumbled when I pushed my butt off the wall and landed in the middle of the room to glare at the sight of the disappearance. I sat so I could still keep the remaining Crusader in my pony arms, and did my best not to look worried when she turned her eyes up at me. “But Princess Fae, Ah saw her go under there! It was like somethin’ was yankin’ Sweetie from behind!”

I hugged the tiny pony close and gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s okay Apple Bloom, I believe you. Don’t worry, I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“What do you think happened to em?”

“I don’t know, but I promise everything’s going to be just fine,” I assured her in what was probably going to end up being my motto for the night if this mystery kept up. However, I was already working 'please or please don't kill me' into something a little less pathetic-sounding for when their sisters got home.

The filly looked back up wide and frightened eyes. She opened her mouth to speak and-

“liar.”

-I felt a tug on my tail, then a hard yank from behind that pulled me backwards with enough speed I didn’t have time to fight back before I was dragged past some…dark curtains? After that, the floor just disappeared out from under me, and Bloom screamed in my arms as we went down.

Once the mind numbing screams of the frightened child were stopped by her need to take a breath, I found myself able to think again and flapped my wings to try and fight whatever the hell was dragging at me. It didn’t stop my descent, but I was able to slow things down enough to give me time to think, light up my horn, and take a look at what had snagged my tail.

The thing in question was just a thin black tendril that had wrapped itself around my tail and extended into the darkness past the illumination provided by my horn. The appearance of such a thing made me grit my teeth. Oh fuck no! I’ve heard enough rumors about Japanese porn to know where this is going, I told myself before turning the magic in my horn into something destructive.

Just because I was a girl at the moment didn’t mean I was letting anything touch my female junk. Except…maybe Twilight, she’d kind of been expressing an interest in getting me off that might have been wearing me down over the past month. Okay…Rainbow Dash too, if she offered…and quite possibly a rule 63 version of the two of them.

What can I say? Twilight fixed a spell by Dumbass the Gandalf impersonator in less than 24 hours, but a month had passed and she hadn’t been able to figure out a way to change my girl pony form into a guy that didn’t leave a ethereal residue that completely messes up a changeling’s transformation magic. So I needed to start accepting the possibility of me not having any balls wasn’t just going to be a euphemism for my inaction problems.

I lit up my horn and fired at the thing dragging me down into the dark abyss near the edge of my tail. “BAD TENTACLE PORN MONSTER!” There was a sound of a shriek as my magic struck the thing and erupted into a swath of green flames to burn at the appendage pulling me down. A second later, it released me and retreated.

“Uh, what’s a ten-tackle porn monster?”

I flinched, and looked down at the filly in my forelegs. “Um…something you should never mention to your sister…ever,” I ordered the child. Not that I thought Applejack knew the answer, but she would ask Twilight. Then I’d be screwed. Because she’d probably give some kind of magical constructed demonstration…on me.

Either that, or it would give her ideas; and I already had enough with the teacher and student role-play she put us through about once a week. Just thinking about her ‘bad girl’ act with day late paper scenarios as the student and exemplars of how to stimulate various regions of pony female anatomy when she was the teacher using me as a model made me want to groan.

Ever since unlocking a whole new…subject to study, the not so little librarian’s libido was ludicrously lively in its lust. Which was actually pretty weird since alicorn’s didn’t have a monthly, or the ability to produce offspring. But then again, Twilight had triple the appetite for a pony, so why not the same amount of hunger for her sex drive?

“Now what Princess Fae?”

The child in my charge brought be out of imagining my girlfriend’s nightly activities, and I looked down towards the darkness below. “Now we see where that thing was taking us.”

“Couldn’ta we of just done that by lettin' it snag us?” Apple Bloom asked.

I increased the light of my horn to up the illumination around us by several fold, and found that we were in some kind of large tunnel with smooth, blackened rock walls that looked too…even in color to be obsidian. “Rule number one in fighting monsters Apple Bloom, never let your opponent dictate anything. Now come on, and let’s go find our friends.”

The trip down didn’t take long, nor did the search.

The black hole I had been pulled down into opened up to a cavern about a quarter the size of a football field with an arching ceiling fifty feet high. Apart from the odd black stone that the place was made of, there wasn’t much else except for a dense layer of dust at my feet. The two fillies we were looking for had been pushed into the walls until only their heads and the ends of their hooves could be seen, and they sat suspended a good fifteen feet above the ground. Thankfully, they were both fast asleep.

“Welcome to my realm unseelie,” a whisper of a voice both seemed to reach my equine ears and echo throughout the small chamber at the same time.

Just seeing the children up there unconscious, and possibly hurt, got me all the anger I needed to fuel the dark magic changelings ran on. Messing with the Mane Six pissed me off plenty, but they could at least defend themselves. Kidnapping little kids was a whole new low for bad guys as far as I was concerned. The anger that little fact dragged up helped me forget I was in the middle of this thing’s home turf, however sucky it was, and I had yet to see them damn thing beyond the whatever it was that grabbed me.

“So the bad guys are stooping to nabbing children now?” I shouted as I looked around the area while making sure Apple Bloom kept herself underneath my legs so she couldn‘t get grabbed. “Who are you anyway? He Who Walks Behind? Slendermare? Tril…Tirra…um…dragon lord guy? Evil Goat? The Smoooooooooze?”

The darkness seemed to take form in front of me, rising out of the ground and forming into a shape that looked disturbingly humanoid, only it was ten feet tall with spindly arms that ended in a three fingered hands that wiggled more like tentacles then stood straight like fingers or claws. “Foolish creature, I am-”

“WIDE OPEN!” I shouted as I threw all the destructive magic I could muster at the slender shadow. The blast struck the monster in the chest and bathed him in green fire, elating a scream from the shadow as it pushed him into the wall and held him there for a few seconds before the magic of my spell gave out and revealed the monsters cowering form.

With the damn thing still alive, and me feeling brave over the fact my opponent was now pretty helpless, I heroically leapt over the filly I was guarding and concentrated my magic in my hooves to stomp on the monster a good dozen times while my forelegs were wrapped in the destructive flames of my magic. Only when I had to pause and take a breath did I check to make sure the thing beneath me wasn’t breathing…if whatever it was even did that. I gave it a few pokes to make sure though.

“And that Apple Bloom, is why you try and get the bad guys to go into an introductory monologue,” I said while changing another spell in my horn to consume what was left of the shadow spirit with my changeling magic’s flames.

“Pardon Princess, but that don’t seem all too fair,” the little pony spoke up from behind me.

Rolling my eyes, I flew up to the other foals and teleported them out of the wall, then nudged them awake while trying to get the last word in with the kid. “Yeah well, neither is snatching little foals…or roping me into this whole babysitting job in the first place. I swear, that habit is going to come back and bite your sister in the flank one day.”

“Wha? Where are we?”

“Ugh…my horn hurts,” Sweetie Belle complained as I managed to nudge her awake with my muzzle.

“No idea, but-” I was cut off as the ground around me started to crack, and everything around us made the sound of glass breaking. As the ground beneath us literally shattered, I snatched up the foals in my magic, then put Bloom on my back while my forelegs held the other girls. With the three of them secure, I could put all my magic in my wings except what I needed to light my horn. Not wanting to stick around and see what happened when the whole place came tumbling down, I flew back up into the well that had dropped me here as fast as I could.

While I could fly and had the girls in a firm grip, there was a big difference between dark cave made of black stone with no source of light, and the infinite black abyss reality itself seemed to shatter and fall into. I didn’t want to know what would happen if I was in the area that cracked apart and fell.

As the area around us became smaller, I looked down to the children in my forelegs.

“Okay girls, do me a favor and don’t tell your sisters about-” I told them before I slammed into something above me, “-OW!” The impact jostled my wings enough to mess up my flapping rhythm.

“-telling you Celestia, I can’t penetrate the membrane of a-”

The impact had me tucking and rolling, and the next thing I knew, I was tangled up in…something that kept me from seeing straight.

“Oh, never mind, they’re back," a disturbingly familiar male voice finished.

Ugh, what the hell? I asked myself as I poked the material holding us with the hoof that had been carrying Scootaloo and realized it was a bed sheet. As light returned to my eyes, I blinked in confusion when I saw Celestia, Discord, and the Mane Six were standing around the upturned bed. All of the girls looked rather frazzled.

All I could think to do was voice my previous thought in pony. “What the hay?”

"SWEETIE BELLE!”

A second later, I felt the little unicorn snatched from my grip and into the forelegs of Rarity. Apple Bloom was reunited with her own sister a moment later, and Scootaloo got a half-hug from Rainbow Dash when she walked over to the larger pony.

I was just left to look around in confusion at the ponies who should just have gotten to Manehattan only hours ago. “Would some pony please tell me what’s going on? How are you girls even here? And what’re those two doing here?” I demanded while pointing at the Spirit of Chaos and Sun Princess.

Twilight was the one who stepped forward to answer. “When we came back from Manehattan and Rarity went to get the girls from the palace, the changelings told them you had disappeared,” she explained, her voice on edge.

“And of course when they were so completely stumped, the princess here called Celestia, who brought me along,” Discord interjected. “I was the only one smart enough to figure out you’d went through that shadow portal that had formed in this room, using the floor as a focus.”

Half a dozen questions ran through my mind, and most of them could be combined into a single sentence. “But that’s not possible! You girls couldn’t have come back from Manehattan yet, I was only down there for six or seven minutes!”

The statement had Twilight tilting her head. “Fae, you and the girls have been missing for six days. We've spent the last three trying to find a way to get you out!”

“Oh that’s…WHAT?”

Nearly twenty minutes after I had managed to get out of the shadow well…thingy, I changed back into my normal form and had explained everything that happened from my perspective after making sure the foals were okay. When it was all done, I found myself sitting in the conference room of my palace…that was technically Twilight’s since I was only really the steward of the place.

Since I was going for form over function, the room itself wasn’t much to look at. A round table with enough places for seven ponies sat at the center, while light from the outside shone in through western windows, and magical touches that would never burn down provided light for the rest of the area. There were no tapestries, paintings, or decoration of any kind since I had thought the room would eventually be used by the Bearers themselves eventually, and Rarity would throw out anything I put up anyway.

However, at the moment, the ponies occupying the room only included one Element user, two larger pony princesses, and a giant douche; a giant annoying douche.

“Okay, would one of you please run this all by me again?” I asked before looking over to glare at Discord. “In order, without all the words being backwards, and in language I understand.”

Much to my annoyance, the draconequus grinned and took in a deep breath. “In that case, I think this rap will-”

“NO!” the two alicorn sisters shouted at the Spirit of Chaos before I looked over to the large and extra large ponies.

“Can I please eat him?”

Before Tia could tell me no, as she had said the last twelve times I approached the subject, Discord let out a scandalized gasp and teleported over to the smallest real alicorn in the room. “Did you hear that Twilight? Your fillyfriend is thinking about cheating on you with another…oh wait, give me a second for a quick gender swap so the sexual innuendo will make better sense,” he mumbled before looking down at himself.

Luna groaned, I glared at the instigator of the situation, and Twilight just looked around confused. “Umm…would somepony mind telling me what‘s going on?”

“I don’t like Discord,” I told her.

The deadpan expression Twilight gave me practically screamed ‘I get that’ but my perfect little girlfriend would never say something of the kind out loud. “I was referring to the eating comment.”

Of course, Discord decided to explain in his own special way. He took one step away from the table and reached up to a string that wasn’t there before and pulled down a picture of me and Twilight in bed together that looked like it belonged in some kind of pony porn magazine. “Well you see Twilight, when two mares like you and the drag queen over there want to have sex, but find themselves lacking the proper equipment, the usual method to satisfy ones needs involves using your tongue to stimulate-”

“GAH! OKAY CUT IT OUT ALREADY!” The purple alicorn screeched in the chaos spirit’s face.

“DISCORD!” Celestia shouted while Luna managed to hold me back from getting in range of the damn bastard. Damn best princess and her peripheral vision! I hadn’t even shouted and lunged or anything. I was just going to sneak up behind the idiot when he was yakking to himself like usual and end his miserable existence.

A moment later, the picture disappeared, and Discord crossed his arms in a huff. “Fine…sex jokes are a little too tasteless for me anyway,” he said before teleporting back to his seat.

“And to answer your question Twilight,” Celestia continued. “As you know, Fairy has the ability to devour magical energy. How much she can eat and its…nutritional value is determined by the emotional state of the pony she is with. However, because of the chaotic nature of Discord’s magic, changelings don’t need an emotional catalyst to absorb it.”

I frowned at the monster as the alicorn holding me released her grip. “So in other words, if he tries messing with you and your friends again just tell me and I’ll take care of it,” I told her.

“Yes, that ended so well for the last changeling who devoured me.”

Luna cleared her throat and tapped her hoof to the table. “Yes, well…getting back on topic,” she said before looking around with a glare to see if anyone else had something to say at the cost of making her even more annoyed. “What you experienced was a reality bubble…a kind of self contained dimension, if you will. Time moved at a different pace there and when its creator fell, the magic holding it together did as well.”

“And what I saw inside?” I asked, referring to the shadow creature.

This time it was Tia who answered. “No idea,” she said, restoring my faith in her incompetence. Celestial god beings didn’t just go and say stuff like that! They were supposed to be mysteriously all-knowing and shit!

I frowned at the rather huge coincidence that came to mind. “But…the room It was sealed and hidden behind a wall! If there wasn’t some…hidden gateway to an evil dimension or something inside it, then why the hay was it walled up in the first place?”

“Ah that,” Luna said. “Well, as Twilight has no doubt taught you by now, places with high concentrations of mystical energies tend to have odd effects on the surroundings, usually in the form of probability. That room was directly over the Tree of Harmony and skirted its sphere of influence.”

“So many foals were conceived in that bed,” Tia mumbled, making me shudder in revulsion. Modern Equestrian cleaning methods were still kind of behind the human kind. I didn’t even want to know how bad they were a thousand years ago since I had been wrapped in those fucking sheets.

“Not to mention the gambling the servants performed in there.”

“And the wedding proposals.”

“Alchemical experiments.”

I frowned when Luna mentioned the last one. “Really? People tried making potions in a room with no ventilation, and…wait, how the hay is that different from everywhere else in Equestria! This place practically runs on coincidence!”

“To you anyway,” Luna told me, “we prefer the term destiny. But in the presence of great mystical power like the Tree of Harmony, even our…limits to accept things are reached.”

Celestia smirked at me. “And with that room in the lowest level being right on top of the Tree...well, you can see why we sealed it,” she said before frowning. “Although…I guess it makes sense that an incursion would happen there of all places.”

“A what?”

“An incursion, a being from outside this realm coming in and messing everything up,” Discord told me with a frown. “You know, kind of like you.”

While I shot Discord another glare, Tia chuckled. “Now behave you two,” she said before focusing on me. “And yes. About every five hundred years, the walls of this dimension…thin, for a lack of a better term. Some things press against the membrane, and managed to get through. I imagine that’s how you came to view this world in the first place.”

The words confused me for a second, at least until I remembered the BS line I had fed them about being an observer from another dimension over a month ago when I had first come to Equestria. In all honesty, I did my best not to think about that kind of stuff anymore and just did my best to go with the flow. “Oh…right.”

“But instead of a neurotic…whatever you were, this time we got the monster under the bed,” Discord continued.

“Hey! Twilight’s the one with mental…um, never mind,” I quickly said to cover my ass when she glared at me, and I quickly tried to think of something else to talk about. Okay…let’s see, what happened five hundred years ago last time this happened? No A thousand…wait, Twilight said the Nightmare Moon wasn’t just Luna going nuts but some kind of dream monster. I wonder if…actually, Luna probably doesn’t want to talk about that stuff. Another thought flashed as Discord’s words played through my head and I frowned. Wait a second, a shadowy monster that kidnaps kids, and hides under the bed… “Are you saying I just killed the boogie man?” I asked the draconequus.

Discord simply gave me a blank stare. “How should I know?” he deadpanned. “Honestly, John De Lancie, The Q, Bronies! I don’t understand half the junk that comes out of your mouth.”

I groaned as Discord reminded me of the major letdown of our first meeting and seeing like Pinkie, he did not have cartoon awareness…although the guy did seem to have a weird need to reference Harry Potter every now and then, when I demanded where he learned the word thestrals, the draconequus just shrugged and told me he made it up cause bat-ponies sounded stupid.

“Princess Celestia,” Twilight finally spoke up. “Are you saying that there’s going to be more…umm…”

When I caught Twilight looking at me out of the corner of her eye, I supplied the word for her to go on. “Are more monsters like me and that thing going to be finding their way in?”

Twilight shot me a frown for my choice of words, and I just shrugged.

On the other side of the table, Celestia sighed and shook her head. “If I knew the answer to that my friend, then I would truly be as all-knowing as you said some humans see me to be,” she told me before a small smile crossed her lips. “However, it seems fate has saw fit to grant us an expert in such matters.”

“Who-” I managed to get out before every pony in the room turned to look at me…oh, and Discord too. Oh shit… Yeah…I really need to come clean about that whole inter-dimensional mage thing before it comes around to bite me in the ass.

But then, telling the ponies they were all cartoon characters would likely get me shipped off to an insanity ward.

Stupid choices. Why couldn't I have just been born a damn changeling drone?

Chapter 2: My Little Voyage Into Dark Waters

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Summer heat is not a friend of ponykind; or those pretending to be a pony either. The summer heat was hot, and even as the days passed closer to Fall, the sun did not seem to let out on the scorching amount of heat that it brought down upon the coated forms of myself and my friends.

Baking in the summer sun, I could imagine the cruel sun tyrant looking through her telescope at the discomfort of me and the girls while chuckling to herself. Unless of course the heat wave was actually the fault of the weather ponies, in which case I imagined a bunch of uptight bureaucrats pushing hot air around towards my general location because I was exempt from weather taxes thanks to my home being in the Everfree. Point was, I was too hot, and in Equestria where everything is managed by ponies, so that meant I had someone to blame for current discomfort that didn’t focus my anger towards the girls I was with.

As for what I was doing at the moment, I was accompanying Twilight, who was accompanying the rest of her friends as they went with Fluttershy to Horseshoe Bay so that she could release some fish she had picked up while over in Manehattan back into the wild.

Apparently the thing had been injured or something, and Fluttershy had seen it as her duty to spend copious amounts of time nursing something that was just going to end up as something else's dinner back to health. Quite frankly, I was proud of the shy little pegasus, she usually just let the animals stay at her place and eat her out of house and home instead of releasing them back where they belonged. The little girl was growing up.

Of course, as soon as Rainbow had heard about her oldest friend’s plan to just run down to the shore and come back, she had hijacked the whole thing and turned it into a last hurrah before our Summer ended. I wasn’t too keen on going to a place where its human counterpart was the equal to an open air flesh bar, where guys went to try and find hot girls and vice versa…but Rainbow Dash had been the one asking, and Twilight thought it was a good idea. The day those two found out I would do anything the two of them asked me, I was screwed.

I was just lucky I had managed to talk Spike into coming along, and Twilight into closing the library for a few days so he could. Otherwise, I would have been the one carrying the bags. Instead, I got to stick close to Twilight while trying my best not to look uncomfortable as I dodged drops of gooey popsicle that fell from above while Rainbow attempted to finish off a snack she had bought at a kiosk back in the little village we just exited before it melted.

“So after we’re done setting the fish free, are there any cool sights to see around here?” I asked, my latent brony coming out at the thought of exploring Equestria’s landscape. All I really knew about Horseshoe Bay was that it was close to Baltamare.

Pinkie threw out her usual suggestion of course. “We could have a back to the sea party!”

Right on top of the deliberation, Rarity added her two cents. “I would like to sample to local foods. Do you think you could make some of those drinks with the little umbrellas Darling? They look absolutely adorable!”

While I was left wondering if Rarity’s sense of fashion had managed to overtake some of her more natural ones, Fluttershy froze up and looked down at the tiny fishbowl hanging from her neck that housed Gill, the fish she had been doctoring for the past week and a half. “Um, well…I was thinking, we need to make sure this is the right time to send Gill back to the sea…and place…and what about the lunar phase? We shouldn’t release Gill back into the ocean if the moon isn’t properly aligned!”

Oh great, so much for the vacation part of this trip, I told myself while Applejack went over to try and talk some sense into Fluttershy. If we spent the next few days trying to talk her into letting go of a fish rather than having fun, I was going to have to start looking for some new ponies to hang out with.

To keep at least some of us on the vacation track, I looked over to the pony who could talk for hours about anything. “So Pinkie, what’s your favorite thing about the beach?”

“I like the crabs, the way they tickle my hooves when they try to pinch me just makes me laugh so much!”

I could barely follow that with a thought. Huh, that was…different? I asked myself. It wasn’t Pinkie weird random, since I guess it did kind of make sense she would like being tickled. It was just so…different than what a human would say I couldn’t help but be thrown off a bit. Apparently, my adjustment to Equestrian society still needed some work.

The others quickly joined in on Pinkie’s comment though.

“I just love to relax with that sea breeze blowing through my mane,” Rarity proclaimed.

“Them pineapples make fer some mighty fine drinks…long as you can take the side effects,” Applejack commented, drawing my attention for a moment. Hell, I didn’t even know pineapples existed in Equestria…and a few jokes involving them and Applejack I could remember from the time I had access to a computer were now useless.

“I want to take a look at the local geography!” Twilight exclaimed before she opened up her saddlebag and pulled out a map to unfold it, using her magic of course. The thing wasn’t like the ones found in travel brochures or…anything modern Equestria had. The damn thing looked pretty old.

At Twilight’s declaration of her wish to also go sightseeing, I just reached over with a wing and put it across her back since nuzzling while walking was a good way to get tripped up. “Have I mentioned how much I loved you?” I asked while ignoring what the rest of the group was going on about. The thought that me and Twi’s wants aligned so perfectly was just awesome.

“Only since this morning when we…umm, ehehe,” the alicorn laughed nervously when she looked around. A second later, and I noticed that all the other ponies were looking at the two of us.

“You get it on three times a day, we know already,” Spike said after Twilight went quiet.

As the real alicorn’s face reddened, I just glared at the dragon. “No need to broadcast it, geeze.”

“But you guys do broadcast it,” Pinkie spoke up. “Especially that first night before we all found out Fae-Fae was a girl. Twilight was really loud! I heard her all the way from Sugarcube Corner.”

Twilight seemed to shrink in on herself. I just gaped at the pink pony.

“The two of you did used to cause quite the disturbance Darling,” Rarity added.

Rainbow Dash let out a ‘pfft’ and flew down to float beside us after finishing her snack. “And just why is it Twilight’s the only one ever hear anyway?” she asked while giving me a frown.

Oh Luna, kill me now, I prayed to the moon goddess as all eyes fell to me.

“F-Fae’s just a little nervous about intimacy on her end okay?” Twilight explained quickly as she took a sledgehammer to what was left of my self image. “And why’re you girls bringing this up now?”

Rarity giggled. “Oh Darling, did you think we wouldn’t be poking a little fun at the first one of us to get into a steady relationship? You must allow us to vent our jealousy somehow.”

The declaration of the reasoning behind their actions made Twilight’s ‘defend girlfriend’ stance turn into a panicked clenching of teeth and wincing as she looked around at her friends. “J-Jealous? I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t think any of you would be-”

“Okay Rare, I think you can lay off her for a little while,” Rainbow said, stopping Twilight’s mental meltdown before she looked over to the two of us. Even I blushed, or had some blood rush to my face in a very manly fashion, under the pegasus’s smirk and found a very interesting cloud to look at. “Now come on girls, let’s get to the beach before the sand runs out.”

A part of me wanted to tell Rainbow we were going to a beach, not an hourglass, but I was just thankful she saved our collective plots and coaxed Twilight into the air to follow me and cut their good-natured jokes short.

Thankfully, the beach we had chosen to spend our short vacation at was devoid of any other ponies, most likely do to its size. The whole thing spanned less than two hundred yards, and was littered with pineapple trees (yeah, they have those in Equestria apparently, but on trees) rather close to the shoreline. It seemed to be more of the scenic type of place where ponies would stop and take a picture of rather than stay for relaxation. However, for our group, it was the perfect size.

A few minutes after we arrived, Rarity was drinking some pineapple juice and lounging on a deck chair she had Spike bring with us while her dragon slave fanned the pony with a giant leaf. Applejack was off picking pineapples up from the ground where Twilight and I had ripped them from the trees for her to make into more drinks. Pinkie had found some small crabs to attack her, and Rainbow was playing a solo game of frisbee by using a boomerang and flying around to catch it. As for Fluttershy, she was down by the shore, probably saying goodbye to her fish.

However, at the moment, I didn’t give much of a damn about any of that. Twilight and I were busy planning a sightseeing date tour using her old history books and a compass she had brought with her from Ponyville. I honestly didn’t know what excited me more: the adventuring through old Equestrian sights, or just spending a day out doing something new with her. Although we had been together for a month, the list of new Ponyville activities we could share had started to run dry and I was looking forward to a change of scenery since the whole cuddling thing didn’t work too well in the summer heat.

“So I was thinking we could start with Plummouth Rock, then head over to the Sapphire Hills and see if we can find anything using Rarity’s gem finding spell,” she said while glancing between the map and her book that described the area. “It would be nice if we could find something to remember this trip by that we didn’t get in a store.”

I nodded before glancing at her map. “Anything interesting in the Hayseed Swamps, or maybe further down?”

My suggestion got a curious eye raise from Twilight. “Why would you want to go to a…” she said before her expression turned to one of one of suspicion. “Wait a minute…" She paused in thought for a moment as she studied the map, then looked back up at me. "We are not going to see where the Battle of Discord was fought.”

I don’t know whether to be impressed, or a little creeped out she can already tell what I’m thinking like that, I thought to myself before giving her a disarming grin, followed by a peck of a kiss on her nose. “Okay you win,” I told her. It looked like if I was going to see anything really cool on this trip, I would just have to sneak off after dark and peek at it later.

A loud splash, followed by a scream got our attention, and both of us looked over to the beach where Fluttershy had been putting her fish back in the water. My mouth nearly dropped to the ground at what I saw.

They say that some people can get so wrapped up in what they’re doing that they tune out the rest of the world. I had always thought this to be a pretty stupid theory, as no matter what you’re doing, there is always a vast amount of sensory input that tells you what’s going on around you no matter how focused your attention is on the purple pony in front of you.

But that is the excuse I’m using for not noticing the 28 meter-high ship that nearly crashed right onto the beach, right where Fluttershy was standing. However, the slightly more disturbing thing than its sudden appearance, although well below the way it got my hackles up for scaring the hell out of Fluttershy and nearly crushing her to death, was the giant skull and crossbones that adorned both its flag and sails. Even with the way Equestrian coincidence worked, all I could think was, a pirate ship? Are you fucking kidding me?

A few seconds later, an earth pony with a peg leg and a cutie mark that matched the skull and crossbones on his sail exactly swung down from the railing and landed next to the frightened pegasus. “Sorry about that bit of water lass, that’s what happens when you tango with the sea,” he said before spitting the rope out of his mouth and turning to the rest of us. “Now, have you wee fillies seen any crew-worthy stallions round these parts?”

In the ensuing silence, I managed to get a better look at the pirate, and although his braided beard and tail had me dreading this was some sort of Jonny Depp amalgam pony pirate, the rest of his clothes spoke otherwise. He wore a bandanna, but it was just covering his brow, and the pony was wearing more gold necklaces than Jack Sparrow ever did, along with a black vest made of a material that had me wondering if it was some kind of leather along with an eye patch that completed his ultimate cliché pirate outfit. The cutlass at his hip was also a bit of an oddity, as I had never seen a pony use a sword before. Their mouths didn’t seem to be made for it.

The boomerang Rainbow had been playing with came around to smack her glasses off and seemed to knock Dash out of the stupor we had all been stuck in. However, instead of ramming into the idiot who scared Fluttershy half to death and breaking every bone in his body like I was planning to do, she just got a look of childish glee on her face. “Ohmygosh! A real pirate!” Rainbow exclaimed. “And hey, if you need a crew, then we’re the best ponies you could possibly hope for pal!”

Uh oh, I thought to myself while Twilight stepped forward and held up a hoof with a placating laugh. “Oh don’t mind her sir. I’m afraid my friend has flown a bit too close to the sun today,” she told the pirate. “But I’m sure you can find a few good stallions in the resort town nearby. We can give you directions if you want.”

“Are you kidding Twilight?” Rainbow demanded as she flew down to get eye-level with the other mare, “we could be pirates, living the dream!”

Apparently, Rainbow’s argument managed to convince another one of our number. Pinkie jumped up, knocking away most of the crabs that had been trying to claw their way through her hooves off. “Let’s do it! I’m always one for making dreams come true.”

A second later, Rainbow was off selling the rest of her friends on their skill sets as she moved from pony to pony. “Applejack here can cook all kinds of food with any kind of fruit, Twilight is a brainiac when it comes to maps and all sorts of other stuff, Rarity would be awesome at gearing us up all piratey, my girl Fae probably knows a million things about being a pirate, and Spike here will come in loads of handy! Come on girls, this will be a way more awesome adventure than just sitting around getting sand in our coats!”

As Rainbow made her sale, I felt a strange feeling wash over me, and shook my head to fight it off. It was weird. I remembered Rainbow Dash’s episode where she had managed to round up every pegasus in Ponyville for that tornado, then get them all back into it when the whole thing seemed hopeless. So, I knew she had a bit of charisma but…I had been around charismatic people before, and what Dash had was something…more. So much so I found myself wondering if she had some sort of emotional affecting ability like Fluttershy’s Stare that simply worked via encouragement instead of intimidation. By the time she was done, even Twilight looked to be seriously considering going out to sea, judging by the chapter of islands off the cost of Baltimare she had opened her book to.

Then, to seal the deal, Rainbow looked around for the final mare of our group. “Now where’s Fluttershy she-”

“What’re you all waiting for let’s cast off and set sail!”

That sounded like, I managed to think before looking towards the sound of Fluttershy’s voice coming from the direction of the ship. Then the thinking part of my brain kind of shut down when I noticed the yellow pegasus was already standing on the ship and motioning us to come aboard!

The only thing I could manage to comment on the situation was a hearty “Bwaaaaa?”

Twilight managed a much more coherent response. Apparently, seeing the pegasus act so…not Fluttershy had knocked her out of the excited daze that Dash had sent her into. “FLUTTERSHY? What are you doing!?”

“Um…pirating?” she replied in her normal Fluttershy way.

A second later, Rainbow Dash was back in the air. “Well if she’s going, I’m going!”

The thought of Dash running off to go gallivanting around with pirates and risking her life for God knows what managed to snap me out of my daze. I teleported Dash back to my side and wrapped the girl in my telekinesis to keep her from getting away while being as careful as I could not to hurt her. Being black magic based meant changeling TK wasn't as gentle as Twilight's, and messing with living creatures was always hard.

“H-Hey lemme go!”

Ignoring the overenthusiastic pegasus, I glared at the pirate who tried to sucker my friends into slaving away on his ship. As Dash had surmised, I did know quite a bit about life at sea back before things like engines had been invented. None of it was fun as Hollywood made it out to be. “Go find some other ponies to be your lackeys,” I told the sea horse before looking over to the last member of our little group. “Fluttershy, get down from there.”

A soft ‘okay’ from the other pegasus reached my ears as Peg-leg Pete the Pirate Pony let out a loud humph. “Yeah, I thought you looked too chicken to be accompanying me on a voyage to the Galloping Ghost Islands.”

My eye twitched in irritation at the pun of a name, but the bait didn’t tempt me in the slightest.

“Did you say the Galloping Ghost Islands? But they’re supposed to be a myth!”

However, judging by the words she just said and the sparkle in her eye, Twilight was more than willing to bite. Then the pirate took one look at her, her compass and map next to the multiple guidebooks, and smiled. “Aye lass, only the brightest and cleverest of navigators can find it. Know where I might find one?”

I released Rainbow from my hold, and wondered if she somehow switched personalities with Twilight as the alicorn accepted the challenge. A second later, Applejack was up next to me to whisper in my ear. “Look Sugarcube, something you ought to know about Twi and Dash is, once this sort of stuff starts happening, its best to just let em go at it and follow along to keep em outta as much trouble as ya can.”

Stupid sensible Stetson-wearing pony, I thought to myself while sighing in defeat.

Applejack had a point of course. I was their friend, not their parent. If Rainbow Dash wanted to go off and get herself killed facing certain doom, that was one thing, but I sincerely doubted even a pony pirate was going to be able to give the girls more trouble than they had become used to.

“Fine, let’s go,” I grumbled. But if anything did happen to the girls, I was going to turn this stupid wannabe sea pony inside out before sucking every last bit of life from his veins no matter how bad he tasted.

Ten minutes later, and we were setting sale. I took one last look at the beach, and frowned at the empty fishbowl laying on the sand that Fluttershy had brought her fish in. The sight made me look back to the yellow pegasus with a frown. She hadn't been there for Dash's speech, so... Just why in the hell was she going along with this anyway?

A few hours into our journey, I was getting a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t the feeling of creeping dread that usually accompanied stuff that came with being put in danger, I was literally queasy. Considering I didn’t have a stomach anymore, it was quite the feat if I do say so myself.

The others were faring much better. Inside the three tons of luggage Rarity had brought with her, she had managed to cobble together seven ‘pirate’ ensembles for each of us with varying degrees of dress. Pinkie had a white and black striped shirt with a red bandanna that covered her usually poofy hair, Applejack’s role at the ship’s cook had left her wearing a black chef’s hat with a pirate symbol on it while hair nets covered her mane and tail, Twilight’s purple collared shirt was a shade darker than her coat and covered her wings, while a hot pink and black striped bandana covered most of her hair. Rainbow Dash simply had on a dark gray vest that allowed for her wings while Rarity and Fluttershy only wore hats, with the unicorn’s being a tri-cone hat I would have expected to see in a swashbuckling move with all the fancy feathers it had, and Flutters had a giant beast that only a naval commander would be caught dead in.

In contrast, the pink Hawaiian shirt that the unicorn had dug out of the bottom of her bag made me look pretty damn out of place on a pirate ship. As for Spike, he was his usual nude self, but his size and ability to talk made the captain appoint him the ship’s parrot. Ironically, the dragon's job was to drop a bottled message in the water nearly every hour. Even after being freed from Twilight's Library, he still just sent messages. Poor guy.

Despite the change in clothes to help make me more festive, I found myself next to Twilight, as she was leaning over the edge beside me while I looked out the stern of the ship in case I really did start to vomit up my green resin. The alicorn running her hoof along my mane and back helped my peace of mind, if little else. “You know, I’ve read the center of the ship is the best place to be when you’re feeling sea sick. Do you want me to help you down to the galley?”

“It’s not like I have any lunch to lose Twi,” I told her with a halfhearted smile before looking behind me to give the damn captain a glare. “Besides, I like to stay where I can keep an eye on our so-called captain.”

“Oy! Navigator, get yer lily-livered plot over ‘er and chart me a course!” Jack Sparrow stand-in pony ordered.

“Coming!” Twilight politely said before her expression turned sour and she whispered in a voice only she and I could hear. “I thought it was the captain’s job to plot the courses.”

I leaned in to kiss the mare on the side of her ear. “Well, you do have the best plot on the ship.”

The comment got an eye roll from Twilight. “I think this salty air is affecting your brain,” she told me before leaning back in to kiss me on the lips. “But yeah, we are definitely having sex tonight. The motion of the waves should make things pretty interesting.”

As Twilight trotted away from me, I slunk down and leaned against the railing while stifling a groan. What really sucked beyond the lurching feeling in my stomach was that my legs felt so weak I couldn’t even stand without them shaking, and a killer headache would probably keep me from using any magic. All of that together spoke of more than just some simple seasickness, but I didn’t want to ruin the others good time, so I kept my mouth shut.

A few seconds after Twilight got out her maps and began correcting our course, Fluttershy made her way up to where the three of us were standing and peered over Twilight’s shoulder. “So, are we going along a current right now?” she asked barely loud enough for me to hear.

“Yes,” Twilight replied without looking up from her work.

Apparently getting the answer she wanted, Fluttershy looked over to the captain with her irresistibly hopeful eyes. “And how fast is this ship captain? Can it…outrun a school of fish?”

The pirate pony puffed out his chest a moment later. “Very fast girly. The Salty Sea Mare can outrun any fish in the ocean! Especially now that we be in the Castaway Current.”

“Amazing!” The pegasus exclaimed before mumbling something I couldn’t overhear. However, it did seem to catch Twilight’s attention, and the alicorn looked up from her work a moment later.

“Gill? You mean that fish you set free? What about hi-”

“LAND HO! Oh mare, this is so awesome!”

With Rainbow Dash’s announcement, whatever conversation Twilight was trying to have with Fluttershy was cut short as the captain let go of the wheel to address the girls on the main deck. “Okay, listen up you scurvy scalawags!” he shouted while knocking a hoof on the railing.

“Hey! There ain’t no scurvy on this ship!” Applejack exclaimed before she took off her chef’s hat to pull out an orange fruit out of it. “Made sure we were all stocked up with tangerines before leaving port…er, beach.”

The captain just waved her off. “Anyway…we’ll be hitting port before nightfall, so yer quest be two-fold! Find me former crew and get back me magical map they stole!”

Behind him, both me and Twilight frowned at the last two words. But with me feeling like Angel Bunny could take me down at the moment, she was the one who asked the question. “Magical map? What’s magical about it?”

“And that brings me to the third bit of yer assignment, mind yer own business, savy?” he said while shooting the two of us a glare.

Despite my…condition, I managed to glare back at him. “You know captain, a pirate leader isn’t a dictator. If anything, he’s first among equals,” I told the three-legged stereotype without much fear. If he tried anything, I could always hide behind Twilight and let her beat him up. I was perfectly fine letting my goddess of a girlfriend fight my battles for me, thank you.

“Ignore him, we need to get you to land anyway,” Twilight said as she sat down next to me and pulled me into an embrace that lasted until we were ready to dock. Just being in Twilight’s presence, being able to breathe in the mare’s scent while I rested my head on her shoulder and snuggled my muzzle against her neck helped me immensely. I closed my eyes and blocked out the part of the world that I couldn’t smell or feel with my hooves.

When our journey finally ended and we pulled into port, I shook from the effort of having to restrain my urge to kill the idiot who interrupted my time in paradise with his words. “Alright bilge rats! I need ye to be headed to the tavern to find me crew, and get back me map!”

This time, it was Rainbow Dash who pointed out the problem I had with the captain’s logic. “What? You’re not going with us?”

“Course not! I be staying on the ship where a captain belongs!”

A minute later, and we had sorted out who was going to look for the map, and who was staying on the ship. Fluttershy had volunteered to stay behind on her own accord, while Applejack had also done so to keep an eye on things and try to wrangle some answers out of our mysterious captain. Spike was also stuck on the ship as a hostage with the captain keeping him on his back like a real parrot despite Twilight‘s attempts to bring him with us. So Pinkie, Rarity, Rainbow, Twilight and myself headed onto the island.

Whatever had been keeping me down had apparently cleared up a little in the past hour enough for me to walk, but Twilight still insisted I put a wing around her for support. The PDA drew Rainbow’s attention a second she bothered to even look our way. She flew down and gave me a good-natured grin to show she was just teasing. “So, you’re turning our adventure into a date, huh?”

Out of all the girls, I hung out with Rainbow Dash the most since using clouds to keep away from crowds was an option with her. It also helped she was still giving Twilight some coaching on her flying, and had started to do the same with me. I would never attempt any stunts since the way my insect wings worked was too different than the pegasus versions, but it was fun to just relax with Rainbow and watch her work from time to time. I had even kept her from a few scrapes and bruises with my magic when she was practicing her insane version of flying. The shared interest in that and attempts with the two of us and Twilight to find just how much of the Daring Do books were factual had kind of made her my de facto best friend in Ponyland since I showed up. Twilight didn’t count what with being in a physical relationship with me and all.

I just chuckled at the comment and bit back a ‘jealous much’ reprisal. However, Twilight seemed to take the comment at face value and glared at the pegasus. “Fae is sick Rainbow! The wing is for helping me keep balance, not a hug,” the alicorn shot back.

Almost immediately, the humor in Dash’s body fled and she dropped out of the sky to walk next to us. Now that my head was clearing, I could feel her growing guilt for not noticing it sooner, and rising panic at seeing a friend in trouble. “She’s what?” the pegasus asked before looking back to me. “Why didn’t you say something before we got on the boat? Hay, the train even!”

“Nothing was wrong until I got on the boat,” I told her while trying not to sound annoyed. If I had been too sick to go, then I definitely would have said something. “Besides I’m fine now.”

To prove my point, I took my weight off Twilight and moved a few steps forward by myself. “See? I just needed some time back on dry land,” I said before taking in a deep breath of the fresh air. Almost immediately, my vision doubled and I was left shaking my head to try and clear it. Thankfully, I didn’t stumble or fall over. That would have gotten Twilight on my case faster than Rainbow could fly.

“Now come on, let’s go see what this place is like!” I said while trotting down the dock. After a few steps, an odd notion popped into my head and all I could think was…eh, fuck it, might as well if Dr Whooves isn’t going to turn up. “Allons-y!”

Rainbow Dash let out a sniff. “Yeah, yeah, you know Prancy, I figured it out after the third time you tried to show off.”

As we made our way into the mysterious legendary Galloping Ghost Island, I developed a theory after looking at the dock, the buildings, the road, and the numerous shops. “You know, for a mysteriously legendary island…this place sure looks like it’s seen population.”

“Well, it had to have been discovered by somepony for it to be known at all Fae. But what happened to them?” Twilight asked as she looked around the dilapidated dock, the old buildings, the empty road, and the looted shops. “Is it possible that nopony is even here anymore? We could be the first Equestrians to step hoof on this island since it was abandoned! Think what kind of discovery we could make!”

Before I could comment that our captain might have very well been here before since we were looking for his crew, Pinkie pushed past us and I noticed her ears were flopping around like crazy while she practically radiated excitement. “Hey girls! My Pinkie Sense is picking up a party!” she exclaimed before looking around. Oddly enough, as she did, her ears started to point forward, then came together like she was actually dowsing for something. “And it’s in that building over there!”

I groaned as Pinkie took off in a blur of motion that made me wish I hadn’t been looking. A second later, she was followed by Dash and the others, including me once I had made sure I wasn’t going to just keel over if I moved too fast.

After I caught up with the others at the door to one of the larger buildings in town, a place I could hear quite a racket coming from. What I saw made me nearly collapse from the sheer oddity of the scene. It also got my snarky comment distributor working again. “Hey you’re right Princess, we really did make a discovery…right after everypony and Applejack’s bucking grandmother discovered it too!”

Twilight didn’t seem to be paying me much attention. She was too busy gaping at the Cutie Mark Crusaders as they danced around singing ‘It’s a Pirate’s Life for Me’ while Big Mac and Granny Smith sold what appeared to be pies made from pineapples.

As for me, the scent of sweat, blood, and pineapple assaulted my senses as dozens of other pirate types sat around barrels drinking, playing cards, and chatting with waitresses. Mugs with foaming cider clanked together in toasts involving anywhere from three to ten patrons while a trio of stallions apparently compared tattoos that were somehow inked into their coats, inches away from a fight.

It was a glorious sight of which I had been in search of since coming to settle peacefully in Equestria. So overcome with joy, all of my earlier pains were forgotten as I leaped into the atmosphere and raised my forelegs in joy. “It’s a bar!”

“Yeah, yeah…a bunch of stallions with big muscles and minds with only half the usual brain cells thanks to copious amounts of alcohol,” Twilight grumbled as she trotted past me and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but has anypony seen the crew of…um…Rarity, do you remember our captain’s name?" She paused and looked around for the unicorn. "Uh…Rarity?”

After recovering myself, I looked around along with Twilight to find that the white unicorn had cornered the three singing fillies near the pineapple pie stand where Granny and Big Mac and were giving them a stare that would make Fluttershy proud. “And just what in Equestria do the three of you think you’re doing here!”

“We’re trying to get our piracy cutie marks,” Sweetie Belle tried to explain before Granny Smith cut her off.

“Ah lay off ya prissy pants unicorn. They wus doin' just fine till ya stuck yer horn in!”

Despite the fact that I was half a room away, and it had a din of racket made from a thousand little noises all around, I could still hear Rarity’s teeth grinding at the older mare’s comment. “While I may not have grounds to tell you how to care for your own grandchildren, when I leave my sister in your care, I expect her not to be brought into a den of scum and villainy such as this!”

"Just how in the hay did they get here anyway?" I mumbled to myself before a travel brochure was shoved in my face, courtesy of Pinkie Pie. "Come see the rediscovered Galloping Ghost Islands, live the life of a pirate and hunt for bootee."

Pinkie giggled. "Yeah, they apparently rediscovered it three years ago...Twilight really needs to update her books about lost islands and junk if they've already been found."

As the fight between Rarity and Granny began to degrade, Twilight made her way over to me, grumbling. “I can't even understand what half these ponies are saying. I swear, it’s like everypony here is speaking a completely different language!” she said before taking in a deep breath.

“HEY! CAN I GET SOME HELP OVER HERE?”

Apparently, an alicorn shouting at the top of her lungs was enough to get the attention of the room. I watched every pirate in the bar slowly turn towards us. I gulped, and then quickly made two steps to the side in order to get away from Twilight. However, all male eyes in the room followed me, not her, and I got a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when a small crowd of pirates approached me from every direction.

From the look in their eyes, I got a sudden sinking suspicion that my female body’s virginity wasn’t going to last the day if they had anything to say. And of course they think I was the one shouting, I thought to myself as the crowd closed in. After all, I was the hot, dark chocolate alicorn princess with her wings covered up by a Hawaiian shirt that had been putting out enough pheromones to make any stallion that hadn’t been gelded so hard they’d beat themselves to death from underneath by running too fast. Thanks a lot Twilight.

“Hey now, I got plenty of help to give to a pretty little filly like you.”

“Come on back to my love boat, and I’ll show you a good time.”

“I don’t need no boat, that table over there will do just fine!”

While I was trying to pick out which one of these pirate ponies to kill first, a rainbow blur dropped onto the floor, and Dash put up her forelegs in a fighting stance while her wings kept her erect. “Anypony that touches her has to deal with me!”

“Two fer one says you?” I pirate pony with half his teeth missing said as he stepped forward. “Hay of a deal says I!”

At the mention of including Dash in their little gangbang, I reached over to the last idiot who talked and pulled him in so close out lips were almost touching. While resisting the urge to gag on his breath, I gave the lust-filled stallion a predatory smile as Dash, Pinkie and Twilight looked on in shock at my forwardness. “Okay, stud, but I’ll get something from you first.”

The emotion of lust was nothing like love. Lust was all about being selfish, about wanting to take another for their good looks and physical pleasure rather than give, or share in each other’s life as love was. So, it wasn’t nearly as filling…but it went down well enough, even if I had to nearly devour all of his essence to make a decent meal.

As the other ponies surrounding us watched the one pirate go from mid thirties to mid nineties in seconds, I gulped down the earth pony pirate’s essence, then tossed the breathing corpse aside a second after Dash reached forward with her mouth to grab the pirate’s cutlass. Then, once the pirate hit the ground, I cast a spell that swallowed by body in a nimbus of green, blazing light.

A second later, I was feeling a bit taller, with wings that could flap several times faster than a pegasus, and fangs in my mouth meant for tearing through meat. Safely covered in my exoskeleton that was more than enough to stop some stupid swords, I looked at the gasping ponies with a fanged grin. “Okay…who else wants some?”

“CHAAAAAAANGELING!”

Almost all around the tavern, the pony pirates who consisted mostly of earth ponies drew their swords and looked towards the two of us. Even the few stallions who hadn’t bothered to look my way, and a few of the mares that were in the bar took up arms to kill the invading pseudo-pony that was me.

“Ohmygosh! We’re actually getting to swashbuckle! Thank you Fae!” Rainbow Dash cried out before squealing in delight and diving into the crowd.

Then the fight was on.

With her ability to fly, Rainbow Dash was easily able to avoid attacks and get out of trouble when the pirates attempted to surround her. Despite the fact that she was holding the sword in her teeth, the pegasus was able to quickly disarm several of the ponies who went after her before giving a kick to their empty mouths that easily knocked them out.

I guess since some of the pirates had seen her come in with our group, Rarity was attacked by the ponies who had been waiting in line to buy Granny Smith’s pineapple pies. She managed to let out a scream and get two steps before the ponies behind her suffered broken bones from a crushing amount of telekinetic force courtesy of the real alicorn princess in our group.

“NOPONY HURTS MY FRIENDS!” the purple pony princess shouted before she turned her attention to a group of pirates that were trying to pin Pinkie down as she bounced around the room, then stopped in confusion when all the pirates around her were turned into tiny plastic figures I expected to be in the pink isle of Toy’s R Us instead of a bar.

The almost feral amount of rage I detected coming off Twilight made a shiver of fear run down my spine as I remembered something Rainbow Dash had said about a month ago. When Twilight had thought I died, she went completely ballistic. The little alicorn had turned a small army of ponies into shrubbery, changed an ancient temple to sand before melting it into glass, then shrunk the servant of a god to the size of a gerbil with the intention of feeding it to the same piranha she thought had eaten me. Seeing her standing there over a swarm of rats that had once been the group of ponies lucky enough to dodge her initial attack told me the princess still had some anger issues to work out.

Well, so much for having fun, I thought to myself before channeling a fair amount of mana through my horn and releasing a powerful concussion wave that knocked out the last ponies standing around me. Fighting when you didn’t have to worry about getting hurt actually made the whole experience enjoyable. But, from the looks of things Twilight needed someone to talk her down from an adrenaline high…

And Rainbow Dash got there before I did by flying in from above her. “Hey Twi-AAAAHH!” she screamed when the alicorn whirled around to blast the oncoming pegasus.

As the Rainbow disappeared in an explosion of white smoke that hung in the air, my entire body froze. For her part, the alicorn face slowly went from one of barely contained rage to dreadful shock, and then her eyes widened in absolute horror when the vest Rainbow had been wearing fell to the floor. Its owner was nowhere to be seen.

Twilight fell back on her haunches, and just stared at the cloud where Rainbow Dash had been. In the following seconds, her whole body started to tremble.

A blow to the back of my neck knocked me out of my shock, and I looked back to blast the idiot who just tried to cut my head off. With a quick look around telling me the rest of the pirates had either fled or found a place to cower from the demigod who could wipe them all out with a thought, I ran over to the alicorn and tried to shake her out of her stupor. “Twilight! Twilight, what did you just do?”

Glancing at the cloud as it began to dissipate, the more panicky side of my brain brought back images of the War of the Worlds movie when everyone was being blown to ash by the alien machines. My breath seized up, and a crushing weight on my chest kept me from taking in more oxygen.

“I…I don’t know!” Twilight exclaimed after finding her voice. She looked up at where our friend had been, and tears began to form in her eyes. “I…I just…I was so angry when those ponies tried to hurt Rarity and…and Pinkie, and…I just reacted and…Oh Celestia! What have I done?”

Twilight broke down into a crying fit, and I honestly didn’t know what to do. It tore at my heart to see her as she was, but an even louder voice in my head was shouting that she deserved all the guilt her heart could muster up and more. After all, she just killed Rainbow Dash! If it weren’t for the sheer amount of shock running through my body to stifle the building rage, I would have already blasted her through the wall.

The seconds ticked by, and I was dimly aware of Pinkie singing in the background a she finished off what was left of the pirates. Rarity stayed in a nearby corner, alternating between staring at the spot Rainbow had been, keeping an eye on the CMC, and looking for any more ponies who wanted to mess with her.

“Okay egghead, geeze, stop it with the water works already!”

I froze for an instant, then looked up where the familiar, if high pitched, voice was coming from…then blinked when Rainbow Dash landed on my muzzle. Okay…that’s…weird, I told myself my eyes just about crossed to keep the pegasus in view and look her over. Despite only being three inches tall and naked once again, Rainbow Dash didn’t look any worse for wear.

Twilight had just about the same reaction I did. She stared at the tiny pegasus for a few seconds in disbelief, then hope slowly returned to her eyes as her mouth slid upwards into a smile. “Rainbow! You’re okay!”

“Uh…I will be when you turn me back. Now hurry up! Flying when I’m like this is hard, and I don’t want Fae sneezing me off!”

I wisely kept my mouth shut so that Dash could keep her balance and Twilight could aim. As the alicorn’s horn lit up, I got a very bad feeling and realized there might be a problem with this whole situation. Wait a second, if Dash is standing on my nose, and Twilight turns her back to normal, then won’t she-was all I managed to think before there was a flash of light and a weight too much for my neck to bear made us both come crashing down to the ground.

With Rainbow’s ass crushing down on my face, I wanted to make some embarrassing quips, but…I was just too damn stunned by happiness over the fact she was alive to think of any. Then, from the sound of Twilight practically screaming her name, and the extra weight that was added to Rainbow’s I guessed Twilight had grabbed the pegasus in a hug.

“Dashie’s okay!” Pinkie chirped before hooves impacted my back as another pony joined the group hug, and I let out a groan as the voices of three fillies shouted in joy before the trampling continued.

“Hey…anypony seen Fae-Fae?”

“…I hate you all so much right now,” from beneath the group hug pile.

After the girls had gotten off me and Twilight dried her tears with a handkerchief Rarity had stowed away…somewhere, the princess stepped forward and looked around the room with a glare that had all the pirates flinching when it fell on them. “We’re looking for a magical map with a wandering X, the first group that comes forward with information or the map itself gets their friends turned back to normal, and I’ll forgive you for assaulting a Princess of Equestria! The rest of you can sit around until the guards to show up, or run and wait for those transmogrification spells to wear off in a few dozen years!”

Wow, when did Twilight get a nasty side to her? I asked myself as she glared at the various ponies, toys, rats, and pirates in need of a doctor. Then, I noticed something odd out of the corner of my eye, and turned to look at a rather odd scene.

“One life holds thirty six worldly desires. Two lives hold seventy-two. Three lives hold one-hundred and eight worldly desires. Three swords style: One-Hundred-Eight Caliber PHOENIX!”

“Stupid green-coat! Take this! Fried Assortment!.”

I rolled my eyes at the pirates turned toys being used to reenact a scene from the pink pony’s imagination. “Pinkie! Stop playing with the dolls!”

In response, Pinkie looked back at me with a scowl and held a pair of plastic ponies that bore a striking resemblance to Roronoa Zoro and Sanji from an anime I used to watch. “Hey! These are Straw Hat Pirate Pony action figures!”

The fact that she actually called them that made a shiver of fear run down my spine, and I turned away from the scene before I could start questioning just how the hell something so…impossible could exist in Equestria. Indiana Jones pony, I could buy… One Piece was stretching it. It’s just Pinkie being Pinkie, I told myself over and over again.

“Hey guys, we found some pirates who’re gonna lead us to where the map is!” Rainbow Dash called out. “Come on!”

As it turned out, the pirate ponies that had agreed to lead us to this map were indeed our current captain’s old crew and a bunch of ponies Rainbow Dash had beat up during the big brawl. So, none of the other pirates got to take Twilight up on her offer to remove the spells placed on them, or given clemency. The minute we left the bar, dragging the Apples and rest of the CMC with us, she put a force bubble around the building and gave Pinkie a letter written on a napkin for Princess Celestia to read that explained why we needed a group of guards sent to the island as well as its location before sending her back to the boat. Rarity also left our little group, deciding that she needed to make sure Granny Smith and Big Mac actually got on the small boat they had taken to the island instead of finding someplace else to sell their pies since Sweetie Belle had been dragged along for the trip.

Unfortunately, it wasn't all good news. While my sea sickness that had managed to follow me onto land had put itself on hold inside the bar. Once everything had calmed down, I was to feeling like crap again.

The three ponies that Dash had managed to drag out with us were a trio of earth ponies, one guy and two mares. All of them had a few scars in their coats and looked like they had seen better days. Only the biggest stallion, who had a light sea green coat and a mane of the same color in a darker shade spoke. “The map ye be searchin fer is down in a clearing at the end’o that path leadin' outta town,” he explained while pointing a hoof to indicate just which path he meant.

“But, I’ll give ya a bit of friendly advice,” Sea Green added when we looked away from the path. “If ye be featchin' that map fer who I think, ye be better off leavin' it where it lay. The pirate who yearns for that map be mad!”

Rainbow Dash let out a snort. “Oh yeah, just what makes you think you know who we’re working fer?” she asked in a fake accent.

“Please,” the pirate scoffed before he raised a hoof to indicate us each in turn. “A fake pirate, a purple princess, and a changeling! It’s the only crew that Hoofbeard could get!”

Well, at least its not Jack Sparrow, I told myself with a frown while Rainbow’s reaction was a little more…fangasm. “Hoofbeard? THE HOOFBEARD? I mean, I knew he looked familiar but… He’s like the coolest pirate ever!”

“And the mangiest, craziest, and evilest!” the pirate pony countered.

The last descriptive drew Twilight’s attention away from wherever her mind was wandering. “What do you mean evilest?” she demanded with a curious frown.

Apparently, a curious frown from the being he had just seen take out an entire bar of pirates was enough to cow the Sea Green’s growing attitude, and he shrunk back. “Beg yer pardon Princess. But…me and me mates here were once a part of his crew, seeking treasure using the map ye seek. However, that map never led us nowhere! It’s called the Map of the Wandering X because the X moves! Every morning it was in a different spot, always out of reach, and casing it drove the captain mad! We snuck off the ship one night while stopped for supplies because he would have keel-hauled us if we tried to leave. We even up and took the map with us so he couldn’t rope any other fools into his crazy before setting his ship adrift.”

As Dash started to taunt the pirate for being a coward, I looked over to Twilight with more than a bit of apprehension on my face for this whole ordeal. “You know, the more I hear about this, the less I like it,” she mumbled.

“Do you want to call it quits?” I asked her before turning my attention to Dash to make sure she hadn’t heard me. After a month of hanging out with her, I had learned the pegasus had freakishly good hearing.

Already, I was working on a plan in my head to get us back to the mainland. If Granny and the others were still around, then it would be simple for us to get back to Equestria on whatever ship they took to get here. The problem was the hostages that our Captain had with him, and there was no doubt in my mind that was exactly what Spike and Fluttershy would become the moment we decided to take the ship.

“No.” I blinked at the words, then looked over to Twilight, and followed her gaze back to Rainbow. “At least…not yet,” she added. “Let me at least take a look at the map first.”

Because I was back in my natural form, I had to turn on my emotional senses to get a read on Twilight. She was a mix of apprehension, fear…and a whole lot of guilt. A part of me wanted to change back into my pony form and wrap her up in a hug, but…the part of me that still had the most say put that on hold.

If Twilight had fired off another spell and turned Rainbow Dash into a glass figurine, or some kind of fruit like a tomato that would have splattered on the ground… I wanted her to feel the guilt for what had happened without someone there to shield her from it.

An hour of walking into the forest, and I was in a sour mood. My headache was back, and I was starting to feel a little woozy again. On top of which, it turned out a tropical island in the Summer trumped anywhere in Equestria for the muggy heat that was bearing down on us. Twilight didn’t look much better, having shed her clothes ten minutes after we went into the trees.

If it wasn’t for the breeze Rainbow was making for us as she floated in the back of our little group, I was pretty sure I would have voted to abandon this little adventure and head home.

“Why is it when I go on an adventure with you two, we end up in someplace that’s impossibly hot and having to fight cliché bad guys?” I grumbled. “First Aztecs and now pirates…if ninjas appear the next time something weird happens, I’m just going to go back to bed.”

Twilight head dropped a little, and the somewhat cool breeze suddenly stopped as Rainbow zoomed up to match pace with me. “Dude, seriously? You’ve got to remind her about that stupid temple now?” she demanded with clenched teeth.

I flinched at the pegasus’s tone. “Okay…sorry,” I mumbled before trying to think of something else to talk about. “So…you feeling okay? I mean, must have been kind of weird when Twilight cast that spell and…you…what?”

Rainbow Dash had gone back to glaring at me so hard that I stopped moving. “You really need to shut up now.”

The anger practically radiating off her made me flinch, and then Twilight spoke. “No…I lost control again. I… Rainbow! Are you okay?”

Deciding to cheat a bit, I turned my extrasensory senses over to the mare and frowned. Rainbow was a mix of anger, fear, and a tiny sprinkling of guilt. I could guess where most of the anger was directed towards me, but the fear and guilt kind of threw me for a loop. Just because I knew what she was feeling didn’t mean I knew the cause of it all.

“Just fi-”

Twilight cut her off. “I know you’re afraid of me Rainbow.” That got my attention, as well as made the pegasus drop from the sky. “And you have a right to be. I…I lost control again and I almost…oh Celestia! I’m so sorry!”

“Twilight,” Rainbow managed to get out before the alicorn went on.

“What if I had turned you into something breakable? What if I hadn’t used transmogrification and just gone with a normal attack spell? WHAT IF I HAD KILLED YOU?” she screeched before breaking down into sobs.

Oh crap, I thought while my conscience kicked me in the gut. How long ago had I been wishing for her to keep feeling guilty? Why? Because I had thought Twilight Sparkle hadn’t realized what she had almost done? Because ponies didn’t carry their guilt around like I used to? Because it just made me feel like the morally superior one for once?

Apparently, Rainbow Dash had realized that I sure as hell wasn’t going to be doing anything to comfort my girlfriend like I was supposed to, and trotted up to the mare before putting a hoof on her shoulder. “H-Hey Twilight come on, I’m not scared of anypony, least of all some egghead who can barely fly.” she said before looking up at me with an expression that demanded I do something to fix her.

Yeah, Dash is really out of her element here, I told myself before taking a deep breath…and instantly regretting it when the world spun around for a moment. Oh good, fucking God…I was fine in that stupid bar! What the hell?

Doing my best to push the problems my body was having to the side, I tried to think of something to say. “That was just an accident Twilight,” I told her. “And Rainbow’s fine, see?”

“Yeah…and it was kind of cool, seeing everything blown up like that,” she added with a fake chuckle. Without my empathy, that would have sounded pretty weak. But since it was on, the spike in fear as she mentioned being shrunk down to the size of a dragonfly screamed lie. The whole experience had no doubt scared the hell out of her, and I even found myself wondering if she had been trapped in that cloud the spell had made before she landed on my nose.

Twilight hung her head. “Don’t lie to me Rainbow…you’re terrible at it.

“And this isn’t the first time something like this has happened,” she mumbled before looking away from the two of us. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what happened in Sun Valley Rainbow, and then there was Everfree Castle just last week.”

The mention of my home got an eyebrow raise from me. “What happened at my castle?” None of the changelings had mentioned anything in the past couple of days, and I hadn’t seen any big holes in the wall.

While Twilight just pulled in on herself, Rainbow Dash cleared her throat and did her best to look in my direction without meeting my eyes. “Uh…yeah about that…you need better door…changeling guys.”

“What?” I asked, tilting my head in confusion.

A second later, Rainbow Dash looked up at me with a frown. “Well that’s not Twilight’s fault those stupid goons wouldn’t let us in and she had to make them!” the pegasus explained. “Then they wouldn’t tell us where you were, just kept saying you disappeared and…she um…kind of thought the changelings were hiding something…so…she asked them-”

“I threatened them all with petrifaction!” Twilight corrected her rather harshly.

“Twilight that’s nothing,” I assured her while dismissing the comment with a wave of my hoof. “I threaten to wipe out the changelings at least three times a day. You need to do it to get them moving in the right direction.”

Both the ponies gave me a look of surprise, and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes before I closed the distance between myself and Twilight to look her in the eye. “Okay look, you had an accident,” I said. “Happens all the time with us. No pony is perfect.”

“But-”

“And Rainbow knows what happens when you get a little freaked out. Hay, she’s even a little scared of it, that’s a good thing,” I told her.

The pegasus didn’t seem to agree, judging by her scowl and harsh words that followed. “Hey! I’m not afraid of Twilight!”

“I’m not saying you’re afraid of her! I’m saying you know what happens when she starts to lose it,” I corrected Rainbow, my tone becoming a little harsher. “The rest of us stood around and did nothing, but you actually saw what was going on and tried to calm her down!”

“AND BECAUSE OF THAT SHE ALMOST GOT HURT!” Twilight shouted in my face before looking back down at the ground. “I hate this! When I became an alicorn, I thought I would finally have the power I needed to protect my friends, but all I’ve seem to be able to do is hurt them! Sometimes, I wish I never became a princess. You’d all be better off.”

While I tried to think of a logical argument against the pony who had turned Fluttershy into a vampire during the last time we were all together that she didn’t cause her friends undue suffering, Rainbow Dash just went with her strengths when it came to dealing with this kind of stuff: anger, and yelling. “Don’t you ever say something like that again!” she yelled in Twilight’s face before she began to hover off the ground and get some height advantage.

“Do you have any idea how awesome it’s been since you’ve gotten wings?” she demanded before pointing her hoof at me for a moment. “Since your stupid royal guard brought the bug queen here? Since I moved to Ponyville, I have been trying to find somepony to fly with me, but I couldn’t ask the other pegasi because I’m the bucking head weathermare! Now I finally have two friends that I can share the most important thing in my life with, AND YOU’RE SAYING IT’S SOME KIND OF MISTAKE!”

Twilight backed away as Rainbow yelled into her face until she tripped over a vine and fell on her plot, getting a cry of surprise from the princess as her wings spread out wide, while Rainbow dropped to the ground with a hurt expression. “Don’t you ever say something like that again.”

The three of us sat in silence for a minute giving me time to organize my thoughts before I could finally come up with something to say. It was probably the lamest thing I could tell her too. My experiences never really prepared me for talking to purple ponies newly ascended to godhood. “Twilight…I really don’t have anything to tell you this time to help pick you up or make things better,” I said. “You made a mistake, we all do. Hell, mine almost ended all of Equestria when I didn’t have the courage to tell you all the truth! You at least had the brains to use something non-lethal when you accidentally blasted Dash, and if you’re still torn up about it, then…I don’t know…aim before readying the spell or something.”

Frankly, Twilight’s casting speed was just plain nuts. It took me a good three seconds to ready and aim a normal spell, and in that time she could teleport, fire off a blast of magic, and then protect herself with a force field. I might have been able to match her for muscle thanks to all the love I’d been sucking off of her every night, but she’d kick my ass to the curb in a real fight if all things were equal.

“Yeah Twilight!” Rainbow Dash quickly agreed. “You can’t become a great flier without a few crashes. So…um…cheer up!”

I groaned as Dash apparently ran out of ideas a second before running out of words, and then reached for Twilight’s hoof to help her up. “So come on and let’s finish this adventure, okay?”

As Twilight reached out to take my hoof, Rainbow let out a hesitant moan before speaking up. “Actually…if you guys want to go home…you know what? Forget the adventure and lets just go home.”

If I hadn’t been pulling Twilight back upright, I would have collapsed from shock. It took my brain a few seconds to even process just what the hell was going on. Rainbow Dash was…turning away from an adventure? I actually found myself making sure the Rainbow in front of us wasn’t the changeling I got to fill in on her weather duties.

When her identity was still confirmed to be Rainbow, all I could do was ask for clarification. “Come again?”

“Look,” she began hesitantly. “I’m not stupid. The only reason any of you are here is because I dragged you along. Twilight’s whole Galloping Ghost Island discovery turned out to be a bust. Rarity’s freaking out over her sister’s safety. This Hoofbeard guy was apparently such a jerk his whole crew up and left him, and you get sea sick!

“Let’s just go back to the ship, tell him where to find his stupid map, and head home on whatever ship Princess Celestia sends to transport those pirates back to Equestria.”

Beside me, Twilight managed to pick her jaw up from the ground long enough to speak, albeit in a dumbfound fashion. “Who are you, and what have you done with the real Rainbow Dash?”

The comment earned a glare from the blue pegasus. “I’m not blind Twilight!” she exclaimed before looking away. “I saw nopony but me really wanted to be there, I just thought it would be fun to have one last adventure with you girls before the Fall weather season started and I’m busy six days out of seven making rain and kicking clouds. Not to mention how everypony else is going to be busy with AJ’s last harvest, Fluttershy showing the newest birds where they’re supposed to fly, Rarity switching out her whole store’s wardrobe, and we all remember how many harvest parties Pinkie had to plan last year on top of her usual birthdays and other junk.”

How in the… After that little speech, I couldn’t even form a coherent thought. Although I loved her like nobody’s business, I would have voted Rainbow Dash for most oblivious pony. The fact she wasn’t so focused on her own self to notice all the other ponies doubts about what was going on just had me floored.

With me still being a little out of it thanks to Rainbow’s…summarization of her friends future activities, Twilight took up the slack. Apparently, seeing a friend in distress gave her something to focus on, and overcome those anxieties she was feeling; or at least push them to the side for the moment. “Well if Rainbow Dash wants one last adventure for the summer, then that’s what Rainbow Dash is going to get!”

Me and Rainbow shared a look of slight bewilderment, then followed the alicorn down the path and into the clearing where the map was supposedly hidden. The questions of just where the hell we should start looking died when I noticed the giant pit in the middle of the sandy open area.

As we approached it, the ground began to shake, and all three of us took to the air and hovered. A few seconds later, something began to emerge from the pit. The first thing I saw were its claws. Two giant blue pincers big enough to cut cars in half rose from out of the ground as a giant blue crab twice the size of a dump truck with a faint glow emerged from the hole. Thanks to the few times I had spent around Fluttershy’s cottage trying to get to know her a little better and look for a pet without making her super-freaky excited, I could tell when an Equestrian animal was giving me the death glare.

“Oh...well of course there’s a giant monster guarding the treasure map,” I deadpanned. To be honest, I would have been kind of surprised if there hadn’t of been.

Chapter 3: My Little Pirate King

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Thanks to the fact we were all fliers, me Twilight and Rainbow were in no real danger from the tank of a blue crab beneath us as it tried to get its claws in range to chop us in half. Although, with the size difference, the pincers would probably crush anyone who got caught in-between them who wasn‘t thicker than a tree.

“So, any pony have an idea of what to do now?” I asked as the three of us calmly examined the scene. Since the plans I usually came up with involved a gratuitous use of violence that ponies weren’t generally comfortable with, it was probably best to let Twilight take the lead on this one while I stored my ‘hit the damn thing hard enough to crack open its shell spill out the juicy goodness inside’ plan on the back-burner.

However, our usually fearless leader’s latest blunder seemed to have knocked her analytical and planning skills down a few pegs along with her self-coincidence. “I…I don’t know,” she mumbled before looking over to our hornless flier. “Any ideas Rainbow?”

“Yeah, we fly in there and-”

“NO!” both me and Twilight shouted in a panic before grabbing the pegasus in our telekinetic fields and pulled her back to us while she was in the middle of demonstrating her idea. There was no way in hell I was letting Rainbow put herself in that kind of danger when we had plenty of other options.

When they looked over to me, I shrugged. If Rainbow was going to rush headfirst into danger, then I wasn't about to beat around the bush. “I say we go for the excessive use of violence option.”

Twilight winced an looked over at me with a pained expression. “Why’d you have to go and say excessive?”

“Because too much is always better than not enough,” I told her simply. “Now let’s just blast it and get the map.”

I began to charge a spell alongside Twilight, and winced when a burst of pain shot through my brain, breaking my concentration and forcing me to start over. Second time around, I closed my eyes to help me concentrate while I heard Twilight’s spell go off.

“Fae look out!” the alicorn’s voice called out in time for me to open my eyes and see a burst of purple energy smash into my face. The attack literally knocked me for a loop before the I was it sent me crashing to the ground, head first.

My obligatory ‘what just hit me’ comment was cut off when the stars I was seeing got replaced by a giant blue claw that came down to pound me into the sand, increasing the discombobulating feeling I was having before I felt something crush me from the sides and lift me into the air.

The next thing I knew, Twilight was floating right in front of me, still free in the air. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! My-”

“Twilight! Get away from that thing!” Dash screeched before a rainbow blur came from behind the alicorn to snatch her further into the air and out of the crab’s reach a good two seconds before the crab’s other claw swatted their previous position. I thanked God for Rainbow's speed and let out a sigh of relief.

Or, maybe it was air being forcibly ejected from my lungs due to the pressure. Thankfully, the crab's claws couldn’t put enough pressure to crush me while I had my carapace on, and the two winged ponies were well out of the monster’s range. So, I looked up at the purple alicorn and frowned. “Twilight, what the hay happened?” I asked like a total moron. Even with my armor, it took a lot more effort than it should have to get the air I needed to live back in my lungs after I wasted it on a stupid question.

“I’m sorry! The crab’s shell, it deflects magic,” she yelled back. “When I used an attack spell, it was reflected back at us.”

Of course… Why the hell was it when Twilight became super alicorn powerful, everything else that crawled out of the woodwork got a similar upgrade? I sure as hell didn’t remember them fighting anything like… Hell, I didn’t remember the mane six fighting anything at all beyond the changeling invasion of Canterlot. But now, in two months they had wracked up battles against pirates, giant crabs, Mesoamerican mythological monsters, and Aztec ponies. It was like Lauren Faust had come back and decided on doing things Power Puff Girls style instead of sticking with the pretty pony dynamic.

Considering it was my life on the line, I really would have rather let Fluttershy get over her shyness and have to deal with some kind of weird love triangle with ponies I couldn't bear to see sad than battle giant killer monsters in the city of Ponyville.

“Don’t worry girl, we’ll get you out of there,” Rainbow called from above.

“WAIT!” I shouted before the pegasus could…well, dash in and save me. Or at least try to. As cool as she was, I didn't really think Rainbow had the upper body strength to deal with something big enough to step on her and leave a smear behind. “The stupid thing had to leave its nest to pick me up, hurry and get the map!” And could you please at least call me a guy when I’ve got the voice? I mentally begged.

“But-” Twilight began.

“I’M FINE JUST GO!”

Now I just needed to figure out a way to get out of my predicament…without magic. The headache that had become a pounding migraine wasn’t helping me to focus either. Plus, all the involuntary motion the crab was putting me through wasn’t doing anything good. Being jerked around while something tried to crush you to death was not a good way to recover from a migraine.

“Any ideas?” Twilight called out from a safe distance.

“Teleportation?”

“The special distortion field is disrupted by the crab!”

“Transmogrification?”

“Will probably be reflected back at me too!”

“Transmutation?”

“Does everything you come up with have to start with T?” Twilight yelled back.

“Then just hit it with something really big!” I shouted at her.

“Like what? That crab’s the biggest thing on the island, and anything big enough to crack his shell would probably kill, or at least bury you too!”

“Hey girls, I got the map.”

I looked over to Rainbow Dash as she just seemed to appear out of nowhere next to Twilight with her usual rainbow contrail just fading behind her. At the mare’s appearance, I blinked as a rather risky idea came to mind. As a…masculine changeling monarch, I was a bit bigger than the average female, and Rainbow was anything but average. I didn’t think the lithe pegasus had an ounce of fat on her body besides the little bit in the flank that all ponies possessed. She was certainly smaller than me with my exoskeleton.

While I had to deal with the debilitating headache killing my magical powers, I could still concentrate enough to use the natural ability common to all changelings since it was practically second nature. So I focused on Rainbow Dash for a second, and changed myself into a cyan pegasus of slightly smaller size that could slip through the opening my reduction in mass provided.

One powerful wing beat later, and I was in the air, flying free. Then my head reminded me that quickly changing elevations when it felt like your brain was going to explode was not a good idea. I got as high as Twilight and Rainbow, then a wave of vertigo made me cut the movement of my feathered wings and let the cruel mistress known as gravity make me its bitch once again.

Twilight screamed my name, and the next thing I knew, I was wrapped in the tingling feeling of the alicorn’s magic before she brought me up level with her. “Fae, are you alright?” she asked while flying only somewhat erratically. Using her magic in flight was still something Twi was getting used to apparently.

I opened my mouth to tell her it was nothing, but only managed to let out a low moan. The pounding in my head told me it wasn’t a good idea to even nod an affirmative.

“Oh yeah, it’s bad,” Rainbow Dash said, earning a curious glance from Twilight Sparkle. “What? That’s my ‘I may still be awesome but I’m feeling pretty sick so I can’t do anything today’ face and moan.”

Even I debilitated as I was, I managed to give Rainbow a disbelieving look that I could see matched Twilight’s out of the corner of my eye.

“And, can you change back? Doing impersonations during parties is one thing, but this is…a little creepy,” she asked. “No offense.”

All in all, I wasn’t mad at her. If something back on Earth could have looked like anyone he or she wanted, I know damn well a lot of hot women doppelgangers would have been standing in front of a mirror in their birthday suits.

I closed my eyes to help me concentrate, and they shot open when I heard a loud crash from beneath us. We three ponies looked down at the giant crab for a moment, then back to each other. “Escape first, then changeling magic,” Twilight concluded before she told us before motioning for our getaway.

About fifteen minutes of travel later, Twilight dropped me in the middle of the jungle and put her nose on my forehead after knocking my new rainbow hair out of the way. “No fever,” she mumbled a after a few seconds of feeling my head with the end of her muzzle. The action was a little gratifying. I had always wondered how they took temperatures without hands.

The feeling of being back on the ground was indescribably wonderful. There were no jerking motions, no moving trees beneath my eyes, no waves of sea breeze assaulting my nose. I took a moment to just lay down and relax to let every tense muscle in my body just become pudding.

“Oh-kay, time to change back now,” Rainbow told me as she landed and spit the map out of her mouth.

“Give her a minute Rainbow,” the alicorn told the pegasus, who took a look at me out of the corner of her eye before relenting. I must have looked pretty bad if all it took was one look for Rainbow Dash to lay off.

“Alright…it’s just…kind of creepy seeing myself laying there all…bad,” she finished rather lamely.

Another minute passed, and Rainbow looked over to the alicorn. “So what’s wrong with her Twilight?”

I’m still here you know, I thought at Rainbow Dash with a frown before picking my head up…and instantly regretting it before putting it back on the ground as gently as I could.

“I don’t know!” Twilight exclaimed in anger. “I thought she was just sea sick, but we’re on dry land and I thought she was getting better but-ugh! Why the hay is she so much like you sometimes?”

While Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow, I couldn’t help but chuckle a the comment since I was currently copying the pegasus. Of course, I immediately regretted it. Not because of the glare Twilight was giving me, I knew how to deal with those. No, the slight jostling that came with the light laughter reminded me any motion sucked balls.

A second later, Twilight got nose to nose with me, with her glower power still going full strength. “Something funny?”

So, to disarm Twilight before she exploded again, I leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. It was not the ‘let’s go find the nearest bed and do it kiss’ but it was still more intimate than the ‘good morning here’s hoping I don’t have bad breath’ peck that I usually gave her when Spike was out of town and her new bed at the library was making use of its extra room. It didn’t last very long. The screaming pegasus put an end to it pretty quickly.

“AHHHHHH! W-WHAT THE HAY ARE YOU DOING?”

A second later a pair of blue hooves pushed us apart and I was left with another spike of pain while Rainbow flapped her wings indignity while glaring down at me. “Can you at least turn into somepony else before kissing Twilight right in front of me?” she half-demanded half-pleaded.

Twilight’s eyes widened and she blushed in embarrassment before looking away. “Sorry.”

This time, the chuckle was worth the discomfort. “Am I giving you any ideas Rainbow?” I asked with the cheekiest smile I could manage. Each word made my skull feel like it was vibrating. Okay, need to talk as little as possible…got it. Still, the question was more than worth any amount of pain.

“Hurry up and get better so I can buck you,” she told me with a frown.

So…many…options, I told myself while using all my willpower not to say anything. One promise I had made to myself when coming to live in Ponyville was not to mock either of the pegasi, and only give them a light amount of practical jokes if Rainbow started to mess with me in that way. I knew her skin was about a thick as tissue paper, and I really didn’t want to upset the awesome mare.

“Okay…just give me a second and I’ll go back to my insectoid self,” I assured her before standing up…and getting a few inches off the ground before I fell over again. Then, I let out a sigh and concentrated on activating my natural magical abilities, and stopped when I felt a massive amount of queasiness run its way through my pseudo-pegasus body. “…or not.”

Dash’s angry scowl started to slide into a concerned one, and Twilight walked over to stand beside her with a matching expression. “What?” the pegasus asked.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. “I can’t concentrate enough to even change back to normal right now. This…could be a problem.” I decided not to try having my defense mechanisms take over using physical trauma. That would have meant Twi or Rainbow knocking the crap out of me, and I didn't want to know if I could actually take it in the state I was in.

“What’re you talking about? Just…stop whatever it is you’re doing to look like me!”

Before Rainbow could start making sense, Twilight cleared her throat. “Actually Rainbow, changeling transformations are one-hundred-percent physical, no illusions involved. There is a limit as to the mass conversion but…” she said before pausing after seeing Rainbow’s expression. “Right…well, point is. Fae is pretty much a physical duplicate of you right now and changing back involves her using her magic.”

All in all, I was surprised Twilight didn’t go into the magic side of changeling transformations in her lecture, which remained unchanged despite whatever I looked like. So I wouldn’t be doing any Sonic Rainbooms even if I could match Dash in a hoof-wrestling contest at the moment. If I had been feeling okay, that is.

As for the rest of the body like the organs…that’s where things got…freakishly simple in a complicated sort of way. Although I had a stomach and everything else that went with a digestive tract, I still didn’t get hungry or need to eat. In fact, I couldn’t eat. Stuff would just go down there, get put in the stomach, and need to be regurgitated later unless I changed back into my normal form. Then my magic just put all the food in my sacs and eliminated the rest. Maybe it was because my body didn’t have the instincts, unconscious knowledge, or instinctual desire for those organs to work right or something. I really didn’t know, and had no desire to start poking at stuff that didn’t make sense in Equestria.

I’m sure if some scientists saw the ins and outs of the process, they’d be foaming at the mouth and going on about how conservation of mass and a dozen other things didn’t make sense, but hell…it was magic! It wasn’t supposed to make sense. Even Twilight couldn’t explain to me why thinking happy or sad thoughts while casting certain spells made them work better. They just did.

“Just give me some time to rest,” I assured them in a whisper. The lower voice kept me from hurting myself at least. “We can figure out what to do about Hoofbeard till then.”

Ever the trusting alicorn, Twilight didn’t seem to have grasped the situation from earlier. “What do you mean? We just give him back his map, and then we wait for the guards to show up and give us transport back to the Equestrian mainland.”

“I doubt its going to be that easy Twilight,” I replied, closing my eyes in a wince at the end to try and help with the headache. “Those pirates we met earlier said they had to sneak away from Hoofbeard out of fear, and even took his map to make sure he didn’t go after any pony else. Plus, remember how he insisted Spike stay with him? The smallest and youngest of us?”

Twilight frowned, but it was in confusion, not anger over the implied threat to her little brother/son. “What’re you talking about? It was a good thing he stayed, I would have hate for Spike to have…been…there.” I felt a pang in my heart as her expression dropped. Nearly hurting Rainbow must have really shaken her up if she was still feeling the guilt over it.

As Twilight trained off into mumbles, Dash was a little quicker on the uptake. “You think he’s going to hurt Spike?”

“Crazy doesn’t mean stupid, it means unpredictable,” I replied as loud as I dared.

For a threat against her family member’s life, Twilight took it pretty well. Instead of going epic rage time, she frowned in thought for a moment, looking at something neither Dash nor I could see. Then, she smirked and let out a little laugh. “Well Hoofbeard’s going to be in for a surprise then. Spike may not be able to handle other dragons, but a crazy pony with a sword isn’t going to be much of a problem to someone who can breathe fire. If worse comes to worse, I can simply teleport him to safety.”

I resisted the urge to chuckle at the scene. Twilight have not been the best pony when it came to spur of the moment planning, but when she had time to sit down and look at things objectively, she could formulate strategies and backup plans with the best of them.

“Look, I don’t see what the problem is,” Rainbow said. “We go there, give him the map, get our friends, wait for the guards to show up, then go home. If he gives us trouble, then Pinkie gets a new doll to play with.” This time, I had to agree with Dash, one pirate against an alicorn princess was like someone bringing a pocket knife to a nuke fight. If he tried anything, Twilight could crush him.

Twilight shook her head. “The problem Dash, is time,” she said before looking over to me. “Fae, you’re not getting any better, are you?”

I managed a weak grin, then rolled over to my four pony feet and stood up. My legs were pretty wobbly, but I didn’t collapse right away. It took a good ten seconds before I went down. “Okay…I may be having a problem.”

“I did the calculations in my head,” the alicorn continued. “I’m just guessing here. But that second wind you had in the bar might have been from adrenaline or…maybe your real body more resistant to whatever is happening. But whatever it is, you’re worse off than you were before. Even if Princess Celestia sends an airship, it will take at least twelve hours for it to get here from Canterlot. With the fastest pegasus in the guard sending dispatch papers, eighteen by normal boat. If we take Captain Hoofbeard’s boat, we can be back to the mainland in three. But we all know he’s not going to go for it.”

Her opinion of staging a mutiny was written plainly on Rainbow Dash’s face. However, the disgust and hesitation was slowly eroded away as her gaze fell upon me. “Okay,” she finally agreed. “How do you want to handle this Twilight?”

The alicorn took in a deep breathe, then let it out in a sigh. “That’s the problem. The fact Fae can’t even walk changes all my original plans. I’m afraid there’s not much either of us will be able to do Rainbow. It’ll be up to you to take the ship from Hoofbeard.”

“What?” I asked while looking up at my girlfriend’s face. “Why?”

“Because I need you to drain me of every drop of energy that you can without threatening my life,” she told me evenly. “I don’t know of anything else that might help you fight whatever this is off, but more love has to be able to help. And afterwards, you are not to channel so much as a spark, do you understand?”

Of course, simply feeding didn’t mean I would get better. I hadn’t exerted myself at all back when fighting the pirates, and the amount of mana I had in me at the moment was more than enough to go a few rounds with an alicorn princess. “Twi-”

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” she screeched.

I glared back at her and did my best to collect myself. “What we need to do is take care of the ship first, then you can transfer your love to me,” I explained. Although the odds were still pretty heavily in our favor if Twi just sat on the sidelines, being… Pinkie, AJ, Rainbow, and…maybe Rarity against the pirate if she had made it back to the ship, I would have felt much better if the alicorn that could neutralize a small army like it was nothing was leading the charge.

Twilight didn’t agree. “And how do we know that we even have that much time?” as her eyes began to glisten. “If there is even the slightest chance you’re going to be hurt, the tiniest chance that I can help you with this, then you are going to do it! Please!”

“And what about the others?” Rainbow asked.

“I know you can do what’s necessary Dash,” Twilight told her without looking away from me.

Like always, the threat of Twilight’s tears made me crumple like a tin can. I looked over to the other cyan pegasus with the rainbow mane and gulped. Considering what was about to happen, Rainbow Dash was probably going to kill me. “Umm, Rainbow, you might want to find somewhere else to be…for a few minutes.”

Rainbow simply tilted her head to the side and in confusion. “Why?”

“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed before looking over to Rainbow, then back to me, and back at her. “Uh…well, you see…Fae tends to feed on me when we’re…coupling. And…well…it feels…good…really good, and…um…my body has sort of gotten so used to Fae feeding on me when we’re…together…”

“When I eat Twilight’s love, she has an orgasm,” I explained while keep my voice as neutral as possible. Judging by the shock on Dash’s face, it didn’t work all that well. “Or at least needs to have one because it…umm…yeah.”

“But you look like…me.”

“Oh, umm…” I replied, looking down at my blue coat. And here I was thinking she was going to freak out about me getting it on with Twilight in the middle of a jungle. Me and the purple princess shared a look of apprehension before we both turned our attention back towards the blue pegasus. “Sorry.”

I blinked at hearing the sound in stereo, then looked over to Twilight, and back to Dash. Finally, the pegasus let out a sighed and rolled her eyes. “It‘s okay, just a bit strange, I guess. Uh…just let me get behind some bushes or something and cover my ears.”

“We’re really going to have to do something to make this up to her,” I mumbled while I watched Rainbow Dash depart.

As soon as the pegasus was gone, Twilight was on top of me, and settling in for a long session. Her forelegs rested partially on my shoulders while her hooves touched the ground and she pressed up against my body without putting her full weight. When our noses were niches from each other, she got around to asking a question. “Why?”

I didn’t even try to stop my sigh. “Twilight, I’m pretty much going to be having sex with you, looking like her,” I explained as my wings and her intertwined. It took a bit longer than normal, with Dash’s wings being different than the big alicorn type I was used to. “It’s wrong.”

“Says the changeling princess formally known as Flash Sentry,” Twilight told me with a tiny smile. “I still don’t understand what you think is so bad about this. I know it’s you, we’re just…wearing a costume like we do every Tuesday and Thursday night, Professor.”

The way Twilight said my name in her sexy schoolgirl voice right into my ear made my whole body tingle right before she reached out with her tongue and ran it along the outside of my ear. It took me a second to recover and focus my thoughts, and by then she was licking her lips for the coming make out session.

As Twilight readjusted herself to kiss me on the lips, I couldn’t help but mention the irony of the situation. “You know what’s really weird about all this? I always thought you and Dashie would make the perfect couple.”

“Less yak, more smack,” Twilight commanded before she moved in for a kiss.

As we broke apart, I inhaled some of Twilight’s love, getting a shudder out of the alicorn before I cut the drain. For me, feeding on love was a weird mix of those first few moments when you wake up in the morning next to your wife, and eating ice cream. I experienced the emotions building in Twilight as she did, then felt my whole body go through a brief feeling of fullness before asking for more. The trouble was, like with ice cream, if I ate too much too fast, there were unwanted side effects centered around the brain.

Another kiss was followed by another feeding. That one got a moan from Twilight as she readjusted herself to straddle my body and her wings shot outward before her hooves rested on my shoulders while her tail intertwined with mine as best it could.

The process fell into a pattern, and two more feedings later, Twilight instincts began to take over while my nose tipped me off to her heightened arousal. She rubbed her body up against mine in tiny thrusts and let out a squeak of a moan before looking down at me again. “Any better?”

I tried to mentally check myself over as best as I could. After a few good gulps of Twilight’s love, I did feel stronger, more capable…but there was still a throbbing pain in my head; temping me to just gorge on Twilight’s love in order to try and forget about it. I pushed the desire away as best I could, and nodded to Twilight. “A bit…I think. At least…I might be able to get up now.”

“Good,” the alicorn on top told me before her horn lit up. The next thing I knew, there was a cloth covering the ground next to me, and Twilight rolled us over so that I was the mare on top. She gave me one last kiss, then a smile that told me exactly what she wanted well before she opened her mouth to talk, and spread her legs. “Now eat up, it’s almost sunset, and you didn’t have lunch.”

Choosing to gulp at the implication rather than groan at the pun, I sat back on my haunches and looked down at the waiting piece of Twilight’s anatomy that was demanding attention and asked myself the same question I did whenever sex and Twilight were mentioned in the same sentence. Was she always this horny, or is it just an alicorn thing?

Thirty minutes later, Luna had put a full moon high into the sky and the excess of Twilight’s orgasms still clung to my face. I had taken five minutes to try and clean it off, only to find doing so without a wet cloth and telekinesis just left a mess on my fetlock, and shoved some more of it up my nose.

Twilight was sprawled out sideways on the blanket she had conjured with a glazed look over her eyes, barely conscious from the last feeding as her tongue fell out of her mouth and wing-boner slowly died down. It had been a long time since I had fed off her while she was in climax, adding the euphoric feeling of being fed on by a changeling to the normal bliss of an orgasm usually left her dead to the world for several minutes; and made the level of love she gave off more pure than…well, anything really.

Since the deed was done, I took in a deep breath, and blinked when the feeling of dizziness that came with it was only a mild case. Whatever it was still had an effect on me, but after eating more love from Twilight than I had since before turning against Chrysalis, I managed to fight it off with some difficulty.

“DAAAASH! OKAY, YOU CAN COME BACK NOW!” I yelled into the trees.

A few seconds later, a disgruntled pegasus trotted her way into the clearing we were using and took a look around. Her eyes fell on Twilight, and she took on a look of hesitation. “Awww, seriously? Couldn’t you at least clean up first?”

I sighed, and hung my head. “Sorry, but I don’t know how long I…wait a second…you heard me calling to you?”

“…yeah?” she replied after a moment. A blush made its way through her fur, and the pegasus looked away from me.

My eyes widened, and I quickly took a glace at Rainbow’s erect, stiff wings. Which meant she probably heard the tail end of…oh, who am I kidding? It’s Rainbow Dash! She probably flew back to check up on us after five minutes, and got a wing-boner from all the stuff Twilight was screaming, I berated myself.

Instead of calling her out on it, or making some stupid joke, I simply bowed my head while a hundred other things me and Twilight could have done after the fact became apparent, from me at least trying to change shape after the make-out session, to asking Twilight if she could create some kind of sound barrier. Instead, after everything started, all we had thought about was feeding and pleasure.

“If there’s anything I can ever do to make this up to you, just ask,” I told her while keeping my eyes on the ground.

Rainbow cleared her throat and looked away. “Look, it’s not like…I mean, you…um… It’s okay.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not. Whenever you think of something for me to make this up to you, just ask and its yours.”

“Is this more of your stupid guilt stuff you and Twilight used to argue about?” Rainbow Dash asked me with a frown before she let out a sigh. “Fine just…uh…get me some Wonderbolts tickets or something, and we’ll call it even.”

Once again, I found myself shaking my head at the sensibilities of ponies. I knew Rainbow had to have been weirded out by what me and Twilight just did, but…hell, how was it any different than two of my little endeavors that had been set up a month prior? Well, aside from the fact impersonating royalty, or any pony depicted on a window at Canterlot Castle was against business policy I mean. It was a line I had made when it came to that kind of stuff. None of the others had even brought it up.

Before I could get even more into myself, Rainbow Dash broke my train of thought. “Okay so…what now?”

“Uh…yeah, about that…” I said hesitantly before telling her my plan for what was probably the best way to go about dealing with Hoofbeard.

By the time I was done, Rainbow was giving me a rather disgruntled look “Seriously? That’s your plan?” she asked before Twilight let out a tiny moan to show that she was coming to.

“Okay fine, but at least get yourself cleaned off or something, I mean…I can still smell you and Twilight for crying out loud!”

I looked back down at Twilight, and sighed. Okay, we’ll find a stream or something. Um…help me get her on my back.”

As Rainbow reluctantly agreed, she let out a hmm when I turned my back on her and I found myself looking back at her. “Something wrong?”

“You’re still uh…didn’t Twilight...you know...do you too?”

The question made me wince. “I don’t have sex with Twilight when I’m a girl, remember?”

“But you still get…ummm…urges?”

“…yeah,” I replied while doing my best to ignore said throbbing biological urges. “Now come on and let’s find a stream or something.”

In the hour it took to find a fresh stream, get cleaned up, and then make it back to the docks, Twilight had managed to get enough of her energy back to complain about the absurdity of my plan before being able to stand on her own four hooves again. During that time, I also made my own observations when it came to the problem I had been facing ever since our little adventure had begun.

Whatever was wrong with me, it was still there. Twilight had simply given me the magical equivalent to a shot of adrenaline or something. The strange thing was, nothing beyond my energy reserves had changed. The splitting headache was still threatening to crack my skull open and I barely enough strength to walk around. I wasn’t going to chance any serious flying, or anything else for some time though. Magic still wasn’t really an option either. But I could still move, even if it felt as if my body was made of lead.

Oh, and I still had Twilight’s…scent shoved up my nose, so the cold wash hadn’t helped for very long at all. Being a horny female for more than forty five minutes strait had just about driven me crazy.

So with my paralyzing changeling cold problem I was having on top of a biological need to get laid, I was ecstatic by the time I wandered onto the docks leading to the Salty Sea Mare with the map in my mouth. On the brighter side of things, the lack of taste buds meant I could only feel the bits of sand and dirt clinging to the map instead of taste them.

When nopony came out to greet me, I made my way up onto the deck and put the map on the railing so I could talk without it getting in the way. Once I had my wing safely positioned over the map, so it wouldn’t blow away, I took in a deep breath and steadied myself until the dizzy spell passed. “Hey Hoofbeard! Come out here you slimy bilge rat! I got words with fer ye!” I shouted in my best pirate lingo.

The pony who came onto the deck from within the captain’s cabin was not the stallion I was expecting. In fact, she wasn’t a stallion at all.

Rarity let out a loud yawn, and looked around before her eyes finally settled on me. “Dear, must you be so loud? A lady needs her quite time!”

My mouth dropped in absolute sock. “Oh SWEET CELESTIA! Rarity, please tell me you are not sleeping with that peg legged tri-pod!” I begged the prissy mare with all my heart. While this was Rarity I was talking to, she deserved better than a nut job of a pirate…or Spike.

“WHAT?” the unicorn shouted in her best indecorous voice. A second later, her face turned into a smoldering volcano that I could practically see smoke coming out of before she jumped up into my face and blew her top. “Now listen here you…uncouth lout! I’ll have you know I was performing a much needed service for that fine stallion in there, and-”

“WHOOOO Wheeee, just what is all that racket goin on up here?” the ship’s cook called out in her country twang of an accented voice as she made her way up from below decks, absent the mane and tail nets that had covered her body during most of the voyage. “Rarity? What’re you and-wait, where’s Twi and-”

“SERVICE?” I screeched as mental images of the unicorn with her head down near the pirate pony’s privates burned their way into my mind and set up shop to create future nightmares. On instinct, I reached up to grab my hair with my hands, only to fail since I had hooves and just let out a girlish scream. “OH GOD! Please stop talking!”

Both the mares frowned at my reaction, and I managed to catch myself from falling flat on my face by readjusting my weight on my pony knees as my back legs bent back in an entirely too human fashion while my wings kept me upright.

With that kind of news running through my head, I just skipped the next three steps of the plan and went strait for the endgame.

Rarity may have not of been my favorite pony, but if that bastard thought he was going to get away with tricking her into giving him a blowjob, he had another thing coming. My new plan, that I had just made after hearing what he did to Rarity, mostly involved me using the cutlass currently at my side to ass-rape the butt stallion until he died screaming.

But I still stuck to the verbal part of the script. It was something me and Twi had come up with, and pretty good if I did say so myself. Real pirate stuff. “Hoofbeard, I say ye be a poor captain and call for a count!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Applejack lean in to whisper to Rarity. “What’s she talkin about?”

“No idea darling,” the unicorn replied.

"Oh neato a showdown!" Pinkie exclaimed after she popped out of a nearby barrel.

A minute later, after hearing the pirate’s wooden leg knock its way closer from inside his cabin, the door flung open and Hoofbeard burst forth onto the deck. The pirate’s appearance was sudden, but it was his appearance that made me freeze. Instead of the gaudy jewelry and other junk he had on before, Hoofbeard was wearing the frilliest, purplist, girlish…thing that had ever been seen on the seven seas. I suppose it looked like something an old English commodore would wear, but…the damn thing just looked so feminine that I had to resist the urge to throw up.

So he makes others suck his cock and dresses gay too, huh? I asked myself. If the guy was going to be all homo, he could have at least had the guy providing the suction instead of poor Rarity.

“What ye be callin me fer ya scallywag?” the frou-frou pirate demanded.

“I said I think you’re an inept captain, and call for a count!”

Hoofbeard’s face twisted in confusion. “A what?”

Are you kidding me? I asked myself before letting out a disgruntled sigh and rolling my eyes. “You know, a show of fidelity?”

Nothing again.

“A vote?”

Still nothing.

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “I say you’re a poor captain and call for a vote to determine by democratic majority who’s going to command the ship from now on!”

That finally got a reaction from the crazy old pirate. He snorted before his face twisted in anger and began shouting. “WHAT? How dare you! I be the captain of this vessel, and can’t nopony say otherwise!”

My anger over his mouth-rape of Rarity quickly combined with a new anger at this idiot’s historical inaccuracy. “That isn’t how pirating works!” I yelled at the idiot who besmirched the first real democracies in existence. “The crew decides who’s captain, and the captain decides how to best provide for the crew! It’s not some type of top down monarch like some stupid pirate…king…thing.”

Okay, my finish was rather lame towards the end. While Once Piece was a nice story and all, there really was no such thing as a real pirate king. It went against everything piracy stood for. Each ship was a country unto itself. A land of free men who did what they wanted, when they wanted. A pony calling himself a pirate king was sacrilege!

“Well let me tell ye something lad,” Hoofbeard declared as he drew his sword to hold it in his hoof as he stood erect. “That is exactly what I be! I shall live, and die, a pirate king!”

I blinked as music started ply from nowhere, and Hoofbeard advanced in a very…choreographic manner. As the song began, I just groaned in annoyance. Ah damnit, I thought I got away from this shit, I thought before drawing my own cutlass I had gotten from Dash and weaving it around wildly to parry his blows while using my flying advantage to keep a good amount of distance between the two of us to compensate for my debilitation.

All the while, Captain Jackass just went about serenading me.

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part
With a pirate head and a pirate heart

The pirate lunged at me, and fell back using my wings. For every advance, there came a retreat. For ever lunge, a back-step. For every move…a fallback. It wasn’t so much a sword fight, as I sure as hell wasn’t comfortable enough with my hooves and fetlocks to try and swing a sword around; and there was no way in hell I was putting the handle in my mouth, I knew damn well where the cutlass I was using had been.

Away to the cheating world go you
Where the pirates all are well-to-do;
But I’ll be true to the song I sing
And live and die a pirate king.

As the battle went on, I continued to parry, parry, midair-backstep, parry, parry, retreat, parry, move back some more, and continued to swat the other pony’s sword away before he could cut into my unarmored blue body.

Okay, screw this, I thought to myself when I ran out of ship to retreat on and was just left flapping my wings to stay aloft as Hoofbeard reached the end of the ship where nothing else was even close to being in the way. “TWILIGHT! DO IT NOW!”

A second later, a spark of magic shot up from the edge of the pirate town and flew high above the ship before igniting into a flare that illuminated the night and brought color to the entire deck. Three seconds later, the night was truly lit up as an explosion of rainbow colors that washed over the area, along with an earsplitting boom that made by very bones ring a second after the pony standing in front of me was knocked aside by my identical twin flying at speeds surpassing Mach 1.

Then, the magic of the Rainboom hit me, and I just stood there in awe for a moment, completely forgetting the ‘Remember this as the day you ALMOST got bla bla bla’ line I had planned to make myself look cool. Instead, I just barely stopped myself from dropping into the water in shock.

The Sonic Rainboom wasn’t some cheap optical trick where Rainbow’s contrail got exploded all over the place and gave her an even cooler wake. To be honest, I’m not sure what it was; the magic of Harmony, some type of one in a billion genetic fluke, or…whatever. As the light washed over me, I could feel myself being rejuvenated and infused with a bit of the pegasus’s magic, and my changeling senses revolving around magic yearned for more of it.

I was in such a daze, it took being called by the girls to snap me out of it. Even then, it was nearly ten minutes later that I noticed all my sea sickness symptoms had disappeared.

“I’m sorry for dragging you girls along. I just wanted to have a cool adventure you know? Relaxing on the beach is fun and all, but I mean come on, we could have been pirates!”

“Aww it’s okay Dashie! We had loads, of fun, right girls?”

As the chorus of agreements sounded, I did my best to restrain myself from groaning while Twilight’s hoof caressed my once again pseudo-alicorn back. An hour out into the ocean, and whatever Dash’s Rainboom had given me had faded away. I was left under the weakened alicorn’s care while she charted our course by the stars as Captain Rainbow steered the ship.

“Oh yes Rainbow Dash, it was very…exhilarating,” Fluttershy agreed without looking up from the fishbowl in her hooves. Although, to be more specific, all her attention was on the tiny fish that was inside the new fishbowl she had acquired from Captain Dash’s cabin.

“Hey Fluttershy…isn’t that the same fish you dropped off in the ocean to begin with?” I asked while getting close enough to try and study the animal in detail.

The yellow pegasus gave me an uneasy look, then glanced around in a panic when my words attracted the attention of the other mares on-board the ship. “Um…well…you see…”

Luckily for the shy sky pony, Rainbow Dash jumped in to save her with a dismissive puff. “Geeze Fluttershy, if you wanted to keep Gill as a pet, you could have just said so.”

So that’s why she decided to come along with us, I realized with a roll of my eyes before deciding to try and change the subject before Flutters got too anxious or something. Even with Rainbow pulling her plot out of the explanation fire, she still looked kind of nervous. “So AJ, did you ever find out what Hoofbeard whatever with the map?” I was a bit curious as to what the wandering X led to.

“I reckon from all that yakkin he did after I got him good an sloshed, it’s some kind of wanderin treasure,” the apple farmer explained. “Kept goin on about a jewel he wanted.”

The resident gem detecting unicorn let out a snort. “He made us risk our lives for some silly bauble? Ugh, and to think I believed him a gentlecoat.”

In Hoofbeard’s defense, he never did try and hit on me. It was a rare thing, done only by stallions who already had their special somepony...or the 100% homosexuals. But, I let Rarity think what she would about him. I kind of owed it to her after mistakenly thinking she sucked his cock when she had just been Rarifying his wardrobe.

“Ah well, nopony got hurt, and we got a pirate ship out of it…no treasure, but I still call it a win,” I said to everypony.

A wing came up to wrap around my shoulders, and a second later, Twilight leaned into me. “Of course, we wouldn’t have had to go through any of this if Fluttershy had just told us she wanted to keep Gill in the first place,” the princess mumbled loud enough for only a few of us to hear.

I chuckled, despite the fact my feminine voice made it sound like a giggle, and leaned over to nuzzle Twilight. “Oh come on, at least Dash had some fun,” I whispered back. “Besides, what else would we have done the week before my class starts?”

“Well I was going to take you to meet my parents, but now with all the preparations that still need to be done, and this trip taking so long, it’ll have to wait until after our first day of class.”

I froze.

I gulped.

I dreaded.

I squeaked. “Parents?”

Oh, better far to live and die under the brave black flag I fly, I thought to myself as I looked up at the top of the ship's mast.

Chapter 4: My Little Introduction to... Well, a lot of things really

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My first day of school began pretty much like you’d expect. I was asleep in my bed, if you can call it that since changelings don’t really dream. Getting updates on the goings on of Equestria and picking up the latest gossip from the pillow talk that occurred after ponies made use of my less than reputable pleasure business was what I did instead of truly slumber. To be honest, I think most of them came for THAT instead of the physical activity that preceded it. Even the male ponies.

Well, except for that one week a month when all the girls in town except Twilight tended to go sex crazy. Then there’s usually a Big Mac for every pony in town except in the cases of mares who like ponies with big wings like Rainbow Dash. Those kinds of ponies need to make appointments, it takes time to copy pegasi that are usually in Cloudsdale and fly back after all.

I was in the middle of finding out how nervous Cheerilee was about the upcoming End of Summer Fair after she had been plowed by a Big Mac look-alike when something impacted my body and knocked me out of my trance. Expecting an attack by some dark creature that had come to claim the top spot in the Everfree, or this one really annoying sales pony that kept coming by about every three days to sell me pretty princess castle decor, I fought through the mass of bedsheets and glared at…Twilight Sparkle?

“Fae! Fae hurry and get up! It’s the first day of school!”

As the alicorn across from me gave me this wide, overly excited smile and knocked on my mattress several times with her hooves, I fought off the weird tingling that came from waking up my changeling body when my mind had still been perfectly active. A second later, I threw off my bed sheets, and looked back at Twilight’s…Pinkie Pie level of excitement before making a disturbing revelation.

Oh God, this is like Christmas to her, I thought with a sigh before mumbling to myself. “Well fuck me,” I managed in a lose approximation to the human language that I could manage with pony vocal cords. The last thing I wanted to deal with at the early morning hours was a Twilight who had been drinking Pinkie’s Kool-Aid; or some kind of super caffeinated beverage at least. Which was actually kind of weird, since coffee had been banned from Ponyville for about five years thanks to something called the Day of Pink Terror.

To be honest, I don’t think I had ever seen Twilight as excited as she was about anything, ever! Hell, the only thing I could even begin to compare it to was when I thought she was still just a cartoon character and Winter Wrap-up Day was starting.

I would have actually questioned why she was so excited about me going to work, but things took a very horrifying turn when Twilight let out an excited gasp with bright eyes that practically glistened in joy. “You mean you’re finally ready for-ohmygosh! This is perfect! I based the timing of our first copulation on the amount of time spent doing activities together based on the Equestrian average of three dates to secure a solid opinion of a significant other before physical intercourse, but the emotional connection formed by marking a specific event with your first time works even better! Yes! We should celebrate with morning sex!”

While my mind was translating just what the hell Twilight was going on about, her horn lit up and I felt the transmogrification spell envelop my body. My natural changeling magic rose up to push it away. I forced it to accept the alicorn’s magic almost on instinct and waited for the two kinds of magic to merge before altering my body into that of a dark alicorn mare; an alicorn mare who had just watched a lot of porn via mental information sent through the hive mind. It took about two seconds before I was soaked and would be needing to either go back to being a changeling, or put up with another day of sexual frustration.

It was times such as these that made me wonder why I didn’t just give in to Twilight’s advances and let her taste me. But, despite my girly parts, sexy voice, and all that other stuff, I was still a guy. Sort of.

In my mind at least.

Even if living in pony-land for so long had made me start looking at things like Surgarcube Corner and thinking that it was cute, or how baby ponies were not so much a pain in the ass as they were cute, and Pinkie Pie wasn’t all that cutesy as she was...cool.

Fine, I went native, I admit it. But I was still a guy...who could be guy enough to enjoy girly things.

But sex? That was totally a guy thing. Even if I was just giving lip service to Twilight’s crotch.

Which was in no way gay!

Protected by such thoughts, I was able to tell myself, Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I ate out for breakfast, before the alicorn’s body impacted mine and she pinned me to the bed. Twilight ran her tongue over her lips and smacked them a few times before giving me a sensual look. “Don’t worry, I’ve read all the books for vulva stimulation via oral attention and gotten some tips from a few ponies. I’ll be gentle.”

Wait...what?

Twilight scooted her way down to my nether region and kissed the exposed skin around my female horse breast…thingies that I think were called teats. It was actually a little less disturbing thinking of them that way than horse boobies. Because they were on me.

“T-Twilight?”

It was actually a lot…less stimulating than I had thought having my tits sucked on would be. Apparently the brutally honest girlfriend I had this one time in high school was right.

Still, the kiss managed to shock me out of my lustful confusion, and my whole body just went rigid as Twilight moved over to my other…teat to kiss and suck on it a bit. Wait…WHAT? Oh fuck is she…

"T-Twilight? W-What’re you doing?” I asked weakly while my whole fucking body trembled. Despite the fact my mind was that of a guy only a couple of months into ponyland, my body was very much a mare in need of attention that had been denied up to this point in time. And with a purple pony princess so close her coat was touching my lady parts, my pony pussy screamed at me to be taken care of.

Confusion written across her face, Twilight looked up at me and spoke. “I thought fuck was the human term for intercourse,” she said, kind of mangling the Equestrian attempt at English even worse than I did when I tried to speak it on instinct.

“Is something wrong?”

I froze. Oh God, she actually thought I meant…oh God…

I gulped as I tried my best to think of what to do. Twilight had been trying to get me to spread my legs for weeks. It wasn’t out of lust of course, she got her needs satisfied by my mouth. She did it because…well, according to the Alicorn of Nymphomania, sex as a mare felt good. She wanted to give me pleasure. Hell, I sometimes thought Twilight actually felt guilty for not fulfilling her duties as a proper fillyfriend.

On the other hand, it was sex…AS A GIRL! Sex as a girl. Bad. Wrong. No! It was the last remains of my man card that existed in Equestria! The holy bastion of my humanity. The...thing that allowed me to...um...be manly?

So it was my man card VS Twilight Sparkle’s look of concern.

Yeah, that fight took all of two seconds.

“No. Go ahead. Just a little nervous, I guess,” I said with an uneasy voice as my man card was utterly crushed Twilight‘s merciful hoof.

Twilight just gave me a gentle smile that destroyed the last of my resistance. “I’ll make sure you enjoy it.”

And thus, Twilight Sparkle took my pony mare virginity while I mentally rewrote my character info card.

Name: Omnifarious
Species: Changeling Monarch
Sex: ~~Male~~, ~~Asexual~~, Female
Alias: Fairy/Fae/Fae-Fae
Occupation: ~~Evil Insect Overlord~~, ~~Regent of the Everfree~~, Twilight’s Bitch.

So, after Twilight made a mare out of me, and I returned the favor…and then we tried the whole 69 thing a few times before attempting to turn it into a stamina contest without me feeding on her since that would be cheating…

I cleaned up the room, put the sheets in the laundry, flipped my mattress to its dry side, got to the bathroom to get cleaned up, got a horn job from Twilight to help me restore a bit of the bits of ash that were my man card, got eaten out by Twilight in the bathtub in a new position that had me floating in her magic and squealing like some little girl, got offered horn penetration by Twilight before turning it down because there were limits to my newfound pony sex need, took a bath to get cleaned up with Twilight, explained the concept of sex toys to Twilight while in the bath since they apparently didn’t have as much of them in Equestria as Earth did, explained to Twilight why I didn’t know exactly how a dildo worked or its vibration frequency since I had never been female before…and then left the castle, wondering if the fake alicorn body I was using that was kind of based off Twilight’s since it also had her newly awakened libido.

By the end of my ordeal, I didn’t even feel all that bad about it.

Which was kind of creepy.

Okay, really creepy.

But on the other hand, mare sex…kind of rocked…a lot.

As long as it was with another mare.

Named Twilight Sparkle…

…or Rainbow Dash.

Of course, just going to a night class wasn’t the only thing I would be doing in Canterlot. No, that was actually the easy part that I actually found myself looking forward to. It would allow me to outwit Celestia in a stunning display of idea thievery while still collecting a paycheck for the year. Dear God, did I look forward to holding that over her head…horn…whatever.

Now, in all fairness, I had tried to quit before. It was after I found out what I was going to be teaching. As in, ten seconds later. But when Twilight Sparkle is your girlfriend, you really don’t get a chance to say no to Celestia on anything if she finds out about it. The pleading scowl that purple alicorn could pull off would pretty much turn people into her personal slaves if she knew of its power.

I mean hell, look what happened to me.

So, after we had got back to Ponyville from a leisurely stroll through the Everfree that was a touchy-feely cool down from our passionate morning, Twilight magicked out a checklist from thin air and one of her favorite kind of writing utensils to accompany it.

“Okay so, let’s see…we need to make final preparations for your clothes…then take the train to Canterlot…early lunch with my parents, afternoon tea with Celestia, and then…meeting of your advanced magic class! Oh, I haven’t been to CSGU since I came to Ponyville!” Twilight said as she danced on her hind legs in that cute little excited nerd dance she always did when she was about to go into overload.

The mention of Rarity’s shop made me slump and whine. I did not look forward to that. “Can’t I just go naked?”

“No, you’re a…my regent, and we’ll be meeting with the princess, and it’s Canterlot!” Twilight exclaimed. “Everypony there wears clothes, and we’ll be going to a party consisting of the upper crust of the city.”

Wait…did her parents ever wear clothes in the series? I asked myself. To be honest, it was getting harder to remember the MLP stuff from when I watched it on television. I chalk it up to actually being in their world and not wanting to think of it as a cartoon.

Because it wasn’t, a cartoon I mean. If I was in it, then it was…94% real.

Or a very nice lucid dream.

But as I hadn't spotted any glaring oddities beyond just...Pinkie stuff, I was willing to accept what I was currently experiencing was in fact, reality.

I let out a sigh and mustered my willpower to raise my head. The kiss on the cheek Twilight gave me helped too. Then Twilight leaned over to whisper in my ear when I had picked myself up all the way. “And when we’re done, I’m going to rip off those clothes, grab you in my magic, and suck up every last drop of vaginal fluid your glands can produce while you flail around in the air like an amoeba’s pseudopodia.”

Despite the…adorkable nature of the alicorn’s line, I found myself getting hot again. The hell with the brony question of Twilight’s everlasting life, I wanted to know about her unstoppable sex drive.

“And what about you? I kind of feel bad for being the one getting all the attention here.” And still feeling a bit guilty over the sex thing. It was one of those things like a guilty pleasure. You know, like watching ponies. You know you shouldn’t but...your DVR records ponies instead of robots one day, you see Twilight Lesson Zeroing every pony and like concane, you're addicted before you even know it. But you still keep it a secret.

The question I whispered into Twilight’s ear outside of the boutique got a soft smile from the alicorn and another kiss on the cheek. “Fae, you’ve given me so much joy since we first met, I need to work hard and even the score.”

That little comment got an eyebrow raise from me. If Twilight was keeping score…oh hell, what all was she counting it by?

Of course, trying to figure that out led me on a flashback trip through all the other things we had shared, including our little Crystal Empire debacle. That memory stung. I could still see the look of betrayal on her face when Chrysalis did her song and dance number that revealed me as a changeling.

I never did ask Twilight why she decided to keep going with the relationship after that. Fear kept that little can of worms nice and shut. Long as Twilight said she was happy and didn’t bring it up, I didn’t ask. It worked for the whole once a human thing, it worked for the fact that I hung out with Rainbow Dash about just as much as Twi, and it was going to work for that too damn it!

As soon as we entered Rarity’s shop, the unicorn gave out her sing-song 'cooooming' greeting from somewhere in the back, and I found myself looking at the clock to see it was just barely past nine.

“Ah, Twilight, Fae, let me just get your dresses and see if they need any last minute adjustments,” the dressmaking monster told me with her usual air of high-classiness.

I just whined and hung my head in shame.

Okay, after the morning I had, wearing a dress wasn’t that big a deal anymore, I mean…I was a…sort of girl, and…. As long as it made Twilight happy, I was…able tolerate it.

At least until she figured out a working gender spell that wasn’t debilitating to my natural changeling magic. While I was wanting my guy parts back pretty badly, a good part of me wanted to keep the whole shape shifter thing going. Especially after what happened on Pirate Island. Plus, it had only been a few weeks since Twilight's messup had made the 63 changelings and I had no idea if there were any other freakish side effects.

Plus, my powers were cool at parties, and pranking other ponies with Rainbow Dash.

As for the dresses, well...Twilight had picked the damn things out…albeit behind my back, but they were still her choice of dress. Which meant I could bare them. No idea where Rarity got my measurements for them though. The only time she ever really studied me for any point of time had been on the pirate ship a few days ago when she stared at me for about two hours trying to find a proper outfit.

She was still mad I burnt that shirt of hers up back during our pirate adventure a few days ago, but that was what happened when clothes touched changeling transformation magic.

“Princess Celestia will be so happy to see us in the dresses she sent!”

Twilight’s words drew me out of my thoughts, and I looked over at her. “What?”

Twilight just looked back at me. “Did you say something Fae?”

I did my best not to glare at the purple alicorn, I think I managed a half-laden stare in the end. “Are you telling me, Celestia sent us our wardrobe?”

It was Rarity who answered as she brought out the two…things. “I don’t know why you’re so upset Darling, these dresses are fine enough to be worn at a wedding!”

“That’s because they’re wedding dresses,” I grumbled while glaring at the offending clothing.

At least the fact that Twilight wanted me to go clothed made more sense, or at least in how she wanted me to be clothed. I did have to agree with her on the whole Canterlot needs clothing stance. But there was no way in hell Twilight was so out of it she would choose to wear what Rarity was holding in her magic.

I mean, the damn thing was a was a blinding white with accents that ran around the bottom the same dark greenish-blue color as my hair and a diamond crest in the front had me comparing it to Cadence’s one…that Chrysalis turned down for not having a long enough train. Twilight’s was similar, just with a of different coloration that mixed a light blue with a pink that was the same color as her cutie mark.

“Nonsense darling!” Rarity assured me as she banished my argument with a wave of her hoof. “Now hurry and get dressed, you don’t want to be late for your train!”

Ignoring the unicorn for the moment, I looked back over to Twilight. “Twilight, are you absolutely sure you don’t want to rule Equestria?”

The alicorn gave me a raised eyebrow. “What brought that on?”

“It’s just some pony is going to have to run things after I kill Celestia!” I told her while holding up my hooves. If they had been hands, I’m pretty sure they would have been in fists.

“WHAT?”

Twilight just sighed at Rarity’s terrified shriek and dragged me towards the large changing room while taking the dresses in her magic. “Never mind her Rarity. It’s just human humor. I don’t get it either, but I know when she’s joking.”

“I’m not joking! I’m serious this time! The sun tyrant must fall!”

“Yeah-huh,” the alicorn said as she deposited me in the small room and closed the door behind us.

The train ride to Canterlot was boring as hell. The first hour, I managed to survive by asking Twilight about her parents, which she was happy to talk about. Although the list of items she gave me to memorize on what NOT to talk about kind of had me worried…and hiding my giggles.

Yes, I giggled. I was a girl. Girls could giggle.

Honestly, when your girlfriend asks you NOT to ask about things like when she stopped wetting the bed, how much she used to drool, the level of her reading when she was at the pre-school age, and the first real spell she managed to cast. Your mind comes up with some pretty interesting ideas.

As for what I learned about the Sparkles…or Twilights…or…whatever the hell ponies used for family names… It was pretty interesting.

Both of Twilight’s parents were astronomers, which both made sense, and set off shit loads of sirens in my head. It made sense because, hell, Twilight was gaga for astronomy. She probably got it from her mom and dad. The warning sirens were because I avoided that particular subject like the plague due to the fact Equestrian star systems were set up by Luna…I think.

It was one of the five great mysteries of Equestria I just didn’t ask about. Things were simpler when my limited knowledge of physics and the way the world was supposed to work wasn’t constantly getting raped by Equestrian magic.

Twilight Velvet was also involved in writing books. She had apparently taken up writing children’s literature when she had been pregnant with Shining Armor, went back to it when she got knocked up with Twilight, and then just kind of kept a foot in the door by helping some old college friend with her work. It didn't give her anymore author’s credits, but some woman named Ainos Kaju…Y-something sent her a check about once a year for the help.

When I asked Twilight what kind of novels her mother’s benefactor wrote, Twilight admitted she hadn’t read any; or found any with Ainos’s name on the title of any book she had looked at. So I was pretty sure A.K. Y-something was writing clop. It was good to know porn had a place, even in Equestria.

“So, there’s something I’m wondering Twi,” I said after the silence of Twilight’s private princess car let my mind wander into the worst possible thing kind of scenario while I watched the landscape go by. “They know I’m a changeling, right?” If there was anyplace in the world where ponies wouldn't be all loving and tolerent towards my kind, it was Canterlot.

For some reason, the disarming laugh Twilight gave me just upped my worries as she swatted the question away with a wave of her hoof. “Oh don’t worry Fae. My parents will love you. Shinning and Cadence saw them two weeks ago, and the letter Cadence sent me said you came up in conversation.”

There was no way in hell I was going to just leave that there. “And?”

“And what?”

“And what did Cadence say she said about me Twilight?” I asked without trying to put too much annoyance and worry into my voice.

Twilight just shrugged, and I collapsed back against my bench before laying down on it. I’m doomed.

I might not have been giving Cadence enough credit though. To be honest, I loved that pink pony princess as much as any of the Mane Six. Back when I had been feeling like crap, on the verge of just giving it up with Twilight, and well…probably finding a rope to hang myself with, she beat some sense into me and bullied me into giving our relationship a real shot. You don’t do that unless you have faith things will work out. I was still trying to come up with a proper way to thank her since she would probably turn down a trio of changelings that I could order to be her personal sex toys.

Judging from my personal experiences with Twilight, if Shining Armor had to deal with the same stuff as I did, then she would need them. There was no way in hell a mere mortal pony could possibly keep up with the pink Alicorn of Love. Twilight was a sex fiend, but Cadence was the fucking princess of the stuff.

As for Shining Armor, he and I were also on pretty cool terms. I’ll admit, this mostly stemmed from the fact that I made his sister happy and killed the bitch that mind-raped him rather than some bromance we had forged during my recovery in the Crystal Empire, but we got along well enough to be called friendly acquaintances.

“Are you really that nervous?” she asked me with those big lavender eyes that pretty much just made me her complete slave.

Okay, time for an anthropology lesson, I mentally told Twilight. I tended to downplay the whole human history and society because…well, compared to the ponies, we sucked as a species. I’m pretty sure if the ponies knew half of what I did about humanity, and that I used to be one, they’d be reaching for their pitchforks and torches.

“It’s a human thing,” I said. “Remember when I met Shining Armor and Cadence for the first time as Flash?” After a nod from Twilight, I continued. “Human families are very…judgmental, especially when it comes to females. It’s why I was dressed up in the fancy uniform.”

Twilight gave me one of her loving smiles. “Don’t worry Fae, I’m sure my parents are going to love you.”

I just stared at Twilight after she pretty much just hit me with the ultimate jinx.

While that kind of crap didn’t fly on Earth, in Equestria, it fucked the law of averages up its ass on a daily basis.

Pony Minas Tirith, or Canterlot as it was called by the locals, was a breath of high-altitude air.

And by that I mean it left me uncomfortable, and wanting to get back to Ponyville as soon as possible so I could return to its normal atmosphere. Sure, it was the disaster capital of Equestria with wild weather, monster attacks, Discord incursions, a pink pony that told physics to go screw itself on a daily basis, and a mad scientist that had turned off the gravity while performing an experiment to see if she could find a easier way to do the laundry…but I was used to it.

Although, it was probably better to say that ponies were used to me.

Thanks to day after day of walking through the streets and being a friendly little pony, most of the ponies in town had stopped asking about my lack of a cutie mark without me having to use a psychic camouflage field to make them just ignore that glaring oddity. They took my alicornness as a given, and the guys even did their best to stay about fifteen feet away from me to try avoid any incidents involving my pheromones causing an accidental unsheathing of manliness. Of course, I in turn ignored any raging hard-ons that actually came up and sent a changeling into shops for me as well as flew over the stallions who couldn’t get out of my way.

Canterlot was not so accommodating, and by that I’m being nice. I meant to say it was street after street of asses (no offense to donkeys intended of course) that usually stopped talking amongst themselves to watch me with their eyes as me and Twilight went by.

The ‘no cutie mark?’ ‘is that mare a blank flank?’ and ‘Mmmm there’s something about that mare’ kind of made it obvious they weren’t talking about Twilight when the new alicorn comments started coming. It also made me wish I had worn the damn dress since it would have covered up my butt and other bits since Twilight was with me and I couldn’t counter with my usual anti-blank flank remark of ‘It’s there, you just can’t see it since my talent is making other ponies disappear’.

Stupid Celestia and her stupid dress being kind of a good idea except for the fact that it was a fucking wedding dress on top of just being a dress!

I didn’t even have a pair of saddlebags like Twilight to carry my stuff because…well… Look, I’m an evil overlord! (sort of) I had evil bug slaves to do that for me, telekinesis, and it wasn’t like I had a lot to carry around to begin with. So, Twilight was carrying my stuff in her bags of holding with their infinite storage space, or she shrunk them down to fit, or…maybe she was just carrying two dresses. I really had no idea. Watching girls pack is not my idea of entertainment.

A half an hour of walking through the streets, since it was considered rude to fly in unicorn town, finally got us to the little house that Twilight’s parents called home.

It looked kind of small, just your average two story house with its two windows and upstairs and basic block design under a shingled roof, although it was more modern than ninety-percent of the stuff in Ponyville. I figured that space was at a premium when you build your city according to some madman’s design that said it had to be hanging off a cliff.

Of course whenever I asked a pony what insanity made Celestia build her post-Nightmare Moon capital on the side of a freaking mountain, they just looked at me like I was the crazy one!

I also had to wonder why the level of technology seemed to differ from city to city, but didn’t want Twilight to look at me like I was stupid since it was probably one of those ’why don’t ponies eat grass?’ questions. My logic had been trying to figure it out since I went to Vanhoover and saw a city that looked semi-modern VS stuff like Appleloosa, which left indoor plumbing to be desired. Canterlot fell somewhere in the middle.

Twilight’s horn glowed, and a few seconds later, the door opened to let us into the house Twilight grew up in, or the one her parents lived in now at least. The placed seemed a little small to me for a family of four. “Mom, Dad! I’m here.”

“Twilight? Oh Twilight it is you!” a slightly smaller unicorn said as she came trotting out of the back room. Judging by the clopping I could hear before she got to the carpeted surface, it was probably the kitchen.

Twilight Velvet was pretty much what I expected. Like a true brony with nothing to do on a Sunday morning, I had seen a few of the older MLP things to kind of…maybe…refresh my memory of stuff I had sort of seen while I was just a little kid because I used to wake up at about 5:30 and there was nothing else on television, never mind the non-existent internet. Back then, television was the gift of God, while books were nothing more than the unholy offspring of Satan. So I had already seen a scrappily animated version of Twilight Velvet when she was named…something I really didn’t remember.

The actual pony looked a lot better. She wasn’t a fat horse for one thing, and had the same basic body shape that all fit ponies had; not that all ponies had the same figure, I had seen plenty of larger ones in my time. She also had the same lacquered-like hooves that Twilight possessed that mixed with her groomed coat so well it probably would have taken me a rude amount of looking to see where one started and the other stopped.

As they hugged, kissed each other on the cheek, and did all that mother/daughter stuff, I took a moment to look around the house. It looked about as normal as could be. Pictures hung by the door showed what Shining and Twi looked like as kids, as well as a larger one that showed off Armor and Cadence’s wedding next to Velvet and Night Light’s wedding photograph.

Apart from the pictures in the entryway and a few more hanging at strategic places around the room like the ones above the fireplace, there were books. Lots of books. I knew reading was basically pony television since their movie theaters didn’t really draw the crowds like it did for humans, but…most families only had one bookshelf per family member, usually topping out at four. The Sparkles family (or whatever the hell they were) had five in their living room.

You know, with Shining Armor, I could have at least hoped the dad was cool, but no, I told myself before I heard Twilight call my name.

“Fae, come meet my mom!”

So I walked into the breach and put on my best smile while tying my best to ignore the uneasy scent coming off of the unicorn in front of me. “It’s a pleasure Misses Velvet,” I told her while bowing my head to show as much respect as I could without the full prostration all ponies did around Celestia.

Of course that was a total lie, and was about as fake as my body. On the inside, I had approached Yellow Alert based on Velvet’s Smell. I was all: Oh crap, she doesn’t like me! Is it the changeling thing? Does she even know I’m a changeling? Is it the mare-on-mare thing Twilight says Canterlot ponies don’t like? I still didn't really understand that one. I think the race was like 100% bi, with the odd mare or stallion out, but Canterlot ponies were all 'hetero relationships are better than homo' or something.

There was also the possibility that she didn’t know I was a changeling and STILL had a problem with me… Oh fuck, that’s even worse!

“Oh please dear, Velvet is fine,” she said before smiling at me.

I smiled back.

Then the awkward silence came. You know the kind. It’s like you know you need to say something, but you can’t because anything out of your mouth will instantly damn you in the eyes of a girl’s parents.

I was going to ask about Twilight’s dad, but then I had another thought. Wait, how much has Twilight told them about the show? Do they know I know stuff like their names and junk? Hell, I didn’t even know if Twilight knew that much!

“So, um…where is your husband Ma’am?” I asked.

My awesome question slew the silence and showed how I was perfectly respectful. It was fucking perfect and managed to get a comfortable smile from older Twilight while getting younger Twilight’s attention off me as well.

“Night is with Shining, they’re going to be meeting us at the restaurant,” Twilight’s mom replied.

I thanked God again because…well, Shining Armor would have my back. At last I hoped he would. If he didn’t, I’d call in the ‘I saved your sister’s ass’ favor he owed me for the Daring Do fiasco…even though it was kind of my job at the time and Twilight saved my ass back when Mom and I duked it out for leadership of the hive. But I would call it in if need-be damn it, all’s fair in the life of a changeling overlord!

“Great!” Twilight exclaimed before looking over to me. “Let’s go get dressed Fae.”

My eye twitched.

Yeah…really should have seen that one coming.

Chapter 5: My Little Rash of Revelations

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You know how ponies are supposed to have this perfect society where they all live perfect lives and spend their days dancing around with songs and junk? Love, tolerance and all that? Well, that apparently isn’t the case at the dinner table.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The whole thing started off well enough. Me, Twilight and the Twilight who didn’t have wings all got into a carriage to take us to…Tea Love’s Tea Room. It was this girly, frilly little thing that probably would have made me groan and vomit twenty-four hours ago.

But as things were, I was fine with it.

Perfectly.

Absolutely.

FINE WITH IT!

After all, I had sex as a girl, so wearing a dress wasn’t bad or anything, and going to a little frilly place that served tiny cakes where we were expected to sip tea also wasn’t…too…much…either.

We got a private room and sat down at a rectangular table meant for a few more ponies than we had that had pony chairs. Or cushions with backs to them anyway; which meant the restaurant was supposed to be swanky. Most equines had enough junk in their trunks to not need cushioning, and considering even the rich didn’t wear pants… God, please tell me they wash these things.

I briefly wondered if I could get sick.

Not the crazy island/sea sickness thing that I had recovered from about a day after getting back on dry land. I still didn’t know what the fuck was up with that other than I was staying on dry land from until the day I died thank you. That crap had made me feel like I was dying towards the end, and by the time we got back onto a train, I was fine.

No, I meant the normal kind of sick. The normal kind of sick that normal people get when they’re touching their bare asses to things other bare asses have touched. And I have never been more thankful for my lack of food intake, I told myself after images of public toilets filled my head.

Then Twilight opened her mouth. “Dad, this is my fillyfriend, Fae.”

“Mister…um…”

“Night Light my dear,” he replied in a brisk voice that sounded a little deeper than Shining’s. “I must say, when Shining told me Twilight was involved with another mare, I didn‘t expect another alicorn princess! When was your coronation? Velvet, did you know about this?”

The nervousness in the other Twilight’s scent grew, and she coughed before looking away from me and over to her husband. “Well…no dear. It’s a little embarrassing to be honest.”

“Oh, she’s not a princess,” Shining told his father. “Or a…she, really.”

“What?”

I sighed and looked down at the little pink teacup beneath me as I shook my head. “It’s complicated sir.” Hell, I wasn’t even sure of what I was anymore. I was having sex as a girl for crying out loud. And...liking it.

I wasn’t a guy anymore…not really. Twilight’s spell had been giving me hope, but I took the biggest plunge I could and it turned out to be pretty good. Then I get a dress and…it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be, I sure as hell wasn’t going to be turning into Rarity, but I only had a irritating need to rip the damn thing off instead of the powerful one I thought I would.

But, I could figure out that stuff later, when I wasn’t being examined by Twilight’s parents.

When her father gave me a curious look, Twilight dropped the bomb. “Fae is a changeling Dad,” she explained evenly.

Judging by how Velvet started choking on a tiny bit of cake and I could Smell her unnerved scores as they went from 5 to over 9000 in an instant… Oh fuck, Shiny and Cady didn’t tell them after all.

Night Light was a little slower on the panic train. His eyes widened, and he started getting in front of his wife.

“A WHAT?” Velvet shrieked before looking over to me in fear, then back to her daughter. “And you just brought that thing into Canterlot? Have you gone completely insane?”

And then the dad managed to catch up with his wife.“She must be under a spell! S-Shining! Quickly! Before it captures you too! Put it in a containment field!”

As I watched any hope of ever being liked by pony Mom and Dad go up in smoke with a pretty horrified expression on my face, Shining Armor face-hoofed and groaned. “Mom, Dad…Omnifarious isn’t evil. He, or um…” he mumbled before looking me over for a minute. “She, helped save the Crystal Empire from Chrysalis just a month ago!”

Of course I also put it in danger to begin with, but it was probably best to leave that part out. And…while that was what happened up north, it wasn’t the story that made it into the papers. According to them, I had turned on Mom at the last instant and then surrendered to Celestia. There was no mention of my betrayal of Twilight. As far at the pony population at large knew, I just stabbed Chrysalis in the back…or vagina…whatever.

“It’s a changeling Shiny! Don’t you remember what happened at the wedding?” Night Light replied as it backed away from the table until they ran into the private room’s wall, then moved to place himself fully between me and Velvet.

“Oh no! It must have gotten both of them under its control, and now it’s come after us!” Velvet said while she cowered in the corner behind her husband. The sight was…probably the most disturbing thing I’d seen since coming to Equestria. And hell, I had watched babies die.

But, they were evil babies.

“WHAT?” Twilight shouted as she reared her head back.

Shining Armor just groaned and gave me an uneasy, but apologetic look.

As for me, I just stood there, looking at them with my mouth hanging open just a bit, unsure of what to do. I had seen ponies edge away from me before, get nervous and stuff like that, but…the level of fear Twilight’s parents had…it was new.

And I didn’t like it one bit.

The same kind of thing had happened to me in Ponyville, but…it was nowhere near to the extent I was seeing in front of me.

Or it was…and ponies simply had somewhere else they could run off to before we crossed paths when they saw me coming down the road. That was a pretty disturbing realization actually. If it were true I mean… Although, considering Mom and Dad’s reactions…there probably were some ponies back in my hometown that I had cared the shit out of and simply didn’t get close enough to feel their emotions like the waves I was getting off of Twilight’s parents.

That was another thing that was disturbing about changelings in general. When we…Smell emotions, for a lack of a better term, we do get an emotional response from them. Like how normal people think this or that smell nice. Fear…it may not have tasted very good, but it still smelled pretty nice. Which was really creepy to be honest.

I opened my mouth to say something to them but…hundreds of instances, both fictional and not, flooded through my mind of what tended to happen in situations like this and I just sighed. Forcing people to confront things that had them shaking in fear wasn’t a good idea.

“Well…this didn’t work out like I thought it would,” I mumbled before I got up to leave.

“Fae! Where are you going?” Twilight asked in a panic.

A sigh escaped from my lips. “Look, this isn’t going to work out. Maybe-”

“Sit. Down,” the purple pony princess ordered.

“Twilight,” I mumbled before stealing a look at her parents.

“I said, Sit! Down!” she ordered again before I felt her telekinetic force slam my butt onto the ground.

Then she turned on her parents. “And you two! Do you have any idea of how…how ashamed I am of the way you're acting?” the alicorn yelled. “Fae is one of the most loving, dependable, and accommodating ponies I have ever met! She was terrified that you would reject her on the way to Canterlot, and this…this is what you do?”

“Twilight, I know you you’re not in control of your actions right now, so what you‘re saying-” Velvet got out before her daughter silenced her with a shout.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” she yelled before starting to pace back and forth. “I thought I’d just have to listen to another ‘oh Twilight couldn’t you have waited until after having a foal or two to become an alicorn speech’ or ‘Twilight, you need to talk Shining into getting broodmare’ or-”

Shining let out a groan and mumbled to himself as he shook his head, “they talked to Twily about that?”

“-some other stupid thing, but this?” Twilight groaned and looked at me. “Look. Let’s…try this again. Fae, can you make them forget I told them you’re a changeling, and we’ll start over.”

Oh…fuck. That was not something I was ever hoping to hear Twilight say.

My stomach lurched and I looked away from the alicorn to let out a breath before I could answer her. “I’m sorry Twilight, but…I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” she said as she looked over to me. “You said you wiped the memories of the train conductor and the squadron of guards you and the other changelings replaced don’t remember what it was like when you had captured them. So-”

“Twilight, there are three things that I’m not ever going to do no matter how hard you ask, and that’s one of them,” I told her with as much resolve as I could, which wasn’t much. “I’m sorry.”

Twilight turned back on me and frowned in confusion. “What three things?”

I sighed and looked up at her with a frown. “I’m not going to mind control ponies,” I told her while telling myself a little misdirection about my cutie mark wasn’t really mind control. “Turn into another pony without good reason, or mess with another pony’s memories.”

The whole damn thing was a slippery slope that I didn’t even want to go near because, to be honest, the power to just rewire a pony’s brain in every way Code Geass could come up with made me afraid of ever touching that shit again beyond the bare bottom basics. If I did…well…I knew a mind controlled Rainbow Dash, followed by the rest of the Mane Six wouldn’t be all that far behind. Just like how shapeshifting could pretty much let me get away with murder if I wanted to, and the memory alteration stuff…I could have pretty much had the girls doing whatever I wanted at night, and not even remember it come morning.

“Without a good…Fae! You turned into Pinkie last week to sing that duet at her party!” Twilight exclaimed. “And you mind control ponies all the time not to look at your cutie mark, and did it to the crusaders to forget they ever saw you the first time you met!”

I rolled my eyes and let out an angry sigh before giving my counter argument. “I had Pinkie’s permission, making ponies not notice something is a long way from making them actually do something, and the CMC were terrified of me for no good reason!”

Twilight threw out a hoof to point at her parents. “They’re scared of you for no good reason!” she yelled back.

“No, they’re scared of me because I’m a changeling,” I told her. That was actually a pretty damn good reason to be afraid of me, and I told her so. “My entire species is designed to hunt and eat ponies. To sneak up on you in the night and feed off your emotions.” Luckily, I managed to stop myself before I started getting Twilight flashbacks…and not of the purple pony kind. “I may smile and dance with the rest of you girls in Ponyville, but Twilight, but when it comes to my species as a whole, we’re monsters.”

The emphasis I put on last word actually got Twilight to take a step back, and while she was still too stunned to insist otherwise, I looked over to her parents with a somber expression. “I’m sorry I frightened you, and how this all just got dropped on you. All things considered, you do have a right to be afraid.”

“Fae-”

“I’ll meet you at the castle,” I told her before charging my horn for a teleport and finding a nearby location that had been marked. One good thing about having a hive mind was that I didn’t need to actually hang around someplace for awhile to fix it good enough in my head to teleport to without being in sight of it.

Of course teleporting without seeing where you were going had its own problems. I popped in about a foot off the ground, and didn’t have enough time to catch myself before I landed nose first in Celestia’s throne room. And it wasn’t even on the damn carpet.

“Intruder!”

Oh God, what now? I wondered before getting up and looking above me to see four pegasi guards coming down from the ceiling, and a pair of unicorns running through the entryway doors.

But, before the morons could try and arrest me or try something stupid I was not in the mood for, Celestia’s voice called out right as the pegasi landed. “It’s alright my little ponies. She didn’t mean to cause a disruption.”

“What? I’m not enough to rate some recognition?” I asked the pegasi before spreading my wings to show off the fact that I at least looked like an alicorn. I could get Twilight’s parents not knowing about me, but I think I had come to the palace enough for ponies to notice!

I looked around the chamber and frowned, it seemed kind of empty for the middle of the day. The only ponies around where Celestia, some big unicorn with blonde hair I hadn’t seen before standing on the carpet where ponies usually addressed the princess, an older unicorn I recognized as Celestia’s advisor, and the guards.

The sound of the giant pony coming down from her throne drew everyone’s attention, and the guards backed away to let her into the square the pegasi had formed around me. “Fairy my friend, I see we have urgent matters to discuss.”

What?

She turned back to address the unicorn. “I’m afraid I’ll have to cut your audience short nephew,” Celestia told the stallion who she had probably been talking with before I arrived.

I just looked over to the douche bag went, huh…so that’s Blueblood, before Celestia used her wing on my ass to turn me around and get me moving forward.

“Come, the details of your assignment should not be discussed where they can be overheard,” the goddess told me before leaning in to whisper in my ear while relief just flooded from the alicorn. “Thank you!”

After Celestia realized I could walk under my own power, she led me out of the throne room and through the halls into her private quarters. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what they were judging by the big golden sun on the doors. As soon as we were inside, she brought out a try with a glass covering to offer me some food.

“Cake?” the princess asked while practically waving the strawberry covered thing under my face. “Don’t worry, the container is enchanted so it stays fresh. I just have to hide it in here or Kibitz gives me such a hard time. To him, lunch might as well be all bran muffins.”

Did she just use me as an excuse to skip out on a meeting and stuff her face?

I looked down at the food and gulped before looking back up at the princess. “I don’t eat normal food, remember?”

Celestia seemed a little surprised by the fact. “Hmm, that’s…interesting. The spell should have given you an intestinal tract to process food. I wonder if it has something to do with your magic, or perhaps your changeling magic interferes with it. I should ask Twilight about…come to think of it, where is Twilight? I know Blueblood can ramble on for hours, but I didn’t think it was time for tea already,” she said before her face and feelings became slightly concerned. “Is something wrong?”

“I…well…” I stopped and gulped before avoid her gaze. “I met with Twilight’s parents.”

She raised an eyebrow. "Did they not like you?” she asked before magically cutting a slice of cake for herself.

“Worse,” I groaned. “They were afraid of me…and now Twilight doesn’t like them.” Or at the least, she was mad at them about it.

Celestia’s face turned somber for a moment as she set her cake aside without taking a bite. “…oh dear,” she mumbled. Then, the alicorn looked back up to me. “And what did you do?”

At first, I thought she meant, ‘what did you do to make them angry at you’ but...I could Smell Celestia's concern didn’t have anything in the way of animosity, only pity. So, she was really asking for how I responded to the situation.

That was the part that really made me flinch. “I kind of sided with them, and then teleported here.” When that didn’t seem to be good enough for the alicorn, I let out a sigh before giving her the whole story in as much detail as I could.

When it was all over, Celestia nodded to herself. “I see. And you ran away from everypony, why exactly?”

“Look Tia,” I grumbled. “Having your girl friend, or filly friend…whatever, chose between her family and her lover might sound all romantic in fairy tales, but real life…it bucks. Not to mention the stupidest thing you can do in a relationship. Even if I came out on top, it would still be putting a wedge between Twilight and her parents. And that’s something I can’t do.”

I had no intentions of breaking up with Twilight or anything like that. I could just avoid them for the rest of my life…or their lives anyway. I was pretty sure changeling queens lasted longer than over the hill ponies.

When Big Ms Know-it-all didn’t step in with some words of wisdom, or a jab at my logic, I frowned at her. Whenever we met before, she always poked fun and annoyed the hell out of me, but having her just sit there being all silent was even more unnerving. “What?”

“Shh! I’m concentrating,” Celestia told me as she stared at…well, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t looking at me anymore. “Oh dear, it would seem that Twilight is already on her way here. It looks like I will have to intervene on your behalf with Twilight’s parents in private.”

The words threw my through train so off kilter I think it took me a whole four seconds before I could actually respond. “Wait…what?”

“Twilight is coming here-”

I held up a hoof to try and stop Sunbutt from talking. “Not that part!” I said. “What do you mean you’re going to talk to her parents?”

For once, it actually looked as if I had thrown Celestia for a loop. She just stared at me with a raised eyebrow and a half-turned away head, like what I had just said was complete gibberish, or there was something just freakily off about me. “Because you’re my friend?” she practically asked. “You’ve been living with Twilight for long enough that I thought you understood how that works here in Equestria. Is it different with humans?”

And just like that, I found the tables turned on me, and looked at Celestia like she was the crazy one.

Because she was.

Because we weren’t friends.

Not in any sense of the word.

Sure, she kind of saved my ass back in the Crystal Empire, and it kind of turns out I did the same since I’m pretty sure Chrysalis would have laid the smack down on at least two or three alicorns before they managed to take her out, but…friends was not the term I’d use to describe the relationship between me and Tia. She was more like that annoying neighbor you have that does shit just to annoy the hell out of you but isn’t really all that bad when it got down to it.

“Tia…how in the hay are we friends?”

And then I just felt like an even bigger poser when the giant pony started to become saddened. As if I still wasn’t carrying enough baggage from Twilight-classic and Night Light.

She even Smelled… Oh God damn it! “Tia…you know I can detect emotions, right?” I can’t believe I actually felt pity for Equestria’s biggest ass! And I mean that in all the ways it could sound!

The alicorn let out a melodious giggle. “Oh spoil my fun why don’t you,” she said with a smirk. “But I do consider us friends. And I help my friends.”

Before I could hit her with the snappiest comeback ever, she stood up and walked to the door, disrupting my train of thought when she stuck her head out the door while giving me a view of her enormous butt. “Guard, would you alert the palace that Twilight Sparkle is on her way here. Have her directed to my personal quarter’s foyer.”

With nothing better to do, I found myself checking out Celestia’s ass.

Not in the sexual, I want to fuck a pony way, I didn’t even do that with Twilight for crying out loud! Hell, the first time we did it was because she just jumped me and not doing her would have broken my cover…and…well…sex is sex…
…
…
…guy or girl.

So…I was checking out Celestia’s…athletic form. As the closest thing to a real horse…with wings and a horn…and that freaky mane of hers…I could actually judge just how fit the horse who did nothing but stuff cake in her mouth all hours of the day. She was…still pretty good looking actually, according to my horse racing knowledge away. No idea exactly what breed she would have fallen under though.

Thoroughbred, maybe…

“Fairy what kind of tea would you…are you staring at my plot?”

“Um…” Ah crap need a quick-witted response, fast!

“…yes,” I replied quickly, and fast…but without the wit.

Did I mention that Celestia kind of unnerved me? Because she did! I mean, giant talking pony that I could probably walk under without much trouble? Hello? How was I supposed to react to her? And yeah, her face was a giant pony face, not a horse’s with all the expressions that came with it.

Like, at the moment, she was just giving me this knowing smirk as she sat back down. “Oh what do you extra dimensional types see in me?” she mumbled with a smile that I hoped was some kind of thing to show she was just trolling me.

Oh please God let her be trolling me, I begged.

Although, there was no way in hell I was not taking the bait she offered. “So, uh…what the hay is that supposed to mean?”

And so for the next twenty minutes while we waited for Twilight to show up, Celestia regaled me with a story about how she used to actually travel to alternate words, sliding between dimensions, where it was the same place, and the same time, but everything else was different. Then she met a Bizarro Sombrero, fell in love, had to leave and actually ended up coming back to his dimension a few weeks ago to find an evil version of herself was raising hell before the girls stopped her.

The whole thing made me realize three little things. The first and second was how a line Princess Fatass from Equestria Girls actually made sense when you factored in some kind of cross-dimensional contamination. Apparently, if to dimensions were pulled too close together some weird side effects started to occur as the two worlds began to mirror each other…which made a creepy amount of sense when I really thought about it.

The third was a bit more trippy. But anyone with a background in scifi could see it. Celestia’s little tale was your usual opposite world story, with one important fact I managed to pick out…

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “Discord was a good guy on the other side of the mirror? Don’t you think that’s a little telling?”

Celestia just raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Oh come on!” I exclaimed. “Look, Tia, you’re the pony who can see good in every pony, I get it…but…Discord is going to stab you in the back! You know it, I know it, hay, even he knows its just a matter of time before the king of jackasses finds the opening he needs and does what I did to Chrysalis!” Hell, he already took care of the Elements for crying out loud!

Now the only thing keeping him from turning into a world conquering slime ball was…well…fuck, it was me and my changeling ability to pretty much make a meal out of him regardless of his emotional frequency. I could already feel the target on my back.

“I think you’re underestimating the power of friendship Fairy. It won you over, after all.”

“And I think you’re underestimating the power of scorpions!” I countered with a hoof pointed at her face.

Of course, Celestia didn’t seem to get the reference, judging by her frown. “That makes no sense.” And words her words.

So I sighed and started my long-winded explanation. “Look, it’s a story from my home world. It varies from telling to telling, but the just of it is this. One day, a frog, or some other small amphibious animal, came to a shallow river, and saw a scorpion standing on its bank. The scorpion walked up and asked the frog if he would take the bug over on its back.

“Not being suicidal, the frog said no pointed out the obvious, that the scorpion would sting him. But then the scorpion told the frog how stupid that would be, since they would both drown,” I explained. “So the frog got on the scorpion’s back, and they both crossed the river.”

Celestia stared at me for a moment, utterly confused. “So, you’re saying…actually, I don’t understand. Your story shows how two creatures can become friends to overcome obstacles.”

Then I told her the slightly edited ending. “And when the frog got to the other end of the stream, and asked the scorpion to get off, the bug stung the amphibian and left him to die. When the frog asked the scorpion why, all the scorpion did was laugh and go, it’s my nature.”

Unfortunately, my little story didn’t sit too well with Celestia. A real melancholy took her, and she just gave me this sad look. “Is it hard, not being able to have faith in others?”

Honestly, that one kind of came out of the blue, and I had nothing to counter it with. Didn’t know what she meant either. Hell, I had faith in people, and ponies too. Amalgamation monsters that had all the power in the world and used it to fuck with people? That’s what made me angry. Especially when they were just given their second, hell, third chance?

But me? Ooooooh, nooooooo! Not the human in Equestria!

I show up at the Crystal Empire, get my ass stomped by Chrysalis, and Twilight’s parents still cower in fear. Oh but Discord acts like a total dick, and ponies just love him. Where the fuck was my love and tolerance, huh?

I mean damn. I finally go native with the damn homo sex, put on a fucking dress, sing the songs, and even manage not to take over the world. And what happens? It’s a changeling, everypony run!

“Fae!”

The sound of my name brought me out of my little internal diatribe, and I looked up from my tea to see Twilight standing at the door. I could tell the little purple pony was pretty perturbed by the way she was looking at me, and the whole changing empathic thing. Good God did I need to find a way to turn that thing off while in pony form.

“Um, look Twilight, about lunch,” I managed to say while trying to come up with something to say. Honestly, the whole shock to my system that Twilight gave me kind of knocked me out of my building rage quit, and I was kind of just…somewhere between wired and quickly approaching bleh on the adrenaline scale.

The alicorn, as in the short purple one, let out a disgruntled…well, grunt. “Yeah, about that. Apparently, since you decided to leave without draining the love from my parents and Shining managed to convince them we weren’t your mind slaves, they decided to…give you another chance,” she grumbled before shaking her head. “I can’t believe them.”

Neither could I to be honest, what with how they reacted to me at first. I mean hell, Velvet and Light had to have been at the wedding. Seeing your goddess bitch-slapped, your son enslaved, your daughter beaten up and having to experience being shoved in a cocoon was enough to traumatize pretty much anybody so… Well fuck, now I’m all understanding and shit again, I realized before looking over to Twilight and her perturbed face.

Damn Twilight and her need for me to make her feel better! I was supposed to be the one put off here after all. But then she shows up all mad and I just have to start reasoning ways to calm her down with tolerable logic. So I started with a kiss to her cheek, and a foreleg around her in a sideways hug. “So we’ll meet up again, talk, and every pony will be all smiles. Happy endings all around.”

“Of that I will be glad to hear,” Celestia spoke up, getting a little jump from Twilight.

Then, after Twilight’s little freak out over the fact she had just ignored the princess, assurances by the princess that everything was alright, and that helped her get back into the swing of things after only five minutes of apologizing.

Once that was all done with, Twilight got some tea for herself and a slice of cake before giving Celestia a nice fat loaded question to shoot me with. “So, what were the two of you talking about?”

“Nothing much,” Sunbutt replied. “I was just discussing the various mirror worlds I have seen. You know Fairy, it occurs to me that I have not heard much about your home world.”

Considering our earlier conversation…I had a disturbing feeling that she might have actually planned to ask me that, I dunno…days go. Tricksey fatass aliconses, always tryin to ferrit out our precious secretes!

“Well, if you're looking for dimensional contamination or something,” I began while thinking of a way to bullshit my way out of this little problem. “We do have some. I mean, there’s cities named Man-hattan, Appa-loosa, Van-coover and Baltimare…or Balti-more I mean.” You knew you were living in pony land too long when the cliché names became your norm. “Oh, and we have stuff like musicals too.” And a cartoon show named My Little Pony that was in fact not the product of using magic to peer through the dimensional wall into the private lives of ponies…but there was no way in hell I was mentioning that!

Although, after Tia’s little explanation on how cross-dimensional travel worked…the idea that I wasn’t dead or hallucinating had pretty much won the argument. So…there was that.

Of course when she saw I had actually answered the question about the mysterious magical land of humans, Twilight got this disturbing giddy look in her eyes that made me want to gulp. You see, I had actually managed to stave off the majority of Twilight’s questions about Earth by appealing to her morals. You know, since talking about Earth reminded me of the family and life I left behind for Equestria and all that.

Twilight was curious, but not to the point of insensitive. At least...once I had explained everything to her.

Still, she still knew a few little facts here and there, as well as had a complete knowledge of the English alphabet that she had actually turned into some kind of scientific report and as a translation key that she shared with pretty much all the ponies she knew. I think only Celestia had been interested in it though, probably due to the nostalgia of her old dimensional wanderings.

“Just um…no personal questions,” I asked them both.

They agreed, and we spent the next few hours just talking about the differences in our societies while keeping clear of things that might pertain to me personally such as relationships. What Celestia seemed particularly interested in was the American system of government and its differences with theirs. You know, how they had two immortal princess who loved their subjects and Earth was stuck with a bunch of shortsighted politicians who didn’t care what happened ten years down the line, and a majority of the populace who couldn’t even think about what do at the end of the month.

“Seriously,” I told them after explaining the whole idea behind the election system that we used. “It’s the biggest mistake we ever made. Everyone gets a voice, the most corrupt ones shout the loudest, and the idiots all flock to them based on impossible promises like change and accomplishing missions.”

Twilight seemed to find some fault with my words though, judging the frown she gave me. “That’s funny. You made it sound like a paradise the first time you spoke of your homeland.”

I shook my head before deciding to correct her. “No, I said it was predictable. Hay, the entire species is. We’ve been moving to the same song and dance for over five-thousand years. The only difference is the tools we use became easier for others to acquire.”

As we continued to talk, a thought about just why the hell Celestia was looking into my human past did occur to me, and by the time we were done, I managed to re-grow my balls long enough to ask. “So um…about all these questions…are you trying to find out about my home world so you can send me there?”

Honestly, the possibility had me feeling conflicted. I mean sure, ponyland was fun and all, but Earth was home. Even if I was finding the ponies to be more…fun, I did have a life back where I came from. Hell, the curiosity of just what the hell happened to me alone was enough to make me at least want a peek.

“No,” Celestia told me, which actually left me pretty surprised. “Even if you wanted me to, I’m afraid I cannot allow it. You were born here, as a member of the changeling race. Even if you were to pass through a portal to remake yourself into your old form, you would still be of our world.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Twilight visibly relax.

I did too, if only just a little.

Then the topic of our conversation switched to what Twilight had been up to lately, and we had to go into the events of pirate island. Of course Tia got all concerned when we mentioned me kind of getting a few inches from death’s door for no apparent reason, as well as all the shit Twilight did to me afterwards to try and figure out why it happened. Don’t worry, no probes were involved in the animal testing process of why I had such a bad reaction to cliché adventure.

After that was the discussion of my upcoming work at Celestia’s school, the basic plan of which she had already approved, so it was just a little T crossing and I dotting. Although Twilight got an odd look on her face when she learned I was planning to give the class a test on day one.

And about three hours after the whole thing began, Celestia had to excuse herself and go deal with…whatever the hell god-beings did to run a country.

So, with a few hours to kill before the sun went down, Twilight showed me around the castle…despite the fact I had seen it all before and had the placed mapped out thanks to changeling #4 being one of Celestia’s advisors. I did humor her by acting surprised at some of the interesting things though.

I also met up with ‘Ulquiorra’ and got things ready for later during the tour.

The whole thing finished with a stop at Twilight old tower where she showed me her old study room and I finally got some questions answered as to how the hell she lived in a tower while being taught by Celestia if her parents were just a short walk through the city away. Apparently, Twilight did go home plenty when she was younger, but as the years wore on and late night experiments and study sessions became a thing for her, Celestia just gave her a tower to stay in when she was tired.

“So, just how many late night experiments and study sessions did you have a week when you got older?” I asked with a smirk, already guessing the answer.

Twilight actually showed her knowledge of how akweird she used to be by blushing a bit and letting her eyes drift to look at the wall behind me. “Seven.”

But her recovery was quick. “Now let me show you my bed.”

As she had already shown me her old bookshelf, her old study desk, Smarty Pants’s old study desk, her old textbooks, and pretty much old everything else that was left behind when Twilight moved to Canterlot. So I really didn’t think much of it until we got upstairs where her old bed was and my clothes were covered in a purple glow, and then they became my pieces of shredded clothing as Twilight licked her lips.

Oh…show me her bed.

Once the dirty deed was done and we were just laying in Twilight’s told bed once she had magicked the sheets clean, I got all close to her again and did the whole wing wraparound thing to hug her.

We just laid in bed for awhile, although it was getting closer to sunset, so I did feel the need to get going. Although…all the question the ponies had been asking me all day had put me in a bit of an inquisitive mood, and…with the way her parents had reacted to me, I found myself thinking about something that I had been ignoring for a good month up until now.

“Hey Twilight?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

The alicorn sifted in my pony arms until she was on her side and we could look face to face. “Of course you can Fae. You know you can talk to me about anything.”

“Well…remember all that stuff…with Chrysalis and the Crystal Empire? Um…why’d you come back for me?” I finally asked. “I mean, after you found out I was a changeling, you just…I mean…why didn’t you act the way your parents did?”

I didn’t want to, ask that is. But…I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been wondering about it. And considering I was giving Twilight my…um…mare virginity now, I was pretty much putting myself all into the relationship. So, I wanted answers to one of my more nagging questions.

“Oh…that,” she mumbled before turning quiet for a moment. I could tell she had been expecting something of the like eventually, and…truth was, I was a bit afraid of the answer.

“I was…afraid of you,” Twilight admitted as she began. “But at the time, I was more…saddened, and then confused. I mean… When I saw you for the first time, the real you I…it’s complicated.” Then she went silent for a few minutes before trying again. “At first, I felt sad. Sadder than I ever felt in my life. So sad it hurt. I gave you everything, and it was like…I thought it was all a lie! I couldn’t…do anything, it was like I just wanted to lay down and die!”

Twilight’s words hurt. It was the make you guilty kind of hurt that someone can only accomplish when they’re not trying to eviscerate you with their tongue. Trust me, it’s much worse than when someone really is trying to guilt trip you.

“Then she took me back to the crystal palace and started gloating,” the alicorn continued. “And…somewhere between all of Chrysalis’s laughter, taunts and everything else, I…I realized that even though you were a changeling, for some reason I couldn’t understand…you risked your life to try and save me. And it was like the Valley of the Sun all over again.

“Well, then Princess Celestia came and rescued me, and explained the situation and…when I learned you were still alive…that you were willing to throw away your life again to save me, I…that’s when I fell in love with you. The real you,” she finished before kissing me on the lips.

As touching as the story was, my human mind found it a bit too…fairy tale. You know the kind, where the prince shows up for five seconds and the princess sees him riding a horse. Then she falls into a coma and he fights a dragon before awakening her with ‘true love’s’ kiss? Never mind something as realistic as liking someone for that whole personality thing.

Okay, so maybe that was being a little harsh on the poor alicorn, especially since I was pretty much living in a fairy tale, but…I was forced to wonder, what if I had just done the semi-sensible thing the first time around during the Daring Do incident and turned into a changeling in front of the alicorn? Would Twilight have still wanted to be with me?

Or would she have tried to blow my head off?

Chapter 6: My Little Land of Insanity

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You ever have one of those moments where something just kind of hits you out of the blue, but looking back on things, you just want to smack yourself and scream HOW DID I NOT REALIZE THAT SOONER? Because, you know, it’s so fucking obvious when the whole picture comes into view?

It makes you feel like a total moron, doesn't it?

Now, where was I?

Oh yeah…after me and Twilight had sex and managed to not do it again while we got cleaned up, I headed over to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.

In regards to how it was structured against the human instructional system, I would have said it was one of the snazzier private schools that parents pay exuberant amounts of money for their children to attend, combined with your everyday college that has people fork over tons of dollars in return for a bit of paper that the latest economists said were kind of worthless thanks to the state of the job market when I left Earth. Meaning that ponies from all ages attended classes. Celestia paid special attention to the classes full of younger students, but tended to let the older ones do as they pleased. So, the older students a teacher had, the more freedom he was given.

Since I pretty much had the super advanced class on a subject that no one had really even tried before, Tia didn’t do much other than ask for an outline of what I planned to do. And since there would only be a single meeting of this stupid class before I guaranteed an F for anypony stupid enough to stick around more than the first day, I hadn’t even bothered to check my roll sheets to see how many students would be getting.

Boy was I stupid.

So anyway, me and Twilight headed into the university levels of Celestia’s school, and found my room. It was a big room, like the auditorium sized ones that the really big colleges have for classes that are expected to be so large a student wouldn't be able to ask a professor anything during class kind of big. It actually left me feeling a little nervous as to just how many ponies had actually signed up for the damn thing. If they assigned rooms based on class size, then I might of actually had a problem going ahead with my plan.

After getting worried about the size of the room, I looked around over to my desk with three stacks of paper that were just the same sheet copied over dozens of times. The fact that there were three fucking stacks of the damn things made me flinch since the test only needed a single page.

But, I told myself it didn’t matter. Just one hour of this crap, and I would be off to go do a victory dance that involved me shaking my ass in Celestia’s face as I gloated over my one-upmanship of the alicorn’s intelligence. I'm serious, I even had a redone version of ‘I will destroy you and steal your fiance’ worked up for her.

So, with my domain fully scouted and my victory assured, I looked at the clock hanging on the wall and turned back to Twilight. “Well Twi, it’s almost time for class. Looks like you’d better be…” I stopped unsure just what the hell to say. I mean, she wasn’t here to visit any old professors or anything. Twilight had been taught by Celestia personally so…other than wishing me good luck, I had no idea why she had followed me this far.

“Oh, you’re right!” Twilight exclaimed before she went over to a set of desks in the middle of the first row and sat down.

OH…

Then, she opened her saddlebag to pull out some quills, ink, paper, and a notebook.

…GOD…

After that, she sat at attention and put her hooves on her desk while smiling happily.

……NO!

Then, things got worse when the door opened to admit my…other first student. It was a tall white unicorn with blue hair and a gnarly kind of voice to whom Twilight let out an excited gasp when she saw. “Shiny you made it! Come on, I saved you a seat. We can be study buddies just like when I was in magic kindergarten!”

My eye twitched as Shining Armor walked down the stairs to take a seat next to Twilight.

“Shining Armor,” I mumbled.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked in an even tone that took some effort to do.

The unicorn looked at me in confusion for a moment, then back to Twilight, who shrugged before he turned his attention over to me. “Well, considering the material involved, Princess Celestia thinks that this course might make a good edition to the ROTC. So, I decided to come and evaluate it myself. Plus, it does give me an excuse to come and see my sister once a week. So…”

I continued to glare as he just shrugged at me, and I moved my attention to Twilight. “And you?”

She just gave me the blankest look imaginable. “What? I thought it would be fun.”

I managed to pick my mouth up after only five seconds. “But...it...you...you’re a princess!” I exclaimed. “You finished your studies under Celestia!” I may have blocked out the horror that was Magical Mystery Cure because it was pretty damn depressing when you knew the ponies personally, but I was pretty damn sure that Celestia said Twilight’s studies were done!

“Well, that doesn’t mean I’m done learning Fae. Plus, you um...managed to defeat Chrysalis single-hornidly in an...interesting way that nopony would have thought of so...I figured the class would have some things to teach me,” Twilight admitted after tripping over just how I managed to one-up Mom.

This time, I couldn’t resist. I actually did face hoof and let out a groan. “Twilight…we’re sleeping together. Isn’t that going to…” I paused as she just gave me an odd look. Wait a second…this might actually work out for the best.

The test I had designed was made for the single purpose of failing every single pony in the room, forcing them to drop the class early in exchange for a refund of their tuition. But as the class had already been established, the room reserved, and all that, I’d still be getting paid. Plus, it was an experimental class, so even if the number of ponies enrolled dropped to 0, it wouldn’t be canceled.

But with Twilight being around…considering her eccentricities…I couldn’t…really…fail her. She’d probably try hanging herself or something. But on the other hand…sleeping with the student always gets teachers fired on Earth, so…why not Equestria?

Then, as I completed my plan, the rest of the ponies started to file in, and as dozen after dozen began to fill the seats, I wondered just how the fuck did my brand new experimental class that had only existed a month before the start of the term actually manage to gain a full… I looked over to Princess Twilight Sparkle and Prince Shining Armor sitting front row center.

And why do I have the feeling that Celestia’s behind this too? I asked while watching unicorn after unicorn march through the door.

As I took a look around at the students, I noticed a disturbing similarity with a lot of them. A good deal of the them were stallions, taller than the average unicorn, and had a gruff expression on their faces that just screamed ‘I AM A ROYAL GUARD’.

So, I quickly made an addition to the beginning of my plan to thin the herd, since my original idea would not work with the three hundred some odd ponies that were taking their seats in front of me. Once they had all found a place to sit, I waited for another group of unicorns to come in and take up positions on each side of the room. The last group were all of black coats like me, and lacked cutie marks.

Basically, they were the changelings that worked my hive-mind telecommunications stuff in Canterlot.

After slamming the door closed with my magic, I took a look around the room before I moved behind my desk to rear up and rest my hooves on top of it. “Now,” I began in the most authoritative voice I could manage. “I don’t know what you’ve heard that this class is going to cover, and to be frank, I don’t really care.

“However, what it won’t be is some pretty…pony,” I managed to say after reminding myself Twilight was in the room so I couldn’t say princess. “Cupcake class where I hold your hooves and lead you through the academic road. If you fall behind, I’m not waiting up, if you lose your way then get lost, and if you can’t cut it, then expect to be cut from the roll. This class will not be a waste of time, and by that, I mean mine.”

As the faces in front of me turned to looks of confusion, anger, a bit of fear and an eyebrow raise coming from Twilight since she probably thought I was just doing the whole human humor thing again, I just took a few seconds to let what I said sink in.

“Now,” I went on. “I’ve been informed the offices close in about ten minutes, so if you wish to resign and get your money back, now would be the time.” After giving the ponies ten seconds to leave, and not seeing any go, I used my magic to lift half the papers from the middle stack of tests.

Since no one was going to take the easy way out, I shrugged and went on. “Okay then. We’re going to start with a test so I can actually find out how many of you are actually worth teaching, and how many of you are dead weight. Therefore, this test will count for fifty percent of your final grade. If you do not pass it, you are guaranteed to fail the course. If you do not turn one of these in, you will automatically get a zero.

“Oh,” I added as green flames consumed the remaining tests I had left on my desk, “and I only have enough tests for about a sixth of you.”

Then, I threw the remaining sheets of paper into the air above the class.

I was kind of surprised when Twilight was the first one to react by leaping into the air and snatching at the papers. “MINE!”

What followed was…beyond my wildest hopes and dreams. Even a bar full of drunken pirates hadn’t been able to match the ferocity of the brawl that the classroom became after I 'passed' the tests out.

Right after Twilight snatched her paper, the entire room erupted into pandemonium as unicorns tried to grab papers with their telekinesis, teleport them closer, or just knock out the guy who got his test before attempting to defense his prize from other unicorns that tried to take it from him in turn.

Bodies dropped like crazy as stun spells were hurled in so many colors, had I been human, I probably would have gone into epileptic shock even without the condition. Then, shields were razed and battle lines drawn as the survivors of the opening bout finished with their Mexican standoff and either tried to fortify themselves, or actually gathered together in groups to attempt a defense against the vastly superior number of ponies that didn’t have tests.

“Is that allowed?” Twilight asked from behind her force field, still sitting in the long, three seated desk that she was sharing with Shining Armor. The five ponies that had been stupid enough to try and breach her barrier sat in a small hamster cage that she had conjured on my desk for attempting to cheat off her paper.

My response was a simple shrug. I never actually had a plan for what was going on. Once Twilight turned out to be a student in the class, I threw out the Naruto Chinin entrance exam idea I was going for, and just went with something that took me all of ten seconds to come up with.

Then, as fortifications were made, the students ran into their second hurdle…

“What the hay are these symbols?”

“Am I needing glasses now?”

“Somepony help! I can’t read the teacher’s writing.”

“Oh…I know this! You wrote the test in human!” Twilight exclaimed before she happily read and answered the first question.

Well, technically I wrote the tests in English but…you know. So, faced with ten questions that only one pony in the room could read, the only logical step for the ponies without a cryptologist within their ranks was to either try and make an alliance with the ones that did, recruit a pony who could decipher languages without help, or try and take Twilight Sparkle’s test.

As several of the ponies were trying to take it before she had completed the whole thing, I kind of wondered about the intelligence of the average royal guard. But then, they were attacking an alicorn teamed up with a unicorn who could at least create a magical shield as strong as Celestia so…yeah…

Ten more ponies went down a second later and more leaped forward to scavenge the two tests they had in their possession. The pony that got both of them managed to wake up one of the smarter-looking unicorns, then bartered his way onto the largest of teams that consisted of twelve ponies.

As for what else was going on…

With the odds so stacked against them, a few ponies beat a hasty retreat out of the room to try and get a refund for being foolish enough to sign up for this class in the first place.

A group of five unicorns were holding off all comers with a magic shield. Although from the looks of things, not a single one could read the questions.

A unicorn mare with a pink mane and a stallion with a tornado cutie mark had holed up in the classroom’s top right corner with a single test between them. Although, it seemed the guy only cared about protecting his girlfriend and watching the show going on down below.

Two of the other teams had small scraggly ponies looking at their tests while the rest formed a defensive barrier, taking potshots at the other groups when they could.

Unicorns rose and fell as magic was exchanged and tests were even burned despite the fact that such an action allowed the now paperless ponies to go on the offensive completely without having to worry about their questionnaire.

A few of the ponies even got it in their heads to try attacking me, thinking I had an answer key in my desk. The ten ‘proctors’ that I had brought in to nail cheaters before my whole plan was ruined by Twilight ended that idea.

Then there was the alicorn student’s reaction to some of the questions.

“Shiny quick, how is a raven like a writing desk?” she demanded of her brother.

“I have no idea!” the stallion replied as he beat off two more attackers since Twilight was distracted.

“How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

He looked back to his sister with a frown. “I thought you were friends with the animal expert!”

Then Twilight moved onto her next question. “When encountering illusion magic, what is the special phrase anypony can use for an attempted dispel?” she said, growing softer as she continued to read. “There’s no such thing!”

“Yes there is it’s…ohmygosh! I actually know that one!” he exclaimed before twirling around to scratch out the answer.

“I can’t believe-”

“Disbelieve,” Shining armor corrected her before turning back to empower the sibling’s shield and take out a pair of unicorns that were floating overhead thanks to the magic of their team in an attempt to copy off Twilight’s paper.

I just sat there slack jawed at the fact that Shining Armor managed a D&D reference. An old D&D reference. Like…from the 70s or something.

Then, I clapped my hooves together, signaling the end to the test time. “Okay everypony horns powered down.”

And when that didn’t work, I charged my horn and let loose with a blast that caused a deafening explosion that left everyone’s ears ringing, judging by how they all covered themselves and went ‘ow’. But, it worked. “Okay, for those of you without ruptured tympanic membranes! Every pony who doesn’t have a test is to leave the room!” I ordered. “Those with tests are to stay right where you are.”

I watched as the ponies started filing out of the room, some grumbling, other limping, and a few needing to be carried in the magic of their comrades. One pony who had no test at all actually whispered to the royal guards and slipped him a sack of bits, then took his test before the pony soldier up and left, leaving the noble behind. What I was left with was a group of twenty unicorns and one alicorn in various conditions that ranged from pristine like Twilight, or barely standing on their own.

Crap, now I need something else to thin the herd, I told myself as I looked around. Let’s see…twenty ponies…

“Now, I’ll discuss the scoring system for the test,” I told them while trying to buy myself time. “With ten questions, each question is worth ten points. However, for each question you were unable to answer at all, fifteen points will be detected from your score. So you can only have two blank answers and still hope to pass.”

“W-What?” Twilight shouted before looking down at her own test. Considering I had heard her and Shiny going back and forth, I knew she had skipped a few questions with the intention of coming back to them.

I cleared my throat and continued on. “However, bonus points will be awarded to students based on the order in which they turn in their papers, with one hundred points going to the first, ninety to the second and so on, with points being deducted for the final ten ponies who turn in their-”

A bright flash of pink filled my vision, and Twilight slammed her hooves on my desk. “Shiny’s came in second!” the alicorn declared a second before the rest of the classroom charged or began teleporting over.

Of course, without their bulwark of guards gone all the nerdy unicorns were left undefended, and the royal guards that managed to keep a test with a few answers on them had dropped their guard. So they were easy pickings when I began my final culling.

“Destroy those papers!” I ordered my changelings before the surprised class was taken unawares by the black unicorns standing around my desk; having been repositioned because of an earlier attempt on a non-existent answer key.

In the end, only five unicorns and one alicorn made it through the day.

“Twilight Sparkle,” I read to myself as I looked over her half-completed test with a surprising amount of correct answers. Although how she had figured out that a woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could…I had no idea. She ended up getting a score of 150. Kind of guaranteeing at least a grade 75, even if she sat on her plot for the rest of the semester.

The next pony, was of course… “Shining Armor,” I read while giving him a score of 140. I was still a little weirded out by his presence but…knowing Twilight, she might have actually talked him into it.

Then there was the pony who teleported in behind Twilight and past my changelings to turn her paper in third. She was a tall white unicorn with a pink mane named… “SUNNY SKIES?!” I asked the Fleur Di Lis wannabe as I looked up at her. “Really?”

The unicorn blinked in confusion as I looked up at her. “What?”

Okay, I wasn’t the biggest Celestia fan in the bronydom, but…I knew the common pseudonym we all had her go by whenever she was running around incognito with some kind of excuse of how she hid her height, cutie mark, and godlike power to do…whatever the hell she wanted. To be honest, the whole idea just made me roll my eyes.

I mean come on, Celestia going out and about in disguise to what? Have fun? Make friends? That’s not what god-queens did in their spare time!

On top of which, a magical spell that just lets Tia change species and hide herself among her little ponies is the most obnoxious plot device ever conceived in the chronicles of fan fiction!

Then it turns out the damn thing is real, and she uses it to turn me into a fake alicorn so…yeah.

And hell, we were apparently right about Derpy. I checked. In fact, I hugged her every day I slept over at Twilight’s place and offered the single mom free work replacement changelings because the poor mare has got more than one foal and all that jazz. She wouldn't take it though, had too much integrity.

So, there was no way in hell I was just letting this one go. I mean hell, I knew Sunbutt was only there to fuck with me, same as with the fake sad face from earlier and those damn dresses. But, I had no intention of acting like a loon in front of Twilight by just calling her out on it.

Plus, there was the tiny, impossible chance that Sunny was a real pony, and not Celestia, and I didn’t want to look like a total idiot. I learned from Canterlot Wedding, thank you very much!

I needed to catch her in the act or something and…well, that was about it really.

So, I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t just losing it and seeing stuff that wasn’t really there based on a fandom of show that made so much shit up in one season, only to have it contradicted by the time season two rolled along.

Only…I wasn’t in a television show.

I was in an alternate dimension that the television show was based on!

…according to the previously fictional character I just had tea with…

…with a pretty contrived explanation of how the universe worked…now that I thought about it…

I mean, magical mirrors and crap? Reflections leading to other words? Wasn’t that just a rehash of the Equestria Girls and my ‘magical viewing mirror’ explanation that just expanded on the mythos that was already there?

Hell, when I really thought about it…so much I knew just didn’t add up. Twilight deciding to save me and crap from Chrysalis because…love told her to or something? How Saturday morning cartoon was that?

“Fae? Are you alright?” the talking cartoon pony asked as she looked at me with overly concerned eyes.

“I…I gotta go! Here!” I told the other three unicorns before throwing them their papers with the proper scores.

Blueblood let out a startled cry, ducking to avoid a…paper cut or something.

Trixie…

I blinked as I found myself looking at the confused mare while she stared at Twilight’s wings. Had she always been in the room? I couldn’t remember seeing her during the brawl, and afterwards when all the ponies held up a sheet to show they passed the preliminary round.

I mean, Blueblood had actually showed up and just bribed his way into the class for…some reason I couldn’t fathom, but…Trixie…

“Ugh Trixie! Yes I’m an alicorn! Deal with it!” Twilight said as the third pony I didn’t even bother to look at got his graded paper and I teleported away.

I slammed onto the ground of the throne room again and looked around at…the empty room. There were no guards, no petitions…no princess. The oddity had me confused.

Wasn’t Luna supposed to rule the night? Why didn’t she had come kind of court in the early hours after sundown? It wasn’t that late! She couldn’t have been off peeking at dreams so soon!

The oddity of the single throne also got to me. If Celestia and Luna shared power, then where the hell was she? Didn’t the night princess at least get to run the damn night? Or was she just the ultimate version of big brother? And how did that work if ponies worked all night and slept in the day?

I took a step forward, and looked at the ground, my hooves. Then, I reached up and slapped myself, hard.

It hurt.

I grabbed onto the pain. You couldn’t feel pain in a dream.

…unless you could. To be honest, I wasn’t quite clear on the subject at the moment.

Then I remembered why I had teleported away in the first place: Celestia! If Celestia was in the palace somewhere, that meant that Sunny Skies was in fact her own pony with…a… I frowned in thought.

Her cutie mark! I had forgotten to check out her fucking cutie mark! If I didn’t get a cutie mark when I changed into a pony, I doubted that Celestia could alter hers, even with the transformation.

And if they were the same…or different…it meant…what?

What the hell did it matter?

Because…Tia was fucking with me for some reason?

I sat back on my haunches, confused.

I tried to retrace my steps in logic of how I got here. I saw Sunny Skies, then Trixie…despite Trixie not being there before…or had she been and I simply hadn’t seen her? But if she had been in the classroom, how could I not have seen her?

Was her name on the original class roster?

Which was a moot point since I never bothered to read it.

No, Trixie, she made a ton of noise and a big entrances. If she had been there, I would have seen her! She would have gone ‘OH MY GOD TWILICORN!’ right at the beginning of the class. And…done…something else. Hell, she should have led the charge against Twilight in the few opening minutes!

So there was maybe-Celestia, and Trixie being there. Two ponies who shouldn’t have been there. Celestia was a fucking goddess, and Trixie…hell, nothing about Trixie said she would go to unicorn school! It was like she was a stupid bit character just thrown in to take up space!

Then…I teleported to the castle to try and find Celestia and…

Started having a mental breakdown, I told myself.

Or was I simply realizing the truth?

Was it that I simply had a mental breakdown months ago and was just now coming to realize it?

I mean hell, when I thought about it, really thought about it, there was tons of shit that just didn’t make sense. The singing, the coincidental crap that just piled and pile up, the…references, I mean hell, Shining Armor knew about D&D, what kind of fucking pony knows about D&D?

And there was the fact that I was having sex AS A GIRL! And liking it! Really liking it! Who does that?

I gulped at the last thought. My head swam and I felt like throwing up.

“There you are!”

I spun around, and looked over to the three-room’s open doors to see Celestia just standing there. Full spectrum mane, giant pony Celestia. I could only stare at her while my throat continued to produce too much saliva.

She walked over to me and sat down, and I could feel the concern coming off the giant alicorn as she looked me over. “Are you alright?”

I just looked up at the talking horse, with her freaky hair and impossible expression, too bright fur and frowned at the impossibility of it all. “Are you real?”

Chapter 7: My Little Introspective Melancholy

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You ever had one of those problems that was so insurmountable and glaring you in the face you knew you would never solve it and it would drive you crazy? Well, that’s what Equestria was to me. I had been doing my best to ignore it, not focusing on this like how rain clouds were made, why the night sky was the way it was, all the weird little plot holes that popped up around town, but after that one night…I just gave up.

Not gave up in the sense that I stopped trying to figure it out. That wasn’t really in my nature. I gave up on ignoring the things that were unexplainable. Because…I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was a human, and although I wasn’t a scientist, it still meant I needed to know how things worked. It was like that annoying thing in the back of your head that just kept picking, and picking and picking until you just couldn’t ignore it anymore and started letting it demand an explanation!

But so many things about Equestria defied explanation. Even with the ’it’s magic you idiot’ kind of explanation, because…I knew how magic worked! It was all emotion and belief and shit woven together with imagery on top of a little math for the more complex stuff like Love + Friendship = TOTAL DOMINATION!

And if I knew how magic worked, but not physics…then…there was no more fighting it. Equestria wasn’t really, real…and that went double for whom I was talking to too...was well...whatever.

I buzzed my wings in annoyance at the question posed by the pony and rolled my eyes before answering. It was one of those ‘why’ questions again. It seemed like she asked one of them every ten minutes since coming to see me.

“Okay, so I’m what you might call wishy-washy. One day I’m extremely focused, and the next, I’m looking at everything at once. That’s why I noticed it, you see. I had gotten everything I needed done, taken care of Twilight’s growing insistence we have sex by her eating me out, and dealt with the whole Defense Against the Dark Arts thing…for the most part…downsized the class anyway...

“You know what? No…it was Trixie. It was Trixie’s fault! Hell, I don’t even like Trixie! As a character, she is a pretty one dimensional annoying villain than didn’t seem to learn from her…well, okay I wouldn’t just go out and say she made a mistake or anything, but Equestrian karma did come back to bite her in the plot when she humiliated three of Twilight’s friends in the form of a giant space bear, so there!

“And now she just shows up out of the blue…like some weird last minute addition made by the blip in the universe because…well…crap I dunno. I hate Trixie. Why should I try and figure her out?” I finished with a chuckle as I laid in the bed I hadn’t moved from for the past…two? Three days? I wasn’t really sure.

No, it was three days, I was sure. I was sure because I had been awake for all of them. I didn’t really need sleep when it came down to it, not if I didn't exert myself, and that was kind of backing up the whole coma fantasy thing.

And…well…maybe it wasn’t just the whole Trixie thing. It was the dozens upon dozens of things that I had just tried to ignore since coming to Equestria…or going into a coma. Things there were no real explanation for, like how the sun's position in the sky was arbitrary, no matter where you were on the ground. Things that didn’t make sense, like how ponies could just forgive everything so damn easily without it coming back to bite them in the ass. All the coincidences… Winter Wrap-up. Yeah, Winter Wrap-up deserved its own slot.

I just got to the point where I couldn’t ignore it all, no matter how much I told myself I could.

As for just what I was doing, I was talking with my hallucination. I know, I shouldn’t have, but Celestia could get pretty creative when she wanted to be. When she started going on about sex, and how her third coltfriend that she had just picked up for the fact that his large penis actually allowed her to feel the penetration instead of just faking it like she did with her last beau in an attempt to forget about her first real boyfriend, followed by regaling me with an instance when he actually shoved his whole muzzle into that maw she called a pussy while showing me the damn thing by shoving it in my face…I kind of had a hard time ignoring her.

When it comes down to it, that horse has no shame.

And before that, she tried hitting me, a lot. Apparently Tia was under the impression that you couldn’t feel pain in a dream, then Luna kind of told her you could if the dream was lucid. Which was the kind of dream I was having. So…there went that theory.

After that, we talked about stuff. The first thing I did was go on about how this was all a hallucination based off the MLP series of cartoons, which I finally talked to her about by the way. She seemed more put off over the fact I had figured out I was crazy more than the fact she was a fictional character. Of course she already had the convenient excuse as to why MLP: FiM existed, but that was simply a convenient way to make things seem believable to explain to me how the universe was the way it was.

Then, when we were done with that, we went onto less important stuff, like Trixie, and why some nothing character would have even been in the school in the first place.

After just going back and forth for so long, I was too damn tired of arguing with her. We had gotten into existential debates, lectures on the nature of Equestrian reality, why the hell the history of Equestria was so vague about so much stuff, and a dozen other things. By the way, Celestia edits the history books.

Or she didn’t since none of Equestria was real, but...after days and days of talking it took an effort not to just be a good little nutcase and agree with her on shit.

Maybe that was her plan, to just make me give up and accept what was going on as real. Fill in the plot holes and all that with sensible stuff. Unless it was all just in my head…

Celestia sat on the floor across from my bed and sighed as she shook her head. “She was there because she received a letter of invitation from Discord once he found out Twilight was taking your class. Then he simply used his magic to hide her during the fighting and gave her a completed test so it didn’t matter how late she was to turn in her paper.”

I poked at the hole in her logic. “That doesn’t make any sense!” Which it didn’t! Discord wouldn’t mess with other ponies using a proxy. Especially since Trixie was a one time only character that was only brought back due to popularity.

“That’s only because you didn’t see the scene the two of them caused!” Celestia insisted.

“And you did?”

She groaned. “We went over that yesterday. Yes! I used the transformation spell to turn into a unicorn, then used it as a cover to enter your class!”

“Why?”

“Is it so hard to believe that I finally wanted some time to myself now that Luna has returned to take the burden of the night?” she demanded. “That I wanted to spend time with my student, my friend not as the mentor she still sees me as, but as an equal and companion?”

When I didn’t reply to Celestia’s question, she let out a groan and started over again, like she did every time I stopped responding to either start an old cycle all over again, or start a new one. “So, your original story about magic in your world as a lie. Considering the truth…I can understand why you felt the need to hide what you thought was real, and even why you believe what you believe now. But tell me, why now?”

I looked away from the alicorn and over to the wall of the bedroom Celestia had stuck me in, doing my best not to look out at the windows into the gardens below. My insect wings buzzed with irritation over this whole ordeal.

“If you do not answer me, I’ll have to go back to using the solution Luna doesn’t like and start breaking things,” she warned.

The thought of pain made me reply. “It’s a lot of things really. The plot holes…Twilight’s sexuality, the references…Equestria Girls…”

“What?” Celestia asked.

I frowned as I tried to remember what I had just said. “Oh, it’s what they called the movie. Um, it was this stupid story about how Twilight went to a world of humans and fought with Sunset over her crown. It wasn’t supposed to be real.” Or canon, I should have said canon.

“That is something you have said about everything in this world,” Celestia countered. “But why now?”

I sighed again. It seemed the damn alicorn liked asking that question, she did it every five minutes just about. The funny thing was, I had a different answer just about every time. I wasn’t messing with her, it was just…the more she asked, the more I thought about it. “Have you ever had…every...one tell you something so much, you believed it? Even when you knew it was wrong?” I asked Celestia. I wasn’t going to say pony. Screw ponyisms!

“And here I thought you knew what advisors were.”

The comment actually did make me smirk. I was depressed and disillusioned with a mental condition, not dead. “That’s what the hive mind is with changelings,” I explained. “It’s not mind control, per say. It’s just a lot of voices telling you something. When you have that sort of thing going on while sleeping, or what happens to changelings that pass for sleep. You get all the changelings, telling you things. At least, unless you’re the changeling in charge. Then it becomes changelings asking you about things…and informing you about things. And what is absolute becomes…immaterial.”

Celestia cocked her head. “Is that your excuse now? It seems a pretty…what was it you called it? In universal reasoning?”

I’ll admit, Tia had a point there. But as we had been at this for some time, she was wearing me down.

“Well…I suppose the changelings could represent my subconscious desire to remain in my hallucination,” I rezoned. “They give all the information on how to fly and use magic, the purpose not to question things, to do something, consequences if I don’t. All that stuff.”

“Oh? And what would I represent then, if this is supposed to all be a dream?” Celestia asked.

That one I had to think about for a little while. “If I had to guess, you’d be my…I don’t know really. I mean, the Celestia character in the show is a complete jerk, and a moron.”

I watched as the pony princess’s face turned sour. “Yes, you mentioned something along those lines after the Chrysalis debacle,” she said with a sigh. Then, she raised an eyebrow at me. “Am I really seen in that bad a light?”

“Well…you didn’t tell Twilight about Nightmare Moon, sent six civilians to fight a dragon, turned an entire empire’s fate into nothing more than a test for Twilight and told her she had to do it alone, gave Twilight a dangerous spell that nearly ruined the lives of her friends,” I listed before seeing the alicorn’s face get extremely nervous on that last one. It kind of tugged at my heartstrings, so I stopped it there “Look Tia, I’m not saying you’re a bad…pony…and now I’m thinking about you like you’re real again…great.” It was hard not to keep up the defenses when said pony actually looked hurt.

Okay, so maybe I did like Celestia as a person, even if she sucked as a god empress champion of her people. Humans had done way worse over time.

“Because I am real, as is this,” she told me before standing up to walk right up in my face. “And…with everything you told me, I can see how one such as yourself would…unhinge after some time with the way you question everything in a place that is so different. I mean…the little of what you describe of your celestial movements is so different from what exists within this realm.” Because Equestria’s heavenly bodies made no sense according to every known law of physics that I understood.

I groaned and decided to try and get rid of her. “Don’t you have a kingdom to run or something?” That had gotten her off my case the first day I was in here.

“Twilight is taking care of it,” Celestia assured me with a wave of her hoof to dismiss the question. When I gave her an even look, she just rolled her eyes. “Oh please, the mare has been needing something to do since she became an alicorn, and the majority of Equestria runs itself these days as long as I am there to stamp the documents. All she’s doing is running through checklists and coordinating activities between communities. The girl was practically giddy to get to work since I won’t let her see you.”

Apparently, Celestia didn’t think Twilight could take the revelation that she was a cartoon character. Although, I thought that it was good that Celestia was keeping her busy. Even if it was just a convenient plot device to explain how the big alicorn was the one talking to me instead of the smaller one.

I was the one to roll my eyes this time around. “And you just got off your throne to talk to me for days on end?” I asked in the best snaky kind of voice I could. “Yeah. That makes sense. The important pony that is so tied up with a royal paperwork that she can apparently drop on a whim now spends her days talking to little old me.”

And it was days. Celestia only left the room to sleep, and not that much either. Alicorns could apparently get by just fine on about four hours of sleep if they weren’t too active.

Then there were the things we talked about, other than science and junk. She tried to goad me into at least going outside to…I don’t know, look around? But I wasn’t about to be bribed into going back with whatever she had planned.

“You actually want to know why I’m doing this?” Celestia asked in a breathless tone that I could identify as her ‘you wound me’ voice.

I swear, if she says its because we’re friends… Well, I would probably hit her or something. Even when she was smacking me around, I couldn’t bring myself to hit my most hated pony.

Okay, Celestia wasn’t that bad, but still…

“Because the last time I saw one dear to me sink into a depression, I just went gallivanting around in my own little world and ignored it,” she mumbled sadly before her gaze turned iron. “And I have no intentions of letting such a thing happen again!”

So she was a guilty Celestia.

Well, at least that little exchange had gotten her to shut up and go all brooding somber…which was actually making me feel guilty. Stupid imaginary Celestia.

Maybe that was her purpose, to tug on my heartstrings and guilt me into accepting reality…or the fantasy. But…I couldn’t. I mean, a world of talking pastel colored ponies with magic? The ludicrousness of it made me wonder how the hell I even thought it was all real in the first place.

On the other hand, crazy people didn’t question their craziness. I didn’t at first either. But I’m what you call introspective so…there’s that.

Or was that just me being conceded?

I mean, beating one's own delusions by thinking about them too hard was kind of…weird. Unless of course I had been waking up every few days and talking to a psychiatrist or something…

But…that didn’t make sense, so the theory was scrapped.

Then I noticed something odd: it had been about two or three minutes since Tia had said anything. When she was in the room and I wasn’t talking, it was impossible to shut her up.

Since I was back in bug form, I didn’t have some passive scanner to tell me her feelings, but…I didn’t really need one to see she was all gloomy. But hell, I didn’t know what to do that would cheer up a two-thousand year old goddess that represented some part of my imagination, psyche, or…something.

So we just sat in silence for some time, until Celestia moved her head to look out the window. “What was…oh dear,” she mumbled.

I didn’t rise to bait as Celestia moved away from my bed and looked out the window and sighed. “I told Twilight to keep them away from-my she is fast. Better stop her from hurting herself though,” the alicorn mumbled before her horn lit up and…she blanched before a pair of pegasi crashed through the window and slammed into their princess.

That actually caused me to pick my head up. What the hell?

My answer came in the form of a prismatic blur that flew in through the broken window. “HA! That what you guys for trying toooooooo…um…Princess Celestia?” Rainbow Dash managed to squeak out when the giant alicorn rolled the two moaning guards off of her and picked herself off from the ground. “W-W-what are you doing here?”

“I think a better question would be, what are you doing here, my little pony?” she asked in a slightly sterner tone.

I frowned at her too. “And how?” The oddity of it kind of got to me. I wasn’t in a special room or anything…unless she had searched every room looking for me. Although then the question changed to why did she come?

The pegasus gulped as the alicorn towered over her. “Well…ummm ya see…” Rainbow managed before going into a bit of a panic. “I haven’t see Fae in days, and then you and Twilight sent that letter saying she was feeling kind of bad again, so me and Pinkie came to visit, but then Twilight was being all…princessy, and telling us we couldn’t, but she wouldn’t even tell us what was wrong, so I decided to sneak in and Pinkie figured out where Fae was staying, because she had these guards on her door, and so I decided to come in through the window, but then these other guards on the outside of the castle started chasing me when I got near her window so I had to lose them, but I couldn’t, so I decided to use them to clear the glass with this totally awesome move that uh…maaaaaaay have caused them to crash into you, and um…please don’t throw me in the dungeon!”

I couldn’t help it. Seeing Rainbow down on her knees begging a half confused and amused Princess Celestia got a laugh out of me. Which in turn drew Celestia’s attention for a moment before she looked back at Rainbow Dash in time for the pegasus to begin sweating bullets.

As for me, I glared at Celestia. “You put guards on my door?”

“Oh, so now we’re actually caring about the state of the world around us, are we?” she asked with a smirk. “And no, they are my escort, not your guards. And speaking of which…” She looked back at the two pegasi that were just then beginning to pick themselves up. “Are you gentlecolts alright?”

The white pegasus on the right cleared his throat. “Y-Yes princess. Apologies. We will take the intruder to the dungeons.”

I narrowed my eyes on sheer instinct when Rainbow Dash flinched. “Try it and you’ll be calling yourselves earth ponies by the time I’m done with you.”

What can I say? I was pretty protective of Rainbow Dash, hallucination or not. Plus, even if all this was a dream, I would have had to watch them drag her off to a jail cell. I didn’t really want to see that.

“Was that a threat, monster?” the other guard said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rainbow’s Dash’s gaze dart back and forth between the two pegasi and me, her expression becoming more worried by the second. “Uh…what’s going on?”

“Yeah that’s another thing I don’t really get,” I growled at the guards, Celestia, and the world in general. “These girls have saved your sorry lives time and time again, but what do they have to show for it? A stupid stained glass window? A medal? Applejack’s farm still struggles, Fluttershy can barely afford food for her pets, and Rainbow Dash…hay, there was a whole episode about the lack of recognition she got from her own burning hometown that she helped save from Discord! But a bunch of stupid, useless royal guards who should know them by sight and bow to their authority do everything from pointing spears at Twilight when she's running towards her brother, to stopping Fluttershy from going into a tea party that the rest of the town is already at!”

It was one of the things that bugged me about the whole idea of world saving heroes who got everything from medals to parades, but still got snubbed by everyone ten minutes later. I mean, there is a thing as too much hero worship, but absolutely zero recognition was just insane! Even Twilight I Am A FUCKING ALICORN PRINCESS Sparkle didn’t get any recognition.

Where the hell was the sense in that?

Okay, Twilight had some kind of perception filter spell thing going on that drew attention away from her wings, but Rainbow and the others sure as hell didn’t!

“Watch your tone with the princess you-”

“That is quite enough of that!” Celestia cut in getting all the ponies in the room to flinch. Then, she turned to face her guardsmen. “Go to the Captain’s office and tell him you have been derelict in your duties, corporal.”

The following silence hung thick in the air. “Um…P-Princess?” the guard Celestia addressed replied hesitantly. “What about the prisoner?”

Princess Celestia gave the stallion an even look. “Are you speaking of my friend on the bed, or the pony who helped save my sister’s soul?”

“Um…” the guard managed as he looked up and backed away. “But…princess, she…”

When that was all the guard could say, Celestia nodded. “Then you are speaking of Rainbow Dash,” she began. “Well in that case, she is to be commended to be willing to go to such great lengths for her friend. You on the other hand, were ordered to allow me time with the changeling king without distractions. Therefore, you have failed in your duty as a royal guard. Now go, and tell your superior officer such. Or I shall be very displeased.”

As the two guards beat a hasty retreat, Rainbow Dash shook herself out of her stupor. “That. Was. Awesome Princess!” the pegasus cheered before leaping up in the air. “and uh…no offense but…your guards are kind of jerks.”

Celestia cleared her throat and looked away from the pegasus’s gaze. “Yes well…I will admit, there is a bit of animosity when it comes to your and your friends. How many times has it been that the six of you have saved Equestria when they have proven…inadequate? Such a record does tend to breed jealousy.”

“Yeah…I guess I can get that,” Rainbow replied before giving the alicorn a nervous laugh. “So um…are we cool?”

After a minute of letting Rainbow Dash sweat it out, Celestia nodded her head. “No harm was done. Although, be more careful of your actions in the future Rainbow Dash.”

The cyan pegasus wiped enough sweat off her brow to make a small puddle, she giggled nervously and smiled. “Sure! No problem,” she agreed before turning to me. “So what the hay is wrong with you? Twilight made it sound like you were really sick again or something!”

“Homesick perhaps,” Celestia commented, drawing Rainbow’s attention before she looked back to me.

“So just go back to your castle…or are you talking about changeling hive thing you told us about?” she asked. “Because…that would be kinda creepy if you want to go back there.” She punctuated the point with a shiver.

Celestia shook her head. “You misunderstand. He…wait,” she mumbled before pausing to turn to look at me. “What if I did take you home?”

I looked up at the alicorn to frown at her face. “What?”

“Well, I’ve tried inducing pain, logic, various explanations on the history of Equestria and the workings of this realm, and you don’t really sleep, making Luna’s options limited, so…what if I simply take you home to prove my point to you?”

It was then that Rainbow Dash decided to poke her head into the conversation. “Um…what are you guys talking about?”

Celestia nodded in the pegasus’s direction. “Inform Twilight Sparkle that we will be gone for approximately…two, possibly three days. My weekly itinerary is full anyway, so Twilight should be happy with it. Now, let’s get going Fairy.” I didn’t know what was worse, that she was calling me by the gay nickname again, or the fact that she was almost giddy.

Practically swimming in confusion, I barely noticed when the alicorn picked me up with her magic before I was floating in the air. “Wha-hey! Horn off Tia!”

“Oh no! I’ve spent the past several days being gentle,” she told me before we left the room and a confused Rainbow Dash behind. “Now we’re going to take the horseshoes off.”

I could have fought her off, should have, but…what was the point? I was tired as hell, but not really all that hungry. And to be honest, I did want something to happen, anything really. I had spent the past three days just laying around a room doing absolutely nothing but talking to a big unicorn with wings about the nature of reality.

It got old. Not really fast since Tia did manage to help me figure out that Equestria didn’t have this thing called evaporation, which kind of raised more questions than it answered, but after reasoning out a few discoveries…like I said, it got old.

“And just how the hell are we going to get to human land anyway?” I asked in the most sarcastic tone I could manage while being carried by a sun goddess that probably represented my mind’s…introspectiveness.

I’m pretty sure that’s what she was. She asked enough questions to be.

Answered them too.

On the way out, Celestia met with a few ponies in passing and told them to expect her back in couple of days, Luna would have to take care of the sun until then. Twilight could help her if it came down to it. The changelings were to stay put, and that kind of stuff…you know…she covered all the bases. Even lowered the sun before we moved into the home stretch of things

“Did you already forget about the mirror I told you of?” Celestia asked me as we made our way through the palace, into a hallway with far too many colorful windows, and to a familiar-looking door. “The one I used to explore multiple dimensions during the early days of my reign and…increase my kingdom’s knowledge.”

And by that she meant steal ideas for stuff. Apparently Starswirl wasn’t all that, as he jacked several ideas from extra-dimensional unicorns, as well as coffee beans and peppers.

“Yeah okay, magic mirror prototype one-point-oh. What’s your point?” I asked as she hung me upside down.

Celestia’s horn glowed as she continued. “While a spell is required to find specific dimensions more than once, Starswirl and I did discover that by thinking of what we needed to do, or imagining places we wanted to go…we were able find a world that suited our needs…for the most part.

“So just picture your home, and we can start from there,” Celestia told me as she stuck her horn in the door and lit it up. “I warn you though, it may take a few tries to get where you wish to go.”

I just frowned as this big golden doors opened to reveal the magical plot device…and something occurred to me. If this was all a dream like one of those cheesy movies and everything represented…something of my subconscious mind. Then…was the mirror like the desire to leave or something?

Just step into it and wake up?

Well why not? I asked myself. I decided to make this whole damn thing look like a bunch of talking ponies so…I’ve had stupider ideas. If I awoke in a hospital or something, then I swore to myself the next coma fantasy I was going to have would involve sexy women with huge tits that put out like no tomorrow.

“Okay Tia, you can let me go now,” I grumbled, making her set me down.

After a few seconds of looking at the reflection of my changeling face, I sighed and admitted to myself that…a tiny part of me didn’t want to go…

Well, it may have been a lot bigger part than that but…who gives a damn, right?

So, after Tia put what she called a ‘medium’ amount of magic into the mirror, I walked up to the edge of the magical stargate and gulped.

Then I looked back at the alicorn. “Hey, maybe we should-”

“Oh just get moving!” Celestia grumbled as she shoved me through.

The next thing I knew, I was seeing so many colors I felt like I was on acid. And after that, I melted, and found out what it was like to be flushed down a toilet.

The first thing I noticed was…waking up hurt…a lot.

My head rang.

My back hurt.

My wings ached…

…wait, I thought before buzzing my insect wings and slowly picking myself up to stand on my hooves. Oh…so much for that.

Stupid dream imagery being what it really was instead of the symbolic thing for something else. But hey, that was par for the course I guess. You know, with Equestria screwing me over again and all?

I noticed it was nighttime, after sunset…which kind of lined up with Equestria since Tia did her whole pharaoh thing before we left and set the sun.

The sound of hooves on asphalt got my attention, and I looked up to see Celestia stumbling around. “Well that was a bit…rougher than I am used to,” she told me before she hardly moved onto something that didn’t carry the clopping sounds as well.

I was still fighting the pounding headache when I turned around to look at the pony. “What the hay Tia?” I groaned. “I thought we were supposed to go all…human.”

“No, the mirror that transported us here was our first attempt at dimensional travel and lacked the later spells that allowed for the metamorphosis into the nearest creature and translation spells.”

Trying to fight off the pounding in my head, I glared at the alicorn. “Translation spells?”

Celestia just stood there and raised an eyebrow. “You speak a different language than us. Did you think I haven’t run into others?” she asked. “Pony feathers, most of the words of your home language can’t even be pronounced correctly by equine tongues.”

I groaned at the sense she was making. “Fine, whatever.”

“By the way, can you read the language on that sign?”

Another frown was given to the alicorn for good measure and looked up at the…well…it was one of those big cheery signs that you’d expect to see on the edge of a town, advertising said town’s atmosphere with some kind of slogan and a bunch of happy pictures.

It did that, and two other things.

My knowledge of the human brain, while kind of limited despite an introductory knowledge of psychology, was extensive enough to know that I had kinda forgotten about what with my mental breakdown over the impossibility of Equestria and all that.

See, people can’t read when they’re asleep.

But I could read the sign, with it’s big English letters instead of the little squiggly marks that ponies used. And if I could read the sign, the normal human sign…then I wasn’t asleep.

I really blame Celestia for it taking so long to realize that little fact since she never left me alone except to sleep. Or talked to Luna. Luna probably knew you couldn’t read in a dream.

Stupid alicorn. I probably would have gotten bored enough to read a book if not for her. So yeah…it’s her fault. All hers…and maybe a little bit of Twilight’s if I picked up some of her bad habits like going insane over stuff because my alicorn body is sort of based off hers…maybe. I’m still not one-hundred-percent sure how the spell works, I just know how to work it. But I seem to have her love of female sex so…there’s that.

Okay, so one simple test and I realize rather quickly I’m not in some lucid coma dream fantasy thing. Good for me. And despite the horror of what was written on the sign, I was still thankful of its presence and the English language.

The second thing the sign did was make me want to go home.

Not to Earth though. I had no intention whatsoever of going back there if my option of going home was to do it as a horse…bug…fairy…thing. Hell, I couldn’t even make human sounds with my vocal cords.

Besides, Equestria was better, despite the fact there was no television, internet, and pornography was kind of redundant when everyone walked around naked.

Then, I looked back at the alicorn and frowned. “Fine, Equestria’s real. I admit it, you're right, I’m wrong. Let’s go home…now.”

Celestia just stared at me for a minute. “Very well…I shall prepare the spell then,” she said, more than a bit unnerved.

“One question though,” she said. “Why are you so…unnerved?”

I opened my mouth to tell her the horrible truth of our location when the roar of an engine made me turn my head to see two bright lights crest the hill we were standing on to blind me before a vehicle's horn assaulted my ears.

Then the bus hit me.

But, that's what probably happens when you question the nature of reality...or stand in the middle of a highway after dark.

As I was thrown around, or under the bus, or…something, I didn’t really know. Getting hit by a big metal transport isn’t good for my senses, all I could do is wonder if Disney was going to sue the town of Canterlot for calling itself the friendliest place in Kentucky.

Stupid Equestria Girls.

Chapter 8: My Little Odyssey’s Beginning

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Yeah, got ran over by a bus. A fucking bus. Just goes to show you kids, when you’re outer layer of skeleton is all black and stuff, don’t stand in the middle of the road reading signs. Cause it’ll get you run over...by a bus.

Okay, so…after getting my ass blown halfway across a continent and beaten on by a psycho bitch bug queen, getting hit by a bus wasn’t that big a deal. It was more like I got spun around real fast for a real long time, then tried to stand up. Especially considering that after I was crushed by its first set of tires, my horn got caught on the undercarriage and dragged me about…well, I dunno…it wasn’t very long before the dragging stopped and my entire world was flung around. Then I was dropped from the bus and onto the ground from a height that was way too high for it to make any sense…but, it didn’t actually hurt all that much. Made me want to throw up, but didn’t hurt.

When the world decided to stop moving, I looked around to see I wasn’t laying on the road and was actually behind a swath of trees. You know, the kind they have to keep up next to roads to make everything look pretty when in reality a few feet behind the first two rows of trunks there’s usually nothing but grass…and that’s in the lucky areas. That’s where I saw I landed after a quick look around. I could even hear the nearby road as another car passed by.

Then I looked up to see the bus that had hit me on its side…and floating in the air with a nice healthy golden glow around it. It went pretty well with the yellowish color of the paint, and the words Canterlot High School in big black letters on the side that was facing towards me.

It’s presence left me a little confused. It was the tail end of Summer back in Equestria. So why in the hell were things different here? I mean, school busses weren’t supposed to be running yet, right?

Oh, and there were terrified girls inside the bus dressed in some kind of blue uniforms too. Their fear probably had something to do with the fact that an alien sun goddess had their bus in her telekinetic clutches for running me over. Of course, it didn’t help that they couldn’t stop from looking out the windows since it was now pretty much impossible not to thanks to gravity pulling them all towards the glass; and I’m pretty sure the big unicorn with wings was also a major draw.

I just looked up at the bus with its letters and sighed. Really? Was there really enough of Equestria’s coincidental laws in this universe as well that I just had to land in this particular town and get hit by a bus from that particular school despite the odd hour of the night?

Which was… Okay, well, I didn’t know the exact time, but I was pretty sure school buses shouldn’t have been driving around at night.

Just what the hell was going on anyway?

Then some hooves touched down beside me and Celestia took a quick check on me before diverting her attention to the bus. “What is that thing?”

Well, besides evidence in for our kidnapping charges… I sighed as I tried to think of the fastest and easiest way to explain automotives to a being whose highest level of such technology was a locomotive. I didn’t count the Flintstone-style helicopters that some ponies could use of course.

“It’s like a train, just without the tracks and uh…can you put it back Tia?” I asked her. The kids were probably frightened out of their minds. “It’s full of scared…foals.” Keeping my ponyisms straight while talking about humans was going to get strange fast. But it was better than trying to make up words. Me and Twilight had managed to make up a word for human thanks to the few explanations I had to give her every now and then, but we were still missing a complete list of all the related words like woman.

It wasn’t that I had much of a choice though. Every time I tried to speak English as a pony, things came out a little garbled thanks to the fact I just didn’t have the vocal cords to pull it off. Some words were at least somewhat recognizable thanks to some effort on my part and a need to curse correctly, like you know, fuck. Others…not so much.

And don’t even get me started on the pony version of human words that had been invented by Twilight. That was just so fucking complicated on how it all linked together…well, the word human in pony sounded kind of like that but…like I said, it’s complicated.

Celestia nodded in response to my question, and the bus moved in the air. It only got a few inches before she looked back to me. “Twilight mentioned that humans do not possess magic. Such an unexplainable event for them…should we not…take steps to insure it does not cause them damage down the line?”

I sighed at the suggestion. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what she was tip-toeing around. “You mean wipe their memories?” The idea did unsettle me, but…she had a point. Two freakishly unexplainable events happening to girls from the same school was better left forgotten. “Okay, put the bus down and we’ll get started. But um, don’t let the rear door or the emergency hatch on the top open, or let the rear tires spin.”

As soon as the things were wrapped in an extra layer of magic and the bus was back on the ground, I walked up to the front of the bus and opened the door with my telekinesis before knocking out the driver and going inside.

Going inside the mobile human structure was…kind of disturbing.

The change in height, or perspective as I was a near-four-foot equine-bug-thing kind of threw everything off. Celestia may have been able to look people in the eye, if not down on them, but I was still just a head above Twilight Sparkle size in my changeling form; topping out at four and a half feet at most. Going into a place meant for creatures averaging out around six feet made me suddenly realize how much that had changed my view of things.

I got a bit of a surprise when I managed a real look at the thirty some odd girls from inside the bus with its proper lighting. They weren’t pastel colored people. Oh, the hair was certainly…pony, but the skin colors only fell within the usual human range. They all had on the same kind of clothes too, long socks and shorts, with bright blue shirts as they all stood towards the back with a few of them trying to get the door open rather unsuccessfully.

There was also the oddity of luggage in some of the seats. Not much compared to what girls usually carried, just a few duffle bags and other easily cartable containers. But there was a suitcase or two.

My surprise ended when some of them pulled out phones and took a picture of me. “Really? An alien walks in, and you take its picture.” I asked before realizing I was speaking pony. Then I groaned when I remembered that even if I could understand the things the girls were saying to each other just fine, which was mostly terrified mutters asking each other what were they supposed to do, there was no way I could talk to them. Even though I had some control over my vocal cords that allowed me to make a myriad of sounds, enabling both changeling and pony speech, human speech was just too alien for me to do.

Then Celestia had to stick her big fat head in and make everything worse. It wasn’t the fact that students saw her that did it. Hell, the presence of a magical unicorn with wings and a crown probably worked to calm the kids down after the horse bug monster walked in. No, she took one look around and focused her gaze on the soccer player with hair that ran every color of the spectrum, standing at the front of the crowd with a face somewhere between nervous and angry. Hell, she even had a lot of the same face structure as the pegasus I knew and loved.

“Is that…Rainbow Dash?”

I was just glad that Rainbow Dash in in pony sounded more like ‘rawbrog ggth’ to anyone who didn’t see the similarities in the language.

“Well, a human analogue version of Rainbow Dash that has the same hair style anyway,” I said. Pony Rainbow Dash wanted to join an elite squadron of the military that doubled as a stunt team, human Rainbow Dash played soccer. There was quite a bit of difference there. Oh, and human Rainbow Dash’s hair looked a bit more well-groomed. But then, she couldn’t fly at hundreds of miles an hour on a whim either. So that probably helped her keep everything straight.

The alicorn looked over to me with a frown. “So that would make this the world that Twilight came to during the princess summit?”

In truth, the possibility of that was actually pretty low. If you accounted for the fact that there really was an infinite variation of worlds, and that those worlds in turn influenced each other based upon their dimensional distance, then it was possible that we had simply landed next door to the Equestria Girls from the movie, and this was a completely different Rainbow Dash that never met Twilight Sparkle.

But I really didn’t believe in that infinite universe bullshit. I know, it was kind of weird since I was a talking pony-bug-thing at the moment, but… If an infinite number of universes existed, then the law of averages said there would be one where a being with enough power to destroy all of reality by snapping his fingers also existed and had the desire to do so, ergo nothing should exist at all because the possibility of an infinite variation in realities says this being has to exist somewhere and he would have already ended existence.

So…yeah, it was the same Rainbow Dash. “Probably.”

“The same world where Twilight Sparkle left Sunset Shimmer?” Celestia continued in a low tone that made her hard to read.

“Yeah?” I replied, unsure where this was going.

At least until I turned around and saw the alicorn’s expression turn to one of pained regret. “Would it be possible for you to locate her for me?”

I was feeling a little tired as Tia carried a magically gagged and struggling human Rainbow Dash further away from the road. But, after Celestia had knocked out all the non-Rainbow humans on the bus and I removed the last ten minutes of their memories before she put the vehicle back in place beside the road, my lack of love was the last several days was leaving me rather drained.

Not that laying around Canterlot for several days made me spend any magic, but I just don’t suck as much energy from Twilight as I used to when I was an undercover changeling surrounded by ponies who would pound my head in if they discovered the truth. There was just no real need to take more beyond daily necessities.

Although at that moment I was really wishing I had done some gorging on my purple pony girlfriend.

“So, how do you plan to find her?” Celestia asked me before setting the human’s things down, as well as a magically mute Rainbow. Who looked pretty frightened about the whole thing, not that I could blame her. I was probably horror movie material in her eyes, and Celestia had just neutralized a whole busload of kids. For all she knew, we were a pair of alines with plans for anal probing or...something.

I used my magic to dig through the non-pegasus’s bag, and groaned when I couldn’t find what I was hoping for. So I snagged her iPhone. It wasn’t as big as a pad, but I could still use it with the help of the end of a cleat’s shoestring I I found in the bag turned into a makeshift stylus.

With my first priority of business being the human in front of me, I typed out a quick message and held it up to Rainbow’s face.

{Do you remember Twilight Sparkle move your head for yes or no}

She just looked at the message with wide eyes, then looked over to me, and up to Celestia. Considering she was more pony than me, it didn’t take too much offense when she studied the alicorn for awhile before looking back at me and nodding.

{Going to let u talk now please no scream}

I motioned for Celestia that it was okay to remove the spells, and wait a few seconds to see what she would do. After about a minute of looking back and forth between us, Dash finally said something. “So um…Twilight, as in talking dog girl who made me grow wings?”

The human’s voice threw me off for a bit. Although the languages sounded nothing alike and they had a completely different everything when it came to bodies, both pony Rainbow and the one I was looking at sounded eerily similar. Hell, it probably would have been identical if the monkey spoke pony.

{Yes}

“How come you can’t talk?” she asked, which got an eye roll from me.

{Because I’m not human}

“The dog could talk.”

{He also ate dog stuff and got ears scratched look explanation is basically magic she not know English without special spell so no waste time with questions looking for sunset shimmer} I groaned as I finished spelling it out for the rainbow girl as fast as I could. I had always hated texting, and that was back when I had thumbs. Now it was ten times as worse.

Rainbow Dash took a moment to read the text, then looked up at Celestia for a few moments, and back to me with a frown. “Why? If you guys are here to mess with her or something…then I’m not telling you anything!”

I couldn’t help but smile at the bravado she showed, despite her situation and pretty obvious fear as I looked up at Celestia. “She wants to know why we’re here.” And well…so did I, for one. Celestia had kind of just written Sunset off after she disappeared as far as I could tell. Now she was being all concerned for her? It was a little strange to say the least.

“I just…” The alicorn paused and let out a sad sigh as she hung her head. “Do you remember when you were listing my…challenges to Twilight and her friends over the past few days? I’ll admit, it has had me…thinking to myself about several things. About how things could have happened differently. About wasted opportunities and possibilities. About my mistakes. And…after I learned where we landed, I…I just…she was on her own for so long, in this world without her magic…I just want to see her again. I want to make sure she’s alright.”

It took me a minute to translate that into a single sentence so I didn’t go insane trying to type that out.

{This is sunsets mom and shes worried about her}

“Seriously?” Rainbow Dash asked before she took a few more moments to stare at the alicorn, and then she sighed. “Sunset has forester parents, but they’re jerks, so…she kind of stays over at the houses of me and my friends when she can. If you guys are really here to help her…I’ll take you there.”

As she started to get up, I held up a hoof to forestall her. {we cant just walk over and whats up with ur clothes}

The soccer player took a moment to glare at me. “Look, the stupid washroom at training camp kind of blew a fuse, and we couldn’t do any laundry last day of practice okay? All we had for clean clothes was our spare uniforms,” she grumbled. “And it’ll be fine. Rarity’s parents are always off on business trips and junk. I swear, she raises her sister more than her mom and dad do.”

When the conversation came to an end, Rainbow Dash stood up to cross her arms before demanding her iphone back with a lot more 'I'm a tough girl' attitude now that she knew the god-like beings in front of her weren't going to devour her soul or something, I took a look at Celestia, then moved my attention back to the soccer player for one last text. {well follow bus from sky to where u goin then take us to rarity}

A nod from the human got me explaining things to the alicorn, and we were flying around after the bus a few minutes later. It took them a bit longer to get started again then I would have liked, but I guess when you pass out in the middle of driving and then wake up still in one piece just pulled off to the side of the road, the question of wtf? tends to make you confused as hell.

Thankfully, Rainbow had the foresight to go through everyone’s phones when they had still been out of it and deleted the pictures of me and Tia that had been snapped. What can I say? Two months without human tech had me slipping when it came to considering how it was used.

“Not that I don’t trust you my friend,” Celestia said as we followed the yellow brick on the road at a height we should appear as little more than birds. “But…what are we doing?”

Oh…right, I thought to myself. Being the boss of my race, I wasn’t all that used to having to defer to other ponies. Even my time with Twilight and her friends was more of an equals thing where we let others lead based on their skill set. With Celestia…I doubted that was going to work very well.

“Well, Rainbow is coming back from a school thing, and she’s supposed to meet her parents at Canterlot High to take her home,” I began, hoping Twilight had told me the same story she told Celestia way back in the day when I went by the horrendous name of (ugh) Flash Sentry. “But, she’s going to tell her parents that she promised to spend the night over at a friend’s house while setting things up with Rarity on the way over.”

“And Rarity’s parents?”

“Out of town.”

Celestia shook her head as she let out a sigh. “Seeing my ponies like this, it’s a…disturbing experience.”

The comment made me snort. “You mean seeing them as humans? Or the age thing?”

“Age…thing?” Celestia asked.

I felt like smacking myself. Of course Celestia wouldn’t know anything about how the human counterparts to the Mane Six were younger than the girls in Equestria. Then there was her human counterpart…I didn’t even want to know how that worked. Unless it was like some weird thing where every human Celestia had been naming their child Celestia for the past thousand-plus years.

“Never mind,” I told her before quickly thinking up something I could use to distract her with. It didn’t take long to come up with something, especially since it was kind of a problem that was on my mind. “By the way, I’m running pretty low on energy here. I know we’re just friends and all, but…I may need to feed off of you if there’s a lot of flying to do.”

Celestia’s expression changed until she actually looked a little uncomfortable at the prospect. “Yes well…I am certain we should be able to finish our business and then you can return to Twilight for…nourishment.”

I frowned at the alicorn. Well it’s not like I can help it with the whole vampire thing Tia.

We spent the rest of the fifteen minute trip in an uncomfortable silence. Celestia did her best not to look at me, and I kept my mouth shut around her. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice, she was my ride home after all.

As I slowly made our way through the skies of human Canterlot I noticed there was an odd smell to the place that wasn’t there in the Equestria that the ponies lived in. The presence of people was also giving me a strange sensation, and I found myself wondering if we could use the spell that Celestia had to disguise ourselves as humans to take a real look around the town instead of just buzzing above it in the sky while the dozens of cars that were inside the town's limits drove by underneath.

But, then there was the possibility that we wouldn't have our magic and be stuck in human land until the moon drifted by enough times. Or we’d turn into humans with pony features like horns and Celestia would keep her cutie mark. Or worse, we’d just go anthro. Plus, we really didn’t have any clothes so…

Okay, getting to see a naked human Tia wouldn’t have been that bad. Considering the pony no need for clothes, I doubted she would even mind.

So, with three bad possible outcomes and only one benefit, I didn’t bother voicing my thoughts to Celestia as we finally came to the school.

Then, we waited another ten minutes on the roof of Canterlot High for human RD to convince her parents that she was going home with a friend whose parents ‘must’ have been running late. Thankfully, human RD’s parents seemed to be about as good parental figure’s as pony RD’s since they left their daughter alone before even checking to see if said parents even showed up.

As the minutes ticked by, Celestia finally broke the silence. “So…these beings certainly have several designs for their…trackless trains. She tripped over the last words for some reason. It was like she was just the tiniest bit unnerved about something.

“It’s sort of a combination of necessity and a status symbol thing…like pony clothes,” I tried to explain as evenly as possible. “Some of the larger…trains are meant to transport families and items like a cart can, but the smaller ones that go faster have been designed to look cooler and cost more as if to say 'I have money'. Like how a lot of ponies in Canterlot wear clothes, but ponies only need them in the coldest of months.”

Then she asked about a few other things, including human fashion, the oddity of all the humans wearing cutie marks, and why they just didn’t go naked since the air was certainly warm enough. I just told her that I knew nothing about fashion as I had been a male human, the cutie marks were probably part of that whole cross dimensional influence thing, and explained that when humans got naked, it meant they wanted to have sex.

“I’d best keep my regalia on while I’m here then,” Celestia said with an odd smirk at that last one, getting an eye roll from me.

As the last car departed, we headed down to meet up with the human. Once we touched down in the parking lot, Rainbow looked around with an uneasy expression. “So um…how exactly are we going to do this?”

“Now, how do you propose we transport her to Rar-why are you smiling at me like that?” Celestia asked as a gave her a cheshire grin.

If I ever needed any proof that Rainbow human and Rainbow pegasus were two very different people/ponies, the ten minute flight from the school to Rarity’s house gave it to me. After all, pegasus Dash was an awesome flier and future member of the Wonderbolts. Human Dash was afraid of heights.

At least that’s what I gathered from the way she grabbed into Celesta after we left the ground and dug her fingers into the alicorn’s neck while screaming at the top of her lungs so long Celestia had to put a silencing spell on her of risk going deaf. It was kind of sad really. We weren’t even going all that fast for crying out loud! Just a cruising speed of about eighty.

Thankfully, the magic of iPhone saved us once again with its ability to give directions to Rarity’s house.

Rainbow managed to avoid wetting herself during the trip, and we teleported down into in Rarity’s back yard with its high fence to avoid attracting too much attention. As soon as we landed, Celestia crouched down below the fence line and looked over to me since we were on eye level. “Please tell the biped to remove her claws from my jugular.”

I stumbled around for a minute, pretty weak from hunger by that point, but managed to get Rainbow off of Celestia before she fell onto the grass and let out a tiny whine before finally speaking. “That…was the scariest thing in my entire life.”

I had to tap her on the shoulder a few times to get her attention, then pointed to the door. As Dash very slowly got to her feet, I took a look around at our surroundings.

Human Rarity apparently lived in the richer part of Canterlot Town, as each one of the houses seemed to be made of the same basic design but were all of the two story, four bedroom, four bathroom, two car garage with pool in the backyard types that told everyone one of the people living their was either a doctor, lawyer, or stock broker.

It kind of made me wonder what the hell pony Rarity’s parents did for a living.

A knock at the door from Dash drew my attention back to the yard, and we quadrupeds waited for someone to answer the door. As the thing started to open, all I could think was, ah crap! I forgot about Sweetie Belle!

But since a teenage girl with purple hair in a telltale style was the one to answer the door, that bit of panicking was put off for the moment. As she didn’t immediately freak out at the mythological creature and the alien in her backyard, I’m guessing Rainbow either told her what was going on while on the bus, or she just didn’t see us for the athlete filling the door.

“Rainbow…why’re you in my backyard?” she asked. Like Rainbow, her voice did sound a hell of a lot like her pony counterpart’s, despite the huge difference in languages. Hell, she even had a posh accent.

The not-pegasus Rainbow scratched the back of her head. “Yeah, um…about that. Sunset’s mom wants to see her.”

I couldn’t see Rarity’s expression, but the rest of her body took a kind of ‘what you talkin’ about?’ stance, as she replied. “Why would you be delivering messages for Mrs.-”

Than Rainbow stepped aside. “Her real mom.”

Rarity’s jaw just seemed to unhinge mid-word and it froze on the last syllable it was going on. “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

Celestia rolled her eyes and looked over to me. “Is she alright?”

“All in all, I’d say they’re taking your appearance rather well,” I said before walking forward to nudge Rainbow as she just smirked at her shocked friend.

When she looked down at me and frowned, I rolled my eyes and motioned inside the house, then towards Celestia, then back in the house. It took her about three tries to get it, but…humans were stupid.

“Oh! Right, uh…Rarity, can you let us in now?” Rainbow asked the stunned teenager. “Unless you want to explain to your neighbors why there’s a pega-corn in your back yard.”

That’s royal pegacorn to you peasant, I thought to myself.

The girl with the purple hair practically leapt aside at that, and Celestia crept through the door after me to have Rarity close it behind us.

The house’s interior looked about as swank as its exterior, with its hardwood kitchen floor and the latest appliances. Although as soon as we tried to go from the foyer and into the main house, Rarity cleared her throat to get our attention, and pointed towards Celestia’s golden, stylized horseshoes. The fact that Celestia actually took the things off for the human just had me standing there speechless.

Then she glared at me for a few seconds. So I bowed to the will of a weak and pathetic human by wiping my hooves on the entry room’s rug before heading into the kitchen. If the sun goddess was going to do it, then…what the hell, why not?

“Um…Sunset?” Rarity called out over the sound of a television blaring from what sounded like the next room over. “Could you come here a minute? There’s…well…just come here!”

As Rarity’s last words finished in a rush, the sound coming from the nearby room stopped as the television was turned off, or was paused, it looked like Rarity’s folks could afford the DVR option after all. Then, a redhead walked into the room. “What’s,” was all she managed to get out before the drink she was holding lightly in one hand fell and hit the floor. The plastic cup didn’t break, but it didn’t stop the punch she was drinking from going everywhere.

I blinked at seeing Sunset Shimmer in the flesh for the first time. She looked about average height for a girl her age, with light tan skin and the telltale hairstyle that told me who she was. I also noticed she had a little better figure than human Rarity, but not all by that much. She was also dressed in the usual girls sleepover attire with a shirt that seemed two sizes too big and pajama pants.

A strange, inhuman grunt came from the back of her throat and I suppose to the human’s it sounded like the cat had gotten her tongue or something. But I knew the sound of a species trying to pronounce something when they didn’t have the vocal cords for it.

“Sunset?” Celestia spoke in a whisper as she took a step forward that knocked the two human girls out of the way. I didn’t even need to turn on my empathy to see the desperation, surprise, hope and fear that the alicorn was radiating. “It…it is you, right? I…I’m here. I wanted to come and see how you were doing. And…I…”

As Celestia advanced, Sunset took a step back, and fell to the floor on her spilled drink, making the white horse freeze when Sunset’s butt smacked into the hard wooden floor of the kitchen. “There is no need to be afraid!” Celestia insisted, as close to a panic as I had ever seen her in. “I…can you still understand me?”

She looked back at me. “You still speak human so…wouldn’t she still speak Equestrian?”

“I understand you…Princess,” Sunset said in an absent tone. As if her mouth was working on auto-pilot. “But, what are you doing here?”

When I translated the words for Celestia, she looked back at the confused and frightened girl. “I…I just wanted…at first I wanted to make sure you were alright, but,” she paused and shook her head. “This place, it’s dark and strange. The air feels thick with muck and the moon is…odd. The creatures may have some semblance to ponies, but they reek of odd smells and scream their words, and…I want to take you home!”

Chapter 9: My Little Odyssey’s Detour

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I really should have seen it coming. But…well, in my defense, I had no idea as to the limits of alicorn stamina. Still, Celestia keeps herself up for three days with barely any sleep, is probably worried sick about me the whole time, and then gets shoved into a high-tech world to suffer at least a modicum of culture shock. Oh, and she was apparently feeling guilty over the whole Sunset thing. All of that combined couldn’t be good for one’s mental state.

As for me, I was just glad Rarity let us in. I may not have used up any energy when I had my mental breakdown in Canterlot, but I had been up so long it was taking whatever passed for the changeling version of earth pony magic just to keep me going and I had spent a lot of power to make those kids forget about Celestia and me back on the road. I was tired, and more importantly, hungry. Just because my mind didn’t need sleep didn’t mean my body didn’t miss the rest.

“Wait…princess?” Rarity asked as she looked over to Celestia’s crown, and then to the pony turned human. “Your mother is a princess? I thought you said you were an orphan!”

The question managed to shock Sunset out of the daze Celestia had put her in, and it probably helped the princess looked away from her and over to me for a translation. Instead of giving it to the alicorn, I just looked over to Shimmer and sighed. “Hey, I was having to type this junk out on a…magical mirror brick…thing one letter at a time!” I said while coming up with the closest approximation of iPhone that I could in Equestrian. “Mom was a hay of a lot faster than magical horse princess of an alternate dimension!”

Celestia raised an eyebrow at me. “You told them I was her mother?” she asked before letting out a breath and looking over to the shocked girl. “Well…I guess that isn’t too far from the truth when you look at it in a certain way.”

“I…” Sunset managed to get down at herself where her pants had gotten soaked. “I need to go change.”

After Sunset took off to change clothes, or more likely, get some breathing room and time to think, Rarity’s manners kicked in and she invited us into the living room while telling Rainbow Dash to clean up the mess. The diva blamed the athlete’s poor explanation of what was going on during her trip over as the reason for Sunset’s shock. Rainbow griped about it a little, but stayed to clean the spilled tea and ice while Tia and me were shown the main room of the house.

“I’m just glad my sister is with her friends tonight,” Rarity mumbled more to herself than us.

That got a relieved sigh out of me as well. I didn’t know if Sweetie would have been freaked out, or jumped on Princess Celestia’s back for a horsy ride. Considering how much doing it took me to get Rainbow on her back, and what happened during the flight, I didn’t think Tia was going to be letting any other humans ride her anytime soon.

Then the teenager turned off the big screen television and looked around the room before grabbing large pillow for Celestia to sit on…and then quickly ran to get a towel from a downstairs bathroom before coming back to cover the pillow and protect it from being touched by the bare ass of a horse.

After that, she seemed to go into full on manners mode again and offered a quick curtsy, which Tia gave a nod to in return when I explained what it was. Two legs and hands made everything look different.

“Now,” Rarity finally said as she looked over to me. “You know English, but…why can’t you talk? Twilight’s…dog could talk. And why can’t the princess either?”

That question I had to relay to Princess Celestia and wait for the humans to find a notebook for me to write in when I tuned down the use of Rarity’s phone for something faster. When I was finally ready to transcribe the answer,I was kind of curious about the how it all worked myself. My money was on the fact that we had used a different mirror to come to Earthquestria.

“Oh, that,” the princess began while I just did my best to carry the gist of her conversation to the human. “Starswirl created his second mirror to help adjust for some of the problems of the first. When we were traveling, there were a few worlds we came across where we didn’t understand a word the occupants said, and others had inhabitants that were not like ponies at all. So he devised a spell that turned whomever walked through it into the nearest creature of approximate size and gave them a the ability to use of the local language on an almost subconscious level. I doubted Twilight even knew she was speaking human until you came along.”

So that’s why Spike could talk as a dog, I told myself as I finished a bare bones transcription of what Celestia said and showed it to the girls. The first thing they had come across was a guy walking his dog after all. I guess that the mirror must have identified Spike as Twilight's pet, or he just had the misfortune of the dog being closer to the mirror when it made his form.

Then came a slew of other questions about things, like what I was, what was the name of the big horse, if Twilight was okay…and the big one of what we were doing here. I just went with the shape shifter explanation without mentioning the vampirism when it came to me, didn’t tell them Celestia’s name with an explanation of it being impossible to correctly pronounce by humans, and when it came to why we were here…

“You’re here to take Sunset home?” Rarity mumbled.

{If she wants to go. Do you think she wants to stay?} I wrote down after seeing the human's unguarded apprehension.

Rarity sat down on the couch while I relayed what I wrote to Celestia. “Well, the question isn’t whether she wants to, its if she can,” she mumbled before looking over at me. “After we found out the truth about her…being an alien and all, I’ve noticed some other things that are a little…odd when it comes to Sunset.”

I held up a hoof to forestall Celestia’s questions to know what was going on to ask Rarity what she meant via paper.

“Well…her grades on history are terrible, she can’t drive to save her life, and…okay…I don’t know how much you know about human society, but when were born, certain…records are made, like each human is given a specific number for them alone. But…I don’t know if Sunset has anything like that. And without them, I'm afraid of what may befall her after she gets out of high school.”

The fact that a high school kid that wasn’t a senior knew enough about that kind of stuff impressed me a bit, and managed to knock my opinion of human-Rarity up a notch. But considering her parents were gone on a business trip...I had the feeling human-Rarity might have been raising Sweetie as much as her pony counterpart was. {I take it you're talking about her SSN and the like?}

Rarity stared at the page for a few moment, probably wondering how an alien knew that much about her society. “Um…yes. You see, because she wasn’t born here…there might be…problems later on.”

Honestly, I had been wondering where the other Sunset Shimmer was. But if pony-Sunset was in the system, having to deal with stuff like foster homes then…it was a pretty good bet that human-Sunset and her family were dead. All she had to do was say ‘I don’t know’ a lot to people when she first showed up in regards to her parents location and…it would have been pretty easy for her to take the dead girl’s place since they were identical as far as I could tell from the HuMane Five and their pony counterparts.

Then came the awkward silence, apparently showing the limits on Rarity’s knowledge of the subject. A minute later, Rainbow walked in and looked around. “What’s going on?”

“We’re waiting for Sunset to finish washing,” Rarity explained before offering the other human a seat. Celestia just lowered her head, from the weight of deep thoughts or exhaustion, I couldn’t tell.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “What is she doing? taking a shower or something? Send her an text and ask what’s up.”

“Rainbow, she was in my spare pajamas, I don’t think she even has her phone on her,” the diva replied.

To that, Rainbow had the ultimate answer. “Well just call her and see if she picks up.”

With all the phone talk going around, an idea sprouted in my head, and I quickly wrote it down to show it to the girls. It took a little pen work and some pleading eyes, but Rarity nodded and dialed her cell.

“I’ll get it,” Rainbow replied before she dashed off into the hallway and to the right before I heard the telltale sounds of someone going up stairs as a phone went off with the classic bell ringtone.

I bullshited an explanation of where Rainbow went to Celestia, and then looked to Rarity for a moment before turning my attention back to Tia. “Hey Celestia, what exactly happened when Sunset left in the first place?” I asked, genuinely curious. “And I don’t mean the basic outline you gave to Twilight, I mean the real story, the whole story. It can’t have been that she just...took off to another dimension for no reason. I know foals can be a hoof full and want everything given to them yesterday, but you don’t just run away from being taught by the most powerful pony on the planet, no matter how short-sighted you are.”

The alicorn’s head shot up from where it had been, and she sighed. “That’s quite a long story,” she mumbled.

“We don’t have that much else to do at this point, do we?” I asked as Rarity scooted closer until she was sitting between the two of us on the couch.

Our conversation drew the attention of the human, but I didn’t bother with giving them the rundown of what was going on. After another minute of me pleading, Celestia caved. “Well…it all started when I found her at Canterlot. There had been a fire at one of the houses in in the outer edge of the city, and…well, as you know, we didn’t use pegasi for weather at the time. So by the time the unicorns that responded to the alarm and got to the scene to summon rain and put out the fire…all that was found in the wreckage was a young filly. Apparently, she started the fire when her magic surged and…revealed her special talent.”

The parallel between the filly she was talking about and Twilight was obvious, but I didn’t comment on it. I mean, magical surge that causes mass destruction? While Twilight's entrance exam hadn't had any fireworks, the purple pony had turned her parents into plants and made Spike put a hole in the roof.

“I saw the potential in her and I had been feeling my sister raging against her imprisonment, gathering her power to escape in a few short years,” the goddess continued. “I knew a confrontation with Nightmare Moon was inevitable. At the time, I had no idea that the Elements of Harmony would be awoken one day and any battle would be between myself and Nightmare Moon would end with both of us being destroyed. I didn’t want Cadence to get injured because of my mistakes. So, knowing my end was near, I began looking for my…replacement. Sunset had powerful magic, and her cutie mark was of a blazing sun. It was kind of obvious to me that she was the one.

“Things were going well at first, but…as she grew older, Sunset started becoming more prideful and conceited. She isolated herself from other ponies and began researching dangerous magic-”

I tilted my head. “How is that any different than Twilight?”

The question got a shake of Celestia’s head. “Right, I forgot just how much you know about us,” she mumbled before thinking things over for a second. “If I had to point out the differences in their respective self-imposed isolation… Twilight did it because she has a tendency to become too focused on a task and discounted the importance of interacting with other ponies. Sunset did it because she thought she was too good for other ponies to socialize with.”

“Twilight put the importance in her work over others, while Sunset put the importance in herself,” I summarized. Although Twilight’s problem had been corrected easily enough when meeting other ponies, Sunset had already done such things and probably subbed them in favor of her lessons.

Celestia nodded. “I tried to teach her humility, and…I’ll admit, my failure to do so with Sunset might have made me be a bit too harsh in that respect when it came to Twilight. But I digress…

“I guess my mistake with Sunset began when I showed her the mirror that is permanently connected to this world,” she went on. “You see, when that mirror is not active, it serves another purpose. Whomever looks into it sees themselves in the best of possible worlds. I had hoped it would inspire her to greatness.”

Considering what happened, I doubted Tia’s plan was all that successful. While giving someone who had no hope a glimpse of it would allow them to pick themselves up, people who were more sure of themselves just had their ambitions fueled even. I could almost see Sunset becoming some kind of end justified the means type of person if she saw her end goal like that. “And what did Sunset see?”

“Truthfully? I’m still not one-hundred-percent sure, but when I put in her later actions into account…I think she saw herself becoming an alicorn,” the goddess told me. “Because after that, she became obsessed with the mirror, asking me about it day after day, week after week. But by then I had decided to slow down her training until I could get her maturity catch up with her magical ability.”

“And then?”

“I didn’t account for her…reckless ambition,” Celestia told me. “She snuck into the castle library’s restricted section where I keep the unedited history of Equestria and books on dark magic. There, she found out that I could make other ponies alicorns and started making demands. She started shouting how she deserved to be an alicorn and my equal, if not my better. I let her anger and…the fact she threw a book at me get under my coat. I answered her anger with some of my own when I should have offered compassion and understanding. And then I expelled her as my student.”

I gave Celestia a confused frown. Kicking a kid out on the street when they had nowhere else to go didn’t quite sound like the Celestia I knew. “But I thought she was an orphan. Where was she supposed to go?”

The alicorn shook her head. “Oh, I wasn’t that angry. I had planned to arrange for a place for her to stay in Canterlot if she wished it and…well, after what happened…I keep trying to tell myself that I simply wanted her to see what the world was like outside the castle without my help so that she could grow as a pony, pehaps make some real friends away from the court, but…

“Let’s see, how best to put it?” she asked herself before tapping her chin in thought with a hoof. “Omnifarious, I consider you one of my closest friends because…well, because you act a lot like Sunset once did that day. You yell at me, point out my faults, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you bow to me-”

“Gee thanks,” I deadpanned. “I love you too Tia.”

The comment actually gave the alicorn pause for a moment, and she looked surprised before she recovered and continued “And you're pretty much the only pony I’ve ever met who does since my sister was banished. After a thousand years of nopony telling me no, when Sunset, my own student did it so violently, I overreacted. I let my temper get the best of me and…I do have a temper.

“By the time I had calmed down and thought to go check on her…I had found Sunset had overpowered her guards that were supposed to have escorted her out of the castle and made her way through the mirror.

“As much as I hate to admit it, I was…too afraid to follow. When Starswirl first crafted the second mirror and tested it, he came back moments later, completely horrified with instructions that I must never enter it after we failed to disconnect it from this world. So when Sunset ran through it, all I could do was place the mirror in my throne room in the hopes that she would return in time.

“The terrible isolation she must have felt here, trapped in this world without her magic,” Celestia hung her head and sighed. “I just wish I could tell her…I’m sorry.”

I leaned over to Rarity’s lap and moved the girl’s hands away before speaking into the iphone. “Hey Sunset, you get all that?” If Rarity hadn’t turned on the speaker function to catch our conversation, I was going to kill her.

“…yes,” Sunset’s voice came through the phone in a whisper.

It was more than enough to get Celestia’s attention. She grabbed the thing with her magic and held it close to her face. Considering the thing was still on speaker phone, I kind of felt sorry for Sunset’s ears when the alicorn started practically yelling into it. “Sunset! Can you hear me, she can hear me through the glass brick, right?” she asked me in as frantic a tone as I’d ever heard coming from her, topping even what had happen just a few minutes prior. “Sunset, I can’t apologize for everything that transpired between us, but…I did make many mistakes and…if you would permit me, I would like to do what I can to make up for them.”

“Princess…I…”

“You know she has no idea what you’re saying, right?” I asked the human on the other end of the line. When I could practically hear Sunset flinching at my voice, I let out a sigh. I knew where this had been going since I wrote the instructions to Rarity and Rainbow Dash to call Sunset’s phone. “Look, you can still write in Equestrian, so…collect your thoughts and tell us what you think. It’s not like we’re going to drag you back to Equestria if you don’t want to go.”

I looked over to Celestia for a second. “Um…you’re not, are you?”

The goddess shook her head. “Not if she doesn’t wish it,” she said before looking back to the phone. “If you want to stay with your friends here, I would not force you to return. But I do wish for you to know that there will always be a place for you in Canterlot, Sunset.”

With that little bit of drama done, I managed to turn off the phone before either of them could say something to fuck it up, and wrote something down to ask Rarity. {We’re tired and need some rest. Where’s your guest room.}

The girl with the purple hair gave me a surprised look. “Um…last door down the hall on your left. But…would you mind telling me what the hell’s going on first?”

{Sunset may come home with us. She’s thinking it over. We’ve been up for days and need some rest so we’re going to sleep on it while she does that.}

The prospect of having a horse, and whatever the hell I looked like to the girl sleeping in her house didn’t seem to appeal much to Rarity. However, she did manage to surprise me with an eventual agreement, if a reluctant one. “Well, I suppose I can’t just throw the two of you out on the street…but…are you sure she can even…get in the room? She’s kind of…wide for the door.”

“What are you talking about with her?” the alicorn asked with a raised eyebrow.

It took everything I had not to burst out laughing at that moment. Still, I managed to assure Rarity we’d find a way to get inside without breaking anything, and the girl went ahead to make sure everything was ready for company. Apparently, her parents tended to use it as a makeshift storage room when they came back from their trips and she didn’t want her parents to look like slobs in front of royalty.

When the giant pony didn’t follow, I looked up at Celestia and tried to sound as casual as I could. “Rarity’s offered to put us up for the night while Sunset thinks everything over. Room’s this way.”

“You get some rest. I’ll wait for Sunset to-”

Before the princess could even finish, I rounded on the princess with a frown. “You’re the one who needs the sleep Tia,” I told her with a frown.

“I can manage.”

The alicorn’s steady gaze made me growl. “You’re physically tired and emotionally drained, and…Luna only knows how long its going to take Sunset to make a decision. We need rest.”

“I-”

“And I need to feed of you, now,” I stressed. “I wasn’t that hungry when we got here, but I mind warped a full bus full of kids, flew, and teleported like crazy, and I may not need sleep like a pony, but the longer I keep my body active without having at least some period of relaxation, the more energy it takes to keep me going. Please. I need food.”

Celestia gave me a pained look as she obviously considered her options, then let out a sigh as she dropped her head. “Very well.” Considering how she had reacted to my comments earlier, I was a little surprised it was that easy to get her to agree. But then, she was Celestia. The giant pony princess could Rarity a run for her money in the generosity department.

As soon as we were done talking, I went back down the hallway while Celestia picked up her towel to follow me through the hall and into the room.

Of course it wasn’t just the size of Tia’s ass that was an obstacle for her getting into the house’s downstairs guestroom, the narrow hallway made it impossible for a horse like the alicorn to get inside with her wide turning radius.

There was also the problem of the bed that took up about a third of the room, with a dresser knocking off another two feet. Empty, the place would have been more than big enough for the alicorn and myself to lay down. As it was, Tia didn’t even have space to stand inside the room.

So of course she went and cheated with teleportation. A flash of light, and the bed reappeared inside the living room. That kind of freaked Rarity out a bit, but she kept her mouth from going slack jawed. “I’ll just, um…I should probably go talk to Sunset,” she said before pointing down the hallway and leaving us to try and get settled.

Once we were alone, I closed the door and looked over to the princess. Since the alicorn took up just about as much room as the bed as she turned sideways to lay down in a crouch, I was feeling a real lack of personal space. “Sorry about uh…taking the lead here,” I mumbled while Celestia looked me straight in the eyes.

“It is not the first time I have followed the instructions of another that made sense,” Celestia told me. “Although, most of the time those instructions come as advice instead of orders.” She giggled a bit, which helped with my uneasiness.

I smirked at her. “Last I checked, queen beats princess.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow back at me. “What happened to the king title?”

“Yeah well…the last of my…stallion-ness kind of died when Twilight and I…she got me to climax as a girl, so…might as well stop fighting it. I’m a girl, queen, and all that junk.” I sighed and hung my head in mourning for my manhood. Part of me though the words sounded hollow, and the rest just shouted 'BULLSHIT!'.

I also had to wonder why I had just gone and confessed my darkest secret to Celestia of all ponies. She and I were hardly friends, even if she had walked me through some pretty hard times already. It wasn’t just the last few days either, as she had been the one to make the call on saving me back in the Crystal Empire, I wasn’t stupid enough to think any of the others would have moved without her say-so.

Stupid Celestia and her easily trustable demeanor and gentle voice. Twilight may have had the cute and caring thing going for her, but Celestia got the ’I genuinely feel for you’ type of thing going on. It was just do damn disarming I felt easy about telling the alicorn and her non-judgmental stare anything.

A strange sound assaulted my ears and I felt something soft, yet extremely strong draped across my back before Tia pulled me to her side with her giant wing. I looked up at Celestia, and she just gave me one of those smiles Twilight received about every other time they met. “You are who you want to be my friend, and I do not think that allowing the mare you love to give you joy is anything to be ashamed of.”

The whole mentor vibe thing Tia was giving off made me sigh. I really didn’t want to get into a sexuality crises debate with a giant talking winged unicorn. Mainly because I’m pretty sure a thousand plus year old girly being had plenty of ammunition to shoot down any argument I had.

So, I did the chickening out thing and switched topics. “So um…about that feeding thing.”

When Tia’s face went all apprehensive while her muscles tensed, I had to ask the obvious question. “Is it really that bad for you just to think about?”

“Twilight has…informed me of what your feeding entails,” Celestia told me.

My mind raced with all the possibilities that little sentence could mean, and I only had to wonder if she was being all academic about it, or just bragging about her sex life to a pony who hadn’t gotten any in God only knew how long. Although I hoped for the later, common sense told me that it was probably the former.

Hell, I wondered if there was even a pony big enough to satisfy the oldest alicorn princess. Celestia easily topped my natural form and made every other stallion I’d ever seen look small. If her twice as big and then some dimensions were true all around, then I doubt anyone would have satisfied the horse goddess.

I kinda felt embarrassed about discussing my sex life with the thousand-plus-year-old woman, but then I remembered I had talked about other extremely embarrassing thing with her both days prior, and less than five minutes ago. It had actually been pretty easy so...why not this? “Is that a no?”

“If it is truly required, I will satiate your hunger,” Celestia agreed after another moment of thought before bringing her muzzle to within an inch of mine. She closed her eyes for a moment, and I felt the alicorn’s powerful muscles tense beneath me. “You may begin.”

Then, I inhaled Celestia’s feelings, taking a moment to taste her affection towards me.

Although I knew all the Mane Six, the only ones I had ever fed off, not counting the time at sea when everyone had thought I was dying and all the girls chipped in of course, were Twilight and Rainbow; the former much more than the later. The taste didn’t actually change from pony to pony based on species or anything, but it did according to the level of affection the pony felt for me, or whomever I was impersonating because when a changeling fed, the taste of our food was the emotional connection that our food had for us t that moment.

With Celestia, it was a warm love that brought a special kind of joy to my heart that I hadn’t experienced with either of my other usual donors. Rainbow was more of a devoted excitement and joy while Twilight…well, due to the timing I usually had, Twilight was a blazing fire of passionate joy that I could only hope to equal by feeding of another mare at climax.

But it was the amount of power that I could feel that really drew my focus. It wasn’t the endless ocean of magic I had been expecting. In fact, it seemed rather…low. Even Twilight had more energy at the end of the day than what I could feel from Celestia at that moment.

That little bit of information made me uneasy. The alicorn was beyond tired as I had thought she was when we came into the house. She almost dead on her feet! Yet she was giving me some of her power, after teleporting around like crazy, offering to go to a completely unknown world, and doing a ton of other things to try and help me with little thought to her own health.

…all of a sudden, my little freakout that had lasted the past few days had me feeling very small and selfish.

Of course being curled up next to a creature more than twice my size helped.

I drained the mare for a mere five seconds, and then cut the siphon. Celestia’s entire body shook as she let out a stuttered breath. The warmth in my body lingered as she looked at me oddly for a moment, then turned her attention to her rear for a moment before looking back to me. “That’s it?”

My confusion pretty much forced me to turn on my empathy, as I just got even more lost at the disappointment Celestia was feeling. For some reason, I actually felt insulted. “Umm…yes?”

“From what Twilight said, I was expecting something a little more…pleasurable,” she said after obviously searching for the right word that wouldn’t kill my pride.

“Uh…just what did she say about it?” I asked, a little afraid of the answer.

Celestia’s uncomfortableness grew, and she cleared her throat. “Well, I believe her exact words when I asked were…it was the most amazing experience of my life, my brain literally short-circuits so much I can’t even process information for a good three minutes, and oh Celestia, if we had known about this beforehand, Chrysalis wouldn’t have needed to conquer Equestria, we would have just given it to her in return for a changeling friend for everypony.”

My jaw dropped, and my sympathy died. “Wait…you thought…okay, first off the only way it feels so good with Twilight is because I feed off her when she climaxes, or take multiple siphons!”

“Do you…want to go on then?” she asked hesitantly.

I told her no, and a bit of struggling made her remove her wing.

With the deed done and neither of us in the mood to talk, Tia laid out while I found my own space and shut down.

Trying to connect to the hive mind without a hive mind was, in a word, lonely. Although I had stayed conscious for days while in Canterlot, the difference in being alone when I was in a room by myself and the difference in being alone while trying to connect with the collective unconsciousness of the changeling hive as massive. It was like standing in the middle of a football stadium’s field, looking around at all the empty chairs and unused field some someone had told you there was a game today.

It was creepy. Really creepy.

So I simply floated within my own unconsciousness, thinking of Twilight, Rainbow, and all the rest of the girls.

The more I thought about things, the more guilty I felt.

I knew Twilight had been worried about me, and yet I just let myself get all wrapped up in my own doubts because I had simply denied the truth of her existence thanks to a little mental crisis. I really needed to make it up to her when I got back home. Not just the dinner, flowers, and a movie sort of thing either. It needed to be more than just a big gesture, even if that was a pretty good start to things.

So, without much else to do, I busied myself by reviewing my own memories, of the times I flew with Rainbow, actually had conversations with Big Mac that involved more than two words, played around with Pinkie, and gossiped with Rarity about the ponies around town.

Hell, I even found myself reviewing the few times I went to Zecora to learn a few things about her potion making. Most of the stuff I made exploded or melted whatever I poured it on, but…well, chemistry sucked, and magical chemistry didn’t even try to make sense.

Still, the home movies kept my mind occupied until it was time to get up.

I’m not sure how much sleep we got before a knock at the door drew me out of my empty mindscape. It was still dark outside the windows, but we had gone to sleep just barely an hour after sundown so waking up at four in the morning and still feeling good was well within the realm of possibility. However, my muscles were glad for any kind of break, and didn't protest as much as I raised my head.

At least it was for me, I knew the exhaustion Celestia was feeling needed more than a peaceful six hours. Still, I managed to take some comfort in the fact that we’d be going home in a few minutes and she could at least fall back into her usual routine.

Celestia was the one who called for them to enter, which made me roll my eyes since only one person the whole planet actually knew what she was saying.

Then Sunset shut my snarkiness the hell up when she opened the door with a couple of sheets of paper in her hand. Celestia took them in her magic, and began reading them to herself while I turned to study the human.

Sunset was dressed in her usual leather jacket, skirt and boots combo I had seen in the movie, but that wasn’t what drew my attention. She looked tired, and not just the physical tired either. The redness under her eyes spoke of tears, and the slightly frazzled head of hair showed…okay, well…I had no idea. Just because I was some sort of bug-pony girl didn’t mean I had insight into the female sex’s hair care secrets. It just didn’t look kept. Although the downcast expression didn’t speak well of her mood. But the sadness that just radiated out of her was obvious.

A crumple of paper drew my attention to Celestia as she finished reading Sunset’s letter and pushed the pages aside. The pain on her face had returned, and was mixed with more than a hint of confusion. Whatever Sunset had written, it had upset Celestia like nothing I had seen from her in awhile. She wasn't afraid or angry, more like...hurt.

“Banishment? Return for punishment?” the goddess whispered to the distraught teenager as she stretched her neck towards the girl just a little bit. “Oh Sunset, no! Mistakes were made, but they exist to be learned from. I would never punish you for them, at least not how you seem to think I will.”

The human gulped and looked up at her hesitantly. “Then…what will do with me?”

After I relayed Sunset’s message to Celestia, the alicorn gave her a soft smile. “That all depends on you. If you want, you can remain here. I see that you have at least two wonderful friends that care about you. But, if you come home to Equestria…I will make you my student again. You can come back to the castle, and we will be together again. That is...if you want to.” The little bit of hesitation at the end of Celestia's offer made me surprised. Apprehension was something I was not used to seeing on the goddess.

“But…why? After everything I’ve done…I…Twilight Sparkle banished me from Equestria, she left me here to…to just…”

The banishment comment got a grunt of disapproval from me to show both what I thought of Sunset’s interpretation of events, and Twilight just abandoning Sunset to the human world. I understood that Twilight probably didn’t comprehend just how badly leaving her in people land screwed Sunset over if this world was even half as human as mine, where you couldn’t get out of jail on charges of enslaving a whole town of ponies with a corrupted by dark magic defense followed by a fireworks show to prove your sincerity like Trixie. Even without major legal repercussions, the girl couldn’t have had much of a good time after everything that went down.

“Trust me, she’s going to get one hay of an earful for that when I get back,” I told Sunset, getting a look of confusion in return. But instead of answering the question written on her face, I went with something else. “Look, since you’ve got those teenage hormones and an underdeveloped brain that probably can’t think long-term anymore…I’ll spell it out for you. Here, you’ve got a few high school friends that look ready to go a dozen separate ways come graduation, and little in the way of future prospects once that’s over and your foster family kicks you out on your plot. I’m sure Twilight meant well, but…this isn’t Equestria, and friendship isn’t all powerful here, like it is there.

“Then we’ve got your opportunities back home. In Equestria, you have a bucking goddess willing to help you reach your full potential, because I seriously doubt a unicorn that can teleport and sneak we way through a palace full of guards is destined to end up flipping processed cow meat. Now stop beating yourself up over your mistakes like a human, and move past them like a real pony would.”

I didn’t like playing the whole destiny card since it kind of went against the whole free will thing, plus the fact that it tended to piss on me at every opportunity, but the future of a kid was on the line and I tended to fight dirty when it came to getting children to try and live up to their potential.

Celestia let out a snort. “You’re one to talk about how to behave like a pony. And what was that about cow meat?”

I snubbed Tia’s comment with a turn of my head. “I’m a changeling. We’re allowed to brood and get all aghast every now and then.” It was in the vampiric creatures handbook, page sixty-four. “And you don’t want to know.”

The alicorn took another few seconds to look at me, then rolled her eyes. “So,” Tia spoke up, making Sunset turn her eyes up to the mare. “What do you say Sunset? Do you wish to come home, or stay here?”

“I…yes,” she breathed out after a long pause. “I want to go home. I want to use able to magic, and not have to worry that one day someone will figure out I don’t belong here. I don’t want to have to worry about what a bunch of stupid websites are saying, or if I’ll be able to afford college, or get stuck in some meaningless job for the rest of my life as I struggle to get by.”

After the translation, Celestia’s head tilted a bit before speaking in a harsher tone than I was accustomed to hearing from her. “I see you still have your ambition then.” The comment got a flinch from Sunset, but the alicorn’s gaze lightened. “But…ambition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if properly guided.

“Now, shall we say farewell to your friends?” she asked.

As it turned out, I had missed a few things during my siesta. Like the arrival of new guests, judging by the five girls waiting for us in the living room.

Sunset had made up her mind to come with us and told the others about an hour into the downtime I shared with Celestia, then Rarity had called the girls so the pseudo-human could tell them goodbye, Pinkie heard about it, and they had all shown up at about nine to throw her a goodbye party.

“It…you really did have a unicorn princess in your guest room,” Fluttershy said breathlessly.

Applejack eyed the alicorn up and down for a minute. “Ah think ya’ll need to change yer descriptions if ya’ll are callin’ yourselves ponies while lookin like that!”

Sunset pinched her nose at hearing that one. “This princess is a bit different than normal Equestrians AJ.”

“Hey Sunny! What happened? You look of a heck of a lot happier!” Pinkie commented as she moved to study the girl.

A light blushed crept up on Sunset’s cheeks, and she glanced over to Celestia for a moment before letting out a sigh and smiling back at Pinkie, although it was nowhere near what the pink-haired girl was displaying. “I…just got some good news is all. Better than I expected, to be honest.” Considering that she had thought that Celestia had come to drag her back to face punishment for just the sake of punishment, I considered her words an understatement.

“Excuse me,” Rarity said as she looked down at me. “If you’re going, could one of you return my parent’s guest bed to its proper place?”

The goodbyes took over an hour, mostly because Sunny’s friends had about half a dozen questions for me and Tia, and I had a few to ask them in turn to find out just what the hell happened after Twilight left.

Apparently, most of the student body of the high school had forgotten about the magical battle between Satan Shimmer and the sparkling angel, and pretty much the entire dance altogether. But, mind magic could easily mess with a pony’s short term memory so they wouldn’t save anything after going to bed. It wasn’t much of a stretch to think it could happen to humans too. Differences in brain chemistry be damned.

In fact, it was almost like magic went out of its way to give science the finger every now and then. This just seemed to be one of those times.

There had been an investigation into everything, but the girls didn’t seem to know much about it. I just guessed without any real evidence, it was filed away in those unexplained crimes folders that the police have; which number more than anyone really likes to admit. Photographic evidence of the girls with ears and wings was written off with words like photoshopped, and everything went back to normal.

On the other side of things, the girls asked a lot about Twilight and Equestria, which me and Sunset answered to the best of our ability in the way of current events and how things worked in a land of magical ponies. It was funny what they thought was unbelievable and what wasn’t.

Magic they believed in of course, but some of them were left scratching their heads at how we could have electricity and pretty modern medical equipment, but still be using things like trains. Of course being humans, they didn’t quite understand the old ‘ponies are traditionalists’ excuse. Plus, with necessity being the mother of invention and magic being the go to thing for ponies, technological development was kind of crippled in certain areas.

The update on Twilight also got a lot of confused looks…even from Sunset. But, that’s what happens when you tell people that pony princesses lived in trees and the extent of their authority was checking out library books.

Well, Twilight had a bit more in the way of responsibilities than that, but I’m the one that got stuck with all the stuff like making boring judgments over the stupidest of disputes and signing all the paperwork.

After that was the reaction of me being Twilight’s boyfriend. Thankfully, no one brought out a Flash Sentry question, pretty much confirming my suspicions that Sunset was keeping quiet on the whole alternate universe that that served as a double for Equestria County, if a bit larger and more populated.

Then came time for the taking of pictures of the actual mystical creatures, Pinkie getting a selfie from Celestia’s back, me having to translate a thanks from Celestia for the help they gave to Twilight while she was in human land, and actual goodbyes that involved more hugging than I liked to admit to witnessing.

Plus, with all the emotional stuff going on, I felt like I was walking into the sixth Star Wars without seeing the fifth. I mean, Han and Leia a couple? What about Luke? Not to mention the weirdo driving the Falcon…it was just too much for even my mind to fill in the blanks. All I really knew for sure was that Sunset was a social pariah back at the school she went to, and the HuMane Five didn't seem to be all that broken up about her leaving either.

By the time we were finally ready to go, the sun had already risen and Celestia was giving it an angry glare out of the window for how it was taking its sweet time getting into the air. Not wanting the midpoint world between human and pony to be destroyed, I managed to speed things up before she tried to help it out and either wipe out the human population by knocking Earth out of Sol’s orbit, or freak out if she learned the sun couldn’t be moved as easily as her star. The goddess was already a bit unnerved by the whole thing.

When the alicorn was building the magic in her horn to create the portal home and I was keeping an eye on Pinkie to make sure she didn’t try running through, Rarity chose that last moment to interrupt us. “And…you’re sure we can keep the horseshoes?”

“We don’t put as much value on stuff like gold and gems as humans do Rarity,” Sunset told her. “The princess said you deserved a rewards and…well, now you don’t have to worry about paying for college.”

The fashionista let out a sigh and shook her head. “I can’t believe that I’m actually going to miss the person who went out of the way to destroy our social lives from the day we first met but…you really have turned out to be an okay girl. You know, espite the whole demonic rampage thing where you tried to kill us.”

Which put her about on equal level with Diamond Tiara when it came to the pony level of morality.

“What do you want us to tell your foster parents?” Fluttershy asked.

Sunset just let out a single laugh. “Are you kidding? Ten bucks says they won’t even notice I’m gone for at least a week. How those two ever got approved is beyond me.”

I snorted. “I’m kind of wondering how you got into the system in the first place.” As far as I knew, foster care wasn’t supposed to last for several years, just until a kid’s parents that were under arrest or something could get worked through the system.”

“Oh that…I just told the police officers who found me squatting in the park my parents had run off and I didn’t know where they were,” she said with a shrug. “They’re still missing so...here I am. To be honest, I think there's also some kind of chameleon effect that goes along with the body transformation that keeps people from asking too many questions."

Celestia looked back to the former-unicorn. “Have you said your goodbyes?”

A nod from Sunset was all the goddess needed to release the magic she had been gathering as she tore a hole in reality before walking through. Sunset followed her, and I dived in after them before using a spell to stick the feet of the girls to the ground and insure no one else ran through at the last second.

The last thing Equestria needed was two Pinkie Pies.

The trip home to Equestria was much worse than the first time. Where before it felt as if I was being sent down a giant whirlpool in the middle of an ocean, this the second time gave me the same amount of nausea, followed by a hard yank and a feeling of being stretched think like a rubber band. Then the tension released, and I found myself slamming onto a cold floor that was much too hard to be wood with an aching everything thanks to the hard impact.

After checking to make sure I was still alive, I looked up and saw something beyond disturbing. For starters, I wasn’t in Celestia’s vault where she kept dimensional traveling mirror #1.

In fact, I had no idea where I was.

The sky was an unnaturally dark blue, not quite nighttime but nowhere near day either. And the whole place was covered with a light fog. Then there was the air, it was stale and full of so much dust I felt like half of what I breathed in was just floating dirt particles. The last thing I noticed that was off wasn’t really anything physical, but my magical senses made me feel like there was a weight behind pressed down on my horn, like someone had put me in the unicorn version of a headlock or something. It was annoying as hell.

Then there was the landscape. I was in an old city, standing in the middle of a stone walkway that was probably a main street or something judging by the fact it had enough width to be a four lane highway. On both sides of the road there were dilapidated houses made of stone and shingled roofs in need of repair. I could see the outline of towers in the distance through the fog, but they seemed weird, with twisted spires on the top of them that hung slightly askew. Some of the towers themselves seemed to even be leaning slightly the higher up they went.

The sound of a hoof striking the ground near me brought my attention back down to earth, and I looked over Celestia as she slowly stood up to twice my height and walked over to check on me. Usually, being so close to her was a little intimidating for me, but having the giant goddess of the sun with me in whatever the hell we were now just helped to calm my nerves. “Hey Tia, I knew the trip to Earthquestria was supposed to just drop us off anywhere, but…weren’t we supposed to come out of a mirror or something on the way home?”

A golden light illuminated the courtyard where we were in, and I had to look away from the alicorn’s horn to get my sight back. “Something went wrong with the return spell,” she mumbled.

“Was it our extra passenger?” I asked before I looked around and found Sunset laying on the ground behind us. The girl was…a redheaded girl in a leather jacket and crappy boots. As in, not a pony, much less a unicorn. I fought down my shock thanks mostly to our situation saying that I didn't have time to freak about about things, and just stated the obvious. “Oh, that’s not good.”

“No, it felt more like somepony pulled us to-” Celestia turned and gasped, then ran to touch the girl with her horn. A second later, an intense glow intensified and I felt the telltale tingling of magic being cast. I winced in sympathy. If I had taken a nasty fall, Sunset was probably lucky not to have broken bones protruding from her body. Although, I wondered what kind of magic Celestia used on her, as my limited knowledge of how healing magic worked said you had to know a few things about basic anatomy of what you were healing, or had some kind of previous healing magic to use as a road map like when Tia kept me from dying in the arctic. Sunset fit neither of those criteria.

Whatever spell was cast on the girl, it did the job of waking her up. “Ugh my head. What hit…” Sunset stopped as she pushed herself up with her hands, then probably noticed the sensation of still having her digits. “What… Why am I still human?”

As Celestia recoiled from the panic in the girl’s voice and face, I looked over to her and did my best to sound reassuring. “Well, we didn’t come through a magical mirror, so I’m guessing the spells keeping you human and speaking…their main language are still active.”

She let out a long sigh, then stood up hesitantly. “Okay…I guess…that makes sense. But…where are we then?”

Celestia’s horn glowed brighter for a moment as she closed her eyes in concentration. A minute later, she opened them to frown at the sky. “I can not feel the sun. Something has happened to block our path to Equestria.”

“Then just open another portal and let’s get out of here!”

Sunset’s angry comment got a confused glare from Celestia, until I translated it for her. Then she sighed and shook her head. “What do you think I just tried to do, my wayward apprentice?”

A chill ran down my spine a I digested Celestia’s words. I did not like the conclusion I came up with. “Are you saying we’re stuck here? And for that matter, where the hay is here? I don’t know how this dimensional travel stuff works, but I sincerely doubt a realm just…moves through whatever the hell you call the space between worlds.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when she shook her head in response to my first question. “You must feel the oppressive aura of this place as well. That is what disrupts my spell, we should find the source and see if we can counter it, or remove ourselves from the range of its influence.”

I looked around at the city, surrounding us, then back over to the alicorn. “Tia, we just landed on a whole new planet. Who the hay’s to say what we’re looking for isn’t on the other side of the globe.”

If there even was another side to the planet we had ended up on. Hell, considering how some things worked in ponyland, I wasn’t even sure if the planet Equestria was on was even round! Take that Columbus, and every other guy who figured out the world was a sphere centuries before he was even born!

“Planet?” Celestia asked. “Fairy, do you not feel the lack of life and harmony around us? This city is floating through the void between words.”

Then my crazy human science reared it’s ugly head and told me how bad it was that we were pretty much standing inside an abandoned sixteenth century city that was floating in space! But my knowledge of the arcane quickly replied no, for we were standing inside an abandoned sixteenth century city that was floating in magical space! Which was much worse as far as science was concerned.

“Well, I suppose it couldn’t get any worse.”

And of course, my comment made things worse.

In fact, it made things worse, in the most ironically bad kind worse way possible. Which was worse on so many levels than simply making things a normal kind of worse, because it not only made things worse, but it did it in a way that made me want to face hoof and shoot myself.

You see, about two seconds after I finished speaking, me and Tia caught the sound of several footsteps coming towards us from the mass of ruined buildings on the left side of the street. Not long after that, a group of bad guys from the set of Star Wars VI came from between the alleys.

Yeah…Star Wars.

It wasn’t the cool ones though, or even storm troopers. No high tech weapons either. They looked like those pig things from Jabba’s palace, the big green minions that Luke Vader-choked on his way into the place, I think they were called gamorreans.

What made it really bad was that they weren’t even good looking gamorreans. The guys at Jabba’s palace may have been fat walking pigs, but it at least looked like they had some muscle on them with their thick arms.

The things walking out from the alleyway had the large belly and huge jaw, but none of the muscle, and their coloring was wrong. They came in gray, tan, dark tan and several shades of brown, but no greens. All in all, they looked pretty pathetic in their short vests and horned helmets except for their spears with the wicked-looking serpentine blades at the end that I could feel tingling with magic. Those actually looked like they could hurt.

Soon as they saw us, the lot of them grunted in pig squeal, and pointed their spears before they advanced. Then they spread out to partially surround us. A second later, I heard footsteps approaching from the other end of the street and even more gamorrean rip-offs came pouring out, making it about twenty odd pig-men with large jaws.

It took me about a second to consider my options. Although I had fed off Celestia earlier, it had just been a snack to tide me over, and the alicorn hadn’t even had that much power herself at the time. With the magical field of the city pressing down on me too, I had a feeling that Rarity probably would have been more useful in a fight than me at the moment.

Then there was Sunset, who was currently a squishy little human that a unicorn could probably outdo in a contest of strength. She needed even more protection than I did.

As for our third member…she was a nearly omnipotent sun goddess who could crush anything short of a fellow deity beneath her hoof. So I wasn’t too ashamed to back up close to the protective deity and wished I had some popcorn to watch her go to town on these losers.

“Okay Tia, thanks for letting me lead in the human world and all, but considering you’re the real dimensional traveling expert here, I think it’s best if you take the lead and do something about our situation,” I told her as the pig-men closed in.

Celestia nodded. “Very well,” the all mighty goddess said before she looked at the small mob that dared to threaten her little ponies with a dispassionate gaze. “I’ll need you to follow my lead exactly to ensure both your and Sunset’s safety.”

We both nodded our compliance, and I had to resist the urge to dance in joy.

Since there were no ponies besides myself and Sunset around, there were no reasons for her to hold back. I was almost gleeful at the thought of finally seeing Celestia, the guardian deity of Equestria, Princess of the Sun cut loose on some bad guys!

Then, the great and powerful goddess sat down, and put her hooves up in a universal sign. “We surrender.”

Both me and Sunset just stared at the sight.

“…DO SOMETHING ELSE!”

Chapter 10: My Little Odyssey’s Layover

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“You know, ever since the whole pony thing started, tons of guys from my home had wondered just what Celestia could do when the chips were down. Goddess of the Sun, ponies using her name like a curse, had some sort of limited all-knowingness, every creature from my neck of the woods figured she must be some all-powerful magical alicorn who could do anything she wanted with a flash of her horn.

“Then comes the wedding, and she gets knocked on her sorry plot! But what do we do? Make excuses! Oh, she was tired from raising the moon for so many years. Celestia threw the fight because she wanted Twilight to use the Elements. No wait! She didn’t want to hurt any of her little ponies so she held back too much!

“But now that she gets her big chance to show off her awesome power with no innocent bystanders around…SHE JUST UP AND SURRENDERS! Good job Tia!”

Sunset groaned and looked ahead at her mentor. “Is he always like this?” I decided not to translate her words for Celestia to understand. Which of course got me a glare from the human, but if Red was siding with Sunbutt, then there was no way I was going to let her in on the conversation.

Hell, I had half a mind to just tell Tia the girl was on my side.

As for the alicorn, she remained silent as the fat but thinly muscled pig-men who looked like the some Star Wars extra alien rejects continued to move us through the perpetually dark and gloomy city that consisted of little more than crumbling houses and towers that looked ready to fall over depending on how high they were. Some even had the top two or three floors built bigger than the several below it, actually creating a top-heavy tower. The whole damn place looked structurally unsound and I was a little worried it would collapse in on us at any moment.

Then there was the atmosphere, and by that I’m not talking about the ambiance, although the fog and leaning buildings did make everything kind of creepy. The very air pressed down on me with an oppressive aura of magic that seemed to just disagree with my presence. It wasn’t outright draining my strength, but it did feel as if I was at the deep end of a very big pool and all that water was pressing down on me. I didn’t need a doctorate in magical stuff to know it was going to interfere with everything from blowing holes in pig-men to flying when it came time for the big fight scene.

But of course, no twisted city of gloom and doom was complete without its big scary castle. Like everything else in the fog filled city of freakiness, whatever kind of play-dough had been used to construct the thing had become warped over time. The walls curved outward at the top, creating a bit of a of looming presence that made the whole thing a little extra creepy with its bent towers and eternal fog. When it came to the actual body of castle itself, the fortification looked like a box of a keep with a tower on every corner, with a fifth, shorter one sticking up in the very center of the square castle. Like everything else in the town, the little castle was also warped in an impossible way. Some parts of the wall bulged outwards, while others sunk in.

When we came closer to the castle and made our way through the outer wall, the mighty alicorn made her move!

She looked up at the castle and let out a thoughtful 'hmmm'.

Then she continued on her way when one of the pig-men slapped her on the rear with his magical pointy stick with its serpentine-bladed spear at the end and grunted at us in a language I didn’t understand. But instead of crushing his skull with her hoof in response, the guardian deity of Equestria just went and moved on, ushering us to come with her.

It was when we got right outside the gates of the castle that our little group finally had some tiny bit of Equestrian normalcy. Which meant it was still pretty weird, but it was the familiar kind of weird that I had been dealing with ever since meeting Twilight Sparkle. Now, it took Star Wars extras dressed in ye olde renaissance fair garb to give me that kind of vibe.

A donkey with a belt wrapped around his barrel that had gave my horn a tingling sensation when I looked at it and a light brown old-timey hooded cap that was a shade lighter than his coat and covered his neck came out from the castle’s outer wall. Although I hadn’t seen much of the other dominate quadruped species of Equestria, the jackass was a lot younger than Cranky Doodle, and in much better shape. He took a look around, then headed down to meet us and our captors. The pig-men to came to a stop and saluted the donkey as soon as he was within a few yards before the one in the lead grunted to him a few times in interdimensional pig-Latin.

The donkey took a quick look across our faces, then settled on Celestia. “A pony, eh?” he said in Equestrian, giving me a bit of a surprise. Although, the strange…nasally sound of his voice made me want to cringe, the fact we had found something able to talk in an understandable language seemed to be a good sign. “Never seen one as big as you before, or with wings and a horn.”

Ever the polite one, Celestia bowed her head towards the ass. “Greetings good sir. I am Princess Celestia,” she said after a moment of letting him look her over. “My companions and I were drawn to your city by accident. You see, I opened a portal home, but our path was redirected here for some odd reason that I have yet to deduce. We meant no intrusion or disrespect, and humbly ask that you allow us to leave in peace.”

A braying, and extremely annoying laugh was the opening of the talking animal’s response. “Stupid pony! All who come within the reach of Tambelon’s magic belong to Lord Grogar!” the donkey said as he looked up at Celestia. “Take the pony and the flutter-bug to the dungeon. If they are like unicorns, then they will make a fine meal for his lordship! And a human’s nimble fingers always give the master pleasure!”

As Sunset cringed at her place in the donkey’s plans, I narrowed my eyes and mentally prepared myself to take one of the guards long spears and shove it so far up the ass’s rear that it came out the other end. Bad guy status aside, the jackass was unbelievably annoying, and had just insulted Celestia. Self-righteous fatass with a penchant to ignore the plight of her subjects or not, I was the only one who got to talk like that to her and get away with it!

“Tia?” I said between clenched teeth. “Let’s-”

The alicorn swung her head around and with the look on her face. It wasn’t a glare, I could deal with those. What she gave me was a look I had encountered during my time in her care that spoke of pained concern. She didn’t even need to ask her question as she looked over to her returned charge of a human, and then back to me before shaking her head.

It shut me up harder than any angry glare promising divine wrath to all who questioned her ever could. After all, Celestia had allowed me to lead the way when we were dealing with humans without any qualms. There, I had been the expert. Here...not so much.

Now, she was asking if I would do the same for her.

So I sighed and lowered my head in compliance while Celestia went back to her conversation with the braying mule…or, donkey really. Mules were the half-breed species between ponies and donkeys. At least back on Earth, I had no idea how that kind of stuff worked in Equestria.

“He intends to make a meal of me then?” she asked in mock surprise when she looked back to the jackass. “Tell me, does your Lord Grogar consume magic, or is he a carnivore in the literal sense?”

The question about his boss made the donkey bristle in anger. “The mighty Grogar does not eat meat you fat pony!” the he berated the alicorn. “He shall devour your magic, as he has done with all unicorns who have come before!”

It was the unicorn comment that did it for me.

All of a sudden, my unease about creepy-town and our situation just clicked with an old, buried memory deep within my mind. Although the names of the boss and appearance of the minions didn’t ring any bells, I did remember an older version of My Little Pony in which the villain had kidnapped unicorns in mid-teleport, forcing them to reappear somewhere inside a creepy city that was covered in fog.

What I had didn’t paint a complete picture, but the blurred information from my childhood memories that stuck around no matter how I tried to repress them told me enough to be worried that our fearless leader seemed to think just marching up to the castle under guard was a bad idea.

But…as much as I hated to admit it…I owed Celestia. Not just for putting her trust in me when it came to our last little world, or the whole Equestria ruler thing, but because of the help she had given me when I was acting like a complete idiot a few days prior. Even if the foolish goddess declined to listen to her all-knowing advisor and turned her attention back to the donkey, I’d play her game until told to do otherwise. She hadn’t exactly done anything wrong yet so, there was no need for me to be hasty in how to handle the situation.

“Tell me then, noble page. What sort of creature is this Grogar that he would take the magic of ponies?”

That much I remembered as well. It was hard to forget one of the only two good villains in the original series. Or…third series. Okay, dating past MLP stuff really wasn’t my forte. And to be honest, I had tried to avoid even that to keep the surprises coming when it came to the show.

“You’ll find that out when he comes to feast on your magic! Troggles, take them to the dungeon!” the donkey ordered.

As the badly named troggles (you know since they didn’t really look like trolls or wore goggles) pushed us forward, I shot Tia a pleading look that begged her to take out these idiots. However, it was met with a shake of her head, followed by the alicorn motioning towards Sunset, then the spears the guards were holding.

So that’s why we’re not doing anything, I told myself as the creature behind me pushed the girl forward. Celestia was afraid of her student being caught up in any fight. Considering we were surrounded on all sides by guys with magical weapons of an unknown power and without the ability to just disappear in a flash of light, I couldn’t really fault the alicorn for her concern.

I just hoped she wasn’t trading the security of Sunset at the moment for our eventual doom.

Thankfully, the aura of oppressive magic that the city was soaked in didn’t increase upon entering the fortress, and Celestia was saved from me chewing her out for making us give up the one thing that might have been our salvation in this situation. That thing being our magic. It was a justifiable assumption really, as when Twilight told me she had confronted the Nightmare a second time during Rarity’s possession, she had found her magic unusable inside some big castle on the moon.

The castle of Grogar looked about as run down as my palace did before its reconstruction, minus the holes. Cobwebs covered nearly every space of the floor that wasn’t in ready use, and what little furniture I caught sight of was crudely fashioned from wood and looked a like bunch of rectangular pieces hammered together.

What little tour we did get ended a few minutes after we went into the castle and were hurried down an exceptionally long set of stairs, into a basement that seemed more like a cavern than anything crafted by the troggles. Our captors led us through the cave to a large wooden door with a barred slit of an opening to see through that was wide enough to drive a pair of cars through.

After slamming the door shut behind us, I heard the donkey’s voice call out from inside the non-jail cell part of the cave.“You four stand guard! I’ll go inform Lord Grogar that we have captured the new arrivals!”

As soon as our jailer turned to leave, Celestia bent down and drew me in close with a wing. “Can you mind control the donkey?” she whispered in my ear.

I considered how much the ass had run his mouth outside of the castle for a second, and weighed him on the heavy side of idiot for actually being threatening to prisoners who hadn’t been that secured all that well. My magic worked especially well on the weak-minded. “Probably.”

“Have him go to his quarters and sleep without telling his master about our capture first,” she ordered. “Make sure he does not remember us upon waking.”

The thought of just how much magic that would drain the little bit of reserve I had left made me groan, but thanks to Tia not giving me some sort of hint about her plan ahead of time so I could poke holes in it…as impossible as that was I’ll admit, I couldn’t just say no. Otherwise, our one good chance for getting out of here would fall apart.

So I jumped up to look through the barred window in the wooden door and called out to our jailer. “Hey jackass!” I shouted in anger, mostly due to getting railroaded into this whole mess.

As the aforementioned jackass turned back to look at me, I locked eyes with him and focused my will. Although we changelings could bend other beings to our will with mind magic, there were also more subtle methods that could be used when our horns weren’t an option. Being in a field that was pressing down on the my power of my horn, I thought it better to get the target in close range by using something else.

That something else being the pegasus ability to influence others with magic that traveled along one of the five senses. Fluttershy did it via sight when she used the Stare on whatever pissed her off like a dragon or cockatrice, and Rainbow had a lesser version when she got overly enthused about something and managed to talk other ponies into pretty much going along with whatever crazy scheme got into her head be it flying in a tornado, stalking Daring Do, or joining up with a pirate.

Unlike Dash though, I actually knew what I was doing, and could control it a hell of a lot better than Fluttershy. Crap like that was a changeling’s talent after all, or part of it anyway; shape shifting was in there somewhere too. Unfortunately, since the donkey wasn’t my friend and didn’t trust me on some deeper level, I would have to use outright commands rather than suggestions. Basically going full on Fluttershy rather than Rainbowing it. That took a lot more power since I would have to suppress his free will just about all the way.

“Come here for a second, I need to ask you something.”

The donkey peered at me for a moment and I could practically see the hypnotic effect work its way through his head. It wasn’t true mind control, not yet anyway, but the demand had been there. But it also had a reason to help get it through to the jackass. First he then grumbled something to himself, but a second later, he was walking closer.

He got up right in front of the bars, and then stopped. “What?”

Hesitation froze me a moment as I tried to calculate how much energy this would take when stacked up against my reserves. Thanks to my little stunt of idiocy back in Equestria, I hadn’t had a real meal in quite some time, and burnt up the vast majority of what power was available to me during my time in Earthquestria. As things were, I had about enough magic to get through a weekend, provided I did nothing overly strenuous.

Unfortunately, mind control wasn’t the cheapest move in my arsenal, and the position I was in made it even harder. While I still had enough love juice to mind warp any idiot under normal circumstances, I really didn’t know how badly the city’s anti-magic field would hamper my powers. Plus, I had to leave enough magic in his brain to wipe the short-term memories upon sleeping. Couldn't forget that extra charge.

If I didn’t use enough, the donkey would either throw off my compulsion completely, or at least remember bits and pieces enough to act suspicious and that would alert others that something was up.

However, magical exhaustion wasn’t anything for a changeling to sneeze at either. While an alicorn or unicorn could let their mana pool run dry every now and again, they could still refill it naturally as long as the core of their magic was still intact and they got plenty of food. Changelings didn’t have that kind of option since magic, energy and the life force of our prey fueled both our magic and bodies.

But, if I messed up with the donkey…whatever plan Tia had brewing was going to fall apart.

So I decided to go the safe route in the case of the donkey and use excessive mental domination, putting the changeling personal health thing on the route that went over the rickety bridge while crossing the chasm of doom. While such a thing had all kinds of hazards in the way of brain damage to the victim, or a kind of Zombie Armor syndrome like when Mom was shacking up with Twilight’s brother (which was kind of creepy when I really thought about it considering who I was dating now) I really couldn’t risk the mental domination up and failing on us with the situation we were in.

I focused my magic and poured as much as I could into the jackass; doing my best to hold back the tiniest drop of power I could to keep me going. The restrictive air of Tambelon made me use about three times as much as normal to open the creature’s mind to my suggestions. “Go to your room and fall asleep,” I ordered the donkey as softly as I dared. I didn’t need to add the command to forget he saw us, the amount of mental magic placed on the creature would cause enough brain damage for that by itself.

Right after I had finished the magic, strength that had been in my forelegs a moment ago just up and vanished. Exhaustion made me break the mental link, and I was glad I had needed to stand up in order to see through the door’s opening, as the support it provided kept me from falling over while my traitorous hind legs trembled beneath me.

For a moment I just stood there on my shaky hind legs, glaring at the jackass and ignoring the spots dancing on the edge of my vision, wondering if it had worked. A few seconds later, Jackass’s eyes glazed over and his head became a little wavy. “Oh…okay,” he said while swaying around a bit.

As my mind slave turned around and made his way out, I stumbled away from the door. The room spun, and I began to think that I might have used up just a little too much of my energy reserves when the black spots on the edge of my vision became more like a creeping darkness that made me feel like I was looking through a tunnel.

“Good, now take his-Fairy?” Celestia managed to get out before my legs buckled.

“Um…is he okay?” I heard Sunset’s voice kind of fade before the world tilted, and I found myself laying on my side.

“OMNIFARIOUS!” Tia’s voice rang in my ears before the world spun around again and I found myself looking into the pink eyes of the alicorn. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

At least I thought they were her eyes. Everything had become a bit blurry by that point.

I moaned and tried to focus my thoughts as I tried to answer that question for myself. What came to mind was not good. As beings that feed on energy that we use in our magic, changelings always have to maintain a set reserve like humans when it comes to food. However, unlike humans and every other natural animal out there, changelings could consciously tap into that food source and use it for other things like magic. On top of which, since physical sustenance was pretty much useless to us aside from a bit of water every now and then, that energy was the only thing that kept us going. There was not a bit of fat or muscle that a changeling’s body could feed off of in the case of a dire emergency like animals could.

“…fari…”

Well that was stupid, I told myself in regards to expending so much of my magic while fighting to stay conscious.

At least, I hoped I was just fighting to stay conscious. I never really did get around to asking the hive mind just what happened when a changeling hit E on the gas meter. Although…if I did go under, there was no way for me to actually feed. Which meant no way to get back up, which meant I’d either spend the rest of my life unconscious…

“…me…”

Well, okay, changelings didn’t really go unconscious, more than likely I was simply losing the ability to see because I didn’t have enough mystical energy to keep my eyes working.

“…eed…”

Which was a hell of a lot worse really. Being trapped in an infinite darkness was not my idea of how to spend any amount of time.

“I’m…”

Death was always another possibility. For some strange reason, I found myself wondering what the hive would do once they figured out I was dead. Without a single voice to guide them, the lot of them could very well descend into anarchy, and either go crazy before attacking the countryside, or even try and create a new queen somehow…or several queens that would fight over leadership until the most militant and nastiest of them came out on top.

“…try…”

Then they’d attack Equestria.

Strangely, that realization actually frightened me more than death.

“…thing…”

As everything went black, I found myself worrying about Twilight.

But before I could get further than visualizing a crying girl, hunched over with tears falling from her eyes, the world exploded in a painful burning sensation. And by burning, I don’t mean itchy rash or skin irritation, I mean blazing, cook your meals and turn your skin into a charred husk fire kind of burning. Out of instinct and a fear of well…I had just thought I died, so Hellfire kind of came to mind what with the premarital sex with a pony and all lying, buffalo murder, kidnapping and all that other stuff. I pushed it away out of instinct with everything I could muster.

There was a bestial scream, which was followed by the sound of an impact as the world jolted back into focus and I heard a much more human-sounding yell of “CELESTIA!” before my eyes kicked back on with the rest of me, and I caught sight of the alicorn falling from the ceiling to impact the ground.

The hell just happened? I managed to wonder before I got to my feet feeling better than I had since coming into town, fully alert.

A bout of awareness flashed through my head, about how worried Celestia had been a moment ago, a rush of panic and terror of having to tell Twilight what had happened if I didn’t make it back, as well as the crushing sadness of one of the few beings she could actually consider anything more than a brief acquaintance actually dying in front of her after getting to know him.

A faint ember of energy sent a pulse of magic through my body, and the realization of what had happened hit me like a hammer. Celestia had given me some of her magic. A piece of pure magic from the very core of her being, without the emotional conduit that changeling’s usually used to scrape and tear the stuff that floated near a pony’s surface. I knew enough about mystical energy transferals from my implanted changeling knowledge that such an act was intimate in the extreme and once removed, was not easily regained.

Hell, I had experienced something close to it before was when I had fed so heavily on a buffalo during my first day as a changeling that it keeled over and died a few days later while inside a changeling feeding cocoon from the loss of energy. But even that had only torn at his core and damaged it so much he died from the shock and loss of life force.

What Celestia had done was more akin to taking a tiny piece of her very soul and placing it inside of me.

“What the hell did you do?” the human demanded as she glared at me.

I tried to clear my head of the shock, but I couldn’t help but look inward and feel the tiny star of power inside me that refused to be eaten away as quickly as my normal meal so much so that it was actually producing its own magic, or to be more precise, drawing power from the alicorn that it had come from. It was a tiny trickle of power, but it was easily noticeable to something like me.

An instant later, I was beside Celestia, and much to my surprise, Sunset drew closer to her as well. But the girl kept a good distance from me. Although the touch of my body was far from comfortable, I ran what passed for a changeling’s hooves across the alicorn’s neck to check for any signs of damage.

What I got was a lot more reassuring. Celestia lifted her head up and smiled. “I am fine you two, if a bit dazed,” she assured me before I…felt the truth of her statement in the tiny spark of magic that was inside of me.

Relief flood through my body, and Celestia’s eyes widened. “Well…that is…unexpected,” she said before looking me up and down. “But I appreciate that you care for me so much my friend. To be honest, I was starting to think any concern for me was based off what Twilight would say upon our return.”

I gave the alicorn a cautious stare. Had she just…

“What are you two talking about?” Sunset asked.

Celestia looked to me for a quick translation, then regarded the human with a cool gaze. “I gave Omnifarious a piece of my core magic to serve as a grounding point for a mystical link between the two of us when he was unresponsive to my commands for him to feed off me again,” she explained simply. “Although since we missed our opportunity to impersonate the captain of this palace’s guard, another method for escape will have to be devised.”

The rather idiotic plan that Tia had come up with for circumventing the castle’s outer defenses by pretending to be caught and led into the dungeon made me groan. “Celestia, the guards outside saw us come in and the donkey leave, there’s no way they would have thought I was him.”

“Those wouldn’t have, but the replacements that came upon their shift change wouldn’t have been aware of such an action and the cell is more than large enough to hide our presence,” she added. “These troggle creatures seem rather dim-witted.”

That point, I had to give her. Still, there were plenty of holes in the alicorn’s strategy; like the amount of time a shift-change would have taken. Considering the fact that we weren’t in Equestria at the moment, I wasn’t going to put my trust in karmic coincidence that seemed to let Celestia’s cockamamie schemes go through without any of the girls getting killed. “Why bother? The doors made of wood and you can still use magic. You can easily knock it open and take out the guards.”

“With the donkey’s stolen form, we could have easily made our way through this place, if not under your guard, then with you wandering ahead to make sure the way was clear. Now, searching for the source of the disruption field and deactivated it before heading home will be a bit more difficult,” the alicorn continued. “As things stand, it appears we will have to resort to more violent methods. Once I take a moment to rest anyway…I’m afraid your reaction to my mystical link caught me off guard and I need a few minutes to recover. We should have at least that much time. We also need to plan our next move. Unfortunately, our jailer was less than forthcoming out this Lord Grogar, or his capabilities.”

As soon as Celestia had stopped talking and rested her head on the ground, an internal debate began in my head. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but…considering who I was locked up with…the similarities were just too many not to tell them about the thoughts that had been on my mind since the donkey had run his mouth.

Despite her aching head, Celestia looked back up to me. “Is something wrong? You seem apprehensive.”

I opened my mouth to explain, and stopped. Another bit of concern sprang from the alicorn, and I frowned at the feeling.

While changelings had the ability to sense emotions, it was an ability we had to consciously activate, like someone inhaling the scent of their dinner to see if it smelled right. Although the magic that created my pseudo-pony form messed with my senses and left it on all the time, I was a normal changing monarch at the moment. And the sense of knowing Tia’s emotions wasn’t like what I got from when I went sniffing around.

The alicorn’s spark of magic inside me pulsed, and I gulped.

Out of curiosity, I used my mystical senses to touch the tiny flame that Celestia placed inside of me and…my eyes widened as I felt myself aware of her. It went beyond a simple ability to judge emotions based on a sixth sense. The bit of herself Celestia had placed inside of me was like a mental mirror image of the alicorn standing on the outside of my body; and one that I was fully aware of.

I knew she was concerned for Sunset, not just her physical well being, but also for her mental state and what the girl must think if the alicorn after being separated for so long. I knew she was experiencing a terrible headache thanks to being thrown off of me moments ago, and…the number of revelations about her at the moment when she touched me with her magic simply kept coming. But it went beyond simple awareness of the psyche and old thoughts. I could feel a…connection with the alicorn, one in which her magic flowed along and into me as well.

Considering the connection, I had to wonder if she was so aware of me as well. Hell, considering that it was just a little piece of her inside my entire being, I had to ask myself if she was completely aware of me instead of the little bit of knowledge I gleaned from her.

One problem at a time, I told myself. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t just give the alicorn back her magic once we were done. There were bigger problems on my plate at the moment.

“Grogar is a blue ram with glowing red eyes and a bell around his neck that has something to do with a bigger bell hidden somewhere within the city,” I told her “Or maybe his castle, it’s been awhile since I saw the story that featured this place.” Hell, it had been years, and I only watched it since there had been nothing on at the time.

But of course, me just blurting out that information only led to Tia giving me an odd look, and Sunset raising an eyebrow.

“How do you know of this Grogar creature? I thought your knowledge of pones was based off the multi-universal and dimensional bleeding effect theory,” the alicorn asked as I a bit of curiosity and a shiver of discomfort ran through her body. Although, I could tell it had more to do with memories than our current situation thanks to the whisper of awareness I had about her ridding shotgun in my soul.

Apparently, the scientific talk about magical theory perked Sunset’s interest, as she jumped into the conversation with a hesitant, but curious look. “Dimensional bleeding? What the hell is that?”

I looked over to her and raised an eyebrow. “What? You thought that every dimension had a Canterlot with a Celestia doing something just...because? I don’t really get it myself, but…apparently, based on proximity each dimension has to each other in…quasi-space…”

“Quasi-space?” Celestia asked with a raised eyebrow.

The alicorn’s expression got a frown out of me. “What what would you call the place between dimensions?” I asked rhetorically. “Where I come from the universe is supposed to be infinite, now I find there’s whole new realities and junk outside of an unlimited area? Then, to top it off, there’s apparently empty space between them. How the hay do you exit an infinite universe and end up in a place between universes? Does this place even have physical laws? How the buck are we breathing? Even if there’s an atmosphere, I haven’t seen any plants! Where’s the oxygen coming from?" I said as I built to the big question about life the universe and how fucked up everything in Equestria was.

“Every natural law of reality I know, even the stuff that Equestria has to follow, like how you need air to breathe, just got left behind when we got here! Not to men-mmmph!”

I looked down at the golden glow of energy surrounding my mouth, then up to Celestia. The alicorn gave me a sympathetic smile, and I found myself calming down from the rush of panic that had gone through my body just from the alicorn’s reassuring presence.

As my heartbeat slowly returned to normal, Celestia looked back to Sunset. “Basically, the closer each realm, dimension, universe, and whatnot are in…quasi-space, the more they resemble each other,” she said taking up the explanation before turning to me. “While the world you entered was an odd human counterpart to Equestria, the world that Omnifarious hails form thinks of us as little more than tales for foals meant to teach morality.”

The explanation wasn’t a lie, but not quite the whole truth either. I was just glad Celestia had decided to go with that route without trying to explaining everything to Sunset. She actually had the technical knowledge to get such things.

Then Celestia regarded me again. “But that still doesn’t explain how you know of Grogar.”

I groaned and sank in on myself. Just because I was talking to a pony princess didn’t mean I liked to talk about this kind of crap out loud. “We just went to a world populated by humans, so don’t you think there’s another pony world floating out there with its own problems worth checking out?

“The…story,” I continued before looking over to Sunset out of the corner of my eye. You know what? I asked myself, screw it. The pony I was worried about upsetting with the cartoon universe information was Twilight Sparkle. I felt sorry for Sunset and all, but considering the pig-men, we were kind of on the clock here with an unknown timer ticking down until one of the underlings actually took a little initiative and told the boss monster we had been captured, I didn’t have time to come up with a nice little back story about how I knew what I knew.

“The show I saw was displayed at the very early hours of the morning when there was nothing else on and nothing to do before it was time to leave for school…or maybe it was only on the weekends, and I was just waiting for the entertaining stuff to come on. I was only about seven or eight, so I can’t really remember it that well. But one of the stories that halfway stuck with me was about a dark city run my a monster goat creature that wore a bell around its neck and abducted unicorns when they tried to teleport.”

I groaned as I tried my best to try and recall everything I could about Tambelon; which I had thought was pronounced Tam-ber-on before the jackass went on about kidnapping unicorns. “Or maybe it was a big bell in a tower…there was something about that too,” I mumbled while rubbing my head with my hoof. “But I don’t remember anything about the troggles, or a stupid donkey, or anything about how they beat him. Hay, I could barely remember the goat at all, much less his name.”

Sunset took it about as well as a person could expect. She cocked an eyebrow and stared at me. “You make it sound like a…television show.”

“It came on one of the stations that ran shows for…foals in the mornings,” I explained evenly while trying to find the proper words in Equestrian. Thankfully, trains had stations in Equestria.

Apparently, Sunset was made of tougher stuff than I thought Twilight was, as she just gave me a disgruntled look and crossed her arms. “Well…this certainly raises some interesting questions about the nature of reality,” the pony turned human mumbled to herself as she leaned against the wall and slowly lowered herself to the floor of the cave. “How many other places like Equestria have there been? Or at least, how many have you seen? And are they all alike? The world I was in had another Celestia and Luna...is there another me out there somewhere? A dozen me? A million?”

As Sunset sat there with her arms crossed, I could almost see how she had been Celestia’s student. She wasn’t as excited about knowledge as Twilight, but did seem to be about as inquisitive in her own way. Hers was a questioning mind that seemed tempered a bit by age…and perhaps the incident that got her kicked out from Celestia’s tutelage in the first place.

Celestia cleared her throat and drew our attention. “Considering the half of this conversation I can understand, I believe we can address such things when we are in a better location,” she said before looking over to me. “And your information is helpful Omnifarious.”

The use of my full name made me tense. Tia only said that kind of stuff when she was trying to convey just how serious she was about something. Usually, she teased me with the girliest version of the name Chrysalis gave me Pinkie could come up with.

“Okay, but…how accurate is it?” I asked.

“It makes sense with everything else I know,” she continued. “Unicorns carry their magic close to the surface of their being. Thus, it is the easiest for other creatures to take so it makes sense that he would go after them. And I did detect the center of this place’s mystical field that is pressing down on our magic was located somewhere in this fortress. Although, your information about the master of this place wearing a bell suggests he either controls the field with it, or it acts as a focus for this Grogar to draw from it.”

I nodded, acting like I understood a bit of what she was saying. “So what’s the plan?”

Celestia took a few more moments to think, but it was Sunset who spoke first. “Well, if this place does have some kind of magical gravity well that draws teleporters and other means of travel to it, then we can’t just run away. We’ll have to shut it down somehow.”

Once I had relayed the translation to the princess, she nodded. “Agreed, but the question is how. I am nowhere near my full strength, and we have lost our chance to move through this castle unmolested.”

I thought to the magical pressure pushing down on me. “Can we locate it by using the field somehow? Try moving to where it’s more powerful? And can we even fight in this?”

The question got an interjection from Sunset in way of a 'not if the field is spread evenly' which I once again had to relay to Celestia before she explained out magical predicament and added, “against a normal unicorn, I wouldn’t be surprised if the magic of this place left them powerless. However, we are far stronger than your average unicorn…most of the time."

As she looked at me, I could tell the comment wasn’t meant to be snarky, but was made out of concern. Celestia was worried about me now, on top of her concern for Sunset, and with good reason.

I had forgotten to factor in the field when figuring how much power to use in controlling the donkey. Once I had drained myself in this environment, everything came crashing down when I realized I didn’t have the power to keep myself going.

“So…any ideas my friend?”

With the ancient goddess asking me a question on…okay, the fact that Celestia was asking me what we should do was just freaking weird that I just stood there looking at her in confusion. “Um…why are you asking me?”

A sigh and a headshake at the ground just made me even more lost. “Right, you’ve only seen things from Twilight’s perspective,” she mumbled before looking at me again. “Considering you came up with a plan that would have crippled Equestria had you bothered to go through with it, and managed to make two armies sit around and do nothing while Luna and I walked into our enemy’s stronghold, to retrieve Cadence and Twilight, combined with the fact that you’re the only one of us who knows anything about our opponent, I think you can come up with a few ideas on how to get out of our current predicament better than I.”

Sunset looked over to me with a raised eyebrow. “Wait…you tried to conquer Equestria?”

I shrugged. “It’s kind of a requirement for getting on Tia’s good side these days.” Memories of Discord being an ass and the alicorn doing nothing ran through my head, but I kept my trademark hatred for the snake with legs down. “If you want to join the club, you’ll have to ask Luna though, I’m just vice chairmare.”

With the joking done, I tried to focus and put my attention on Tia. “Well, you got us past the guards and may have bought us an hour or two before Grogar knows we’re here,” I admitted while sitting down to think.

Escaping the dungeon wouldn’t be hard, Tia could easily just kick the damn door down. Hell, she probably didn’t even need to use her horn. The giant pony’s physical strength could shatter boulders when she needed it to. And the realization of that piece of information came from my head Tia kind of creeped me out.

Still, I managed to focus my mind on the task at hand. That meant devising a solution to our problems. For that, I needed answers to two very big questions. Those big questions were: just how powerful was Grogar, and how many toggles did he have serving under him?

In a perfect world, another group of ponies would have come along to provide a distraction outside of the city to draw some of the troops away and give us time to…okay, in a perfect world they would just show up and do all the work for us. So I needed to focus on the real situation, and what we had to work with.

I thought back to the moment we first arrived in this place, replaying in my head as best I could. For some reason, things were a lot...clearer that I had thought they would be. While my memory was a sort step of photographic for stuff i paid attention to with the intention of remembering, everyday sights were not nearly as crisp.

Tia’s spark drew my attention again, and I found myself wondering if she was the cause before refocusing my mind on the task at hand. If it had somehow improved my memory, or overlayed it with Celestia’s own recollections of what happened, all the better.

I remembered the state of things when we first arrived in Tambelon. The place was an empty, decaying ruin. We had walked down the main street and right up into the castle without seeing a single sign of life. Even some of the streets had been covered in an unused layer of dust while the one we walked on left a trail in our wake. Ergo, the town was probably empty, and had been for some time.

The state of the castle itself was also worth noting. Poor construction was one of its problems, but the fact that it was overrun with filth in many areas but much clear in the used sections was more telling.

Then there was what Celestia had said about not sensing the sun. So sunlight meant no crops. None of the natural variety at least, there were ways to induce the growth of food via magic, but such a process was more of a pain than it was worth.

The conclusions those facts pointed to made me a little hopeful for our chances.

Then there was us.

For starters, we were currently constrained in a poorly constructed containment that consisted of little more than rock and wood. So escape was easy. While the magic field that surrounding the city might have stopped a normal unicorn’s magic, Celestia had said she could overpower it easily enough.

Hell, I had just done that very thing moments before. I also learned just how much extra power it took, and Celestia hadn’t fully recovered from our time together. To top it off, she was feeding me a trickle of her magic to keep me from passing out again. With the weird mystical link it had established, I could tell she was about at half strength, although the magic of the city would hamper any magic she tried to use and thus cut the amount of fuel she had down even further to about a quarter if she compensated for it.

As for Sunset…I had no idea. She didn’t have magic or a pony’s...anything really, but...just casting aside any potential usefulness of the human was just plain stupid without at least looking first.

I turned to the human and frowned. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything useful in that jacket of yours?” I asked. “Like a…fire arm?” The word ‘gun’ being unknown in Equestrian and all that.

“Oh yes, I planned on my trip back to Equestria to be interrupted by some kind of interdimensional kidnapper, so I came prepared,” she told me in a sarcastic tone before she reached into her jacket to pull out her iphone and just jiggled it in her hand. “I’ve also got some homemade lock picks, but considering how old this place is, I seriously doubt they’re going to be good for any of the locks that we find.”

The ‘magical brick’ in Sunset’s hand held my attention for a good fifteen seconds as an idea popped into my head and I looked over to run it by the alicorn. “Hey Tia, can you enchant stuff?”

Chapter 11: My Little Odyssey’s Battleground

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With our plan ready and everything all planned out in the most haphazard and vague way that barely made our plan a plan at all and more of a guideline that didn't even seem like a smart idea to follow, we began phase one of the plan: getting out of our dull surroundings. Which they were. I mean, it was a dark cave with almost no light and a big wooden door.

Now, earth ponies are known for two things: just ‘knowing’ how to make food better than any other member of the pony race all the way from the very beginning when the actually have to grow the food to cooking it, and their strength. In the few times that I have hung out with her, I’ve seen AJ knock down trees and smash rocks with her hind legs like it was nothing, never mind the stamina she had that enabled her to go all day long with no problem.

And no, that wasn’t a sex joke. I do not recall having any type of sexual relations with that mare.

But Celestia wasn’t Applejack, and just being an alicorn didn’t translate to having superior strength. After all, Rainbow Dash could still outwrestle Twilight, as I had learned after kind of asking the purple alicorn just how strong she was and got RD’s competitive nature going along Twilight’s inquisitive one. When those two things combined, it was frightening to behind. After losing in every contest of strength from hoof wrestling to weight lifting to a pegasus, Twilight was forced to conclude that just getting some earth ponyness didn’t make her a world class weightlifter.

However, the sun goddess was not Twilight Sparkle. Celestia was a being that counted her age in millennia and had worked hard in the past to carve out a safe haven for her little ponies in a place with so many problems in ye olden days she needed to create her own personal Hell just to hold them all. On top of which, she had more than three times Applejack’s weight, and although all the cake she ate went straight to her flank, the rest of her body was in top physical condition for a creature of her size. Meaning she could have hoof wrestled the biggest stallion in Ponyville, let him use both hooves to her one, and still fallen asleep from how little effort she needed to put into the contest of strength.

So when Tia turned and bucked the wooden door holding us prisoner, it didn’t fall down. The door exploded in a mess of wood and metal bars that would have put a stick of dynamite to shame. The wooden pieces flew outward in a spray, at speeds that turned the splitters into deadly projectiles that left three of our guards squealing in pain from what might as well have been pointy wooden bullets from the force they had been launched with.

Then Celestia leaped over the two fallen guards and one full-on corpse that had completely stopped moving to the lucky one that had been standing off to the side of the door. As the alicorn went at the troggle that was still breathing, I snatched up one of the guard’s fallen spears in my teeth, then jumped over to one of the thrashing pigs while transferring the thing to my hooves and jabbing the creature in the throat to shut the thing up in the permanent kind of way.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the troggle Tia was flying towards raise his spear at the alicorn and fire a blast of magic. Celestia’s hooves took on a golden hue for a moment and she battled the attack aside with one of them before bringing the other down right on his head. A sickening crush soon followed, and my nose was treated to the smell of burning flesh while I finished off the other injured troggle.

Behind us, Sunset just stared at the sight with wide eyes and a mouth that threatened to fall open. “W-Wow, you actually, I didn’t think you would…that you could…”

Celestia apparently picked up on the meaning of the girl’s stunned rambling, because she turned back to her a moment later with a hard look in her eye. “While I am always one to favor peaceful solutions above all else, I will do whatever is necessary to keep my little ponies from harm,” she said before walking up to the slightly shorter girl and her determined expression became one of amused motherly care. “Even the disobedient ones that walk on their hind legs and wear such garish clothing.”

Then the pony princess looked back further down the hallway, and the wall of golden energy she had created a second before breaking down the door winked out, allowing for sound to make its way deeper into the hall once again. The link we currently shared told me that the whole thing had most the alicorn about three percent of her remaining magic reserves.

Sunset just hugged her jacket and rubbed her arms. She obviously didn't like the attention Celestia was giving her...or maybe it was the dead bodies making her nervous. “Yeah well, let’s just get phase two going so we can get the hell out of here and I can go back to having a real coat instead of this thing,” she mumbled before pulling out her piece of human tech and going to the ap all iphone’s came with before covering the lower end completely.

Then, we waited.

Sunset tapped her foot impatiently.

Celestia got the burnt remains of man-pig brain off her hoof.

I turned to Sunset and was unable to keep my curiosity in check.

“Mind if I ask you something?”

She looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “What?”

After taking a second to collect my thoughts on just how I wanted to put this without sounding too…stalker-ish… “Look, you know I know certain things about the lives of ponies…like you…”

Sunset waved her hand around in the ‘get the point motion while talking. “Yeah, yeah dimensional bleeding gave people in your world an idea for a television show, get to the point.”

“Actually, you were in the movie,” I told her, which made Sunset stand up a little straighter for some reason. “But…it never really went into explaining just why you came back to Equestria in the first place.”

For some reason, a pang of guilt shot through Celestia’s heart, and I glanced over at the alicorn as she lowered her head just a bit while Sunset rolled her eyes like the question was one of the stupidest she had ever heard. “Because I wanted to come home,” the human explained before her expression turned a bit darker. “But of course when I got there, I get all the news about Princess Luna, and the new Princess Twilight Sparkle.”

The girl’s hands became like claws as they dug into her jacket. “And it...it... I was gone for two years, just two fucking years, and in that time Celestia just up and gets a whole new apprentice to replace me,” she grumbled as her eyes moved over to the alicorn for a moment with a frown forming on her face. “Two years I’m gone…and you just go and make her an alicorn! You just take some nobody from off the street and just give her the Element of Magic!”

I moved to argue with the girl in Twilight’s defense, but the tears leaking from her eyes stopped me. I backed off as the girl with the red hair gave Celestia a pleading look. “Two years and…I know I made a mistake, but…you raised me since I was a child! You taught me everything I know about magic! And…and when I try to think of my mother, yours is the only face I can see, so why…WHY DID IT JUST TAKE YOU TWO FUCKING YEARS TO REPLACE ME?”

Our former prison echoed with Sunset’s question and Celestia’s recoiled from her former student’s words while fear for the girl made the closest thing to a concerned panic Celestia was capable of at the moment fill the alicorn’s link that she had with my mind. Then the princess looked over to me with and got herself under control. “What did she just say?”

Sunset’s whole body jerked as if struck, and she whirled around to face me in terror. “No…you can’t…please don’t tell her what I said,” she begged. “I…I just forgot myself. I can behave, I can be the person she wants me to be. Just…just…please…”

I could only stare at the girl with my mouth hanging open before Celestia’s question made me close it. “Sunset, what’s wrong?” she asked in concerned confusion before looking over to me. “What is it? What did she say?”

I looked over to the human’s pleading eyes, then felt the alicorn’s near all-consuming concern for the girl next to her, and gulped. Even if God himself appeared and said I could turn back into a guy at that very moment and got to live happily ever after with everything I could ever want if I just translated their conversation, I wouldn’t have taken Him up on the offer. “She says you need to have a nice long talk after we get back to Equestria,” I told her as evenly as I could before looking back to the iphone laying on the floor. “And now we probably need to start the waiting game all over again.”

The second time around, I intended to keep my mouth shut.

Okay pop quiz, you’re surrounded in a big creepy and rundown castle with an uber pony princess that can blast away anything short of a demigod, but her gas tank was pretty low and alicorn magic had been turned into a gas guzzler thanks to anti-magical fog.

So, what do you do?

Well, if you choose to let Celestia go full tilt boogie on the bad guys and just blow holes in every wall until you either found the mystical thingamajig that powers the local evil overlord, or evil overlord himself…you just failed.

Oh, and hooves sucked when it came to sneaking around, what with all the clippity clop sounds that they made in confined spaces that tended to echo. So doing the last of that thieving assassins creed…other stealth game thing, wouldn’t be too smart either.

So, what’s the other option?

Simple.

You tell the big evil overlord exactly where you are, like the three of us were doing as Celestia wrapped Sunset’s phone up in a myriad of spells before hurling it out of the castle’s first floor window into the sky above Tambelon with her magic. After it reached the apex of Celestia’s throw, the three magic spells the goddess cast on the iphone activated.

All of Tambelon was lit up by the miniature sun’s worth of light that Celestia’s first spell provided, banishing the shadows around the walled city and turning what had appeared to be a dark blue brick to simple gray stone covered in dust in the light of day. The second and third spells activated a second later, slowing the phone’s descent from on high to a crawl more akin to an angry creature with wings might do when she’s got a divine wrath level of fury and wanting to put on a show to make everything in sight piss itself before praying to mercy from their impotent god. Then the third spell kicked in as the recording on the phone began to play.

Okay, well technically the recording was playing from the moment we threw the damn thing out the window, but there was a good five minutes of silence recorded on the thing since I couldn’t figure out how to get a recorded sound to play while rigged to a timer and we all needed time for the phone to reach a height that would allow for maximum effect.

“INSOLENT MONGRELS! YOU THINK TO CAPTURE ME? TO IMPRISON ME? I AM SHE WHO COMMANDS THE HEAVENS TO BOW AT A WHIM! I AM THE ONE WHO BANISHES THE DARK INTO THE CORNERS OF THE WORLD! I AM THE SUN! LET ME WHO CALLS HIMSELF LORD OF THIS CITY OF REFUSE COME AND FACE ME! COME AND FACE YOUR DEATH!”

Although the spell that amplified the sound of the phone was the same that Luna and Celestia used to produce the Royal Canterlot Voice, there seemed to be something…missing from the whole thing. Maybe it was the fact that it was coming from a machine and Celestia had been speaking at a normal tone when we recorded it, but…

I had heard the Canterlot voice being used in anger before, back when I had the Alicorn Amulet and Celestia came to Ponyville thinking I was going to hurt the girls. While it hadn’t done much to me at the time thanks to my brain being high on red kryptonite and knowing I could take on the world with one wing tied behind my back, the memories of hearing her talk like that made me pretty uncomfortable. The Royal Voice wasn’t just some spell that pumped up the volume, it carried with it a twinge of magic that amplified the speaker’s authority as well. So when Celestia used it back in the day, the unspoken…something that made a person’s entire body shake and still left an impression even now that we were all buddies.

The iphone didn’t have that…which I was a little glad for I guess. I didn’t want to be prostrating myself every time I went to AJ’s farm out of some misguided respect to the ghost of Steve Jobs.

But, the loud sound did its job and we watched from our unused corner of the castle as dozens of the troggles ran out into the courtyard and through the gates towards where the recording of Celestia’s voice was coming from. A few others made their way onto the ramparts to take potshots at the glowing orb of light, and considering the sphere was three times Tia’s size and as bright as the sun, I was certain none of the attacks would ever clip Sunset’s phone.

“I did not see the donkey, nor this goat these creatures defer to,” Celestia mumbled. “Are you sure he can’t have more than the number we saw leave just now?”

I shook my head. “I never said that it would get them all out of here, but there’s no way he has more than a hundred of these guys. Just look at his own house, it’s a mess. They don’t even have the manpower for a good housekeeper.”

“Or he just likes the stupid and dusty décor,” Sunset the Snarky quipped as she toyed with the magical spear taken from the prison guard.

Celestia apparently heard the tone of the comment and understood it wasn’t important. She looked Sunset up and down for a moment. “Stay close to me unless we encounter resistance. I could not bear it if I were to lose you a second time.” As Sunset just gaped at the alicorn’s words, Celestia turned to me. “I must save the rest of my power in case the worst comes, is there anything that you can do to protect her?”

About the only thing I could come up with was acting as the girl’s bodyguard. Like, take a bullet kind of bodyguard. My shell could probably handle a few hits of whatever magic those spears had. Maybe. “I’ll stick close to her.”

“Alright, since the local lord’s main hench-pony is still in the castle we’ll stick to the clean areas and head upstairs,” Celestia announced before taking the lead. “Omnifarious, please make sure nothing manages to sneak up behind us. If we can’t find the bell or Grogar inside of twenty minutes, I will break through the castle and close the outer wall’s portcullis.”

Thanks to the fact the vast majority of Grogar’s castle was obviously unused and anywhere that didn’t get foot traffic had a heavy amount of dust on the floor, we were able to cut the first bit of our search to a mere ten minutes. It only involved heading upstairs and find a pair of skinny troggles coming down the stairs with the donkey behind them.

They froze for an instant.

Celestia didn’t.

She didn’t charge up and use her giant earth pony strength or anything like that. Doing so probably would have gotten her killed what with trying to attack creatures with spears on stairs which were definitely not built for horses of her size to use. So she used her telekinesis.

Not in the pick up the bad guys sort of way, or an even more obscene use of power that would have done something like crush their bones into powder. Instead, the helmets on each of the troggles heads glowed with Celestia’s golden light, and then shot off their heads to ram into the other’s now unprotected skulls at speeds approaching that of a bullet.

They both began to collapse in a heap before their spears took on a life of their own thanks to Celestia’s magic, and pointed their blade’s at the donkey’s neck before the bodies of the guards even hit the ground. The whole thing took maybe two seconds, and colored me quite impressed.

“Now good sir donkey, if you might direct us to a large ancient bell hidden somewhere in this castle, I might see fit into releasing you, despite the part that you have had in abducting ponies from their homes,” the alicorn told the shorter creature in a voice that sounded respectful, and yet…creepy thanks to it being so matter of fact.

“B-Bell?” the donkey I had decided to name Jackass stuttered as he looked down at the spears pointing at his throat. “I’ll never tell you ponies anything!”

As the alicorn frowned at the donkey’s resistance to her intimidation tactic, I frowned and pointed a hoof towards Jackass’s lower regions. “Spear him in the balls princess. He doesn’t actually need them to talk, and it might actually help with the voice.”

Sunset looked over to me with a raised eyebrow while Jackass let out a terrified shriek as one of the spears was repositioned. “No mind control this time?”

“The bells are in the watchtowers on top of the castle!” Jackass politely informed us as quickly as she could while trying to protect himself from a gelding.

“Well I’ll be,” the human mumbled before shoving her spear into the donkey’s vision. “How many guards?”

The donkey looked over to the human, and I opened my mouth to translate, but didn’t get the chance to before he started talking. “Stupid human! Lord Grogar lets no one near his sacred bells!”

Although the fact that the evil overlord didn’t feel the need to post guards had his obvious weakness did kind of intrigue me, not to mention gave me a good idea of the goat’s stupidity, something that really caught my attention was that the donkey had responded to Sunset’s question without me having to be a go-between. “Wait…you understood her?” I asked. “How the hay do you understand English and speak Equestrian?”

“Umm…what I’m hearing coming out of his mouth is English,” Sunset said.

“It’s the belt,” Celestia answered before my mind could start working on the answer to the mystery of how we were hearing two different kinds of languages coming from the donkey at the same time. “It’s enchanted to allow him to talk to creatures of several different languages. I think there’s a resizing enchantment on it as well.”

Sunset Shimmer smirked. “Thaaaaaaank you Celestia,” she said with a smirk that made me think she wasn’t talking to the giant pony just then. “Now hand it over Jackass.”

As Sunset touched the top of her stolen spear to the donkey’s nose, I found myself having to restrain a smirk. I know she tried to kill Twilight and all while under the effects of dark magic, which I will admit does tend to mess with your moral compass unless you ran on the stuff like me, but I was starting to really like the two-legged-pony.

“Allow me my student,” Celestia told the girl before she reared up as the spears were removed from around the donkey long enough for the pony goddess to smack her hoof in-between his eyes.

After the donkey collapsed in a heap, a golden glow surrounded his belt and I watched it become larger, probably big enough to fit Celestia. Then the princess detached the piece of optional clothing and floated it over to Sunset. The second the girl took it in her hands, the size readjusted and she exchanged the belt she had one for the new one.

Sunset looked over to the horse goddess. “So, can you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?”

While Celestia was answering in the affirmative, I was left wondering if Sunset’s human world had movies that mirrored my own and tried not to snicker. Then, once the girl had made sure she could talk Celestia’s head off, Sunset checked her watch to see there was a good five minutes left before Tia’s spell burnt out and the pig-men would know they had been duped.

I got to be the one to ask the obvious question. “So, what now?”

“Considering the bell is in a tower, it would be best to fly out the nearest window and search for it from the air. We can close the portcullis and deal with he troggles on the wall as well, that should allow us time to search the towers surrounding the castle for this bell.”

“Alright,” I agreed as I went through the basic steps of the plan in my head and didn’t see any holes.

Two minutes after we managed to get out of the castle and make a break for the wall, I was wondering if the fog surrounding the city was actually some kind of marijuana fumes that I had inhaled too much of because…I HAD ACTUALLY THOUGHT CELESTIA HAD A GOOD IDEA FOR A MINUTE!

Don’t get me wrong, Tia’s a real nice pony and a bazillion times better than any human leader that’s ever existed (Gandhi included), but when it comes to the times when the chips are down, end of the world, thirteenth hour kind of stuff, Celestia might as well be the fuck everyone over with her sheer level of stupidity pony! Hell, the reason Equestria’s history books are missing a few pages is probably because she doesn’t want her little ponies to know just how many times their glorious leader brought the world to the brink of destruction with her crisis situational incompetence!

Take the problem we faced upon exiting the castle…

Celestia blew a nice alicorn-sized hole that was even big enough to slide her fat ass through. Then, she let Sunset Shimmer ride her bareback again, which is really making me wonder about the nature of their relationship, and we flew out to close the gate.

Then it was WHAM! BLAM! ZAM! and a massive energy shot from behind us, left Celestia’s floating in an oversized plastic bubble (or magic really) and I was flying as fast as I could to grab onto Sunset before she turned into a red smear on the pavement! Oh, and by the way, when you’re a changeling that’s low on gas and surrounded by a evil stoner smoke that’s making it hard to fly, humans are heavy!

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sunset yelled as I wrapped my forelegs around her waist…that kind of slipped a bit and ended up on her breasts.

“It’s called saving your fat rear!” I grumbled while the human struggled in my grip and I was left wondering if my actions would just leave me with a sexual harassment lawsuit, or actual criminal charges for touching a teenager.

Although…considering Sunset was actually older than Twilight…well, okay going down a dark path here, better jump off while I can…

Um…oh right! So thanks to the stupid redhead’s struggling and the cheating magical maharaja mist, me and Sunny hit the ground, with her sliding a few inches on the stone in front of me.

What was the cause of our predicament?

Well, apparently my good-natured idea to follow Tia’s lead and thus become stupid, which is a real thing by the way because following someone else’s instructions causes certain thinking parts of the brain to shut down, made me completely forget about that goat everyone had been talking about for oh…since we got to Tambel-rambel-bamble-amamamon!

You know, the evil goat overlord that we thought was either going to be leaving the castle (which he didn’t), or still in his throne room waiting for some poor idiot to report in and get killed for his mistake (which also didn’t happen).

OOoooooh no!

See, the evil goat overlord had been standing on the roof of his little stone box of a keep probably glaring at our distraction and wondering why it wasn’t shooting back when Tia just flew right out into the sky above his courtyard it was all wham, bam thank you ma’am and the goat of darkness fucked the sun goddess over royal.

So…yeah. We were in trouble

After I caught Sunset, she thanked me by struggling until we crashed landed on her face, knocking her more senseless than Pinkie Pie. Celestia was trapped in the magical bubble of…entrapment, and I was pretty much coasting on empty, what with the only magic I had being a tiny spark from Tia’s soul keeping me going.

Not gonna lie, really thought we were screwed at that point.

Inside her bubble, Celestia turned around to look at me and Sunny. “Omnifarious, is Sunset alright?”

I declined to answer the question, because that was the time that Grogar finally decided to make his entrance and well, it kind of took up all my attention.

He stood at the edge of his keep’s roof for a moment, and then leaped down to the stone courtyard causing enough of an impact to crack the stone around him as he landed in a crouch. Then, he slowly rose to his full height, more like some kind of predator than something that’s considered the main meal in a third-world country.

He also sure as hell didn’t look like any goat I’d ever seen!

Hell, he didn’t even look like the stupid stagehands that Iron Will had working for him! For that matter, he even made Iron Will look like a punk!

A scrawny punk.

You know the kind, the ones with the taped together glasses.

Grogar. Was Huge. About twice as big as a pony huge, with one hell of an underbite. What made it even worse was that the goat’s extended jaw was lined with a row of jagged teeth and two massive fangs that looked more like sabers than teeth, and climbed all the way up to frame his nostrils. It made him look like some kind of vampire with all the pointy teeth on the bottom of his mouth instead of the top. As for his horns, they curled around and ended with their points sticking outwards from his face. He couldn’t just butt someone with those horns, the damn things would let the bastard gore an opponent while his fucking wolf teeth would let him tear into their flesh and finish them off!

The rest of his body was covered by thick, bushy fur that hid any musculature. Although judging by his thick legs and body, he had plenty of it. And his hooves were thick and developed like any hardworking stallion that didn’t bother with getting a pony pedicure like the vast majority of Equestria.

And he had all of this, along with a goatee at the tip of his chin, and a fucking golden bell that glowed with magic runes attached to a thick collar decorated with golden disks.

Good God did G1 fuck up on your design, I thought to myself as the massive creature approached us. On the other hand, if they had gotten everything right, the little girls would have probably had nightmares.

I had been expecting some braying goat the size of a regular pony, that got its fucking head stuck between trees when it charged at the talking equines like some Saturday morning cartoon villain. What we got instead was something that would shatter the tree, crush the pony under its hoof, and then reach down to bite the little thing’s god damn head off before using its bones as toothpicks!

“So long has it been since I’ve had a satisfying meal, surviving on nothing but the collected ether of the Dark Realm,” the creatures gruff voice growled at our party. “How I’ve longed to feel the sweet taste of a pony’s magic, to rip the soul from their little bodies and devour it whole. To hear the symphony of screams as I create death, from life.”

Well…someone went to the Darth Vader Villains School of Badass, I told myself as I slowly got to my feet…or hooves…whatever. I would have come up with a much cooler comeback line that would have totally put goat guy in his place but…well, Tia had asked me to check on Sunset and I was that gallant hero who always did what his princess needed him to do.

Plus, I was kind of scared shitless and was really hoping Sunset had just been holding out on us with her demon goddess fire magic powers. So, running over to the girl and shaking her awake was priority number one.

“Sunset! Sunset wake up!” Oh God, please don’t tell me she’s dead, I thought.

The girl let out a moan, and slowly opened her eyes. “Ugh, what happened?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer before I felt a rush of magical energy flow into me a second before Celestia spoke. “Take Sunset and close the portcullis,” she commanded me evenly as if she were actually the one in control of the situation, and not down to about fifteen-perfect of her full power. “Then the two of you need to fly up and disable Grogar’s bell. I will deal with the goat.”

It wasn’t the words that calmed me down, it was what I felt from the little Tia inside my head. Despite Celestia being what she was, I had gotten a harsh lesson since starting this little journey on how she was just as emotional and…well, human as any other pony.

And what I was feeling from her that moment was complete confidence in her abilities, and the situation, despite the fact she was completely at the mercy of Grogar.

So…I left her to die at the hands of the giant goat monster and led Sunset towards the gate as fast as my holy hooves could take me. As we ran, I couldn’t help but look back at the sight as the jackass overlord took his sweet time just walking up to the alicorn, doing what was probably the evil goat version of a strut.

“FOOLS! YOU THINK TO ESCAPE ME? I WILL SHATTER THE BONES IN YOUR LEGS TO PIECES!” the goat’s voice thundered as I felt Grogar begin to gather his magic.

The threat got a rise out of my link with Tia as she went from calm to terrifyingly furious in the space of an instant. Despite the confinement of her magical sphere, she managed to rear up, and the courtyard was illuminated with a blinding light coming from the alicorn’s horn that fried the retinas of the troggles looking down on us before the goddess’s words rang throughout the city with an air of authority that shook me to my bones.

“YOU WILL NOT TOUCH ONE HAIR ON MY LITTLE PONY’S HEAD!”

The sound of an explosion that followed Celestia’s Canterlot Voice and shook the ground beneath me, and my mouth dropped as about a hundred people’s head canon’s were confirmed by the sight of Celestia standing cloaked fully in her solar radiance while flames rushed out from her blazing form and over the place in all directions to cover the ground for fifty feet around her in a carpet of fire.

Thankfully, Sunset got the wall’s gate controls and slammed the damn thing holding the gate open away so the bars came down to close with a bang because all I could do was stare and think…

Holy shit, she really can go super sayian!

Chapter 12: My Little Homecoming

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You know, I’ve had some bad days since I was reborn as a soul-sucking monster whose only purpose in life is to kill beautifully innocent creatures. The biggest one being the time I decided to not do what my lack of a cutie mark was telling me, and nearly got beaten to death for it by what could be considered my mom. Ever since then, I kind of had this whole problem with trying to pick on things that could kick my ass.

Sure I had picked fights with pirates, manticores, and a dragon, but those things couldn’t really stand up to me on so many levels. Well, except for the dragon, but I had minions to distract him, and good enough aim to put a hole in his eye that went straight to his brain.

And what with Grogar being giant demonic demon goat…thing, I was pretty sure he could fall into the category of 'crap not to mess with'.

Thankfully, the presence of the super saiyan pony gave me something to let do all the work for me. Unfortunately, even as I watched Celesta blazing like a walking sun that promised to turn anything that fucked with her into a pile of ash, my knowledge of her track record, the way things worked out the last time she went mono-e-mono with a boss character, and the little piece of Tia’s soul that was currently resting inside my head (technically it was more like my stomach but head sounds better) which that told me she had about five minutes of fight time before running on empty said things were not going to go well for her if it came down to a mystical slobber knocker.

In short, despite the impressive display from the horse goddess of the sun, we were still uber-boned unless something was done by the two much less powerful characters of the party. So while Aragon was outfighting the Dark Lord Sauron, me and the human of a hobbit would have the real job of finding the horn head’s power source and destroying it.

“So, any idea where Grogar’s bell tower might be?” I asked the magical expert of the group. I had no illusions about being the one to do all the bomb disarming work after all. That would be the job of the sun goddess’s student that knew more about magic than how to hunt and kill stuff with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew magic. The whole necronomicon of changeling magic had been downloaded into my brain since the day I was born. But reading an instruction book on how to do stuff and actually doing it were two very different things. I was more of the super brawler type of magic user that just took a big stick and beat the hell out of the thing that pissed me off than the subtle artist that Twilight was. My time with Twilight had taught me a few new spells, but the kind of magic changelings use is a bit different than what unicorns shoot out of their horns, and trying to copy it despite our similarities is like learning a different language. Sure that language is Spanish to my English and all the letters are the same, but its still pretty damn hard to do.

And I sucked at Spanish.

Hell, monster goat might not even use Spanish...although since he apparently ran on stolen unicorn magic, it was my best bet.

So I was counting on the magical prodigy to walk me through disarming Grogar’s big magical thingamajig before Celestia lost her fight. I was just thankful she hadn’t tried to do another power struggle thing and match her Kamehameha against Grogar’s Gallic Gun. The last time that happened, she got knocked on her ass in front of all Canterlot. It was not a good day to be Tia.

“What?” the terrified teenager next to me exclaimed. “Okay, first off, it’s a tower, so I’m guessing it won’t be that hard to find from the air. But why the hell would you want to go up there? And why the hell do you even need me?”

I repressed the urge to groan, and lowered my voice in case Grogar had super hearing, or Tia might pick up on my words and stop sending me confidence via her soul-piece thingy. Without that, I was pretty sure I would have been in the same boat as Sunny. “Listen, Celestia doesn’t have enough power to fight Grogar for long, and…considering he’s not backing down after seeing her flare up, I’m guessing he’s at least in her magical weight class. Plus, he can still look this way and kill us.”

Well, kill Sunset anyway. Changeling exoskeletons were only grown by magic, they didn’t need it to continue to function. Considering mine had been reinforced when I had the Alicorn Amulet, I was pretty sure I was in the clear when it came to my chances of surviving whatever double-horn-head had to throw at me. Safe from being one-shotted at least.

“Okay fine let’s go,” she grumbled before unclasping her hands from of the little bit of wall we were hiding behind.

On the battlefield, the staring contest between Grogar and Celestia continued for a good minute. I guessed that since the giant goat saw something bigger and with a lot more power than what he was used to, there was a reluctance to attack it when he could just wait for his fog to slowly eat away at the power the pony was using to maintain her flames. At the same time, he was seeing a creature use its magic for what might as well of been a special effect, and I could Smell that the guy was a little wary of it. Either way, hesitation was definitely the way to go in his position, and it didn’t even hurt his standing at all.

Then Sunset stepped out from behind our cover.

Grogar looked out in our direction, and Tia charged forward upon either seeing an opening, or realizing that Sunset was in danger. The clopping of her hooves drew the goat’s attention, and Grogar’s bell lit up a second before his horns glowed with power to shoot twin beams of magic at his opponent.

Celestia’s horn blazed with light and she used the alicorn horn raising stance to fire bend the flames underneath her into a wall that did absolutely nothing to stop Grogar’s magical blast from blowing a hole in the flames that weren’t meant to block diddley in the way of attacks. However, they did keep the goat from seeing her take to the air for a few seconds and fly up until she was out of his line of vision. A second later, the flame wall died out, an Gogar was left looking on at the empty castle grounds. Then he got a fifteen-hundred pound blazing alicorn to the face!

As the goat got smacked into the ground, I grabbed the gimpy girl and got gone from the gate. Thanks to the boost Tia had given me before the fight began, I had enough magic to strengthen myself enough so that flying while carrying Sunset was doable…if kind of annoying since the human’s body being in front of me made it hard to see. Or impossible really, I even had to turn my head to keep my muzzle from digging into her back while more forelegs held her up via where they were latched under her arms.

“I found the bell tower,” she told me.

“Where?”

“It’s the one right in front of us with the bell in it dumbass! What are you, blind?”

I growled. “No I just have this big and bulky human thing in front of me fatty!” Plus, I needed to keep my eyes on the fight going on beneath us in case Grogar decided to look up and shoot us down.

And it was pretty cool to watch an epic battle involving a pretty pony princess. That sort of stuff never happened in MLP.

“Wait, you mean we’re flying blind?!”

I ignored the question to watch what was transpiring below.

The fire that Celestia had surrounded herself with had changed from a wild inferno that stretched outwards from her second skin of flame to cover the floor to one that was mostly concentrated around her hooves while leaving the rest of the princess’s Radmidash impression little more than a campfire level of glow as she created a miniature sun around Grogar’s head.

What was weird about it was, I knew exactly what she was doing. For the insight, I blamed the little piece of Tia that Celestia had cut out of her soul and put into my body. I didn’t quite understand how it all worked since nothing like this had happened to a changeling before, but when you put a piece of yourself into a creature that is a natural at mind magic (or being psychic for those of you that don‘t believe in that junk) there’s probably going to be some weird mind shit going on. Whether it was intentional on her part or not was still up for debate.

But it did give me an insight to her actions. Like how she was actually trying to melt Grogar’s bell instead of burn his face off by dunking it into a mass of solar fire. Although I didn’t think she’d be losing any sleep if the old goat were to happen to die while she was trying to burn his face off.

It was actually a pretty good idea. Anyone who's played RPGs knows you don’t go after the uber god being directly while he’s got all his defenses in play. While this wasn’t exact same, the basic principle still held. I had seen Grogar’s bell glow with mystical energy when he first showed up, and as far as my knowledge of Equestria went, goats didn’t have the power to blow shit up or grow to double pony size. So my limited knowledge about the monster had to have been correct. The old goat needed his bell to actually put up a fight, and Celestia was focusing all her efforts on taking it down.

Then a dark red light that clashed with Celestia’s golden yellow erupted from the ground, and both of them went flying apart from one another.

“Pull up you idiot!”

Sunset’s voice jerked my attention away from the battle, and I pumped more magic into my wings to do just that. A second later I saw the roof of the keep beneath me, and turned so I could look in the same direction Sunset had been paying attention to.

The tower she had been guiding us towards was the one at the very center of the keep. It seemed pretty out of sorts with the way it just stood there, jutting out from the cubic mass of stone to rise into the air. I couldn’t see the top from the position we were at, so I addressed my navigator. “So the bell’s in there?”

“Yes, now get moving!”

I grit my teeth, my temper close to snapping. A few insulting comments I could put up with, and I tried to tell myself that this wasn’t exactly the best of situations for a calm mind, but…getting bitched at by a teenager that was really a much older pony but still looked and sounded like a whiney brat didn’t help my mood one single bit. “What the hay is your problem Sunset?”

“Celestia’s fighting for our lives and you’re just floating here wasting time! That’s my problem!”

My anger didn’t quite dissipate, but it became a lot easier to hold in check after hearing the kid’s words. Judging by the bitch queen act in the movie, and what I’d seen of her IRL (good God I was still adjusting that) anger was Sunset’s go to emotion when she was in a tight spot, or worried, or…probably anything other than in control really.

Once I had gotten a general idea of where to go, I flew me and Sunset up to the bell tower with only a moderate amount of demanding course corrections from the human. We landed in the belfry and I took a look at the dark golden bell hanging in front of me.

The bell was freaking huge, like…church bell huge. The kind of church bells that could cover a whole man while he stood up and still leave some room for his head to clear the ceiling. With that and the odd aura I was picking up from it, I knew this wasn’t some glorified decoration meant to trick us like an intelligent villain would have put out as bait for a trap or something.

Cause you know, that was what I would have done if I had been running the place.

Still, just because I knew it was magic didn’t mean I knew what to do about it.

A month of living in Tia’s old house and some tutoring by three alicorns on the subject had let me get pretty well acquainted with magical artifacts in both the academic and actual realms of experience. It helped that changelings had a bit of a talent for sensing magic thanks to the whole predator thing, so it made identifying stuff kind of easy.

There were actually very few bare bottom, all around rules that everything had to follow when it came to magical thingamajigs. Some radiated power and made you feel all tingly inside, and others didn’t even look like anything beyond your basic magical textbook until you read their activation phrase. A few made even me want to throw up just by being around them, and stuff like the Tree of Harmony gave me an overwhelming sense of peace and clarity that I took a trip down into the cavern beneath the old castle to just sit around for an hour…or four every few days.

Honestly, that damn thing has done wonders for my mood over the past month.

The bell kind of fell into the later category of things. I could tell that it had power, and that it was old. The thing kind of had what’d you’d call a grandma smell to it, only it was my magical senses that were picking it up, not my nose. Up close, I could sense that there was indeed a mystical outpouring of energy that was feeding the mystical fog around us.

“So, any ideas?” I asked the magical genius that knew more about the freaking Element of Magic than its owner.

“Damn it, you’re the insecticorn! I thought I was just getting taken out of danger!” Sunset replied from between her teeth. “I don’t have my horn, I can’t detect magic, and I’ve spent the past two years where stage magicians are the closest things to actual arcane power. So excuse me for being a little out of practice!”

The sound and physical shock of a loud explosion reached my ears and shook the ground beneath my hooves. I looked back to the battleground. Apparently, Celestia and Grogar had gotten tired of circling each other, and were going at it again. From the looks of things, the goat was the one with the advantage.

Grogar fired dual blasts of magical energy from his curled horns time and time again, making Tia run, bob and weave to avoid them. All the while she refrained from returning fire, probably because of the fact that the city’s fog would have eaten away at any attack that the alicorn could call up until it was too weak to do any damage to Darth Goat. And to top it off, I could see her flames were dying down to ember levels instead of the raging inferno that they had been a minute ago.

Unfortunately for Tia, pony bodies with asses big enough to cause earthquakes upon sitting down were not meant for bobbing and weaving, and if Celestia bothered to build up enough speed, her momentum would make it impossible to dodge. Closing the gap between the two of them didn’t seem to be an option either. It would have been like getting closer to a guy who has a gun pointed at you.

Sure Rainbow could probably zip and zoom around the guy like nobody’s business and Pinkie would just pop up behind him, but I got the creeping feeling that without the ability to teleport…Tia was up shit creek without a paddle.

I also noticed one other disturbing fact about the fight. Despite her moving around, Grogar was slowly backing her into a corner. While the alicorn had to turn, jump, and do all that other crap, all he had to do was tilt his head and wait the three seconds it took to charge his attack spell. A spell we had no idea as to what kind of damage it would do to a pony I might add.

The was also the problem with Tia’s time limit. Thanks to our link, I guesstimated she had about three minutes of fight time left. Unless she actually did something stupid like, I don't know, fought back. Then it was closer to sixty seconds.

“Nuts,” I mumbled before looking back to the bell, then to Sunset. “Okay, ancient golden bell that radiates an anti-magic fog and empowers goats wearing a smaller bell. Come on, Sunset, you knew more about the bucking Element of Magic than Twilight did! Enough to dark magic yourself into…that red thing! You knew enough about magic that Celestia made you a student and kept you close to her based on talent. Do you know how Twilight got the position? Tia saw a picture on her plot! So get yours in gear and tell me how to shut this thing down!”

Sunset glowered at me for a moment, then looked up to the bell. “Fine, just let me think for a second.”

I went back to watching the battle, thankful for the pseudo-pegasus pony-ness in me that gave me vision that could have suited an eagle or hawk. With magic to feed my eyes, they gave me a perfect view of the fight despite the fog. Grogar had actually managed to corral Tia into a corner, and judging by the way everybody was moving they both apparently knew it.

“Sunset.”

Thankfully, the goat was taking his time in approaching the mare. I don’t know if it was just the whole cliché villain strut thing, or if he had enough of an IQ to still be cautious about Tia, or he was just savoring the moment before the kill. If I had to pick, I guess I could buy the last one as some psychopathic need for the goat to make his prey feel all vulnerable and junk.

As a changeling, I kind of understood those urges.

Considering the fact that the alicorn had gone back to being a big fat pony with an imitation rainbow mane instead of a blazing goddess of fury, it looked like it was working.

“Sunset, really need you to hurry it up now.”

“Shut up,” she said from the other side of the bell.

Celestia fell to her knees.

“Sunset.”

Grogar slowly moved in for the kill.

“I said shut up,” she replied, her voice taking on a weird echoing quality as she looked up inside the bell for some reason.

“SUNSET!”

As Grogar stood over the panting alicorn that appeared to be fighting just to stay on her hooves down below in the courtyard, I could practically hear him gloating.

“Fine!” she yelled before getting out from under the bell. “Just ring the damn thing!”

I frowned at the girl, and looked away from the fight completely, a little miffed I was going to miss its end. “What?”

Sunset glared at me before she pointed to the object in question. “Look, there’s no symbols, no pictographs or writing of any sort on the inside or outside, and no weird indentations,” she told me in an angry tone. “That means no activation phrase, no special code that has to be punched in at the right order, and no keys or other magical devices that have to be put in or taken out. That usually means the only way to turn the magic on or off is to use it. SO JUST RING HIS FUCKING BELL ALREADY!”

I took a second to just stare at the kid and the idiocy of the situation. I mean, here we were in some dark dimension controlled by a goat who had an army of Star Wars reject henchmen (henchhams?) who made it his business to kidnap unicorns and steal their magic using this semi-all powerful device that was literally put out where everyone could see it, and all we had to do to beat him was fly up and hit the damn thing. I mean…it made no fucking sense…

…and kind of fit right in with everything else that had been happening in my life for the past couple of months when I really thought about it.

So I groaned, turned around to point my ass at the stupid magical object of infinite darkness, then did the whole Applejack thing. You know, bucking. The bell let out a resounding gong like…well…a gong. Seriously, bells big enough to hide a pony don’t ring, they gong.

Loudly.

My entire body shook, and I actually felt the suffocating sensation that had been smothering me the whole time I was in Tambelon let up. Plus, since I was turned around again, I got a good view of Grogar as he moved in for the kill on his prostrating opponent, and then looked away from Tia to see what was making all that racket where we were.

Good God was he stupid. Okay, apart from the whole no taking your eyes off an opponent thing, he had a wounded animal cornered. Plus the whole thing where he took his time kind if made the whole three strikes and you're fucked thing come up because…well…

Tia cut off her cool flames mainly because they were kind of useless if she couldn’t get him in close range. And although she was cornered, Grogar hadn’t actually managed to tag the alicorn once since the fight started. Plus, Celestia hadn’t been bending down because she was tired or giving up…even though I suppose it could have looked that way to a guy with an ego the size of Mars, she was crouching.

You know, the way some animals do before they pounce?

So when the bell rang, Tia’s horn lit up and her wings extended, and she shot forward in one motion with her entire body with this blazing horn thrust so fast that it tore through Grogar’s body before there was an explosion of flame, and Celestia went skidding down half the courtyard with a wave of fire trailing behind her while Grogar was sent tumbling through the air to smack down on the ground a second later.

I gave the bell two more kicks for good measure to keep it going, then grabbed Sunset and made my way down to where Celestia was waiting for us. When we landed, the alicorn trotted up to us, and I got a look at Grogar’s roasted form with its still sizzling hole behind the sun goddess as she and Sunset met up.

“Are you alright?” they both asked at the same time. Although while Sunset was a little surprised at the question, Celestia just got a little…warm and fuzzy inside before she kept talking. “I am the teacher Sunset. You don’t get to worry about my health.”

Then she turned to me. “Omnifarious, are you well?”

I blinked at the question. Celestia should have been the one we needed to be looking after. “Yeah I’m fine. Can you get the portal spell working now before the reinforcements break through Grogar’s front door?”

I really didn’t feel like taking on an army of cannon fodder when I was at five-percent mana. Carrying around a human in Tambelon's fog hadn't done anything good for my batteries.

“An excellent suggestion,” Celestia replied before her horn lit up. A minute later, I felt the last of Tia’s magic come to rest on that little red zone under E of her magical gas tank, and a golden hole in space and time opened to provide us with an exit. The alicorn’s legs buckled with exhaustion, but she didn’t up and collapse like I did back in our cell, so I figured everything was going to be okay.

Then I heard this growling groan of a noise coming from behind us, and looked back to see the burnt corpse of Grogar pick himself up. And yes, it was a corpse. Tia’s last attack had turned his bell to slag metal and ripped a hole in the goat’s shoulder that exposed bone for crying out loud. To add to the creep factor, the guy actually looked smaller. Gone was the imposing figure that could look Celestia in the eye. Instead there was this gaunt…thing that looked little more than…well…skin and bones.

The guy was dead, and he was still moving. I mean I was willing to chalk up the lack of blood to some light saber effect since Tia probably burned a million degrees or something when she rammed him, but nothing survived that kind of damage and lived to tell about it.

Although he didn’t seem as teasingly powerful as before, the shear creep factor that a zombie goat with glowing red eyes and fang teeth had was enough to give me a good chill. Then there was his freaking grainy voice that belonged on the set of an Evil Dead movie. “Nothing…escapes…from Tambelon!” it went.

Not fair man. I didn’t even bother taking stock of our current situation. Hell, I didn’t have to. I knew Tia was out of commission as far as walking more than one mile an hour went, her fucking hair didn’t even look as shiny as it had a minute ago. Sunset was…a kid, and I wasn’t about to rely on her to save our butts. Then there was me, the underpowered changeling monarch that hadn’t eaten in days and was only still alive due to the grace of a sun goddess.

Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to kill the thing to death, but I just didn’t have enough of Twilight’s love juice in me to power an ass kicking spell.

So I skipped the whole self-sacrificing noble thing where I went one on one with an undying goat monster while the only way out was probably opened for a few seconds, and just gave my witty response. “Watch me,” I said before wishing there was a pony stand-in word for bitch.

Then I rammed Tia’s ass with my shoulder to push her through the gate a second after Sunset Shimmer cut and run under her orders in a tone that wasn’t open for debate. Sheer stupidity had me glancing back in time to see the undead goat leap at me, which made me let out a squeal of manly terror because…well shit it’s freaking zombie goat, even pastel pony princesses don’t properly prepare you for that.

It actually took me a second to recover and realize that I did have enough of Tia’s magic in me for one last burst in me thanks to the fact that Tambelon’s anti-magic fog had been turned off. So I charged and fired right as Grogar opened his mouth to bite my head off or something, and I took him in the chest with a concussion blast that knocked him back a foot. Nowhere near my best work, but any magical smackdown blast that could knock a bad guy on his ass would do.

Then I looked back at the gate and moved to get the hell out of Dodge.

But of course, the zombie had to get up and give me his last minute villain monologue before I got through the gateway. Hell, I even looked back to listen to the damn thing. “It doesn’t matter where you go. I will find you. I will hunt you down, and I will devour you all!”

I would have given a snappy heroic comeback, but the portal was starting to look a little too unstable for me to take the time to come up with a crippling retort and well…the guy just fucking creeped me out. I wanted to be gone.

So I jumped through the gateway and felt everything go upside down as the world was turned into sea of colors that probably would have given me a brain seizure if I tried to follow how it was all flowing together. It really made me wish Tia had invented some kind of magical Stargate slide spell thingy for traveling to different words rather than the sloshing rainbow lake of color that I ended up falling through.

Then the world returned to normal, and I found myself ramming into a wall of white.

A groaning wall of white.

“Ti-um, Celestia?” asked while my brain attempted to adjust from the acid trip of a ride to normal ponyland physics and scenery. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” my landing cushion replied. “Would you mind getting off me now?”

It took me a second to get my wings working, and I picked myself off her before landing a few inches away from the out of it alicorn. Thanks to the fact I had four legs, I managed to avoid falling on my ass. I kept my head pointed at the ground for a minute to help with my vertigo.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Tired but…unharmed,” she replied after I heard the ruffle of wings. “How is Sunset?”

I didn’t know I she was having he same nauseatingly ‘I want to just collapse’ sensation that I was and just didn’t want to move to check, or if she really was so tired she couldn’t move but…I lifted my head to check. Then after my brain got through punishing me for daring to move my head, my vision cleared and I looked the unconscious girl over from where I stood.

Sunset must have been thrown a bit harder out through the portal than me and Tia because she was laying unconscious a good five feet away. She looked okay. There weren’t any bruises or blood that I could see. All five fingers were there…on her hands…that were...still there…

Because, you know…she was still human.

My brain kind of froze up for a minute there.

How the hell was she still human? Wasn’t the mirror supposed to fix that?

I mean hell, it...wasn’t the same one me and Tia used to go pick her up. Which probably meant the magic surrounding her didn’t get its release command...if there was any magic still involved in the thing. For all I knew, it was one of those things that turns ponies in to people instead of generating some soft of chameleon field thingy.

Which meant she was going to be really pissed off when she woke up. Not to mention freaked out.

Still, my inner smartass did managed to get a word in. “Well…a human in Equestria…that’s just...super.”

There are times in a man’s life…or whatever the hell I am, (to be honest I’m still trying to figure that out) that they must endure great pains and trials. Some go to work at a dead-end job to feed their family. Others go to war, and…the ones like me get chewed out by their magically adept girlfriends in a way that makes us angry, guilty, sad, and apologetic all at the same time.

“Four days, four days I spent worrying about you AGAIN!” Twilight yelled as she paced back and forth while I sat back on the bed of what was now our guest suite in the palace and let her vent. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to run a government while you’re worried about your fillyfriend’s mental state?”

I suppressed my survival instincts for the moment and raised a hoof to draw her attention. “Could we go with the male version of a pony in relationship from now on with me?” I asked.

She looked around to glare at me some more. “I’m being serious here!”

So was I but…I suppose there was a better time and place for my gender-bender term battle. “Sorry,” I told her before letting out a sigh. “About everything I mean. To be honest…I’m pretty sure if you had helped me, this whole mess could have been avoided.”

“And another thing, HOW IN THE HAY COULD YOU COULD YOU THINK I’M JUST A FIGMENT OF YOUR IMAGINATION?”

I gulped, but managed to find some defense from that little jab. “Oh come on, that was just all the stress and…you know, you’ve had crazier ideas,” I tried to tell her. Then I immediately regretted it. This really wasn't the time for arguing, I needed to just let her vent because...well...I really didn't have much of a defense for denying the existence of reality and all that.

Twi glared at me again, and at that point I was a little glad that Twilight had let me feed off her when we got back as well as worked the transformation spell to make me fully pony female instead of the mannish changing queen that I apparently looked like to other ponies. Something told me Twilight wouldn’t be offering herself up as food for me anytime soon.

What really hurt wasn’t the words, as angry as she was…it was kind of hard to consider an adorable little pony threatening when I knew she wasn’t going to get all violent on me and junk. No, I got all my guilt from the emotions radiating off the mare.

My actions had hurt Twilight...again. She wasn’t just angry, she was feeling guilty. Hell, I could already see her tuning this whole thing in on herself like she had with that damn spell book. Yeah sure she cast the spell, but Celestia had sent the damn thing without a warning label. Just because I didn’t want Luna to replace her as the supreme monarch of Equestria anymore didn’t mean I was handing out pardons for her previous bouts of idiocy.

As Twilight paused in her tirade, which had come to roundabout insults to my intelligence and my inability to tell fantasy from reality, I took in a breath and doled out the classic apology. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah well…I should have guessed you were going to be high maintenance after the first month,” she grumbled, which kind of threw me for a loop. I mean, Twilight Sparkle thought I was the one who needed reassuring and high upkeep in the relationship?

My newly resurrected manly pride that Celestia had coaxed back to life took a bit of a hit right in the balls from that one. I mean come on! That… That was just…ouch.

“So um…anything else?” I asked hesitantly.

Twilight sighed and shook her head. “And...you’re sure you’re okay?”

Well I was tired, still had a bit of Celestia in me…which I really needed to see if she could take out, feeling like crap for making Twilight freak out for God only knew how long, but physically… “I’m okay Twilight. Sorry for making you worry again.”

The alicorn groaned and collapsed on the bed. “Well, at least its over,” she mumbled before looking back up at me. “And you’re never doing anything like this again?”

“No.”

“Promise me,” she ordered.

I had to repress a smile at that. I mean seriously, four days without Twilight had made me how cute she could be, especially when she was trying to be serious. “I promise.”

“Really promise,” she told me with a frown. “Say the whole thing.”

My admiration for the Princess of Adorkableness ground to a halt as I realized what she meant. You…you got to be…oh screw it. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

When she lightened up a bit, I repressed a sigh and I hoped I wasn’t blushing with embarrassment. I mean seriously, I had managed to avoid plenty of stuff since I got to Equestria, like the most girlish of games, hooficures, and all that junk, but it seemed the pinkie promise finally caught up to me.

So in the short time that I’d been back, I had managed to upset my girlfriend that I was still kind of surprised was deciding to stick around, and got caught by the most childish saying in existence. All in all, it seemed pretty par for the course and I actually found myself preferring it from the goat demon zombie thing that I had gotten away from just hours prior.

It was good to be home.

Then the door opened, and I had the sneaking suspicion that Equestria wasn’t finished yet.

Especially when I saw Celestia walk into the room, followed by Sunset Shimmer…on two legs…that still had boots on them…because that’s what humans wore.

The appearance of the human set Twilight on edge. I detected bits of anger, fear, and strangely enough…jealousy on her psychic scent. The whole thing just make me think, what the hell?

“Sunset,” Twilight mumbled. “You’re still…why is she still human?”

I was a little confused by that fact myself. Tia had said she would remove the transformation spells that were keeping Sunny in biped form after some rest but…Twilight had been chewing me out for a few hours and Shimmer looked as hornless as she had been when we got back.

Celestia sighed as Twilight posed the question, and hunger head. “It would appear that the magic Starswirl wove into the mirror are a bit more...durable than normal transformation magic. I am afraid that undoing such magic is…outside my expertise,” she admitted hesitantly.

Sunset flinched at the news and hugged herself while looking down at the floor. Not that I blamed her. Hell, it was bad enough being trapped in human land for her. The thought of coming back home had sent her into a crying fit because she thought it would give her magic again. Now she was back in Equestria and had no magic, and was pretty much the only one of her kind around.

I know she had tried to kill Twilight and all, but…a month of living peacefully with the girls and some other stuff had done wonders to curb my murderous revenge urges the hive had tried to instill in me. Plus since I was the only changeling monarch around, I could kind of tell the voices in my head to fuck off when I went under instead of just toning them down to a subliminal murmur.

“Oh,” Twilight mumbled as her pity finally made itself known for the other girl. “So…there’s nothing that’ll change her back? What about the other mirror? Can we just wait and use that?”

Sunset sunk in on herself a little, and Celestia shook her head. “No, but…I was hoping that Equestria’s experts in transmogrification magic might be able to find successes where I could not.”

I raised an eyebrow, a little impressed that there was another pony out there that might know something more about magic than Celestia of all ponies. “Okay well that’s good…wait,” I mumbled as a sneaking suspicion creeped into my thoughts. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”

“And I do believe Twilight had been making some headway in the field as well,” the goddess added, making me give the purple alicorn a nervous look that she reciprocated.

Meaning that she knew the same thing I did. If Celestia couldn’t remove the magic turning Sunset into a human, then messing with it using other transformation magic was a very bad idea. Tia was just grasping at straws here.

Still, I couldn’t just kill the poor girl’s hope. “We’ll see what we can do.”

Hell, for all I knew, Zecora had some kind of anti-transformation potion tucked away somewhere. I doubted I was going to be that lucky, but…it was worth a shot.

“Th-thank you,” she stuttered, and I felt Twilight’s uneasiness grow at the words.

The little alicorn looked away from the human and cleared her throat while her emotional scent continued to swirl around in a tangled mess. “No promises though…this isn’t exactly something we’ve researched or anything. It could take time.”

“I’ll prepare a transport back to your palace for the three of you at once then,” Celestia informed us.

Both me and Twilight looked up at the alicorn at the same time. “What?”

“Your palace,” Celestia repeated. “I can hardly expect the two of you to fly to Canterlot every day and do your research here.”

Well of course she’s going to live in Ponyville. Sunny’s the new one of a kind outsider in Equestria and probably one of the weirdest creatures around now with history tying her to Twilight. Where the hell else would she be? I thought to myself.

Stupid Equestrian destiny/coincidence crap.

It took us some time to get ready to go even with a palace full of servants, and Twilight went off somewhere to go collect someone. Sunset just sprawled out on the bed Twilight and I had been using, and I decided to make some small talk with Celestia after going unconscious for a minute to check up on the hive and reassure everything that I was still in charge.

“So...she doesn’t seem to be taking her situation very well.”

“Would you?” Celestia asked me. “If you returned to your homeworld in your present state.”

All things considered, they would have probably dissected me the moment I landed. But I didn’t want to tell Tia that. “...good point,” I just mumbled before thinking of another something to talk about.

“So uh, this thing you put inside me...you can take it back now,” I told her.

I actually got a creepy suspicion of what she was going to say before she opened her mouth. “No, I cannot,” Celestia replied. Then before I could say ‘uh yes you can’ she went on with “such a thing freely given cannot be so easily returned.”

“No offense Tia, but I don’t like the idea of a little piece of your core essence hanging out inside my body,” I told her.

“Yet it is there...and it may prove to be useful to you one day,” she added with a tiny smile. Which totally didn’t make THAT sound any less ominous. Seriously, you don't say shit like that in Equestria.

But I knew she wasn’t going to go on no matter how much I pressed the matter; mainly because I had a piece of Tia inside me telling me that she wouldn't. Okay, I probably could have worked out a way to get rid of it on my own. I mean, it was just magical energy when it came down to it and I ate the love flavored version of that stuff for breakfast so it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility...but...it was basically eating a piece of Tia’s soul. Really eating it.

That didn’t sit too well with me.

“Okay so...something else I’m wondering,” I mumbled while I prepared to switch subjects. “Sunset Shimmer...she’s been gone for more than just two and a half years, hasn’t she?”

It’s the only thing that made sense. I mean, there was no way in hell that Twilight couldn’t have run into her if they had both been Celestia’s students at the same time. Sure Tia had said Sunny started her apprenticeship shortly before Twilight, but considering Tia was pushing a four digit age, a short while could have been a freaking decade to her.

There were a few holes in the theory, but it didn’t seem that impossible. Hell, a few weeks ago I had been kidnapped by the boogyman. Well, almost kidnapped, I seriously doubted he expected something that was technically two months old to beat the crap out of him. But after I did get pulled into his little shadow realm and brought the CMC out of it, I found nearly a week had gone by while only a few minutes had passed for me.

“Fifteen years,” the girl on the bed said, drawing my attention. She hadn’t moved or anything, but the way she spoke with such a hollow voice filled the room.

Which meant she just extend her time in human form by about a decade, all because of what amounted to a temper tantrum two years ago, to her anyway. I thought about asking if she wanted to try going back to Earthquestria, but considering what happened with Tambelon and the fact Grogar didn’t stay dead...that didn’t really seem like a viable option.

“Hey Fae you’re back,” the familiar voice of a brash pegasus said a second before I saw her float through the door with Twilight trotting behind her. “So how was...what the hay is that thing?”

The appearance of the blue pegasus seemed to knock Sunset out of her 'bla' mood for a second, and she sat up to look at the newcomer with a dumbfounded expression. “R-Rainbow Dash?”

“Yeah?”

Sunset just gave the pegasus a surprised look. “How… What’re you doing here?”

I looked over to Twilight. “You’re explaining this one.”

Things moved pretty quickly from that point. Sunset was a little excited and weirded out by the fact that the girls she had known back on Earhquestria had pony analogues in Equestria that Twilight knew when there wasn't a Twilight Sparkle at Canterlot High. At least she and Rainbow Dash hit it off. Mostly because Sunset was new, which meant ponies would automatically be interested in her, and she already kind of knew Dash so the former pony did exactly what she needed to in order to get all friendly with her.

We got everything set up for Sunset to live with me in Everfree Castle, and she seemed to cheer up just a little when I mentioned the local witchdoctor might be able to help up with her condition. At the very least, Zecora was willing to take her on as a student because of the human's ability to reach the top shelf in the zebra's lab. Equestria apparently didn't make stuff like that with earth pony restrictions in mind.

Twilight seemed...apprehensive about the whole thing. I didn't even need my empathic abilities to tell me something was bothering her. She even stayed over at the castle for the night to make sure Sunset got settled in...and checked on the vault where I kept all the evil magic stuff that Tia had collected over the years. Her mood even managed to kill the goddess's libido. All she was up for was a few kisses.

Then she went to sleep, and I went into my comatose mind trance. At which point, things got kind of freaky.

I woke up on the couch in my living room and sat up while my brain tried to adjust to regaining consciousness. For a moment I just went through the motions that everyone has when they come out of a dream before noticing something was very wrong. Like the fact that I had fingers, elbows, knees and toes.

Because I was human.

A naked human, but still a member of the non-pony species.

And male, thank god.

But still human, which kind of gave me this weird creeping suspicion. You know the kind, its like when you're a few seconds from a freakout because you just know something bad is about to happen but you can't really go into full-on panic because you just know it's going to get worse if you do. I think it's part of that whole survival instinct that keeps people quite when all they really want to do is scream at the top of their lungs.

I licked my lips nervously, and looked around for a moment. I was back in my old house, in my old living room, and judging by the lack of windows, it was night outside. "What the hell?"

"A sentiment I share."

The familiar voice made me look off to my side to find a stranger standing off to the side of my living room's television that was in an equal amount of undress that I was and very female. Very large, and attractive female. She had to top seven feet in height and had the smoothest skin, with large breasts and wide hips that went with her waist to make a perfectly fit hourglass figure.

I'll just go out and say it...she was hands down the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

And I would have asked what the hell she was doing in my house, but the long hair that flowed down to her ass in a mix of green and pink shades as well as the sun tattoo on her butt made me ask something else first. "Celestia?"

The sex bomb looked up from rather distracting activity of examining her body with her hands, of which she was currently poking using her newly acquired fingers to poke her breasts with a curious expression on her face, and just stared at me. "Yes?"

"Um...what's going on?" I asked in an uneasy voice.

Chapter 13: My Little Heavenly Dream

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There were several odd sights I had seen since coming to Equestria. Some of them were creepy like the changelings. Some sights were cute and adorable like the ponies. Magic was just plain cool no matter what color it got thrown around as, and while the scenery ran the whole gauntlet from everyday meh like your usual field to the somehow cool but kinda girly at the same time house of Rainbow Dash with its rainbow waterfall, I kind of liked it all.

However, none of them was like the amazon of a human that stood in front of me. Okay yeah, it was ‘just’ a human, of which I had probably seen a million of but…I had kind of thought those days were over. Except for Sunset Shimmer, but she didn’t count.

If it wasn’t for her tramp stamp and hair, I would have been completely lost. Not that I wasn’t confused as hell anyway, but I managed to avoid panicking thanks to the old fallback that Twilight always had in case of weird and freaky emergencies: ask Princess Celestia.

“Tia…what’s going on?”

The pony goddess turned sex bomb looked up from where she was examining her body, and gave me a confused expression that pressed her lips together and widened her eyes. I could actually feel her confusion in the back of my mind, as well as a bubbling fear that was slowly building.

“Is that you…Omnifarious?” she asked before she cut herself off and reached up to touch her mouth, or at least started to. I think she got distracted when her hand made it to a few inches from her face, and then she started wiggling her fingers very slowly before she found something interesting in her mouth.

It took me a second to recover from the fact I has just heard her talk in English, and I just watched Celestia play with her tongue and mouth for a minute. From the looks of things, she was running her tongue over her teeth, which I could understand. Although pony mouths were pretty human, the teeth were pure herbivore, so I could guess why Celestia would find the appearance of canines worth investigating.

She studied me for a few moments, and then noticed something about herself that was apparently more important and her attention became divided.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I replied, although I don’t think the goddess had heard me. Celestia was already back to examining the parts of herself that I could see, and to be honest, so was I.

At the moment, the impossibility of the situation was put on the back burner. It was kind of a survival trait I had developed since coming to Equestria because...Pinkie Pie. If I froze every time I saw something strange, I would have never moved. So I just went on auto-pilot and looked at the former alicorn’s perfect, powerful human body as she ran her fingers over her arms in wonderment.

Like I said before, Celestia had to top seven feet when it came to height, but she wasn’t slouched over, or lanky, or anything that’s usually associated with humans who get that tall, the woman was just bigger in proportion. Of course the rest of her body was a perfect combination of impossibly sexy voluptuous supermodel beauty mixed with a good musculature, and topped by certain proportions that would have been impossible to have if she really did exercise all day to stay in shape. Put simply, human Celestia was perfectly fit with huge tits and a nice ass.

It was a weird contrast to what her human form was supposed to look like, but...that woman was a school teacher, and this one was a goddess that had existed for millennia. A few physical differences were to be expected.

She walked around for all of three steps, and then paused. I wondered how she wasn’t tripping around since Tia had just gone from quadruped to two legs, but that apparently didn’t interest her as much as the fact she had feet. The goddess actually rubbed them on the carpet for a moment, then just sat down on the floor to look at her lower appendages as well as wiggle her toes. Then she got back up and slid her feet on the carpet again a few more times.

I guess I could get what was going through her mind. Aside from her emotions I mean. On that front I didn’t have to guess, I knew Tia was experiencing a huge mix of wonder, confusion, some hints of anger and a little bit of fear, but as we had just changed species, that was totally understandable.

As for the need to have her hands mess with everything…hooves weren’t all that sensitive when it came to things like touch. I could still feel through them, but it was pretty muted when compared to what I used to have; and don’t even get me started on a changeling’s ability to touch stuff . Considering she had always wore shoes on top of that...yeah, the full tactile sensation of human skin was probably a bit mind blowing.

Then I noticed something odd about myself. I could still sense Tia’s emotions despite the species change. If anything, it was even stronger than when I was a changeling. Where before I had just gotten a mental...smell, what I had been getting some kind of weird echo in the back of my mind of what Celestia was experiencing.

But the moment of confusion was ruined when I noticed Celestia squeezing her breasts. I almost told Tia to stop touching herself, but that little phrase didn’t make it out of my head as Celestia’s inspections turned to one of her nipples and she asked me a question without even looking up. “Why exactly do humans have their teats in such a odd place?”

I had to keep from groaning at the question, and averted my eyes before…oh who am I kidding? The five seconds that I looked at the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen after settling for ponies for the past two months… Dear God did I want to bend her over the nearest table and… Oh hell, she was human, missionary position was actually a valid option again, and the goto option for human sex looked pretty damn appealing.

Then I remembered who I was, who she was…and a few other things like the fact I had a stable relationship with Twilight despite the fact the alicorn should have probably dumped me half a dozen times over. Sure she could forgive me for worrying her again, and lying to her about the human stuff since our relationship was kind of built on lies, but…dream cheating on the purple alicorn with her pseudo-mom was kind of pushing it as far as what I knew Twi would shrug off.

What can I say? I’ve read the X-men comic where Cyclops had been banging the blonde psychic in his dreams and then Jean found out. I think Blondie died the following issue so…yeah, not gonna be that stupid. Even if Twilight didn’t kill me, Equestrian karma would.

Of course that didn’t stop my body from screaming ‘FUCK HER NOW YOU IDIOT!’ and having all kinds of reactions like brain shortages, a tensing of muscles, shortness of breath and a...stiffening of…other things. Two months without a hot human woman and I was just about to a teenager’s level of desire for all things cotious.

It didn’t help that she was incredibly hot either.

“Y-You seriously have to ask me that?” I replied before my stupidity took over and I looked over to her again.

Tia had one of her breasts cupped in her hand and was actually jiggling the damn thing. “I asked Sunset but, she said she had no idea either,” she told me before looking up with a frown. “And why are mine so big? Sunset’s weren’t nearly this large.”

Probably because the fanart involving you drawn as a human, or with human features was usually an impossibly tall woman with wide hips and giant breasts, I thought to myself before managing to look away again.

“Am I going to start lactating?”

It was questions like that which made me just look back up at her. “W-What? What the hell kind of question is THAT?”

“My teats seem to be rather large compared to what Sunset had, and I’ve played in dreamscapes long enough with Luna as a filly to know when I’m in one,” Celestia told me before looking around a bit. “Seeing as how I’m able to move around without difficulty and there’s an odd language coming from my mouth…I’m guessing this is your dream and you want me to look like this. It’s very well done by the way, most dream realms are more...chaotic than this.”

The odd fact that she was speaking English did had filed away in my mind as kind of weird, but I still groaned again as Tia’s theory ran up what I knew about changelings. We didn’t dream. However...monarchs could create mental constructs inside the hive mind. Chrysalis and me did it all the time when we wanted a private conversation with each other. It was kind of like lucid dreaming only…private since we only saw what we wanted the other changeling to see.

But Celestia was here inside mine to such an extent that she saw it and could be affected by it.

So what the hell did that mean?

For a second I tried experimenting and imagined her wearing clothes…and nothing happened.

“You haven’t answered my question yet.”

“What?” I asked before my memory clicked and I groaned. “Seriously? Celestia! Just…why the hell? Why would you even ask me something like that? Why in the hell would I even do something like that? Just…ew! No!”

She chuckled, and I detected a faint blush on her cheeks. “Trust me, it wouldn’t be the oddest thing I’ve done when in a dream realm. When reality is malleable and there are no consequences to our actions, things can get…trippy,” she said before rubbing her chin. “Hmm, that’s an interesting word, and…quite fitting. So yes, trippy.”

I groaned and held my head in my hands again and tried not to think. It helped me from imagining the Sisters on an acid trip while in dreamland. “Please tell me you're trolling me.”

“Trolling...no,” she replied as I could practically see the human language information tell her just what I meant. “You’re the one who made me like this. I’m just trying to figure out the rules.”

“Fine, rule one is put on some clothes,” I told her weakly.

“...um, how?”

“Just…imagine yourself in them!” I exclaimed. Then I got a much better idea. “Or turn back into a horse already!” Pony Celestia I could deal with. She didn’t have perfect skin, fine legs, and boobs that were more than a handful.

A minute passed with Tia looking down at herself. Nothing happened, then she looked back up at me with a concerned expression. It was more that that though, I could feel that she was nervous, and even a little terrified for some reason. “I don’t seem to be able to…you’ll have to do it.”

The humacorn’s tensions reached a new height as I stared at her for a few seconds, trying to will her back into being a quadruped and got nothing for it. “Yeah it’s not working,” I told her before frowning at the giant woman. “And what the hell are you so freaked out about?”

Confusion, and then a bit of embarrassment ran across Tia’s mind for a moment before she looked away and crossed her arms under her breasts that kind of hiked them up a bit. However, beneath the surface, the alicorn was...afraid. My rather angry demand had only help to hype it up to a new level too.

“I’m sorry...but I do not deal with...helplessness very well,” the most powerful being in Equestria told me. “It has been quite some time since I’ve experienced something like this, and most of it was under the care of my sister.”

Even with the amazon’s emotions telling me how afraid she was, I wasn’t very sympathetic. She may have been hot, but she still looked like a human version of Celestia. In other words, gigantic, powerful, and beautiful all rolled into one impossible package. If anything, I should have been the one afraid of her seeing as how she could probably snap me in two with one hand tied behind her back!

But instead of trying to reassure her that I wasn’t going to rape her or anything, I focused on something else. “Hey Tia...tripping and trolling...you know what those mean?”

“Yes,” she told me while giving me a wary look.

Since I was getting a little tired, not to mention freaked out by Celestia of all people being afraid of me, I sighed and sat down on the L-shaped couch that took up most of my living room, then gestured for her to do the same on the other end. “Oh for crying out loud Tia, I’m not going to hurt you! This is...dammit, this is because of that stupid little piece of you in my head isn’t it?”

It wasn’t that big a leap of logic. One minute Tia had absolutely no knowledge of a human concept, and then…she was getting thoroughly culture shocked. Combined with everything else that had happened so far and what I knew about mind magic. I began to formulate a theory about what was going on.

It was obvious we were in a changeling mindscape based on my old house…although why Tia was human I didn’t quite understand at the moment. But the fact that knowledge about things like talking and purely human concepts were just popping into her head were giving me a very disturbing thought: she really was in my head.

It was really disturbing because if she was in my head, then she had access to the hive mind. If that were the case… Well, the first few times I had touched the hive mind, it had nearly driven me nuts. In the following weeks, I became a borderline sociopath in regards to anything not pony…and didn’t really give much of a shit about any of the ponies that lived outside Ponyville thanks to the fact Chrysalis had been directing the thing. It’s not like she had outright mind control of me or anything, but thousands of voices whispering into your ear all the time tends to have some effect.

On top of which, I was a changeling. Sure I had a human personality, but my brain was still wired to handle all the freaky mental magic that composed the hive mind. If Tia got thrown into the thing…well, it might make her go nuts, turn her into my little mind slave, or just completely fry her brain. I honestly didn’t know.

So I had apparently thrown up a mental construct around me and her to block out all of that crap on instinct. And of course I ended up building something that resembled the safest place a human being could have: my old home. Then I made her and myself fit the little scenario, and blocked out everything else. Everything but me anyway, although it seemed her ability to consciously access my knowledge wasn’t an option. Tia had just been given English, and info on how to move her body without falling flat on her face.

As for the area around us... I was betting it wasn’t even really night outside the house, there just wasn’t really anything out there period, because my subconscious hadn’t bothered to make it. There didn’t need to be an outside for Tia to be safe.

Although the place wasn’t without its problems. I found that out while getting up to look around while Tia went back to playing with herself in the living room. For starters, the house was pretty damn imperfect. None of the lights were on and there was literally nothing outside, but it might as well have been the middle of the day when it came to illumination. Despite there being a stairwell in the entryway that was supposed to lead to the second floor, the whole thing just stopped and met drywall halfway there. The miniature library of books that were in the living room and in my office couldn’t be opened and as well have been bricks, and the big screen television wasn’t working.

Oh, and the toilet didn’t work either, but…that was kind of par for the course with my place.

“So, now what?” Celestia asked me as I came back to sit on the couch and told her what was going on. Somehow, I had managed to forget that Tia was butt naked while I had been up looking around, and found my eyes taking her beauty in again.

Unfortunately, the lust came not long after, and I wet my lips while pictures of me between the powerful woman’s legs with the two of us joined at the crotch played in my mind. She dug her hands into my shoulders and I did the same with her ass as I drove myself into her harder and...

I beat down the mental image and sighed. “I don’t know,” I told her truthfully before slumping down on the couch. It did little to hide my body’s reaction to an object of extreme sexual desire being within easy reach. “I’m pretty sure I could leave if I wanted, but doing so might collapse this little safe house and I don’t want to know what that would do to you. I don’t suppose Luna can come and help us out here?”

Celestia shook her head. “No, Luna’s dream walking magic only works on ponies I’m afraid ,” she told me before her eyes drifted downward.

It took me all of one second to become a little self-conscious, and I reached over to grab a pillow on the couch to cover my own crotch since certain parts of my body were still quite aware of the impossibly beautiful naked woman sitting on the couch. “Sorry. I couldn’t find anything to really cover up with.”

“I was not offended. To be honest, I prefer nudity. So many of my ponies use clothes as a way to proclaim their…superiority,” she grumbled at the end with a scowl and a flash of anger. But it was gone a moment later and Tia was giving me a little smirk. “I was actually comparing the size of your penis to that of what I‘ve seen on my ponies.”

I’m not gonna lie, I flinched. I flinched hard. Then I gave Tia my best ‘are you insane’ expression before she went on. “If I’ve got the dimensions correct. It’s actually rather small compared to the shaft of the average-”

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” I demanded with a frown while I fought down incredible levels of embarrassment. Not that I didn’t already know that! And I was pretty average for a human being thank you! Ponies were just…they had big cocks, okay? I don’t like to think about it, but creatures that are four feet tall have bigger sholongs than anything the human race can produce.

Celestia had the nerve to just stare at me with a blank face. I knew she had to be screwing with me somehow despite the fact I could read her emotions like an open book inside the place we were in.

“What?” The fact she was genuinely confused only made things worse. So I got the brilliant idea to explain thing to her and…it kind of went about the same way as when I explained some of the more universal parts of human culture to Twilight.

She got all analytical, and I stammered a lot. Then she started asking the most embarrassing questions possible. Five minutes into the whole thing and I came to two conclusions: Ponies truly had no shame when it came to nudity, and Twilight had gotten a LOT of her behavioral patterns from Tia when it came to learning about something.

I swear, the woman had no freaking tact whatsoever.

“So human males pride themselves on the size of their…reproductive organs?” the goddess asked after FINALLY catching onto the fact just saying various incarnations of the word dick was a taboo during my whole completely scientific and technical explaining of things that I totally failed to keep emotionally free. “That’s rather stupid.”

I gave her a deadpan expression back. “Didn’t you tell me that the only reason you got involved with your third boyfriend was because he had a huge dick?” I asked evenly.

The goddess rolled her eyes. “Back when I was young and stupid, yes. Honestly, a relationship should be based off love and trust, not how much physical pleasure the other pony can give. That road only leads to possessive thoughts and heartbreak.”

After hearing the moral of the proverbial episode, I let out a low chuckle. I mean, I knew Twilight and the girls talked like that, but hearing in from Celestia was another thing entirely. The corniness managed to cheer me up a little and helped to clear my head so I could get it back on track. “So, um look…” I began while pulling the conversation back to where it was supposed to be. “As far as I can figure things, we have two options. The first is that I wake up now and hope that breaks your connection to the hive, or we wait until you wake up.

“The problem is...I have no idea if me leaving the hive mind will take you with me now that you’re here,” I went on. It seemed like a safe bet but...I did not want to risk Celestia sanity and free will no matter how safe the bed. “But...I don’t know if you’ll wake up on your own either. I mean, I don’t technically sleep anymore so...you could be stuck here until I leave.”

“The second choice seems the best option,” Celestia said after a moment of thought, which I had to agree with. “Until then, we’ll have to figure out a way to entertain ourselves.” The fact she said it innocently did nothing to stop my imagination.

I was wondering how how good her boobs felt and was picturing the former horse giving me a blowjob inside of five seconds, and blushing in embarrassment over such things after ten while I tried to cover my renewed arousal.

And guessing by the bit of laughter that came from her mouth, she really had meant to embarrass me with that last one.

“Honestly, you’re easier than Twilight used to be,” she said after I recovered enough to glare at her a bit. Considering just who was talking, I was starting to understand Twilight’s libido…and that teacher fetish she seemed to have. But that led me down a rather dark road called Twilestia, and I couldn’t help but shudder.

So once Celestia had gotten her giggles when it came to ribbing me about human squeamishness and all that other stuff, we tried to get some conversations going. The topics ran everywhere from pre-Equestrian history…which pretty much amounted to what a pair of goddesses did back in their wonder years, to pony fashion and just what the hell made a pony sexually attractive anyway. Some of the answers were disturbing, while others ran the gambit from boring to very enlightening.

Luna and Tia pretty much did what you’d expect two godlike beings with teenage hormones would do. First they were your average high school girls…in a world without a formal education system. Which meant they just went around looking for true love…at least until their first boyfriends dumped them because the pair of alicorns ended up being bigger, stronger, and more magically talented than any pony around after just a few years. Then they just started looking for cheap thrills for about a decade after that.

Oh, and they were blank flanks well into their adult years too. That was a bit of a shocker to me; and probably the MLP fandom as a whole. That whole story about the unicorns raising the sun and the moon was true, and they kept it up even after Equestria was founded, with ten for the sun and five for the moon. However, doing so apparently put such a strain on their magic their cores were overstressed and it eventually took away a unicorn’s ability to use magic at all. It was only after the entire adult population of the tribe was drained that Tia and Luna stepped in and took over the job. Which got them their cutie marks at the tender age of forty.

They also fixed all the unicorns magic too, which kind of shut the unicorn monarchy up about the alicorn princesses just showing up and taking over their new country because they were alicorns. Seriously, that’s how it happened. A bunch of ponies tracked them down and asked if they wanted to rule over all pony-kind.

The whole sun and moon things was also the source of that whole unicorn supremacy idea that seemed to still abound in some Canterlot circles. Although now that I knew the source, I didn’t know whether to be understanding of it, or just think it was sad. I mean sure, somebody’s great grandfather or whatnot suffered and gave up everything back in the day so everypony else could be happy, but…they were all dead and the assholes that lived in modern Equestria didn’t suffer through shit, but demanded an equal amount of respect and everything else.

“So wait,” I said as Tia finished her lecture, making the naked amazon stop in her tracks instead of pacing back and forth across the carpeted floor while she gave me a classic lecture the way it was meant to be given. Yeah, the naked body, swaying hips and… jiggling was as distracting as anything I could imagine, but I was willing to indulge her if it meant getting what I wanted.

Hell, she wasn’t even trying to make me want to bang her with the way she sauntered back and forth. The princess was apparently just as…strict on procedures as Twilight seemed to be when it came to teaching, and that meant she needed to be up in front of the ‘class’ and walking around.

Keeping my attention of her cutie mark helped, it think…with the exception of when she turned that is.

“So, this whole snob thing, it has to do with…breeding?” I asked. “Girls weren’t allowed to date girls because they needed unicorns to breed? But what about the massive mare to stallion ratio?” An idea come to me, and I groaned. “Oh God, please don’t tell me herding was real back in those days…or something.”

Celestia gave me an odd look. “That word…I don’t seem to understand it,” she said. Although when I opened my mouth to explain, she kept going. “I mean, I understand the word, but…what does a communal group have to do with breeding?”

I did my best to keep a straight face as I thought up the best way to explain the concept. “Well um…okay, some of the MLP fans theorized that because there’s so many more girls than guys in Equestria, they had multiple partner relationships with something approaching three mares per stallion. Although there was one…theory that had Twilight belonging to a family comprised of two stallions and four or five mares.” It had kind of been awhile since I read fan fiction for obvious reasons, and my semi-photographic memory revolved more around remembering sights and sounds better than words.

“Multiple partners, that’s…” she crossed her arms and tapped a finger against her flesh. “That’s a rather interesting idea, actually. But, how would raising the foals work?”

For a minute I just sat there cursing my stupidity and how I had found myself in a discussion with Celestia over MLP fanfiction. “It’s all one big family thing, I think…even the ponies that aren’t related by blood are considered siblings since both their moms and dads belong to the same group,” I explained.

Then the discussion on theoretical pony polygamy soon turned to an actual one on human marriage customs and all of our little quirks; which the goddess seemed incredibly interested in. At least on that front I had some actual knowledge and statistics that I was able to rattle off before we changed topics.

Pony fashion was confusing…and boring. It was like I was talking to Rarity again, and she had already done plenty to explain things on that front back when I had been the slightest bit interested in what ponies wore and why. So it was mostly just a rehash of information to kill time and keep me from noticing Celestia’s nakedness.

Bright colors were seen as attractive and inviting, while darker colors and tones were actually meant to convey a sense of authority. Covering up cutie marks was seen as distasteful, unless you were a mare in a gown. Guys didn’t get an excuse and got to show off their butt tattoos all the time while girls got to cover up and be mysterious. As for just where the hell the idea for dresses came from, Celestia didn’t know. It was all before even her time.

And of course, saddles came from Saddle Arabia. If I wanted to find out just why the hell they were invented, I needed to go to that part of the world and ask them.

“I detest the things,” she told me with a frown. “Honestly, they were never made with a pegasus or alicorn in mind.”

That, I had to agree with her on.

But, seeing that the woman had hit an undesirable point in the boring part of the conversation, I took that as my out and switched topics before Celestia could start talking about her favorite dress or something…although, considering how she said she preferred nudity…I wondered if she ever even wore any clothes.

“So let me guess, coats are the same way, right?” I went on. “Ponies with bright coats are considered happy and fun, while the darker ones get to be all serious and…Twilight-ish.”

Hey, it kind of fit with Pinkie and Rainbow being the party animals, and Twilight and…okay, well Twilight was the only darker colored mare in the group, aside from me that is, and I was nowhere near Pinkie levels of party.

“No I’m afraid things are a bit different there,” Celestia went on hesitantly. “I’m surprised you haven’t talked to Twilight about this.”

I couldn’t help but give her an even stare. “We did talk about how pony relationships work once, but…I’m a guy Celestia,” I told her. Most of it revolved around the fact the vast majority of ponies were bisexual, and mare on mare relationships were actually the norm thanks to the pony population's need for romance. She had graphs and everything. “Human men don’t really care about appearance as long as they look good enough for work.”

Not exactly true, but I had no interest in getting into just what made a human attractive. So of course Celestia just had to go and bring it up.

“Ah, but this form is attractive to you?” she asked after a moment.

My brain quickly lost ground to other parts of my body in the battle to decide just what was controlling my thinking process, but I managed to keep from stammering. Instead, I just gulped. “Yes.”

“Why?”

The question had me bringing up an explanation in my mind, which made me remember studying every inch of Celestia’s naked human body…until I was back to looking at her in dream-reality. “It um…” I mumbled before taking a breath.

We had been talking for hours so, I can’t say I didn’t get a little bit used to the goddess being around. But that still didn’t make her any less desirable.

“Well you’re tall, which is a bit of a plus for me,” I began while doing my best to keep myself under control. “And you're physically fit without being ripped, and your breasts are huge…and your butt is filled out, but not so much its fat.” And then I quickly closed my eyes and hunched over help hide the...you know.

By the time I looked back, Celestia had gone back to examining her body and touching herself. Although this time she was mostly concerned with her boobs and butt. “Yes but, why do you feel the way you do about that? And how do humans find teats attractive?” she asked. “The rear I could understand, but…why the teats?”

Was it wrong that I actually knew the answer to that question? And on several levels at that. Off the top of my head too. So I quickly ran and dove into that academic knowledge before something like ‘can we have sex now’ made its way out of my mouth.

“It’s um…a lot of things actually,” I told her while looking at the goddess’s feet. “Um…culturally, it has to do with an ancient civilization we got a lot of our ideas from. These guys called the Spartans required their woman to exercise regularly in order to maintain fit bodies for childbearing.” And the Athenian men probably didn’t survive calling a Spartan’s wife ugly, while chubbier women that sat around reading poetry all day were considered unfit by the Spartans. “It just kind of stuck.”

“And the…” I looked up and regretting it. Celestia was messing with her boob again. “Breasts, boobies, teats, tits…why do your people have so many names for the mammeries?”

Once again, I had to gulp and look away. “Um…well, there’s tons of reasons really, at least when it comes to why humans think they’re important in a sexual way...no idea about the names,” I told her after a moment. “You see…um… One idea says that because when a baby suckles from his mother is the first completely beneficial form of human he receives, there’s a condition of the infant mind or something that tells people the breasts are one of the most important human body parts because they’re used to give us food. But some people say the exact opposite is the case to explain why babies who aren’t breastfed grow up wanting what they never got.

“There’s also some ideas that revolve around evolution, like how because humans stand upright and we focus a lot on breeding, a man's eyes are drawn to that area when women face us, and the butt when they’re not because…well…some tend to stick out,” I finished rather lamely. “Then there’s the idea that boobs are the big noticeable difference between guys and girls, so guy focus on them.”

And somehow, that helped to kill my mood. No idea why, other than...you know...turning an object of lust into an academic...thing. So I blame Twilight. You hang around a pony long enough and she starts to rub off on you, and not in the nuzzling kind of way.

Celestia nodded. “So it’s a matter of positioning then. That’s interesting.”

Thankfully she kept going kept going. “For mares, the area paid the most attention to when determining sexual attractiveness is the flank. To be more precise, it’s the width of the flank, and the mare’s plot. After what you said, I would blame it on the fact that ponies are a quadruped species and that’s where the attention goes. Also, it’s the easiest place to examine unobserved, and includes the…reproductive area as well,” she said before clearing her throat.

When Tia didn’t offer anything more, I looked back up at her with a frown. “So, wait…the fatter the pony’s ass, the more attractive she is?” I asked, completely confused. “That’s um…that doesn’t add up.”

Going by the reactions of other ponies, Rarity and Fluttershy were the hot ones of the group. I think Pinkie was considered cute, while AJ, Rainbow and Twi were at the other end of the attractive scale for some reason. Oh and…I guess I was up there with Rarity and Flutters. But going by Celestia’s explanation, Pinkie should have been the one fighting stallions off with a stick…and Ms Cake should have had her pick of the local guys instead of the one she ended up with.

“Well there’s a balance to it of course,” the goddess added. “Ponies that are too…heavy are seen as unattractive, and that is just one factor. Height is also a desirable trait, as well as a bright coat. A long mane and tail is also something most stallions look for. Large wings are considered sexy among pegasi, as is horn length when it comes to unicorns, and earth ponies value the manes and tail more than most. Mostly the tail.”

I stared at my pony Sex Ed teacher as things started to click into place. A tall pony with bright colors, a long horn, and big wings that had a huge ass without being fat was considered the definition of pony beauty. “In other words, the more they look like you, the hotter they are.”

It was understandable. Hell, Celestia was their living deity. If ponies didn’t use her as their definition of beauty, then I would have wondered just what the hell was going on.

“So what about the darker colors?” I asked. “Are they considered ugly?”

Celestia breath caught for a moment, and then she shook her head. “Not exactly,” she replied after a moment of thought. “How best to put this?”

She reached up and played with her hair for a moment, and I was left wondering if she’d forgotten me when that act to seemed to consume her for a minute as she wound some of her multi-colored hair around one of her fingers. Then she just looked back at me with a start, and dropped her hands to hide them behind her butt. “Sorry,” the goddess apologized before continuing on.

“Darker colors were associated with Nightmare Moon for a thousand years and so they got a reputation for marking a pony as…wild,” she explained cautiously. “Ponies with darker coats were, and still are to a great extent, usually seen as being less inclined to have…social morals.”

I stared at Tia for a moment, trying to put some sense into what she had just said. Being a human for America and all, what I came up with was… “Wait, so…ponies think if your born with a dark coat, you’re going to turn out evil or something?” I asked.

Apparently I was way off, because Celestia just stared at me with an open mouth for a moment before equal parts shock and anger guided her words. “What? No!” she exclaimed. “Ponies with dark coats are just seen as the wilder kind! They’re seen as less inclined to let their inhibitions stop them from enjoying…things, and not as inclined as others to…commit.”

For a moment, I found myself thinking back to my own pony body. Although there were some minor differences, I kind of looked like wet mane pony, with the same thick wings that alicorns like Luna, Twilight, and Cadence possessed as well as a longer than average horn, an extremely long mane and…my ass wasn’t as big as Tia’s even proportionally, but I was comfortable sitting down on the floor. With all that factored in with my pheromones that turned guys on by just being in the same room, and a dark coat that told every pony who saw me I put out…

“Christ, no wonder every guy in town was after me,” I groaned. Plus, the way Rarity and all the other girls just got confused when I tried to blame all the fact all the guys chased me around on chemical reactions made a lot more sense. I may have just been another pony in my eyes…but by their point of view…I was hot as hell.

Did they think I was just being sweet and trying to humor them by blaming it on something other than my looks?

Then I found myself thinking about the other girls and…Fluttershy getting a modeling job that one time made a lot more sense. She may not have had big wings like an alicorn, but everything else about her screamed beautiful when it came to pony looks. Flutters had a well proportioned flank, bright colors and long hair. She had even been in squeamish poses instead of the ones Rarity had tried coaching her to do to make her seem less...open.

The same went for Rarity except when it came to her horn, and Pinkie… The tiny bit of extra pudge she got from working and living at a bakery probably marked her as cute, but undesirable when it came to long-term romance since one day she’d slow down and balloon up. If it wasn’t for her constantly being on a sugar rush, she would have probably already been there.

As for the athletes of the group…I didn’t even need to ask. Celestia may have been as strong as five Applejack’s smooshed together, but she sure as hell didn’t look it when it came to her rump. So while the farm pony’s tail might have turned a few heads with how thick it was compared to the others, living on the farm had given her an almost stallion physique that left little in the back to work with. But she still had the sunny look going for her. Rainbow was…a little less lucky. Her coloration was good, but…my favorite pony’s mane was a short mess, her wings were average and her body had almost no fat whatsoever.

Then there was…Twilight. She had gotten a bit of an upgrade with her aliconnation what with her alicorn wings being bigger than Rainbow’s and the horn lengthening along with her tiny height increase, and there was the fact she was a fucking alicorn princess but…

My little revelation killed the last hot Celestia thoughts I was having trouble with, and I looked up to meet the Princess eye to eye. “Hey Tia, can I ask you something?”

I opened my eyes to the near darkness that came from a world that always had a full moon. A few seconds later, my pseudo-alicorn/pegasus eyes adjusted, and I found Twilight quietly snoozing next to me. For a second I wanted to reach out and touch her, but then I noticed I had hooves again and those things weren’t really meant for light touches.

Besides, I was still a little afraid the meeting of the minds I had with Tia might just have condemned Equestria to eternal darkness, so I kind of just sat around staring at her while I waited for the sun to either rise…or tell us just how screwed we all were.

To pass the time I just laid where I was, and looked at Twilight’s sleeping face. It was a lot more...human than I remembered, even with the large eyes and muzzle.

A few minutes later, the sun rose into the sky and I let out a breath that I didn’t know I was holding. Tia had disappeared from my little mental construct about five minutes before I woke up, and I checked the hive mind to make sure she hadn’t been pulled into it or something. Since there hadn’t been any trace of her, I had made the assumption that she just woke up but…it was good to know that everything was okay.

As far how I knew. The little Tia in my head got this nice tingly feeling when the sun went up and…oh hell it was the freaking sun. Sure Luna could have raised the damn thing in an emergency but I think it would have been kind of late and Spike didn’t just run into the room screaming about a big problem.

Probably because we left him in Canterlot.

But that was beside the point, the sun was up, Celestia was…probably conscious, and Twilight was waking up.

Before she could get her eyes open all the way, I bent over and kissed her on the muzzle. The whole thing made her eyelids practically snap open, and I just smiled at my mare. “Good morning.”

Twilight blinked a few times, then yawned and smacked her lips before sitting up and returning my greeting in kind. I managed not to giggle at her messy little mane. Pony hair like hers wasn’t made to be touched by pillows for any length of time.

I sat up too and pushed away some nervous crap that was trying to work its way into my head. “Twilight…can I talk to you about something?”

Confusion, concern, worry and a bit of fear got picked up by my emotional nose, and I felt like kicking myself. My tone was way too low and steady for her to think I walked to talk about anything good. For a second I thought about dropping my transformation, but…what I needed to say would probably sound better coming from me as I was.

“W-What’s wrong Fae?” she asked cautiously before dropping down onto the ground and stretching out her wings.

I took a calming breath, and did my best to try and put my thoughts together. I had worked out what I wanted to say with Tia, but…that was all rehearsal with one of the kindest creatures in existence doing the moral support thing. This was the live performance, and I was on my own.

“Do you remember when we started dating, I didn’t understand a lot of the things about pony culture?” I asked while trying to think of the best way I could to start things off. Of course that hadn’t been something the two of us had worked out.

Twilight tilted her head and her anxiety started dying down, but only by a bit. “Yes. We went over courtship, sexual orientations, what’s expected for couples on anniversaries-”

I held up a hoof to cut her off. “Okay um…that’s not what I was getting at,” I said before taking another deep breath and trying again. “Uh…okay, y-you know I’m human, or I was human, and…now I’m not, but…I’ve still got human values when it comes to morals, and what I think is funny, and what’s hot and-”

The tiny bit of anxiety had that been going down started to skyrocket, and my eyes widened. “What? Nonononono! This isn’t-this isn’t,” I repeated as I raised my hooves and looked at her frightened face while everything I had planned out with Celestia went right out the window. If she thought I was breaking up with her or something, that idea needed to be shot down as fast as possible.

“W-What’s going on?” Twilight asked me as she fidgeted around nervously, just stepping around in place.

“Okay,” I said before letting out a loud sigh. “Here we go…starting over…again.”

I cleared my throat and took in a deep breath before letting it out. “I’ve been a terrible colt friend or…filly friend, or…whatever you want to call me,” I told her. It really wasn’t time to get into the gender thing with the girl.

When Twilight opened her mouth to argue, I held up my hoof. “I know we’ve been on dates stuff but…I didn’t…I never tried to understand you…your…view of things,” I went on before licking my lips nervously. “And while I was gone, I talked to Celestia about…stuff, and she opened my eyes to a few things when it comes to Equestria, and I realized just how horrible I’ve been to you. How I’ve neglected you so much.”

“What? That’s not true!” Twilight insisted. “You-we, we do everything together! You-we…okay I know our vacation was a bust and…did you not want me to enroll in that class? I mean you looked pretty surprised to see me there even though I marked it on the calendar, didn’t post a schedule in the library for that day-”

“Twilight-”

“-asked you all the details about enrollment, and-”

“TWILIGHT!” I shouted before magicing her mouth closed and walking around the bed to get right in her face. “Look…I love you, and I’ve told you how amazing I think you are, and how cute you are, and adorable and…a-dork-able.”

The spell holding her mouth closed was undone by the goddess’s magic, and she giggled at the last one so hard she looked away. It’s not easy putting human words into pony ones most of the time and a lot of them come out sounding pretty weird. Hell, the pony word for human sounds nothing like its English counterpart.

“But I never once told you that I think you’re beautiful.”

The giggles stopped, and she looked back up at me with wide eyes before I continued.

“And you are beautiful,” I told her as I found myself gaining some confidence. My tone dropped, and I looked into her eyes. “You’re the most beautiful, gorgeous, and stunning mare I’ve ever seen. And it’s not just inner beauty. I love your hair, and your eyes. Your wings are amazing and…your plot is absolutely perfect. You’re perfect and…I love every inch of you, inside and out.”

As the alicorn just completely degenerated into embarrassed stammers about how I was all kinds of hot too, I kissed my little pony on the nose, ending the conversation, and giggled when her whole face turned bright red. The emotional response was even more overwhelming. Love, embarrassment, relief and half a dozen others all mixed in a myriad of psychic scents that I gladly took in.

See, here’s thing…ponies and humans are different, but girls are still girls. Self-image is everything. Since becoming an alicorn, Twilight had gotten a longer horn, filled out a bit, put on some sexy wings and even added some height. But before that, she had been a scrawny bookworm without much in the way of…anything, really. Back when she had been a unicorn, Twilight was just that scrawny little girl you see hiding in a public library somewhere that wasn’t worth anyone’s time to even look at, much less chase after.

I had guessed during my Flash days that guys hadn’t taken much of an interest in her, but guessed it was because she had been so withdrawn in her youth, not physical reasons. I’m sure she learned to deal with it over time but…hot guy shows up, gets a little interested and…all of a sudden, all those things Twilight’s told herself about not wanting a guy around probably sound pretty hollow. So girl holds onto guy despite him being an emotional vampire that has pretty much lied to her for their whole relationship.

Then guy turns into girl and…well…I’m guessing the fact that Twilight’s girlfriend ends up being drop dead gorgeous starts reminding the alicorn that she’s gone from just ‘meh’ levels of attractiveness to barely passable ones. Especially since every fucking guy and some of the girls in town wants a piece of the new mare on the block.

But hey, she could take it, she could endure. I was a loyal…girlfriend and I must not have cared about appearances that much since I hated dresses, didn’t go to the spa with Rarity, and hung out with Rainbow Dash whenever I wasn’t with her. Plus the whole other species thing probably had something to do with it. I wasn’t a jerk, I was just...ignorant.

Sweet, interesting and attentive, but ignorant.

And then a human, my former species, shows up in Equestria. Sure Twilight had no idea that Sunset’s body was way too young for me to be anything but be kind of weirded out about when it came to the possibility of physical attractiveness, but seeing as how I dragged her back to Equestria and she’s going to be living in my fucking house…I understood where the girl’s apprehension might be coming from.

So…yeah. All that going on and Twilight without anyone telling her how beautiful she was? Worst special somepony ever. That’s what I was.

“Th-Thank you,” Twilight managed to stammer after a moment of silence. “That’s very-”

“Overdue,” I told her before kissing the alicorn again. “And there is no kind of apology to make up for that. But, I just wanted to say it anyway. You’re beautiful, and I love you.”

“I love you too,” she replied before kissing me in response.

Cue little lovey-dovey pause and…

I put a smile on my face. “Now come on, let’s get cleaned up and…we’ll probably have to get Sunset to Ponyville to see Rarity for some more clothes, get some…” I paused as a list of just how many things I’d be needing to get her to survive out at my place and looked over to Twilight.

There was a bit of irritation coming from the alicorn, so it looked like my compliment hadn’t gotten rid of Twilight’s feelings on the subject completely, but they were nowhere near the mess that had been there yesterday. And I supposed something else could have been bugging her about Sunset, but…I’m sure we could deal with it later. Considering all the crap that I’d had to go through just in the past twenty-four hours, a little slice of life drama was nothing.

As things stood, I was sure everything would be just fine.

Perfectly fine.

With no more stressful situations waiting for me in the future whatsoever.

Yeah I didn’t buy it either but…it was the morning, and I was making Twilight feel better about herself so, I deserved a few happy delusions.

Chapter 14: The Incredibly Mundane Day of a Magical Pony Insect

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I started off the day by murdering Twilight Sparkle.

It was a quick, cold and ruthless action, done so fast she didn’t even see it coming. I drained her of love so completely that she couldn’t go on living even for another second. Then I threw the empty husk that had held her away, and felt a level of power I hadn’t held in ages flow through me. It was a great deal less than I really expected but…draining that alicorn dry still gave me more juice I had held in some time.

In all honesty, I kind of had to wonder why I didn’t do it sooner. I had just let her sit around, not doing anything with her for so long that I just kind of forgot she was there.

Okay, I kind of knew why. For some weird, sick reason…I hadn’t wanted to hurt her. But…she was food, good food that tasted better than most, but still food all the same. So I drank her so dry she just died from the loss of magic like a good little prey animal.

Then I went onto the next alicorn…and the next, and then the final one. They all died the same way, one after the other. By the time I was done, I felt like some kind of god that could swat the sun from the sky and…considering the tiny bit of Tia’s essence that was inside of me, that might actually have been possible.

“I can’t believe you drained all four of them, why did you have eat all four?” the mare beside the human at the entrance to my fridge asked.

Sunset was rather silent on the matter. Hell, she wasn’t even looking in my general direction. She just stood back near the door to the storage room wither her arms crossed. I think murdering four alicorns either creeped her out, or made her jealous that she wasn’t the one doing it.

I threw the cocoon that had held the last Twilight Sparkle mirror clone and turned to the original before letting out a long breath. Mirror clones didn’t have the same amount of power as a real alicorn, but they still stood head and shoulders above your average pony. After four of them, I felt like I could level half Equestria and take Celestia’s lunch money.

Or completely decimate a city in the middle of nowhere and tear a stupid goat that fucked with Celestia limb from limb. That whole incident still pissed me off more than anything since…well, maybe since I got to Equestria.

Okay, there was that one time when I thought Rainbow Dash had died, but we found her alive and well before I had time to get major pissed off angry, so it didn’t really count.

“Because I wanted actually feel full for once in a long time and…we still have a full day of work ahead of us so I couldn’t snack off my PPPPFFF,” I told Twilight before looking over to the human. “Hey Sunset, you okay?”

Sunset jumped as if I had shocked her and looked at me. “What?”

Before I could get into it with the human, the alicorn jumped in. “I’m pretty sure the three Fs are fillyfriend forever, but…what’re the four Ps?” Twilight half-answered Sunset and half-asked me.

“Purple pretty plugh,” I sighed as I flubbed the tongue twister by going too fast, then shamed myself by having to slow down and do it over again to get things right. “Purple pretty pony princess.” It didn’t sound nearly as cool as it should have as slow as I had to say it. Plus I kind of grumbled it. “Or wait…I suppose Pretty purple pony princess sounds better.”

Twilight blushed at the whole thing, and Sunset groaned before facepalming. “Oh Celestia,” she mumbled before looking at me with a frown. “And what is up with the full alicorn transformation…and the blank flank, and why the hell are you dragging me to town anyway?”

I evaporated the former food containers with my magic, and headed out while motioning for Sunset and Twilight to follow. “Because we need to order things for your room,” I began while thinking of that empty stone box that Sunset had to sleep in last night with revulsion. A trio of old pony mattresses on the floor had given her something to lay on, but other than that, it was bare.

My pause gave Twilight an opening to cut in with her checklist that she had made while we were still in the bathroom cleaning up. “We also need to have Rarity measure you for some human clothes, set up delivery of a rain cloud shower system since the castle doesn’t have running water, visit Bedrooms Bathrooms and Bookshelves to get your um…well I suppose you could use a princess-sized bed but…real bathroom fixtures may be a problem.” While we had the same kind of sinks… Pony toilets were not made for humans, and were just another reason I was glad I didn’t have to go through that process anymore. “We might be able to get some kind of custom work done.”

“I don’t see why you need me to help you with that. I‘d rather just stay here for now,” Sunset grumbled before she slowed a bit and I looked back in concern.

“You okay?”

I knew the answer to my own question, but sometimes asking troubled kids let them knew you cared. Sunset gulped and nodded before looking away. “Y-Yes.”

My heart really did go out to the girl. It wasn’t just the fact she was practically crippled. It was also the failed expectation of coming home and finding out she was trapped as a human. The phrase 'getting your hopes up' didn’t even seem to do it justice. It was like a kid in a wheelchair getting told he was going to walk again, only to go into an operation that put his life in danger and came out with no improvements in his condition.

Then there was the fact she was now an outsider in her own homeland. I’m sure Earthquestria was bad enough, but at least there she could blend in on the surface. Now that she was in pony land and still had five fingers… It was no wonder I was seeing the signs of a real long-term depression kicking in.

I Smelled a spike of jealousy from Twilight, and looked back over to her in confusion for a second. “Something wrong Twi?”

The alicorn just sighed and shook her head. “No, I’m fine,” Twilight said in a low tone. Even without my empathy, I could have told she was lying. “Um, what about holding court? You’ve been gone so long, cases have probably built up.”

That little reminder got a groan and roll of my eyes. As Twilight’s regent, it was my job to handle a lot of the more boring activities of a princess because…well, she just didn’t want to. Sure, telling other ponies what to do kind of disturbed her and all, but seeing as how the biggest legal problem Ponyville had under normal circumstances was littering and Filthy Rich bitching about something, I didn’t really see why she was so against taking up her royal duties.

Hell, she had apparently ran Equestria for a few days while Tia had been failing miserably to get me out of my funk, so a small town didn’t seem that big a deal.

Except for the fact that she knew everyone in Ponyville and had that whole personal connection thing going on. Doing Tia’s job just had her bossing a bunch of strangers around, so…I guess I could kind of see why Twilight didn’t want to put herself above the other ponies she lived with. Her ‘I AM NOT A GOD’ syndrome ran deep. The only time she put on her full mantle of power and authority was when someone messed with her friends, and idiots like that were usually crushed under her hoof so fast that ponies could blink and miss the local librarian wielding enough magic to level a city block or two.

“Um,” Sunset spoke up, making me look back up to her. “When are the two of you going to get to work on turning me back into a unicorn?”

I felt another bit of irritation from Twilight, and glanced over to her for a second while she answered. “I’ll be examining you today at one while Fae’s in Canterlot looking for the designs for that mirror she used to get you,” the alicorn said in a normal voice. “We’ll also be sending a letter to Princess Cadence so she can bring the other mirror down here and we can study its magic directly.”

With Twilight done, I quickly added my two cents. “In the meantime, we’ll be trying to find you some work.”

“W-Work?” Sunset stuttered, speaking without the whole gloomy tone for the first time since she came to Equestria. “What do you mean work? How can I even-”

“Ponyville’s schoolhouse only has one teacher, and she’s kind of overworked,” I told her before she could mount a proper argument. “I also know the mayor needs help with her organization. She could take you on as a secretary. Um…if you know how to bake, or at least follow instructions, Pinkie could probably use some help at Sugarcube Corner and…well, she is kind of a familiar face.” I ended with that one because I hoped she’d take it. Although Cheerilee would probably be just as good for Sunset in the long run as someone to talk to, she wasn’t as cheery as Pinkie; and I needed a quick fix since we were going to solve Sunny’s problem soon enough.

As for why I wanted to get Sunset out and about, like I said earlier, the signs of depression were pretty damn evident. Letting her wallow in the Fortress of Solitude was the worst thing she could do. At the very least, having her do something would keep her mind occupied, and Pinkie would actively be trying to cheer her up.

So after leaving my personal fridge, which was pretty much an old repurposed servant’s quarters, the three of us headed out of the castle and into the Everfree. Being with the human meant the five minute flight quickly became a half an hour walk where Twi and I had to make sure a manticore didn’t manage to sneak up on us. Just because my changelings owned the Ponyville side of the forest didn’t mean that I something didn’t wander in from time to time.

“Ugh, why in the hell did Celestia and Luna build their castle out in the middle of nowhere like this anyway?” she grumbled.

While I was kind of wondering that myself, Twilight actually had an answer. “Well, after the pony tribes made Princess Celestia and Luna their leaders, the Sisters toured the nation and everypony wanted them to live at the specific tribe’s capital city but they opted to build their own palace in the Everfree instead because it was away from everypony else.”

I stopped, frowned, and turned to look at my girlfriend. “Wait a second, are you saying the Everfree was here before the castle?”

“Yes?” Twilight replied, somewhat confused.

“Tia and Loony chose to build their castle in the middle of the most dangerous place in Equestria?”

Twilight frowned at me and her irritation spiked. “I don’t think Princess Luna would like that name Fairy.”

Oh if one of her first official decisions was to build something in the middle of the Everfree, best princess pony was Loony Lulu the Lunatic as far as I was concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved her to death but…that was like…American President level of stupidity. You couldn’t get worse than that.

Okay, I might have been a little too hard on the girls. I mean…the Tree had kind of mellowed me out. Maybe it was the same way with the forest. Maybe only after the Sister’s had picked the fruit of harmony from their tree did the Everfree turn into Hell on pony planet.

“Huh, so…the Everfree wasn’t always like this?” Sunset Shimmer asked while looking around at the trees, the sky and everything else.

Twilight shook her head. “No, it’s always had chaotic weather, and manticores, and I read one passage in their old journal that said Luna ran into a tribe of zebras that used to live here as well,” she replied before looking up to the sky with a thoughtful face. “Hmmm, I wonder of Zecora is a descendant of theirs, or if there’s been zebras coming to the Everfree for over a thousand years to practice herbalism?”

And thus, my hopes that Tia would have at least proved halfway intelligent in her youth quickly died. I mean, just what kind of leader decides to live out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by monsters in a creepy castle that’s full of evil mystical artifacts where no one can get to her to address their problems, where the nearest town is over half an hour away or more on foot?

So, with Sunset’s curiosity sated, and me apparently getting on Twilight’s nerves by pointing out her fellow goddesses were…well…morons in their youth, the rest of the trip to town was a quiet affair.

You know you’ve been a guy in Ponyville too long when seeing Carousel Boutique doesn’t make you want to gag. Screw Twilight’s sexual advances eroding my manhood with her offers to do it as a chick. While I had girl parts and their detrimental effect on my self image, sex was sex no matter how I got it. But having to come into Rarity’s place of business for a few weeks as an apology for my alicorn amulet rampage to double as a measuring dummy for her more squeamish clients to show Rares I really wasn’t out to eat her soul or anything…that’s what killed my masculinity.

As for what I thought of it after weeks and weeks of exposure?

Well, the heliotrope and lilac walls matched perfectly with the plum drapes that managed to let in just enough light to make sure the seashell (the color) floor didn’t clash with the wisteria staircase in the back. Only the most garish of ponies used those awful colors of purple, pink, or Celestia forbid…white!

So…yeah…in my defense, I think changelings are very susceptible to social osmosis…or…something. Plus, all that other stuff about harmonic magic and junk I was living on top of.

We came into the boutique about five minutes after it opened and Rarity called out her usual greeting before coming out to see it was me and Twilight with the strange alien creature dressed in tacky clothes. The unicorn froze and stared for a minute, then she looked over to me and the alicorn. “Darling, is that a…human?”

It kind of threw me for a loop that the unicorn had actually recognized Sunset’s species, but I guess it would make sense that Rarity would have been interested in a dimension where the inhabitants wore clothes all the time. She asked me about it a few times, but I kind of said fashion wasn’t my thing and gave her the bare minimum. I might have mentioned how humans looked, or was it Twilight?

I couldn't really recall.

Sunset looked to be about equally shocked. Of course some banter between me, Twi and Dash had already tipped Sunset off that all the girls she knew back on Earthquestria had pony counterparts, but it was probably one thing to hear about them, and another to see them in person.

Hell, I kind of froze up when I saw human Rainbow the first time too.

“Rarity, Sunset Shimmer,” Twilight said as she handed out introductions with a wave of her hoof. “Sunset Shimmer, Rarity.”

The unicorn gave Sunset a weighing look for a moment, and the girl tensed under the scrutiny. “Darling, wasn’t Sunset Shimmer the unicorn that…”

I nodded. “Yes it’s that Sunset Shimmer. Me and Celestia ran into her when we kind of ended up going through to another dimension,” I explained. “The way back didn’t undo the transformation magic so she’s going to be staying with me until we can figure out how to fix her.”

“Ah I see,” Rarity replied before she looked back at Sunset and nodded. “A pleasure. Now, is there something I could do for you all? If you’re here to invite me to breakfast, I’m afraid I’ve already eaten.”

Twilight shook her head. “No Rarity. We’re here for Sunset. Um…humans always wear clothes all the time, Remember? She needs a few outfits to get her through the week,” the alicorn explained before I smelled her irritation spike once again. “Princess Celestia told me to charge everything to a royal account so expense isn’t a problem just…um…don’t go too overboard. These are supposed to be everyday things.”

The mention of food got a growl from Sunset’s stomach, and she looked over to Twilight with a frown. “Hey, why didn’t we go get breakfast first?”

I beat Twilight to the punch when it came time to answer. “Because your teenage body needs more than cupcakes. We’ll get some real food into you as soon as the market opens.” If Celestia wanted me looking after the girl, I was going to do it right.

“Well now that we've got that settled, could you take off your clothes?” Rarity asked the girl. “They don’t look that much different from what I’m used to making. Although I’m afraid to say that this is going to take some time to make sure I get everything right.”

“How much time?” I asked while giving the unicorn a dubious look. Sure Rarity could do rush jobs and still manage to make some pretty great dresses, but she was working with a new species as far as ponies were concerned.

Rarity walked around Sunset, eyeing her whole body with a discerning gaze. “After I’m done measuring here…I think…two days of work will allow me to make a proper outfit,” she said before checking out Sunset’s ass.

Okay, I think she was looking at the jeans the girl had on, and it was probably just a coincidence the unicorn was eye level with Sunset’s butt. At least I hoped that was it was…or Rarity was doing the pony equivalent of checking out Sunset’s tits.

It could have just been the local hottie checking out the newcomer, but that was pretty doubtful. Rarity’s figure made her one of the most desirable ponies in town since she kept herself at a constant sexy level of fitness and had a dark purple mane that screamed seductress. If it wasn’t for her social climber desires and the fact male ponies understood the word no, that mare would have had stallions lined up all along the block just waiting for a chance to be with her.

Plus you know...human VS pony wasn’t even a competition in the looks department, what with them being different species and all.

“It may take longer if you want some denim,” she added after a moment. “I’d have to special order the material all the way from Manehattan.”

“Um…a normal skirt dress is fine,” the human said before she looked back at the unicorn with a nervous expression. “Although…I am going to need some underwear.”

And so my spider senses began to tingle…

“What’s an under…garment?” Rarity asked, hesitantly combing the unlike words to form a new one in pony. Of course since I spoke English, Sunset’s magical belt didn’t translate things when it came to me. Although…it did make me wonder why I heard Jackass speak in Equestrian instead of English before we jacked his universal translator. Maybe it has to do with a person’s expectations.

Twilight let out a groan and facehooved. “Oh right…those things,” she grumbled before looking over to Rarity. “Trust me, she’s better off without them.”

“Oh no! Not when she’s living under my roof she ain’t!” I said before stepping forward.

As the alicorn turned to face me with a frown, I didn’t need to use my sense of Smell to know she was perturbed. The expression said plenty. “Are you kidding me? The first time I had to go to the bathroom in that school, I put the ones that go around the waist back on and they…it was like they crawled up inside me or something! And don’t get me started on the…whatever those things were that went on my barrel! Teat bags or something!”

“Considering those A-cups you were sporting, I didn’t see why you even needed a bra,” Sunset added before the conversation actually managed to go downhill from there and…trust me, the less said about it the better.

In fact, by the time everything was said and done, I was considering accessing Chrysalis stored knowledge in the hive to see if there was a way for me to wipe my knowledge of Rarity’s education in human underwear, the differences between pony/human bathrooms, and the ponies who used them. There were just some things bronies weren’t meant to know.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only disappointment we had that day. Hell, if there really was someone turning this thing into some weird episode of MLP, the montage would have began right after the left Rarity’s and headed to Sugarcube Corner…

“Sorry girls,” Pinkie announced from behind the counter as she handed the human and the alicorn their breakfast that I relented on letting Sunset get if she would just stop lecturing about the importance of panties to Rarity and Twilight.

Subject matter aside, which was bad enough…the fact she sounded just like Twilight whenever she was explaining things…Super Creepy.

“I’d love to help Sunny, but the Cakes don’t really need anypony else to work for them right now and…” she glanced over to the human for a moment, then looked back to me. “And I may like Sunny tons but…you know how ponies are around new non-ponies… Sorry Sunny.”

Surprisingly enough, I actually thought I saw the girl’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second and she gave the party pony a small smile. “Um…thanks…Pinkie Pie,” she replied as her melancholy returned and she crossed her arms in front of her stomach again.

For my part, I let out a groan as Twilight floated their breakfast over to a nearby table. “Right, I forgot how every pony in this town is about strangers,” I grumbled before taking a seat on the floor hard enough to feel it in my bones.

As they ate their breakfast and I just sat there wondering if Pinkie really was good a baker as the fandom seemed to think she was…I noticed Sunset looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “Something wrong?”

After she gulped down a circular mound of future diabetes, the girl gave me an odd look. “Okay, I’ve been wondering this for awhile and…now I’ve got to know,” she began. “What’s with the accent?”

Twilight let out a dejected moan. “Oh Celestia,” she mumbled before looking over to the girl. “Sunset, please just drop it. I tried asking her about it once and-”

“What accent?” I asked in confusion. I didn’t have an accent. One of the whole changeling infiltration things was being able to mimic our prey perfectly.

Instead of Sunset continuation the conversation, Twilight shot me a look, and I felt her irritation grow. “Fae, say…everypony needs somepony so much sometimes they’ll take anypony they can.”

I shrugged and repeated her word for word. “Every pony needs some pony so much sometimes they’ll take any pony they can.”

“What’s weird is she didn’t start this until after that whole Flash Sentry thing,” the alicorn princess went on. “But when it comes to making her correct anything… It’s like beating your head against the wall.”

Sunset’s frown deepened. “There’s a Flash Sentry here too?” she asked cautiously.

“Not anymore,” Twilight grumbled as her irritation shot up several notches and I gulped on the inside. From the looks of things…my pretty pony princess didn’t like being reminded of the long hiatus of being fucked by a stallion and I made a mental note to feed on her as much as possible come time for bed so she wouldn’t be feeling the lack of my male anatomy.

The human gave the two of us a cautious look. “What happened?”

I growled as memories of Brad came to the forefront of my mind and mixed with the fact that my best times with Twilight had been as…him. “He got in my way.”

Sunset gulped.

Twilight rolled her eyes.

And they quickly finished breakfast before we moved onto the next disappointment…

“Sorry, but I don’t have any princess-sized beds in stock,” the clerk across the counter told us.

And the next…

“We don’t carry desks that tall Princess,” the stallion told me specifically (as in not Twilight) before I let out a sigh to release my annoyance at the mistaken title and thanked him for his time before leaving. And of course, I caught him checking out my ass on the way out of the store.

“Eyes up here, not on the rear!”

I mean seriously, for a society where women were supposed to rule everything, the men could be such pigs…

But after failing to gain proper clothes, employment, bedding, or even basic furnishings for the displaced girl…which was putting me in more and more of a bad mood every second, we did manage to find one little ray of sunshine…

“Sure. I could use an assistant to help me with things around here.”

I stared at the wingless mulberry pony in front of me for a second…blinked, and then grabbed onto Cheerilee so I could hug her with all the strength I had. Even got the usual “Gak!” that accompanied bone-crushing embraces before she spoke.

“Hehe, okay um…thank you for the hug?”

A second later, I dislodged myself from Cheerilee and let out an embarrassed cough. I had to admit, I had probably become one of the earth pony’s bigger fans once I had meet her in pony. She was always cheerful, patient, and…well, she knew how to have a good time in the right atmosphere.

Oh, and her plot was a nice mix of padding and shape, while her tail was perfectly poofy in every possible way. The whole thing definitely gave her a look that would have had any older colts needing to go to the bathroom for non-waste related needs whenever she turned her back.

Not that I was sexually attracted to the ponies or anything of course. I was just making a…scientific observation. I did it all the time since I hung out around Twilight.

Okay…so…

With something for Sunset to do in Ponyville until Twi and I fixed her humanity problem found, things started looking up for us. Sunset still seemed pretty dour, but I think she was starting to show signs of life when she was promised a chance to show off her intelligence by helping Ms. Cheerilee pretty much run the local school.

It really came down to being just one of those pony things. Humans might be able to sit on their asses all day in front of a glowing screen, but ponies had to do something. Since Sunset didn’t have a tramp stamp on her thighs (which I leaned after Rarity screamed in horror and went on about her lack of a cutie mark, I didn’t check her out when she was naked in the dress shop) I thought it had to be something ingrained in their society that just two to three years hanging out with a bunch of lazy kids couldn’t chip away.

The shopping went fine enough once the stands opened and I managed to procure enough food to keep the girl fed and a magical preservation box that was the rural pony equivalent of a fridge. It didn’t keep things cold, but did slow down the spoiling of food at pretty much the same rate without the need for electricity.

However, I was still in a pretty crappy mood. I mean hell, the poor girl had her hopes of finally getting her spell casting back completely trashed. And yeah I knew I was giving Sunny a little insta-forgiveness but you know what? I almost destroyed Equestria too, and came a LOT closer than she did while not under the effects of evil bitch transformation magic.

Plus, she was a teenager at the time. A teenager that was probably close to thirty years old, but a teenager none the less. Teenagers are stupid.

And moody.

And the girls could get super emotional in a bad way when things were going against them, so no matter what I did to Sunset, it wouldn’t be half as bad as what she was already doing to herself.

So by the time we got home without a bed fit for humans, no dresser that wouldn’t give a human back problems later on in life because of all the bending over, no clothes whatsoever, no bathroom, and no…okay, we forgot to put drapes on the list of things to get Sunset, but she needed some! Look, the point was we didn’t have anything a teenage girl should have had, even in the way of basic ‘need these to live’ necessities, much less something that would actually make her a little comfortable!

And to top that off, Twilight was upset about something. Not the sad upset, the semi-angry-but-more-kind-of-annoyed upset that women get sometimes for no reason whatsoever. Oh they say they have a reason, but since it can be something as simple as a guy leading with his left foot while going upstairs, I tend to discount them. And considering what was going on…it was a pretty good bet that Twilight was annoyed at me for some reason that my mostly male mind (like 99.9999999999999%) couldn’t comprehend.

But as I had an adult pony and a teenage human to contend with…I kind of focused on the teenage human’s problem. She didn’t have anything to call her own and what she had slept on were two millennia old pony mattresses that hadn’t turned to dust over the centuries that my castle had stood abandoned.

Yeah...ponies built stuff to last.

And Twilight might have used to magic to clean them up a bit.

“So…now what?” Sunset asked as we got back onto my castles grounds. “I can’t keep having you guys cleanse my clothes every morning for the next three days.”

My nod of agreement was cut short by a shiver as I pictured having to do that with her underwear every morning. I cleared my throat. “Uh, considering Rarity does almost nothing but custom work…it’s probably going to be considerably longer than that.” On top of which, she wouldn’t take a ‘special’ gratuity in order to bump my orders up the list.

And having another seamstress do the work might actually hurt her feelings.

God did I hate friendship sometimes.

Sunset let out a low moan, and I actually smelled some sympathy coming from Twilight…which cemented the fact that she was pissed at me in my mind. Not to mention identified the problem for me. The alicorn thought I would be a bad caretaker for Sunset and…

Oh dear God please don’t tell me this is some kind of ‘let’s have a baby test’ from her, I mentally prayed. Hell, I was pretty sure Sunset was still older than Twilight. Not to mention alicorns were supposed to be sterile or something.

Although adoption killed that ray of hope so…

Crap, this is some kind of baby test, I thought to myself before quickly switching mental gears.

It was a little early to be planning for kids when we were still dating, but Twilight was…

A) TWILIGHT!

B) Female.

So I wouldn’t have been surprised if she already had the restaurant booked for where the proposal was supposed to take place, her wedding dress picked, the date of the wedding set, our two-point-five children already named, and our retirement all set. It was kind of creepy but…also a little sweet that she could actually see a future for us at the same time.

“Well if the usual methods won’t work,” I began. “We’ll just have to cheat and use magic. Twilight, can’t you just conjure some new things for Sunset to wear?”

The question didn’t seem to go over very well with the alicorn. She rolled her eyes and groaned. “Magic isn’t cheating Fae. And did you forget the laws of conjuration? Matter created by magic only exists as long as there is a source of power to anchor it to the world. Anything I make will just disappear in an hour or two.”

I frowned as one of my previous experiences told me otherwise. “But there’s a book in the vault that allows for infinite…conjuration,” I mumbled at the end. Engrained humanness made me raise a hoof, but I couldn’t snap any fingers, so I quickly put it back down in a stomp of triumph. “That’s it! I’ll just use-”

“WHAT?” Twilight shouted. “Are you crazy? I’ve seen that tome! That’s dark magic!”

Next to her, I caught sight of Sunset looking over at me, a little nervous at the mention of the DM words.

The irrational fear made me roll my eyes before I looked over to her. “Twilight sweetheart, I hate to burst your bubble, but I run on dark magic!” I exclaimed. “I suck pony love, use mind control, and focus negative emotions like my desire to cause pain and death as the basis for my spells. Hay, even my telekinesis is more of a demand than that gentle nudge you do.”

Twilight frowned at me. “Do you even remember the last time you messed with dark magic?”

I rolled my eyes. “I saved Equestria, kept our friends from getting in over their heads, told Tia what for and finally kissed Rainbow Dash. Not really seeing any bad there.”

A second later the emotional scent I was getting from Twilight became a sweet fear, mixed with irritation and some kind of deeper anger, telling me I probably shouldn’t have laid it out for her like that. She physically gulped her emotions down, and took in a breath.

But that also let me beat her to the bunch. “It’ll be fine Twi,” I assured her before she could start with the lecture I knew was coming. I summoned up my magic and the world disappeared in a flash of green light…

…to become a big room filled with all odds and ends of mystical goodies.

Of course being the intelligent creature that I was, there were no gold or jewels in my sub-basement vault for all things dark and magical. I wasn’t stupid enough to put all my eggs in one basket so when the inevitable two-bit thief showed up looking for my money and precious gems that I was just giving away to Spike and Rarity anyway, he wouldn’t accidentally pick up the magical goddess-slaying sword Sizematar and be able to take over the world.

No, I just kept the dangerous stuff down in my special vault like some ring Daring Do fought Alizotal for (Dash wanted a souvenir), Tia and Luna’s old diary (which I had held off on reading), the pieces of the Alicorn Amulet (for obvious reasons), Sombra’s Big Book of Demonic Summoning Rituals, Starswirl’s book (with his cutie mark screw job spell), about half a dozen different thingamajigs promising mind control powers, a dozen more weapons of untold power, a tiara that made ponies fall in love with the wearer, the Wendigo Crown, and the Tome of Infinite Conjuration and Transmutation.

I took the last item on the list and opened the stone tablet of a book to its single page and began reading its activation phrase. “From in the head to out in the world, every thought to action, hold close this book and through its spell you’ll start a chain reaction. Projecting forth whatever beauty you see only when true words are spoken, will you finally be set free.”

I felt my horn tingle as the mystical energies of the book filled me, and felt the tingle in the back of my mind that said ‘I’M FUCKING WITH YOUR PERSONALITY BITCH!’ before I kicked it in the balls and told it to Shut The Fuck Up and that I was a God damned changeling. WE were the things that made others into our little puppets, not the other way around!

Of course there was a teleporting magical pop that came from outside the room right after I finished, and a second later the doors opened up to admit Twilight and Sunset. Although all the Elements and Princess had the run of the place on my orders, I was the only one that had the magical defense skeleton key.

“Fairy no! Please tell me you didn’t-”

“Twilight I’m fine,” I assured her before looking the girl over a bit wondered why my little princess never got to wear any of the regalia befitting her station. Tia and Loony got awesome clothes, but not her. Well, except for that whole coronation thing, I told myself. So she did have them, but decided to go nude.

Not that I was complaining. Twilight was just too cute for words. She didn’t have the ass of an earth pony, but her wings were so nice and big that I wanted to feel them wrapped around me all night, and that long horn had me wondering why we hadn’t tried a little experimentation in bed.

Sunset steppe forward. “Listen, uh...Princess Omnifarious-”

“Not a princess,” I reminded her evenly before letting out a sigh.

“I’ve done the whole dark magic thing,” she kept going she said after a flinch at my voice. “You saw it…sort of. I know it feels good, and makes you feel invincible…but remember what I did? I went from not even being able to harm a pet to trying to kill somebody! Just…let it go.”

Twilight let out a groan. “Spike’s not my pet.”

“Not helping Twilight!” the human snapped at her.

I groaned and rolled my eyes at their lack of faith in my abilities to hold off a little megalomania. “Sunset I’m fine. If I were evil, I would have blown you to dust for snapping at Twi, and probably turned her into my love slave already.”

Twilight’s head swiveled over to look at me in a snap. “Bwa?”

“The only reason you girls don’t even like this stupid book is because it looks all necro-mon-e-con-ish,” I told her before focusing my newfound magic to transmute the mystical object into a more fitting shape while reaching under its surface to fiddle with the activation phases programming.

When I was done, Sunset raised an eyebrow at my choice. “Really?”

I rolled my eyes. Living in a world that would never get any reference jokes was hell sometimes. So yes, even Equestria had a few downsides…apart from the life threatening dangers and seasonal apocalyptic threats I mean.

“Look, I know your kind doesn’t appreciate good humor-”

“Humor nothing, that movie sucked,” Sunset interrupted with a frown.

I froze.

My brain came to a complete stop.

My mouth dropped open.

And I looked up to the salvation of my funny bone. “You…understand this reference?” I asked while pointing towards my power battery.

Sunset frowned at me. Behind her, Twilight’s worry and irritation slowly increased. “Uh…yeah,” the girl replied.

It took all my willpower not to hug that little girl right then and there. But I did come to a well thought out decision that was totally based in the world of rationality. FUCK CELESTIA! SUNNY’S STAYING WITH ME!

Seriously, I loved all things pony and all, but there was just so much I could take day in and day out. And even if I did start talking to Twilight about the human world stuff…which I kind of could now since I wouldn’t need to keep track of a million billion lies…pop culture was one thing I knew ponies would never understand unless I could actually fucking show it to them.

I barely held off the urge to talk about all things Star Wars, human pop culture and everything else for the moment though. I had important work to do and...well, considering everyone back on Earthquestria shared a name with the girls in ponyland, it was more than possible everything they had was a badly hidden pony parody that would ruin everything. So I just held onto that little hope as fuel for giving Sunset everything she needed to get by.

“Look,” I told them before charging a teleportation spell and drawing my power batter close. “I’m fine and I’ll prove it to you, okay?”

“That’s not-” Twilight managed to get out before the world was gone.

Two seconds later, I was standing in Sunset’s room with a slightly nauseous Twilight standing in front of a somewhat more terrified Sunset. If I hadn’t of known any better, I would have sworn the alicorn was protecting the girl or something.

On the other hand, it may have been the fact that changeling teleports are a bit…rough. I kind of got used to the whole feeling that makes your stomach want to do cartwheels, but I had plenty of experience.

And no real stomach.

“Okay, first your bed,” I said before creating something pretty high class that you’d expect from a palace like I had. It was one of those beds that had its own canopy and curtains that matched Sunny’s cutie mark.

“Wardrobe.” And one flash of magic later, and I was getting ready to stock one of those armoire things. Then, after a second later I made a mannequin of Sunset’s dimensions to run T-shirt ideas by her. “Now are you a pants or skirt girl? Oh and for Celestia’s sake, lose the boots.”

Another zap and she had on some nice pink sneakers that had the same color scheme as the boots. “Now I’m thinking something with pega-sister on it.”

“FAE!”

I sighed and looked over to Twilight with a bored expression. “What?”

Her shoulders slumped a bit and she gave me a pained expression. “Listen to me. Just…hoof over the…green lantern.”

Twilight’s magic made contact with mine, and I tugged it back towards me. “No way.”

“Why won’t you do what I say?” she asked. It was a pretty harsh ask. Almost a demand.

“Why won’t you trust me?” I countered in an annoyed grumble.

Twilight glared at me while Sunset backed away and I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t believe that the human teenager was thinking I was going to hurt her, or have some big fight with my girlfriend.

Although when the alicorn let out a sigh, I took that as a good sign. It meant that I was winning the argument at least. “I do trust you-”

“Good! Then let me just finish up here then,” I told her before pulling a copout and giving Sunset your basic cartoon character’s wardrobe: ten sets of everything. It also included footwear, shocks, and the stuff that went under aforementioned ten sets of everything.

“But you’re not giving me much reason to!” Twilight went on while I gave Sunset a nice reading couch and a dresser complete with a mirror and some drawers. Then I looked over to the little space that was her bathroom to make a workable human toilet and sink with pipes in the walls leading up to a water tower on top of the palace, complete with water.

Once I got done with putting in the bathroom hand towels, Twilight stomped her hoof on the floor. “Okay, there! You’re done. I trusted you to finish, and you're finished. See? Now let go of the magic, and everything will be fine.”

For a moment, I just stood there. “Welllll…” I’ll admit, Twilight had a point, and a good one at that. I had given Sunset everything she needed, or…that we said we were going to get her. But...that list was pretty limited. I mean…what kind of teenage human didn’t have their own entertainment center?

“One more thing,” I assured Twilight before charging my magic and willing a home theater system complete with video game consoles and some fifty odd disks to appear.

When all I got was a table that I pictured in my head, a big mirror, and a record player with a large stack of albums…I frowned in confusion. “That…wasn’t what I expected.”

Behind me, Twilight half-groaned half-growled. “Fairy.”

“Did you just try and give me a television?” Sunset asked in surprise.

“And video games but…I guess the spell is limited to what I can think up to create while inside Equestria,” I mumbled while rubbing my chin. “Or maybe…”

I heard Twilight’s hooves coming up behind me, and moved my power battery away from her before looking at the alicorn. “Fine, it didn’t work. Now please, give me the magical tome. It’s dangerous for you to keep doing this.”

A roll of my eyes told Twilight all she should need to know. “Oh come on Twilight, it’s a spell that’s supposed to bring stuff out of my imagination and it didn’t work. Don’t you want to know why?”

My vital strike to her mental Achilles tendon actually gave the alicorn pause. “Well…no! It’s dangerous for you to keep-!”

“I run on black magic, Twilight!” I replied as I got on my hind legs and waved my forelegs around the air before I dropped back on the ground. “I don’t go crazy killer monster when I mess with the stuff.”

“Fae if you keep this up-”

“Just…give me a second,” I said.

“WOULD YOU JUST STOP AND LISTEN TO ME?” she shouted.

I sighed, rolled my eyes…and teleported outside the palace, then turned around and blinked my way back in so they couldn’t see where I landed.

Materialization occurred within one of my palace’s bare third story rooms. It was unused, undecorated, and chosen completely at random. There was absolutely nothing about it to draw Twilight’s attention. Which meant I had about ten minutes to mess around until she found me using a combination of her genius and just Equestria dumb luck.

“Okay let’ see,” I mumbled to myself as I began to work out my problem. “Tried to make something that didn’t exist in Equestria got me it’s basic equivalent here in dimensions. Or was it just that I didn’t know how the items in question work, and the spell just filled it in with something I knew the basic rules of?”

I thought about how to approach the problem for a second, then decided to try some experimentation. “Let’s try making something that is easy enough to make on my own, but I’ve never seen in Equestria.”

A few seconds later, I had a foosball table. And a pool table. And a ping pong table.

“Okay,” I drawled. “Let’s try…something I know exists in Equestria, but have no idea how to make and only a basic idea on how it works.”

With some magic from my horn, I popped an arcade game that Button Mash spent way too much time on for his own good standing in…well, I think it’s pretty safe to say it was a game room at this point in time. A bit of examination even revealed the thing was even powered by the mana suction crystal batteries that ponies used when cords weren’t an option.

“Combination of the two,” I said before another arcade gaming machine that I knew couldn’t possibly exist in Equestria…and never really existed on Earth either, appeared just as I pictured it. Judging by how the title screen looked, it even worked.

But before I could mess with anything else, the door banged open and Twilight leaped into the room with a frown. “Okay Fairy! I’ve been more…than…patient,” she said while looking around the room before her face fell on the arcade games. “Why is my picture on that video game and…isn’t it supposed to say friendship is magic? Not...fighting? Why does it say fighting?”

I looked out the window. “Yeah about that,” I said before charging another teleport while Twilight leapt at me a second too late. There was no way in hell I was going to stick around Sister Palace if Twilight was going to chew me out about just making crap appear out of thin air. All I’d need to do was wait for her to calm down, admit everything was fine...and then I’d stop.

When the world came back into focus, I stumbled around the outskirts of Ponyville while I regained my balance. Twilight could search the palace until she wore herself out, and I could maybe do a few favors for my favorite Ponyville populace.

Well...except for Rarity, she would probably make me create about a million of the same dress because something just wasn’t quite right...and Fluttershy wouldn’t ask for anything. Applejack was so stubborn she wouldn’t even want the magical help, while Pinkie wasn’t much of an option either. Even I knew conjured food was a bad idea on so many levels, with taste only being the least of its problems.

Once I was done thinking and steady on all four legs, I looked up into the sky and saw a pony with a rainbow mane buzzing around kicking clouds. After creating a pair of saddlebags to hold my magical macguffin, I and flew up to meet her on a cloud she had yet to kick.

As soon as my Rainbow Dash noticed my approach, she stopped her cloudbusting and landed to bow. “”How can this one serve you my queen?” the changeling that was currently lucky enough to be wearing the face of a pony I would never punch asked.

“Where’s Rainbow Dash?” I asked changeling #20.

“The waifu is at the training grounds my queen,” #20 replied in changeling.

Sometimes, having a hive mind really sucked. Personal info could be kept compartmentalized pretty easily, but stuff like how to fly, talk, and all that jazz was common knowledge that just got shared without thinking or asking. With me being the queen, I was…well I was their freaking Celestia! So, many of my little changeling were picking up some of my habits and mannerisms.

With the location of my waifu given to me, I flew the short distance to the track that Rainbow and the other pegasi had used when getting ready for Tornado Day. Only, Dash had pulled down some clouds and beat them into the shape of obstacles for the various races that pegasi could compete in. All the various obstacles…thrown together in a single track…when they were only meant to be one kind of obstacle per race.

So…she crashed.

A lot.

In fact, I think the most she managed to get through in her homemade course while going her usual speed that defied all logic was about halfway. But since clouds were what she crashed into…Rainbow could just shake it off and keep going. Don’t ask me how that worked though...Twilight had told me it was something about condensation, pegasus willpower, and at that point I think she just started saying bla bla bla...or Rainbow gave me the more easier explanation of ‘it’s magic you idiot’.

I waited for her to run into a cloud on the part of the course that was set up like a slalom for people who didn’t have to worry about gravity and several other laws of physics, and grabbed her with my horn’s TK when she got clipped by a cloud pole on her rear leg from zagging back in too soon. “Hey Dash.”

The pegasus hovering in my green glow looked around for a second before letting out a sigh. “Okay, Fae, what’re you doing?”

In all honesty, I was checking out her ass.

Rainbow was…fit. Exceptionally fit. I knew she had almost no body fat whatsoever apart from the normal places that ponies had padding, but I had never been able to really look at her with the kind of discerning eye that was fit to judge pony looks through their eyes.

Like Twilight, Rainbow didn’t have much in the way of back. But where Twi’s lack of booty was from a healthy diet and no exercise whatsoever, Rainbow’s came from a diet that was probably a little too healthy, and way too much exercise. The end result was an extremely tone body that had almost a gymnast vibe going on and some pretty muscular wings.

“Fae, if you’re not going to prank me or something, can you let me go now?” she asked.

I blinked and suddenly realized I had been checking Rainbow out, and dropped her like she was a hot coal. “Sorry! Sorry, I was just…thinking,” I told her kind of pathetically. “Um…so…training.”

“Yep!” Rainbow chirped after she hit the ground and flexed her wings a bit. Then she turned around to face me. “Oh, thanks for offering up stand-ins for Blossomforth and the others. The tryouts aren’t that far off, and a lot of ponies still haven’t figured out what they want to compete in.”

The compliment made me smile. “Hey no problem Dash,” I said before actively taking a whiff to get some gauge on how she was feeling about everything.

A second later, I was gagging as my solid nose was picking up the rather powerful stench of pegasus BO. “Gah! Dash that is just…wow! How long have you been out here?” I demanded.

My non-physical nose got a huge wave of embarrassment, and I saw her cheeks turn bright red before she looked away. “Since, um…before dawn,” she said while I let out a sigh. “Hey it’s still Summer, and Summer means hot! Not my fault they’re holding the games in the Crystal Empire with its stupid forever Spring….not hot summer weather. Like, months from now when everypony else is having to deal with Fall stuff.”

I had to give her my best calm Dashie down smile that was just a little curving on the end of my lips. “Okay Dash,” I told her while an idea came to me. “I’ll even take care of it for you.”

She managed to get out a “Huh?” before I conjured a high pressure rain cloud and squeezed it with my magic to soak the girl clean with enough rain that I couldn‘t even see most of her as it fell. When ten seconds were up, the conjured cloud disappeared, and…to be honest, I wasn’t paying all that much attention to the dropping pegasus’s face because…

Look…there’s a reason guys like looking at girls in showers, and it’s only partly because we can see them naked. There’s just something about a wet girl that…well…gets guys hard.

With ponies…it’s worse. Soooooooo much worse.

That tiny bit of puff in a pony’s coat that keeps ponies from noticing every little curve, every inch of muscle, every…thing?

IT’S NOT THERE ANYMORE!

And I. Saw. Everything.

“Gee Fairy, thanks,” Rainbow grumbled before she shook her mane out of her eyes.

I gulped nervously as I looked at the perfectly fit pegasus, and it had nothing to do with a creature several times weaker than me at the moment being pissed. Rainbow may of not had much in the way of flank, and some overly developed wing muscles, but the rest of her body was the equivalent to one of those home workout stars. “Sorry,” I said before picturing Dash in a bathing robe and making it appear on her.

A second later, she was looking down at herself in surprise, and stumbled backwards. “What the-Hey!” the irate pegasus grumbled before she looked up at me with a frown. “Wait a second. I thought you said you couldn’t make anything with your magic.”

The fact that she apparently wasn’t mad at me for the bathrobe that left no room for her wings calmed me down a bit. “Oh that,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hoof. “Yeah, I used a magical thingy from my palace to give me conjuration magic that will actually stick around. Sunset needed clothes and we couldn’t really wait on Rarity, so I just made them.”

Rainbow went rigid, and I smelled that her confused irritation changed to startled fear. “Uh…isn’t all the stuff in your palace…dark magic stuff?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes mom.”

“Okay, I’m outta here!” She managed to get about two steps before her robe bulged, she stumbled, and I had put a cage around the pegasus to keep Rainbow from running away.

My anger hit a new high for the day, and I stomped my hoof in the ground as Rainbow turned around with worry in her eyes. “Oh for crying out loud! Do you honestly think I’m going to hurt you?” I demanded. “The only thing I did when I had the amulet on was kiss you! It practically turned Trixie into a psychopath!”

For some reason, Rainbow actually winced at my declaration, and I felt her nervous start to border on…fear. But she turned to look at me and gulped. “Then why am I in a cage?”

I’ll admit, she had me there. So after thinking up something to say, I banished the bars around Dash and got rid of her robe. But before she could up and fly off, I parked my plot on the ground and let out a dramatic sigh worthy of Rarity. “Fine! Abandon me in my hour of need and let me fall to the dark magics that are consuming my soul rather than-”

“Okay! Okay!” Dash grumbled before she trotted over to glare at me. “So…what do you want?”

I couldn’t help giving her an almost predatory smile. “I think the real question is…what do you want Dashie?”

She gave me a studying look for a moment, then the question seemed to get through her thick skull when I put her in a Wonderbolts uniform. A real one, not the crappy academy things they stuck her with, but a skintight flightsuit that hugged every inch of her body and had me examining her flank to um...make sure I remembered her cutie mark.

One hundred and fifty vinyl MLP figurines, ten Wonderbolt posters, two hang gliders, four Wonderbolt uniforms, a trampoline, a rainbow gala dress, six human action figures, an attempted light saber that didn’t work, an attempted alien ray gun that also didn’t work, two pairs of failed shipping goggles, a collection of vinyl albums piled higher than a pony that contained every human song I knew, a life sized picture of Dash doing her Sonic Rainboom, the complete Wonderbolts workout home gym, an authentic-looking Equestria Games obstacle course, dozens of mane 6 plushies, every bit of Hasbro My Little Pony piece of merchandise I could remember as well as several T-shirts featuring the mane 6 along with Celestia, a pair of metallic hands Lyra declared ‘groovy’ after she wandered into sight and I had to bribe her to go away, and one big stone statue of Rainbow Dash standing on her hind legs and pointing up at the sky with her wings stretched out like she was flying later, Twilight had kind of caught us…along with Celestia.

Tia found us first…or at least got to Ponyville from Canterlot before Twilight made it out of the Everfree while dragging Sunset through the air with her. She just landed in all her regal glory and looked at me with a frown before Dash’s face touched the dirt in respect and I just took in the sight that was Princess Celestia.

Dear God she is beautiful, I thought to myself as I looked at the personification of pony perfection. Like with her dream-human counterpart form, every inch of Celestia’s body was an impossible mix of power, size, and curves. The extra large alicorn wings she possessed made even Rainbow’s seem weak and lacking in luster, with the dozens of extra feathers that were kept impossibly pristine. And her round, shapely ass that had cheeks as big as…

I blinked as Celestia looked over to me with a frown and I just realized an extremely creepy fact: I thought Tia was hot.

Okay…beyond hot. Celestia was that untouchable divine beauty that men would sell their souls for just to get a look at.

But the extremely creepy fact remained, I thought Celestia was freaking hot!

Hell, I had been checking out Dash since I looked her up, and I got turned on by her athletic looks too!

Not to mention Cheerilee was definitely a mare I wouldn’t mind taking care of personally the next time she came to my little red light establishment for some teachers get fucked free R&R.

No! Bad libido, CUT THAT OUT, I told myself as Twilight came flying in with Sunset in her magical grip and…I assessed her to be even more adorable than ever before with her long horn, thick wings and slightly padded plot that I just wanted to latch onto with my hooves and squeeze.

“Would somepony mind telling me just what the hay is going on here?” Sunbutt asked as she stood atop Rainbow Dash’s granite head alongside Twilight and Sunset while the non-rock Rainbow Dash was looking around a little nervously as she prostrated herself in a bow. As for me, I was laying on my side, gasping for breath.

Honestly, creating a hundred and twenty foot statue that had ‘COOLEST PEGASUS EVER’ written into its base took a lot more out of me that I thought it would. “Well Sunset didn’t have anything to wear, and I decided to solve the problem with magic, then Twilight was all black magic is bad!” I said in Twilight’s voice.

“No I wasn’t!” Twilight told Celestia before she glared at me. “I was afraid you’d use too much magic like Princess Celestia said you did back in Taber-Tammy-”

“Tambelon,” Sunset told her.

“Where you almost died!” the alicorn went on. “AND YOU DID! I told you it was dangerous, but did you listen? Nooooooooooo!”

I groaned. “That is a completely…different…oh buck,” I mumbled when I realized this was one little argument that I knew I wasn’t going to win. Plus…I guess it was a little stupid to mess around with dark magic the day after I had come home from a near death experience and worry Twilight even more.

“Sorry,” I apologized as best I could before moving onto the admittance part of the process. “Maybe I’m not as immune to the whole mind influence of black magic as I thought I was either.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe…I know it doesn’t make you completely crazy but…ugh!” she exclaimed before lifting up one of the figurines and waving it in front of me. “And another thing, this looks nothing like me! The head is too big, the eyes are too far apart, the horn is too short, and my tail does not stick up that high! It looks like I’m constantly saying RUT ME!”

“You don’t like it?” I asked as a nervous and tired laugh escaped my lips as I felt the magic of infinite creation and transmutation slip away from me and rolled my eyes. “So um…does this mean you forgive me for the whole using dark magic thing?”

“She’s the one that had a problem with the dark magic part!” Twilight exclaimed in irritation as she pointed over to the redhead that was looking at her own pony action figure while it was still in its package. “I trusted you not to hurt anypony but yourself!”

Celestia chuckled. “Alright Twilight, I think your coltfriend has learned his lesson,” the alicorn told her before Twilight let out a long sigh and shook her head dejectedly. “Now, lets get to work on undoing this mess.”

Rainbow looked up from her half-bow half-nervous cower that she had been in since Princess Celestia showed up in a flash of light. “So uh…I can’t keep any of this stuff?”

After a moment of quiet deliberation, the alicorn looked down to her subject. “Well I suppose the dolls-”

“Limited edition vinyl collectables and action figures,” I corrected her.

Sunset snickered, and Twilight glowered at me while Celestia rolled her eyes. “Along with the clothing and things you made for Sunset are fine…but the obstacle course and statue have to go. And...why are there no likeness of me among the...figurines?”

Silence hung in the air as I tried to think up a viable defense that wouldn’t hurt Tia’s feelings. “Um...I was uh...concentrating on ponies I knew the most?”

“Oh? Tell me three things about this stallion then,” Celestia countered as she held up a Doctor Whooves figure.

Twilight let out a groan. “That’s just Time Turner. Fae goes to look at his pocket watches every few weeks for some reason. Don’t ask me why, she says it’s a human thing.”

The goddess shrugged, then turned to face her former students. “I also have a research assignment for the two of you.”

Twilight’s scent became a confusing mix of fear, excitement, and more annoyance as she stepped forward. She looked at Sunset for a second, then back to the princess. “Prin-Celestia,” she stumbled. “I’m ready to do whatever I can to help but…what about the chest? And…Sunset’s…problem? Isn’t there somepony else who can do research for you?”

“Considering your last research project saved the Crystal Empire,” Tia said with a small smile. “I can think of nopony better suited to this task with the future of Equestria at stake. Omnifarious will handle dealing with Sunset’s species problem.”

“Hold on a second,” Rainbow Dash spoke up. “The future of Equestria…rests on Twilight doing nerd stuff? You sure you don’t need like…the royal guard or anything to solve a real problem?”

“Hey!” Twilight exclaimed before she turned to glare at Rainbow Dash.

Celestia chuckled at the outburst. “I assure you Rainbow Dash, this is a very real and serious problem. And they are not solving it, they are researching information that I need to create a solution,” she said before looking over to Twilight. “With your help of course Twilight.”

“Now,” the goddess added as she turned to face me. “Spike will be bringing Starswirl’s designs for the first dimensional mirror to see if that will help you. He’ll also have books for the Equestrian records office for you Twilight. Omnifarious, I know our meeting was scheduled for much later in the day, but as long as I am here, we might as well sleep together to see if the same thing that happened last time repeats itself.”

Every. Single. Pony. And. Person. Stared at Celestia.

DID YOU HAVE TO PUT IT LIKE THAT? I mentally shouted at the sexy sun goddess while I noticed Twilight experiencing a short circuit.

“Gujiwa…you…bwa…it…idgja…princess…huh?” the goddess of friendship went on as her whole body twitched with every word.

“I BLAME YOU FOR THIS TIA!” I shouted at the impossibly hot woman that sat on my imaginary couch, butt naked and completely unashamed of the fact.

For her part, the woman simply crossed her arms under her breasts and her legs before she sighed. “I really don’t see the problem.”

It took me a moment to get my urge to strangle the woman under control. “You…you gave me stupid…pony…sexiness knowledge!” I sputtered. “Do you have any fucking idea how…wrong that is?”

Celestia sighed. “No. And wouldn’t the ability to judge the attractiveness of your beloved be a good thing?” she asked.

“NOT WHEN IT’S TWILIGHT!” I shouted before freezing, then let out a groan at the stupidity of my own statement. “Twilight’s…look…Fluttershy is cute and hot, Rarity has this seductress thing going on, Applejack’s full and fit, Pinkie’s cute and probably fun to play with in the not for kids kind of way, Rainbow’s all athletic sexy and Twilight…Twilight’s…NORMAL! The plain kind of normal! Okay well she’s got nice wings and a perfectly proportioned plot with that adorable hair style but…FUCK! You see? I didn’t have this problem before you and your damn ‘This is what makes ponies beautiful’ crap!”

As I paused for breath…then wondered just why the hell I was breathing in the first place before the need stopped, Celestia let out a moan. “I still fail to see how this is my fault.”

“Look,” I began while trying to structure my thoughts. “You remember how I just gave you human word knowledge and how to walk on two legs? Well, you did the same when you told me what’s hot and what’s not for ponies! But when you told me, you gave me all this…empirical knowledge.”

Celestia raised an index finger. “The idea of beauty isn’t empirical, it’s subjective.”

I frowned at the woman as that little nugget of information was doled out, and quickly made things worse. “Oh great, so it’s not even my own definition of beauty, it’s yours!” I groaned before just collapsing down on the couch next to her. “No wonder I don’t think Twilight’s hot, she’s practically your daughter.”

“I assure you, I think of her in no such way,” Celestia told me before she got extremely sad for a moment. My curiosity got a wakeup call, but it was no means any match for the turmoil I felt about the fact I now found ponies sexy.

One of the too tall woman’s impossibly perfect arms reached out, and I found myself pulled into a hug. “And I am sorry if this has caused you any distress. I was unaware the sharing of information like that would cause…this.”

I wanted to say something really bad and stay angry at her but…it was kind of hard to do that when my face was buried in her tits. After pushing down a desire I’d rather not mention and another mental image of doing it missionary, I managed to pull away from the goddess of hard-on causation, and just laid down on the couch without even trying to hide my reaction from being so close to Tia. If she wanted to get all grabby, she could deal with the consequences.

“I really need to teach you the whole do’s and don’ts of human contact if you’re going to keep showing up here looking like that,” I told her. “And…are you sure you can’t change shape?”

“We saw how I tried and failed,” she told me with a frown. “Considering what you’ve just said about your newfound apparition of the pony body…it would seem that some of the rules are different for me than they should be.”

I groaned and covered my face with my hands. “Just great.”

A few minutes passed as we sat silently. “How long until they wake you up from this again?”

“Well you said two hours,” the goddess replied. “Although why you wanted ten minutes in this place by yourself…”

I sat up and glared at Celestia for a second. I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean that as some kind of sexual innuendo insult but still…

However, to show her there was no hard feelings, I grabbed the remote for the television on the wall. “Because I had to make this place before you got here. To be honest, considering our connection and all, I don’t want to know what would happen if you went to sleep before I did now,” I said with way too much...caring for Sunbutt in my voice. “We got lucky the first time.”

“Well there’s always the chance that I’ll just have a normal night’s sleep, but...if you are so concerned...I am in bed by eleven every night. Make sure you’re asleep before then,” she told me before frowning at the television and the remote in my hand. “I thought those things didn’t work.”

“I had ten minutes,” I replied before turning the thing on. It wasn’t a real television of course, so I could have just put an easy button on the damn remote and everything worked just fine. “And remind me to make some clothes for you next time if you’re not going to show up on four legs.”

Celestia let out a huff. “I hate wearing clothes,” she said before crossing her arms, as if that would settle the matter.

Then the movie started.

“The world has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost, for none now live, who remember it.”

Chapter 15: The Incredibly Panicky Pony Princess

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I paced around my makeshift lab while my tutor/ward stood there looking over a sheet of data concerning the project Celestia had given her while we waited on our test subject to show up. After some basic training in mass manipulation, I was ready to try a basic transformation spell out on a pony that didn’t involve simple duplication. It was my first step in actually gaining a real understanding of transformation magic that was more than just copying the nearest thing I could find.

As for my company, four days of messing around with Sunset hadn’t yielded much in the way of clues to how to change her back because…unlike the spell that made me look like an alicorn mare, there wasn’t a spell on her. The magic that made her human wasn’t some constant thing that forced her into a foreign shape that the natural way of things was always fighting against, it was a permanent alteration that made her new body what was natural for her. Normal reversal spells and the like wouldn’t do anything because there was no spell to reverse.

It also meant that pretty much all the magical info in books were useless because transformation magic was meant to turn a specific thing into another thing. A spell to turn a pony into a potted plant was different than the one that changed a hydra into one. Each one was fundamentally different than the other and, according to Celestia, required genuine understanding of the species in question on a physical and mental level that none of the ponies in Equestria could ever hope to have without years of study of human anatomy that probably involved cutting the girl apart to see what made her tick.

So to have any hope in getting Sunset back to normal, I had to basically get my doctorate in transmogrification magic. Then, I’d need to translate it to work with changeling style magic, and then I’d have to come up with a whole new kind of magic to change Sunset back to a unicorn.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her just how fucking impossible it all was.

But I sure as hell wasn’t above trying to do it anyway. Plenty of more impossible things had happened since I came to Equestria...which my arrival being at the top of the charts.

Then there was all the other problems that cropped up in the past week. With seven days gone by since my first class, me Twi and Sunny had got back to Canterlot with plenty of things written on the alicorn’s to-do list. Things hadn’t gone anywhere near what I expected it to on several levels. After dropping Sunset off at the castle to see Tia, Twilight and I found that her parents were away on business…despite the fact they both worked at the Canterlot Observatory. The disappointment that they were still avoiding me was compounded by the fact that Shining hadn’t brought the mirror from the Crystal Empire with him, and apparently Cadence was expecting us to come and get it. I might have had the plans for the first mirror thanks to Spike picking them up for us, but since it lacked any integration spells, those plans were completely useless when it came to understanding how the one that messed up Sunset was all set up.

Oh, and there was this rather annoying thing with Blueblood that I’d rather not get into. Let’s just say...from the way he was looking at me the other day...I think he fully expects a dark-coated mare like me to be sleeping around.

Then there was Twi and Sunny’s little project…

“So…any idea just what the hay you and Twilight are working on?” I asked as Sunset took a seat and began to write down some figures with a quill. "Or why Tia wants it done?"

“So far, all we’ve done is go over the total ponies born and deaths per year for every settlement in Equestria. Or started to anyway,” Sunset replied without looking up. “But since I’m sure Princess Twilight has told you that much, I…have no freaking clue when it comes to what Princess Celestia’s up to besides a really overdue census.”

I couldn’t help but nod. Twilight really had told me just as much, although she also included the fact that Celestia was having them go through all that information for the past several years. Several, as in several hundred. Although the precise number was a cool thousand. I also noticed the title Sunny had attached to Twilight's name. It was a little odd considering how Twilight liked to be as familiar as possible with her friends.

Which... Sunset kind of wasn't.

A light knock on the door ended our conversation before I could voice my opinion about how it might have just been a lot of busy work that would keep the two of them together long enough to have them become friends. But even that idea kind of rang hollow in my mind. Due to the nature of the work, it didn’t require Twilight and Sunset to actually work together.

Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t outright hostile towards each other, but...

Okay, as much as I hate to admit it…I was apparently wrong about the whole Twilight testing my parenting abilities while using Sunset. Apparently, the girl’s presence had put Twilight in an almost perpetual bad mood whenever she was around. Nothing showed of course, but…I could Smell it just fine. Something about Sunset was bothering the hell out of Twilight.

But I had no fucking clue on how to deal with it. Hell, I didn’t even know where to begin when it came to getting involved. All my questions in the manner that I directed at Twilight whenever we met up with us for lunch and dinner (she ate, I talked, and sometimes we had sex) were met with an ‘everything’s fine’ complete with wave off. And when I asked Sunset about it…

Well, I didn’t ask Sunset about it. I didn’t know how. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if she knew there was a problem. She just kept to herself for the most part except when the two former unicorns needed to meet up for a few hours a day to collaborate their efforts and eat together. She also went and helped Cheerilee, so it wasn’t as if she was being all withdrawn or being unfriendly, but…there was just something about it that Twilight didn’t seem to like all that much.

It was almost like Twilight was the one who had a problem with Sunset, which was ridiculous as Hell.

Thoughts about all the problems with my personal life ended when I opened the door with my magic, and my test subject came walking in the room with a guest in tow.

As much as it made me feel like a heel for doing so…I asked Rainbow Dash to be my magical metamorphic test subject. Rarity would have actually known how dangerous it might be, Applejack already helped me out enough with the mirror pool stuff, Pinkie Pie…was Pinkie, Twilight had her own thing to do, and Fluttershy…okay, even if she was nowhere near most favorite pony for me, shooting magic at Fluttershy was too much, even for me.

And…I had kind of been avoiding Fluttershy ever since Tia taught me about what’s pony hot and what’s not. Mainly because…she was hot. Really hot. Out of the entirety of the girls, she was head and shoulders above the other five.

But there was a difference between knowing that and seeing her in pony.

When it came to pony hotness, Fluttershy… Was. Perfect. She had an extremely light coloration, her wings weren’t overly developed, and she spent most of her time on the ground but didn’t exercise beyond walking, so the mare’s plot was just the right amount of padded while her attitude matched her coat. Altogether, Fluttershy might as well of been Celestia in pegasus form.

“Pink hair…you…Fluttershy?” Sunset managed as the adorably hot mare followed Rainbow Dash into the room, knocking me out of my daytime wet dream and into a real world nightmare.

“Oh hello…you’re…Sunset Shimmer?” the pegasus replied hesitantly, although nowhere near the shy levels I had been greeted with as Flash Sentry. “You’re…um…is something wrong?”

Sunset stared at the pegasus for a moment, she shook her head and laughed a bit. “Sorry it’s just…with the way the other Fluttershy was into animals…I was expecting an earth pony.”

Rainbow snickered a little and Fluttershy’s eyes went wide for a second, then she hid behind her mane. “But I do like animals.”

“Wow you even do that like…sorry,” the human apologized before she squatted down to eye level with the mare. “I probably shouldn’t be doing the whole comparison thing. I know it kind of creeped Rainbow out.”

The blue pegasus snorted. “You said human me couldn’t fly, was afraid of heights, and wanted to play…sock-her for the rest of her life,” with a frown before she pointed a hoof in Sunset’s direction. “Not cool.”

Me and Sunset both laughed at that one. Then she spoke to Fluttershy again. “It’s just kind of weird meeting you last though. I mean…back there…that Fluttershy was the first one who really tried to be my friend.”

My ears perked up at the potential information. “But I thought you and Rarity…”

“Naw, she was one of the last to come around…even though she did make up for it with effort,” Sunset replied. “And what I mean is, the first of the girls who did more than…just go through the motions, I guess would be the best way to say it. Not that I…deserved it…I mean.”

I groaned. “If you want some pony to beat you up Sunset, I’ll gladly save you the trouble and find a stick.”

“FAIRY!” the pretty pegasus with the pink mane shouted at me. “Don’t you dare bully her! Rainbow said she’s really hurt…or sick, or…um, well…what do you call a unicorn that can’t use magic?”

Sunset giggled at my problem, and reached out to put a hand on the pegasus’s back. “It’s okay Fluttershy. Fairy is just…trying to be funny. Ponies and humans have a completely different standard of humor. It’s weird but after two years, I can get it.”

As Fluttershy made some embarrassed apologies and I found myself having to accept them when she wouldn’t take a ‘there’s nothing to apologize for’ for a reply, me and Rainbow were finally able to get down to business while Fluttershy and Sunset talked about…

“So, those things up there are your teats? That must be so inconvenient!”

…stuff I’d rather not say. Although considering Fluttershy’s interest in animals and Sunset’s non-pony status, the fact that the pegasus wasn’t her usual self and had as much curiosity as a purple alicorn was starting to make sense. The two of them seemed to get along…better than any of the other girls that Sunset had been introduced to in fact.

“What’s this magic favor you wanted me for?” Rainbow asked.

I grinned nervously and looked over to my ace in the hole that was hidden under the table Sunset had been writing on. It was a table covered by a tablecloth that went all the way to the floor so nothing really showed and...well, it was better to get forgiveness with a bribe when it came to Rainbow Dash rather than ask permission.

“I um…wanted your help in practicing some magic. I…wanted to try casting a spell on you,” I told her nervously. “Metamorphic magic.”

Rainbow brightened considerably. Quite frankly, it surprised the hell out of me. “Like you’re going to turn me into a griffon? Oh! How about a dragon? That would be so awesome…unless I was like Spike. You know, all small and puny.”

Thankfully, she didn’t see me gulp. “Um…something like that. I’ve got a little something for you in return, if you want it,” I told her nervously.

“Hey sure,” she agreed with a smile. “But uh…there is something I’ve been needing to ask you for too. But, it can wait until afterwards. Fire away!”

Now, to be fair, I just said I was using transformation magic on her, I never actually said just what kind of transformation magic I was using, and that form duplication spell had already been mastered anyway, so I didn’t have a reason to play around with it. Instead, I focused on a purely will-directed transformation that was at the command of the caster.

I make a quick prayer that this would all go as planned and I wouldn’t need to run and get Twilight or Tia, and focused the spell on Rainbow Dash.

Magic is…hard to explain. It’s not like some chemical experiment or math. It’s not SCIENCE. Sure, there are equations, and expectations on how things were supposed to work but it’s like love + purple = BLAM! There’s no such thing as a true understanding because...there’s so much more emotion and artistry in it than math. Hell, if magic was completely understood and worked like science with every little thing perfectly explained, well…where the hell would the MAGIC be in that?

That was what made Twilight’s feat of creating new magic so extraordinary. She was like an artist that put red and green together for the first time to make yellow. Up until then, ponies had only been using the three base colors separately, and then she had two colors make friends and opened up a whole new kind of creation. Sure, they could make new spells with those three colors, but none of them had made the color yellow.

Even Twilight didn’t really understand it, and she made the damn thing.

So I concentrated on what I wanted to happen, focused my will, pictured Rainbow Dash the way I wanted her to be, and told the way things were to go suck it before she was struck by my spell and covered in a cloud of smoke. My…artistic understanding of magic told me things had gone off without a hitch. I didn’t check the math or anything, I just…stepped back and saw all the colors on the painting had been put in the right place.

“Oh mare this is so awesome, hey uh, I didn’t step on anypony, did I? Uh wait, how come I still have hooves? I thought I was going to be a dragon or something? Hey, did the spell not work? GAAAAH!”

It took all my power not to bust out laughing at hearing the squeaky voice coming from where Rainbow was standing. But I managed to creep up close enough to her without the pegasus knowing what was going on, and blew away the smoke concealing her. Then I crouched down so she could see my face, and grinned at her little scream.

“I’d say it worked just fine,” I told the three inch tall pegasus as she flew into the sky, forcing me to stand up just to keep on level with her.

“W-What’d you do to me? You were supposed to turn me into a dragon!”

Once again, I had to keep myself from laughing. Despite the situation, I had promised myself never to laugh at the little pegasus in fear of damaging her pride. “No. I said I’d be using transformation magic, you just assumed I’d be turning you into a dragon,” I told her with a smirk. “I just reduced your height…a little.”

“Not cool!”

Okay, I’m still a guy at heart but…seeing Rainbow Dash all mad at me when she was small enough to fit on my hoof…it’s true when they say little things trying to look tough are all the more adorable for it. But I was just too relieved at her reaction to ‘daww’ at the little pony. And by that I mean I was just glad she was perturbed instead of panicky. The last time Rainbow had undergone a reduction in height had kind of weirded her out.

Of course the casting had drawn the attention of others, and a few seconds later, Fluttershy was right up next to me. “Oh my gosh Rainbow! You…you’re so cute!”

“Fluttershy!”

The pipsqueak pegasus’s complaint fell on deaf ears, and her friend looked over to me with a concerned face. “Um…you can change her back, right?”

For a moment I felt the urge to just abandon my plan of acting like I couldn’t do anything and how Rainbow would just have to spend the rest of her life as my pet in order to reassure Fluttershy that everything would be just fine. That damn mare’s eye looking at me, all concerned for her best friend…and the growing panic I could Smell on her…

“It’ll wear off in ten to fifteen minutes,” Sunset assured Fluttershy before I could say anything as she came over to rest on her haunches. “We put a timer on the spell to make sure it would reverse itself if anything went wrong.”

“You mean I’m stuck like this for ten minutes?”

Rainbow Dash’s anguished squeak made me wince. “Sorry, but…here,” I told her before using my TK to grab the bribe I had prepared beforehand. The small keg of Apple Family cider floated out from underneath the covered table I had hid it in and popped the top open. It wasn’t that much, just the size of a saddlebag. But to Rainbow… “So…how many gallons does this look like to you?”

“Waaaaay too much for ten minutes.”

I realized a flaw in my plan. Although she had too much to drink, the little pony didn’t have anything to drink out of. For a few seconds, I found myself looking around for something small enough to hold the cider and let Rainbow use as a cup, then the sound of a ‘plunk’ from the little pony’s cider pool made me groan.

Sure enough, when I looked back down inside the thing, little Dashie was swimming in the stuff with an open mouth, drinking gulp after gulp while she flailed around madly in something that was probably a lot harder to swim in than water. “Sunset get her out of there before she drowns, I don’t trust my horn not to crush her at that size,” I told my ward. Handling living creatures was a lot more difficult than inanimate object after all, and changeling magic was far from gentle.

A second later, Sunny was holding a drenched Rainbow in her grasp while the little pegasus struggled in a futile attempt to escape the human’s hand. “Rainbow cut it out, I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” the former unicorn warned.

Rainbow’s attempts to fight her way to freedom subsided soon after, and she looked back over to me with a frown. “Hey, how come there’s no buzz?”

“Yeah, there’s no way in Tartarus I’m giving you that much cider made from hard apples,” I told her evenly. Even discounting just how bad an effect consuming that much of an intoxicant would have on her liver at that size, I didn’t want the temptation of a drunk Rainbow Dash. Especially a drunk Rainbow Dash that I considered hot and the ability to actually get away with pretty much anything thanks to my ability to change shape and warp minds.

A picture of the inebriated pony sucking me off while her eyes had a distinct green twinge to them passed through my mind, and I was filled with a dozens senses that went everywhere from desire to self-disgust for even picturing it. Then my traitorous imagination decided to tell me just what was possible with that kind of power, and I had a brief image of myself sitting on a cool throne of obsidian with eight chains attached to eight collars that were being worn by two pegasi, a unicorn, two earth ponies, and a trio of alicorns whose only goal in life was satisfying any perverse pleasure I could think of. So with that image running through my head, I decided it was best to take a quick breather and winked out of the room.

Once I reappeared in another part of the castle, I took a deep breath and steadied myself. “Bad changeling,” I told myself with a groan. “You picked Twilight, and you sure as hell aren't going to be doing that to any of them. Sexy or not.” Damnit Celestia, I’m really going to hate you if this whole thing keeps up.

At least I could still control myself around Twilight. But then...well...she kind of was the least attractive of her friends.

I shook off that estimation with a growl.

Twilight was beautiful. She was a wonderful young woman with nice wings, a perfectly good ass, and a plus three libido that could never be put on hold. I was beyond lucky to have her and wasn’t going to break her heart. Period.

With that fact set in my mind, it took me a minute to teleport down to the kitchen. After that, I grabbed a little bowl Rainbow could drink out of without drowning, and came back into the lab to fill it with cider for her while Sunset and Fluttershy went back to talking about animals on Earthquestria. Of course Rainbow still had to stand in the damn thing but…it was better than when she was swimming in the stuff.

Not two minutes after she started chugging, the tiny pegasus fluttered her way out of the bowl Sunset had set her in, and fell onto the ground before she rolled over with a swollen tummy to let out a barely audible burp. Sure it probably would have been gross beyond belief had she been at full size, but as things were, everything that little pony did was cute. I couldn’t help but smile at the little girl as she patted her stomach.

“Oh mare, I have never had that much cider in my life! If you need me to help with your magic stuff from now on and got one of those barrels for every time I show up, just let me know.”

Then, ten minutes after we began, there was a puff of smoke, and I sat back up to look Rainbow in her rather disappointed eyes as she looked down at her stomach for a few seconds, then back up to me. “Hey, what happened to the cider?”

Sunset looked away from her conversation and filled Dash in for me. “Technically, you only drank a few drops, so it’s all still there. You're just bigger now and it isn’t.”

“So, want to go again? I have to experiment with various sizes to make sure I have the theory right.”

For a moment, I was worried that Rainbow was kind of put off by the idea when she gave me a lidded stare. “You’re saying you can make it so I can drink cider till I feel like I’m going to explode, then make it so I can drink more?” she asked before smirking and rubbed her hooves together. “This kind of experimenting, I like.”

An hour later, and I was pretty sure I had the spell down pat, with Rainbow having been changed in size from anywhere to something along the scale of a fly, to barely an inch shorter. It was a little odd when I made her about equal in height to Scootaloo though, her dimensions actually made her look a lot punier than the girls of the CMC. But a success was a success, and the most basic of transmogrification magic had been castable by me in just four short days.

Things were shaping up to be…somewhat okay.

“So, about that favor you owe me now,” Rainbow spoke up while I resealed the cider casket. Despite her binge, the thing was barely a fourth empty, and that was only because Sunset and Fluttershy had chipped in.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “I thought the cider covered that.”

A roll of the eyes told me what Rainbow thought of that, and I hunched over at what I knew was coming.

One thing that really sucked about being in Equestria was that the girls would always be asking me for favors, something I was just now starting to reciprocate by asking for favors of my own that involved more than just hanging out. It wasn’t much, just some little things like try on some clothes while looking like a different pony, help carry some apples, corral some critters for a census, or just play some childish party game. But…saying no to ponies was impossible. I could defy gravity, the laws of physics, and even the state of reality in general, but a cute little equine-ish species asking with wide eyes and I collapsed faster than a house of cards.

“Well you see, Fluttershy wants to be in the Equestrian games too, so I figured I could help her out and sign up for a team sport. But we need a third pony to make even the smallest team, but there aren’t really any athletic pegasi left around town-”

“There’s Bulk Biceps,” Fluttershy cut in, making me shutter as the cute pegasus mercilessly slaughtered a piece of the fandom with her cruel words.

Rainbow Dash sighed and looked back at her friend. “Fluttershy, you’ve seen the size of his wings and muscles. Trust me, the kind of juice Bulk’s drinking ain’t cranberry,” she said before turning back to me. “And we were talking and then I remembered all that flying around you did as Flash when I was giving Twilight lessons, and I guess giving you lessons too, but I also remember you were kind of fast so…you want to join our relay team?”

The invitation made me blink. “You mean…you and me…at the Equestria Games?”

“Uh…yeah,” Dash replied. “I mean, you’ve got the speed. You just need to work on your cornering and junk.”

Dash’s assessment made me wince. I’ll admit, I had a tiny bit of a flaw when it came to flying like an Equestrian. It wasn’t my fault I had a…ninety degree turning problem…as a pegasus/alicorn I mean. I could fly around as a changeling just fine. But…

Look, pegasus flight is powered by magic. Magic likes to kick science in the balls…repeatedly. Magic is also heavy into the belief and mental imagery stuff. If you think you can do something, you just might be able to, but if you know you can’t do something…you can’t. It’s that simple, end of story. Doubting yourself is one thing, it was one of the things that kept Rainbow from doing her signature move for so long, but knowing you can’t do something…that was the death of magic.

So when the logical side of my brain tells my magic that a feathered creature can’t make ninety-plus degree turns on a dime…well, I can’t. I can fly fast when I want to, maybe even somewhere approaching Wonderbolt speeds, but corning at barely subsonic speeds just didn’t work thanks to my half-assed knowledge of the way the world was supposed to work and the fact no changeling ever told me pegasus wings could work like our natural ones back when I was all young and impressionable two months ago.

“Are you sure there isn’t another pony you can ask?” I replied as Dashe’s eyes got all big and sobby. “Um…what about Twilight? She’s uh…getting…bet-okay, fine! Just stop looking at me like that!”

Rainbow chuckled and let out a cheer before she flew up into the air. “All right! Now we can start practicing for the tryouts next week!”

My jaw dropped. “Next week? Seriously Dash? You waited till now to choose your partner and I only have a week to prepare?” I shouted.

“Chillax, we got this we can start right-” Whatever Rainbow was going to say was cut off when her stomach growled, and she cleared her throat. “-after you treat us to lunch.”

I groaned and hung my head. “Why me?”

Lunch in Everfree Palace was always a somber affair since Sunset moved in and Twilight started eating her meals in the palace as well. So much so that the third resident of our home had stopped coming to eat with the rest of us in favor of avoiding the atmosphere.

The main reason for such an atmosphere being one positively perturbed purple pony princess that liked to show up at the castle now that I stocked a food supply. I had tried to talk to her about whatever was bothering Twilight, but whenever the subject came up, Twilight assured me I hadn’t done anything wrong and neither had Sunset.

But…there was just that…something beneath the surface that seemed to creep up from inside of Twilight whenever Sunset was mentioned. It wasn’t anything like hatred or anger, but…I knew there was something about the teenager that got to my girlfriend and…I honestly had no idea what it was, or how to solve it.

But with our new guests, things were twenty percent livelier.

“So…” Rainbow began three minutes into the meal as she shifted around on the pillow that kept her rear from touching the floor, “how’s…stuff?”

Sure twenty percent of zero added to zero was still zero but...at least she tried.

Twilight raised her head, her expression not showing anything of what was beneath the surface. Hell, if it wasn’t for the whole changeling thing, I probably wouldn’t have been able to gauge Twilight’s mood at all and just thought she was your average half-insane mystical goddess. “You mean the research? It’s…going good enough,” Twilight said as her voice dropped a bit and a little bit of sadness seeped in. “We’re still waiting for reports from Vanhoover and Manehattan, as well as the smaller communities that don’t have railroad access, but once we get everything it’s just a matter of correlating the data.”

“Right…data,” Rainbow replied before confusion blossomed on her face. “Um…what all are the two of you doing again?”

Both the eggheads groaned and face palmed/hoofed at the same time. It was…creepy. Twilight was the one to answer the question though. “We’re correlating the total number of births and deaths in a town by town basis.”

For a second it looked like Dash got it, which she might have, it wasn’t that big a thing to wrap her head around. “Uh…why?”

“Because Princess Celestia is telling us to,” Sunset grumbled. “Beyond that…no idea. And don’t bother asking her because she never tells us anything beyond do this or read that. I think she gets off on it or something.”

Twilight frowned at Sunset. “Excuse me?”

The barely restrained hostility of her tone apparently came to Sunset’s attention, and she looked over to the mare with an expression that was half trepidation and half annoyance. “What?”

“Did you just…insult Princess Celestia?” she asked in careful disbelief.

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“You did! Didn’t you?” Twilight accused the human as she pointed a hoof at Sunset.

I looked over to the alicorn carefully. I really didn’t want to step anywhere near this minefield but…better me than Fluttershy. “Uh Twilight…what’re you going on about?”

“She just insulted Princess Celestia!” Twilight exclaimed. “Again!”

The last word made Sunset’s confused frown return. “Uh…when did I insult her the first time?”

Twilight’s jaw just dropped for a second as she looked at the girl in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? You…you just…” I caught a whiff of her anger as it practically went through the roof, and the alicorn’s whole body visibly trembled for a moment before she let out an aggravated groan. “You know what? Forget it! I lost my appetite. I’m just going to get some more files to research, and I’ll get out of your…hair!”

As Twilight disappeared in a bright flash of purple light, I shared a confused look with Rainbow and Fluttershy, then looked over to Sunset and sighed. “Okay, I’ve been trying to stay out of this, but after that…what the hay is going on between the two of you?”

Sunset actually looked confused and apparently felt it strongly enough for me to smell it on her too. Was was pretty hard as she wasn't a pony and my Nose was specifically attuned to them at the moment. “I-I don’t know,” she replied in an almost whiney voice. “Y-You’ve got to believe me, I haven’t picked a fight or anything since we got back, and Twilight hasn’t done anything to make me angry. She’s just been kind of distant and now…well, you saw.”

“Yeah right!” Rainbow exclaimed as she got into the air to point a hoof at Sunset. “Twilight doesn’t go all crazy like that for no good reason.”

“Except when she does,” Fluttershy added before she hid behind her mane as her words drew all of our attentions. “Which is a lot…actually. I’m sorry, but…that is kind of the case. Sometimes anyway.”

For a second I thought Rainbow was going to argue with Fluttershy, but the mare’s wind got taken out of her wings and she just floated back down to the floor to sit on her cushion. “Oh yeah,” she mumbled before looking up at me with a glare. “So, how come you didn’t do anything?”

I flinched at the accusation. “Say what?” I asked before getting rightfully indignant. “What the hay was I supposed to do?” Stepping in during a catfight was one of the stupidest things a guy could do. Best to let the females fight it out and be there with the disinfectant later.

Rainbow waved her forelegs at me in a wild fashion. “You’re supposed to fix it like you always do!” she replied. “Hay, remember the train, and when Twilight thought you died, and that whole thing on that pirate island? That’s your thing! If you could get a cutie mark, it would probably be…whatever the hay ponies like you use to identify themselves with.”

I groaned and looked over to Sunset. “Sunny, are you sure you didn’t do anything in the past few days to make Twilight get all…that?”

“What?” Sunset asked me in a surprised tone that told me asking her had managed to hurt her feelings. “No! I…Fairy, she…you saw what happened between the two of us. Twilight, she…Twilight saved me from that…thing,” she finished with a shudder before she reached up to wrap her arms around herself and I had to kick myself for reminding Sunset about the darkest point in her life.

“Why would you…I don’t…I’m not like…that…anymore,” she finished in close to Fluttershy volume, and my hooves went up in social surrender as I tried to hold off the dejected teenager assault.

“I know, I know,” I assured her quickly. “I’m sorry.” I took in a breath and let it out. I knew the whole evil thing was a very sensitive subject for Sunset. Being what I was, dark magic wasn’t all that mentally scarring, but when it came to ponies…the extra power might be seductive, but having an overdose of the stuff was apparently so horrible they were able to quit cold turkey if they recovered.

Case in point: Trixie. She was in my class, took notes, paid attention, and actually answered as many question as Twilight did the other day. She wasn’t the same mare that set up a whole show as a boost to her own ego at the expense of others, or anything like the bitch queen that the alicorn amulet had turned her into.

To be honest, it...kind of surprised the hell out of me. The mare really was trying to turn over a new leaf and...I honestly believed it wasn’t an act.

So with Sunset properly disturbed and apologized to, I had more important business to take care of. I stood up and backed away from the table to teleport to the most likely place that Twilight would have gone to before heading home: the records room.

The world disappeared in a wave of green light, and when my eyes cleared, I was looking at a bunch of papers that were doing backflips through the sky thanks to the displaced air caused by my teleportation thanks to the fact the changeling version of the teleportation spell did tend to cause a bit of a mess around loose objects.

Thanks to the fact ponies kept everything on paper and the girls were literally going over every birth and death Equestria had experienced in the past thousand years, keeping the records at Twilight’s library was impossible. The records were written on everything from modern Manehattan level stuff to paper that might as well have papyrus for as yellow and wrinkled as it was. But thanks to whatever methods kept the millennia old banners around and furniture too, it was all legible and didn’t turn to dust at the drop of a hat.

And there were stacks of papers. Stacks upon stacks. The small ballroom that we had set aside to house the records looked more like some cartoonish exaggeration of a mail room with all the packages full of nothing but paper, and a few free flowing sheets just floating around.

Twilight was in the middle of the mess with her saddlebags already on, looking around and probably trying to decide what stack of records to take next. I know she liked to work through the records for each city and had finished Ponyville’s information the day before. So, Twilight was probably trying to decide on whether she wanted to tackle another small town, or start going through one of the towers that contained the birth and death records for someplace like Manehattan.

“Twilight?”

The alicorn gave a slight jump at my calling out to her, and looked over at me with wide eyes for a second. “Oh, Fae. Hi…I um…what do you think would be faster, Appleloosa, or Dodge City?” she asked before a jumble of papers floated up into my face and I had to push out of the way to get to her. “Appleloosa is pretty new so there’s not much to go on. But what about the buffalo? Do you think Princess Celestia wants their information too? Wait, I don’t think they didn’t send me any kind of information pertaining to the buffalo tribe! What if-mmmpth!”

Stopping another pony by kissing them is a bit of a risky business, especially Twilight. About half the time she keeps trying to talk or gets mad at me for interrupting her. This time however, Twi cut herself off and backed away after I ended it.

“I’m rambling again, aren’t I?” she asked before licking her lips.

“And avoiding the problem,” I pressed her before nudging the papers that were locked in the alicorn’s magic down so we could focus on what was really important. With the air cleared, I locked the alicorn in my gaze and took in a deep breath for strength to weather the coming storm. “Twilight…what’s…wrong with Sunset?”

My choice of words were apparently poor, as a frown crossed Twilight’s face. “Sunset? Nothing’s wrong with Sunset, she’s perfect! Well, except for that whole human thing that Princess Celestia is making us-I mean, you solve. Oh, and her organization of information! Do you know that she wants to go through the data chronologically? No, wait, chronologically backwards!” We don’t even have everything we need and she wants to go over information from Manehattan when we’re still waiting for-”

“TWILIGHT!” I yelled, making the alicorn jump again. Another breath, and I tried again. “Twilight, come on, I can read emotions remember? I know you’re angry at her for…something. Please, tell me what’s wrong. I wanted to wait until you’re ready, but after what just happened...I think we need to talk.”

Twilight frowned at me. “Nothing’s wrong!” she went on. “Sunset didn’t do anything wrong. Well, except for all that human world stuff, but I don’t care about that. I forgave her for that! Now everypony loves Sunset! Even Fluttershy was talking to her on the way in, Fluttershy! It takes her an average of three days to warm up to anypony, and she’s talking to Sunset about animals from day one!”

I cleared my throat and looked away. “Well uh…she isn’t a pony, so maybe that-”

“And she’s helping Cheerilee at the school, and doing a good job at it too!” the alicorn went over right on top of me. “The crusaders can’t stop talking about how awesome those…hands of hers are! Did you know I’m tutoring them now by the way?”

“Yes,” I replied. Apparently my once a week teaching thing had caught on, and Twilight had set aside a special time each week when she helped the girls out in her library. It was pretty admirable of her.

“Oh, and Princess Celestia!” Twilight exclaimed as her emotions rocketed to new heights. “I can’t even get a dinner with my parents to try and get a proper introduction going for you because they’re too busy, but Princess Celestia can just clear her schedule to have a meal and Celestia knows what else with her! I come back from a world Celestia doesn’t even know about, and apparently scares the hay out of her, and her first words, her first words are ‘is Sunset alright’ without even asking how I am despite the fact Sunset just threw away everything Princess Celestia ever gave her and-”

And then it hit me like a bolt of lighting. The…impossibility of what I was seeing made me nearly collapse but…I really couldn’t think of any other explanation as everything I had seen of Twilight over the past few days, the anger that wasn’t quite anger, the way she just became a little withdrawn and dour around Sunset, her sudden explosion just now and back at the table…

“You’re jealous,” I said with surprise dripping from every word. “Of…Sunset Shimmer.”

Twilight looked over at me with wide eyes. “I…no!” she declared with a frown before she stamped her hoof onto the ground. “I can’t be jealous of Sunset. I…I pity her! She’s trapped as a human here! She’s the only one of her kind around, she…she can’t even use her magic! I’m a princess! I have everything Sunset ever wanted! I can’t be jealous of somepony like that! It’s not right!”

The words rang of practice, and it was probably something Twilight had told herself dozens of times over the past few days while I had been…busy with Sunset. Living with Sunset. Working on my magic…with Sunset.

Hell, we even talked about movies together and…okay, Earthquestria got the names wrong on a lot of things, but the basics were all still there. Sky Walker was really the son of Darth Vader, Indy Ana found the Ark of the Convenient, and Fro-dough fumbled Soar-on’s ring less than one yard from the goal line so Goal-um had to finish the job. All of which were conversations Twilight couldn’t even hope to get in on.

“Is it me?” I asked her carefully. “I know it must be hard for you to just go back to the library when she’s staying here, helping me learn magic when that used to be our thing.”

Twilight shook her head fiercely. “No! I…I’m proud of you for helping her like this!” the alicorn told me in that same desperate tone. “And I’m glad she had somepony to talk to that understands what it’s like to be human. And…you…I know how much you want me to find a way to turn you into a male alicorn so we can be together like we used to. And you’re even putting that aside to help somepony who doesn’t…” A short burst of anger was followed by an outpouring of shame, and the alicorn took on a miserable expression before she hung her head.

“I know I don’t deserve it.” The sound of Sunset’s voice coming from the other side of the door made Twilight’s head bolt up in surprise, and even my body tensed from the unexpected addition to the conversation.

I turned around and saw the door had been opened, and the girl in question was standing there just huddled in on herself again. Twilight’s eyes went wide, and she practically cowered as the former unicorn walked into the room. As she did, nearly every instinct I had said to get the hell out of Dodge before I got trapped in a catfight but…my legs wouldn’t move.

“Hey,” Sunset began as her usual introduction kicked in. “I’m sorry-”

“Don’t apologize!” Twilight shouted before Sunset could really start. “Ugh, ever since you came here, that’s all you ever do! Everything you did, I already forgave you for. I’m not mad about that and I…you need help, so I’m helping you. It’s what a good pony is supposed to do!”

The last of Twilight’s little speech put a quizzical frown on my face while Sunset came in and stood a little behind me. “Uh…a good pony?” I asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Twilight’s eyes went wide for a second, and she fell back on her plot to look at the ground. “I…I’m a good pony,” she said before repeating it more to herself in a much lower tone than to either of us. “I’m a good pony.”

“Twilight,” Sunset cut in as she came within reach of the mare and crouched down so they were eye to eye. “What’s wrong?”

A tiny snicker that sounded halfway blocked came out of the alicorn’s nose as she looked back up at Sunset with a frown. “Everything’s wrong!” she exclaimed before throwing out her hooves in a wide gesture towards Sunset. “Look at you! You can’t even use your magic anymore and it’s because I…I LEFT YOU THERE!”

Twilight fell forward a bit, back on her hooves and let out a sob. “And I…when I first got back, Princess Celestia asked me where you were, and then you get to go have lunch with her when my own parents won’t even talk to me, and…and when I think about it, I just get this…feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I know it’s so wrong, but…but I can’t stop it and then I hate myself for feeling this way, and-and-and-”

I didn’t let her continue her hyperventilating/talking combo before I walked around the alicorn and put her into a loving embrace that included putting my wings around her. Then I let out a little shushing noise into her ear. Slowly, the panting mare’s heart rate decreased, and her muscles relaxed a tiny bit while I told her everything was okay.

As Twilight continued to calm down, Sunset stood up to her full height and looked down on the two of us while I tensed under the old teenager’s gaze. It was still something I hadn’t gotten used to, being so damn short compared to my old height of six foot and a few inches. Hell, Sunset was maybe five-and-a-half at most, and she still made my neck hurt to look at in the face. Hence why she crouched when talking to a pony.

After giving me and Twilight a long, measuring look, she bent back down and ran a hand through Twilight’s hair. “In that case, I forgive you,” the human told her with a little smile. “And I’m sorry if I messed things up between you and Princess Celestia.”

Twilight sniffled in some air and looked across to her senior student. “No…you didn’t do anything to-”

“Twilight, I’m not stupid or blind,” Sunset went on before the alicorn could finish. “I see the way you get around her, the way you talk about her, the stories I’ve heard from your girlfriend over there.” As Sunset paused for breath a winced at the reveal that I had kind of been gossiping about Twi behind her back. “You’re attention starved when it comes to Princess Celestia…and it is my fault.”

Before the alicorn could do more than shake her head, Sunset held up a finger and stopped her. “Did she ever take you to an amusement park, or the Canterlot Country Fair? Or tell you how proud she was of you even for the smallest things, or um…sing you to sleep…at night?” she finished with a blush while both me and Twilight just stared at the human.

“Say what?” we got out a the same time.

“I-I was like…seven, okay?” Sunset exclaimed before looking away from the two of us. “And had just become her student and…my parents and…look! I was having trouble sleeping. It was perfectly normal!”

She sighed and shook her head. “My point is…when I talked with her after coming back and…everything…I…” Sunset gulped. “When I left…I did hurt her. I hurt her badly. So when you came along she probably…kept you at arms length. So I’m sorry for-”

“She read you-” Twilight said before her face became a frown. “You make it sound like I wanted Princess Celestia to be my mother or something! That’s just…ew!”

That little bit of information even managed to throw me off. “Say what? Come on Twilight, from what I’ve seen-”

“Then you have seen something completely out of context!” Twilight told me before she got back on all four hooves and out of my embrace. She paced around for a minute and let out a long groan. “I can’t believe you-ew! I have a mom! Why would I want Princess Celestia to be…that’s just…creepy! She’s my teacher. I respect her and I…um…” Twilight cleared her throat and looked away as some embarrassment made its way up from the conflicting emotions on her Scent.

Sunset carefully frowned at the alicorn.

I laughed nervously.

Twilight…let out a long sigh and shook her head for a second. “Sorry.”

What followed was probably one of the most weirdest awkward pauses in the history of anywhere. Sunset continued to look at Twilight, Twilight continued to look away from Sunset, and I was kind of caught in the middle of the whole thing. I think a whole five minutes passed before I managed to say something.

“But uh Twilight…you did kind of say something about Sunset and Princess Celestia,” I pointed out. “And don’t try and tell me its nothing. I got the whole reading emotion thing going on, remember?”

“I really do wish you could turn that off sometimes,” Twilight mumbled to herself before she shook her head and looked over to Sunset. “Okay fine! I am jealous of you for that. She…rebuilt that mirror and went looking for you. I mean, I know it was mostly an accident but…Princess Celestia has never come to my rescue like that, and I’ve needed it plenty of times. She worries about you more than she’s ever shown to care for me...and when I think about that, I just feel so…angry, and sad and just…wrong! And it all just tears me up inside!

“Everything I know says I should be happy for you that Princess Celestia cares for you so much but…there’s just this part of me that wants to scream at her, and then there‘s you! With you I just…I…just…I keep thinking about that stupid night when I left you there, and I look at you now and I just…I…feel like I want to kick myself for doing something so horrible and…” The words stopped and Twilight’s shoulders slumped before she sat down again to let out a sigh. “I’m just so confused.”

The image of Twilight just sitting there told me to help her, screamed at me to. I needed to come up with something to say to make things right but…nothing came to mind.

Sunset walked up to the alicorn and sat down so they were on eye level again. “Twilight, I already said I forgave you. You don’t need to feel bad about this,” she said before raising her arms up. “I…this was my mistake. I could have come home that day I stole your crown. But I let jealousy get the best of me and then that dark magic overtook me and…you saved me Twilight. And…I’m sorry-”

“What?” Twilight exclaimed as she stepped back from Sunset. “No Sunset, you don’t have to apologize for all that again. I-”

“I’m sorry I made you feel this way,” the human told her before Twilight could finish. “I’m sorry I didn’t see what my presence was doing. I guess…I’m not really that good a friend, huh?”

There are moments in people’s lives when they can just see something just click on the face of another. Like there was this one time me and a friend of mine when to go see the 6th Sense, a movie about a guy who was a ghost and didn’t know it. I kind of figured things out about halfway through the film when the kid was describing the way ghosts were while Bruce Willis just got a close-up, but my friend actually took until the scene the movie was meant to reveal everything as the dead man tried to open a closet and noticed a table that wasn’t there before blocking it. There was just like there was a light that came on in the guys head or something as all the little clues just fit together in his brain to go ‘HOLY CRAP HE’S BEEN DEAD THIS WHOLE TIME’.

Twilight stared at Sunset for a few seconds, and she kind of had the same thing happen to her a second where there was like a sudden spark of realization in her eyes before she lowered her head and sighed. “No…I’m the one who hasn’t been a friend to you,” she said before looking over to the human. “I’ve just been going through the motions, and I am so sorry for that. You’re trying to start a new life and…you deserve better than that. Better than everything I’ve done so far. So much better.”

At that point, I was pretty sure the girls had forgotten I was even in the room, and I tried to back away from the awkward pause. Unfortunately, my movement seemed to break the spell of silence, and Sunset spoke. “So um…what now?”

“I’m…not sure,” Twilight replied. “I mean, usually me and my friends do something to bond after making up by relying on past experiences, but…we weren’t really fighting and…up until right now…I don’t even think I could have classified us as friends.”

Sunset crossed her arms and nodded. “Yeah, friendly acquaintances, definitely. But friends…not so much.” She tapped her finger against arm for a moment, then looked over to me, and back to Twilight. “So what was that thing about your girlfriend wanting to turn into a guy?”

Twilight groaned. “Oh yeah…that,” the alicorn said as she rolled her eyes. “Well you know how Fae used to be a human, right? Well she used to be a male human. And she got pretty whiny when she couldn’t change into a male alicorn, despite all the other stallions around that she could turn into when it was time to do it.”

“Hey!” I complained in a totally non-whining manner.

The expression on Sunset’s face changed to one of confusion. “But wait a sec. Don’t you two have sex?”

“Of course we do,” Twilight replied before she obviously got a little lost in a memory, judging by her aroused scent. “Oh, and she is amazing in bed. I think she’s even better than when she looked like Flash Sentry.”

“WHAT?” Sunset shouted before she got even closer to the alicorn. “Okay, this I’ve got to hear. Wait, what does Flash even look like as a pony?”

“OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! I’M STANDING RIGHT HERE!” I shouted at the two girls before Twilight started to go into WAY too many details about what me and her used to do.

And so, fifteen minutes later I was finding myself following the two women while being completely ignored as we came back to the table where Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were waiting….

Thankfully by then, the conversation had switched to something that didn’t involve my female sex life and was something I could chime in at on some points. That something being our trip to Tambelon. But with this being the Twilight and Sunset bonding time…moment…thing, I just let the two of them go on. Especially when it came to the technical side of things that I just didn’t want to get into with Twilight after Sunset mentioned her iphone. She was…well, it was Twilight. Telling her about advanced technology was like showing meat to a starving lion.

Sunset had yet to learn this fact. “What’s an iphone? Well, it’s like a…you did see one back in that other Canterlot, right?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t really understand anything about how they work,” Twilight admitted. “They were like…magic bricks that let humans talk to each other and do a bunch of other things.”

The human nodded. “Magic brick’s a pretty good description,” she agreed. “It could play music, record sounds, be used an alarm clock, talk to other people over long distances and a ton of other things. Kind of pissed off I had to throw mine away. Probably could have rigged something to keep it going here.”

Twilight sighed and looked down at the ground. “I would have loved to study one,” she said before looking back up at the human. “Are you sure you don’t have anything else from that human world I could look over?”

The question stopped Sunset midst ride, and she obvious frowned in thought, then reached into her jacket to take out some earphones. “Well there’s these things,” the girl told Twilight before handing the things over to the confused alicorn. “They’re for when I was listening to music and didn’t want anyone else to hear it playing. Um…basically, they translate electricity into sound and use an electromagnet to vibrate some material to create the sound waves like a normal speaker, just on a much smaller scale.”

For a second, Twilight just stared at the objects, then let out a tiny snicker. “Wow, you really have been gone for awhile. We have headphones,” she said before grasping the things in her magic. “Although…nothing near this small and…it looks like they’re meant to go right in the ear instead of covering it completely to try and muffle outside distractions. And is that a volume control built right into the wire?”

Sunset giggled. “Eh, they’re useless to me now. So you can have them if you want.”

Twilight smiled back as we sat down at the table and nodded some greetings to Fluttershy and Rainbow before she went back to her conversation. “Still, it is human technology, and a gift from a friend so…don’t mind if I do!” the alicorn said before putting the things in the saddlebag she still had on from when she was grabbing more research material.

Then, Twilight looked back at the salad on her plate before her eyes drifted over to me for a second, and turned back to Sunset. “That reminds me! There’s something I’ve been asking Fairy, but she just won't tell me,” Twilight said. “When I was in the human world, they had a weird kind of burger with lettuce and tomatoes, and it was just so good! I tried to duplicate it with hay and oats when I got home, but nopony can get the taste right! Not even the royal chefs! And I don’t know what it’s made from, but any student of Celestia’s would have found out if she lived there for two and a half years, right?”

Sunset’s eyes went wide at the alicorn’s innocent expression, and I gave her a look to say ‘if you tell her, I will kill you’ when she glanced over to me. “Well…shit.”

That night, sleep came as easily to me as it always did. Me and Twilight got each other off, told each other how much we loved the other mare, I ate, waited for her to recover from passing out and she went home. Then I just closed my eyes and decided to go to sleep. Bam, instant coma.

I wasn’t even all that tired.

Sunny and Twilight weren’t exactly instant best friends, but...she had actually stayed over and gone over everything with Sunset after lunch when me, Dash and Shy left to go find a team sport to sign up for. By the time I got back, they were making jokes and judging by the way they looked at me for a moment before laughing...I was probably better off when they had been giving the other the cold shoulder.

Within the hive mind, I formed the familiar scene of my old house, complete with upstairs and semi-working television as well as a sort of computer I fooled around with in order for Celestia to understand some of my insults that…okay…I’ll just say this…calling her Molestia in an attempt to get the goddess into some clothes only made the amazon chuckle, and gave her ideas.

Bad ideas.

Wrong ideas.

Ideas that ended up having me restructure our living room into something with a single couch meant to hold two people without any sort of ninety degree curving that she could relax on while I showed her the pleasures that a human body could have on top of her fictional world escapism that was television.

Right after I got done constructing the thing, Tia’s presence appeared in my mind, and the goddess came into being a second later. That kind of froze the building as it was. Of course, she was still human and hot enough to make me get an insta-boner despite the several days her naked form had been around my barely clothed body in its pair of shorts. Whatever it was that bound us worked off a good part of my subconscious, and it said only humans belonged in my old home, so we were human.

Unfortunately, my self-image kept me as your average guy with an average height, kind of skinny build, black hair and brown eyes. Meanwhile, my opinion of Princess Celestia had enough respect for the mare to turn her into a seven foot goddess that had an impossible figure and perfect skin with a face that was the very definition of beautiful. This only made me hate myself even more.

We had tried changing venues to fix the problem during our second sleepover, but…like I said, a great deal of my subconscious opinions were apparently present in the dream reality I shared with Tia. So when I had tried turning everything into the Canterlot Castle throne room, the television wouldn’t work, the air was too cold…and a still human Celestia refused to wear the clothes I had provided. Not to mention she was kind of pissed off over the fact we had only finished half the damn movie thanks to the fact Twilight had woken her up early the first time around.

So, having to spend six hours with nothing to do with a seven foot naked woman that I could only make small talk with while she was pissed at not being able to see what happened after the Rivendell scenes…we had to get a little creative when it came to ways of passing the time. Let me just say, there is nothing worse in all of existence than a bored nudist with a penchant for trolling.

Dance lessons my ass. Once she found out tits were the pony version of a plot, Tia went out of her way to shove the damn things in my face to get a reaction. Sure she’s all prim and proper during the day court or whatever, but when the sun goes down that mare forgets the meaning on the word inhibition.

That was the night I made the mistake of mentioning Molestia, and one night of showing her what I remembered of the old tumbler later on a computer I dreamed up in our house, things got even worse.

Celestia didn’t do anything too raunchy like play with my body or make me her love slave (unfortunately) but…there were a few comments about her old love life and comments about how several experiments had long since proved to her that a banana couldn’t survive an alicorn’s orgasms that had me trying to cover myself unsuccessfully while she lamented over the size difference in alicorns to normal ponies had left her unsatisfied for over one thousand years.

But she thankfully got that out of her system on psychic slumber party number three and things became a bit more bearable. I was even able to wear pants. She still went nude though. Apparently all ponies thought bras and panties were evil.

We did other things than just watch a series of movies, redecorate, and see how much I could blush with all her teasing. Sometimes we actually talked. For the most part, I just listened to her go on about what happened in court and how ruling Equestria wasn’t all it was cracked up to be; something Twilight had told me too. Thankfully, most of the province rulers weren’t idiots. But I got the impression that after ruling for one thousand-plus years, ponies tended to run to Celestia for anything they considered a major decision.

And by major, I mean any kind of decision that might affect an area ten inches outside their town.

As for my side of the conversation, it mostly revolved around updates on Sunset Shimmer, or how my transformation magic studies were going, or if there was anything I needed to help get her adjusted to Equestrian society again.

“Fae,” the goddess greeted me before she sat down on her end of the couch and turned her whole body towards me in anticipation of being pleasured by her expert in human relaxation.

A second later, I took her feet in my hands and began to work them over, getting a moan that was almost sexual from the naked woman. “I know this isn’t my real body but…by the heavens I don’t know how I could have gone so many years without these and those back rubs you give me.”

I let out a tiny laugh before looking back up to her. “Hey I know hooves aren’t as sensitive, but…um…what about wings? Wouldn’t they be just as good?”

“And who would rub them?” Celestia asked me evenly. “Even minotaur don’t have as nimble fingers as a human’s and…Sunset’s...uncomfortable around me enough. Telling her to give me a massage with those fingers of hers…” Tia actually blushed and looked away for a second.

Ouch, I told myself as I imagined the girl basically massaging Celestia’s wingboner. “Uh, Tia…can I talk to you about your daughter before we get into whatever stupid crap the nobility are hoisting off on you today?”

In response, Celestia gave me a confused frown. “I don’t have a daughter.”

My irritation grew at the alicorn’s response. “Yes you do.”

The even words made the goddess sit up a little straighter and she raised an eyebrow. “Whatever you’ve heard Omnifarious, alicorns can’t breed with other ponies. So what you’re saying is impossible.”

I took a deep breath, and organized my thoughts. I had kind of known this was coming and came prepared for it. Hell, a little talk with Celestia’s kid and her own words had even given me plenty of ammunition. “You sung Sunset to sleep at night, gave her birthday presents and took her to celebrations when she was just a child because she didn’t have anyone to do it for her,” I replied before I felt Celestia’s surprise. Of course her face showed nothing. She was way too good for that. “Oh, I’m sure you wrote it off as ways to make sure she was well adjusted, or something else but…all that little girl would have seen was Princess Celestia taking time to read her a bedtime story, or play a game with her, or the thousand other things mothers do with their daughters.”

Celestia sighed and shook her head, but I could feel she was experiencing something very different underneath. The uneasiness she had was almost palpable. “I may have done those things, but…she needed someone to… I would have done that for any of my previous students with her circumstances.”

“Don’t tell me she’s just another student Tia,” I went on with an accusatory finger as Celestia’s guilt started to grow. “I felt how panicked you were when we showed up on that world and you learned she was in your reach, the hope you felt at seeing her again. You! A creature that has seen thousands of ponies just up and die broke down when you saw her again, and just how pissed off you got when those pig-men threatened Sunset’s safety. You slaughtered them like they were nothing. That’s not the Celestia I’ve read about in every single story Equestia’s got on you. It’s all defense spells and cunning traps or cutting deals. And when it came time to fight Grogar, you didn’t hesitate one second before hitting him with everything you had so I could get her someplace safer.”

On the other side of the couch, Tia broke eye contact with me as she crossed her arms over her breasts.

“I remember how you said you kept that mirror in the throne room at Canterlot,” I went on. “How many nights did you stay up looking at it, just waiting for her to come back? How many times did you glance at during the day at court? Did you have your guards stand a constant vigil at the thing with orders to alert you the second she came back?

“Hell, you could control the moon back then. Did you try to open the gate yourself?” I asked, getting a shake of the head as the goddess drew in on herself, pulling her legs away from me. “And then the Crystal Empire summit thing and…Twilight reminded me what you said when she came back here, about how the very first thing you asked about was Sunset Shimmer. You moved it to the Crystal Empire because you gave up on her, didn’t you? You thought she died, or that she was never coming back. But the second you moved that mirror, the moment you dropped your guard, Sunset came back…and you weren’t there when she needed you.”

A storm of emotions raged within the goddess as I finished with my little speech. I didn’t see any tears but…I wasn’t even sure we could cry considering where we were. Still, there was enough guilt, shame, self-hatred, and a million other things that I could feel coming off the woman.

Celestia looked away from me as she curled up into a defensive ball and whispered a reply I barely heard. “Why are you saying all this?”

“I…” I stopped and blinked at the goddess that was practically cowering from my words. Why was I giving Tia the guilt trip?

Was I angry with her?

I’ll admit that there was a tiny bit of that in the pit of my stomach towards the impossibly tall woman sitting in front of me. I had watched over Sunset for four days, and while she had managed to improve a bit, all of those improvements hung by a thread. A thread that was tied around me, attached to the hope of me being able to turn her back into a unicorn.

A task I had pretty much figured was impossible.

If Sunset found that out before she had a real support system in place…I didn’t like the chances of finding her after the girl made a very life altering decision in the way of ending it. She was a unicorn without magic, and had her true form stolen from her by a bad set of circumstances. But with how she liked to guilt herself so much lately and all that junk ponies liked to spout about destiny...the possibility wasn’t out of the question that Sunset might thought she deserved to die. That it was her fate or something.

As things stood, to avoid that kind of situation, I needed help. Twilight and the others could be there as Sunset’s friends, but…that girl needed family.

She needed her mother.

For Sunset to have that…Celestia needed to stop beating herself up and talk to her daughter on a regular basis. She needed to admit the connection they shared was deeper than just some student-teacher thing Twilight had with the ancient woman.

“It’s not your fault,” I told her as gently as I could. “What’s happened to her, it’s not your fault. Stop blaming yourself.”

Tia shook her head. “No, it was my fault. I…I chased her away! I…didn’t tell her what she wanted to know about that stupid mirror because I didn’t know anything about it other than when it turned on! I was so used to being the all knowing teacher and ruler that I thought admitting I didn’t know something would have undermined her view of me. I…” she sighed and looked down at the empty middle of the couch. “I remembered how that little filly used to look up at me with wonder in her eyes and…I… She just made me so angry when I found she had snuck into the restricted section of the archives, when I learned she had gone behind my back, when I heard her demanding to be made an alicorn and I just…I cast her out!

“Then I find her again and I thought I could make it better, that I could fix things if I could just bring her home and now…I can’t send her back to that world but…the gate only opens once every decade and a half! How can I keep her here when she doesn’t have magic? How can I send her back to that world when all that waits for her is…is nothing?

“How can I make her choose between two years of nothing or...perhaps decades of being like she is now?” Tia finished.

I shook my head. “So you’re going to…what? Avoid her when she needs someone to talk to? Someone she really trusts? All because of some bad circumstances?”

The goddess sighed. “I…saw her when you came to Canterlot the other day,” she replied in a defensive tone.

“For how long?” I asked as I worked to keep my voice even. “An hour? Two? You showed up in plenty of time for class, so it couldn’t have been that long! Did you tell her where you were going, or just give some empty excuse about royal duties? Did you just leave her alone in a library while you went to spend time with Twilight? She needs more than that, and you know it!”

The goddess looked back up at me with a desperate anger in her eyes. “She needs to be a unicorn again! You…you used to be like…like this!” Celestia said as she spread her hands out and gestured to herself for a second before her tone became almost pleading. “Please. You’re the only one who understands anything about the human form. You’re the only one in Equestria who can help her.

“If you need to know more about magic then…I’ll give you everything I know,” she went on. “I taught you about pony beauty in a single night! I could…I will share with you the entirety of my arcane knowledge, right here and now, and with that we could-”

For a second, I found myself wondering where that path would lead. Although I was hardly an expert on the subject, I knew that Celestia was the defacto ultimate source of mystical knowledge in Equestria. Although I would need to learn how to translate all her magical know how to changeling style mysticism…it wouldn’t be all that hard.

But…

“And how the hell would you do that?” I asked with a sigh before lowering my head as I felt like kicking myself for bringing up some holes in Tia’s plan that probably took her all of three seconds to concoct while under the stress she was showing right now. “We’re still not clear on how I got the pony sexiness knowledge in the first place, and…it’s all absolute information. What if learning it that way means I can’t do what I need to do to fix Sunset?”

Celestia let out a sigh, and slunk over to the point where I almost expected to see her deflate. “But…I have to…there has to be something…I failed her and…”

When the goddess just trained off, I let out a sigh. “Come to my place right after sundown.”

“Do you have something in mind?” she asked, brightening a little.

I shook my head. “It’s when Twilight usually shows up with Spike and the four of us have dinner together.”

A wave of fear ran through Celestia, and I felt the goddess’s hopes turn to terror. “I…”

“Back when we were with those humans, you told me that Sunset could be seen as your daughter from a certain point of view,” I went on. “Well that’s the exact angle she’s looking at you from and…I think it’s the same way you see her too, just from the opposite direction. So stop wallowing in self-pity, pick yourself up, and be there for your daughter. Because she needs you to be there for her, and...so does Twilight.”

Celestia’s attention focused a bit and her nerves calmed down as she took a breath. “What’s wrong with Twilight?”

I didn’t want to bring Twilight into this whole thing too but...well, she needed help too. The kind of help I couldn’t provide. And if Sunset was going to get a helping hand from the alicorn, then I was going to be damned if Twilight didn’t receive the same level of attention. “Look, there’s something about this whole thing that’s really bothering Twilight too. She’s jealous because of some preference you have for Sunset and... She feels guilty about Sunset just like you do and…you’re the person she respects most in the world. She needs you to tell her that everything will be okay, and that she needs to stop beating herself over this whole thing. I can tell her that until I’m hoarse but...she’ll just think its an empty platitude,” I grumbled before looking down at the carpeted floor. “I can’t do anything and...I don’t know if she’ll listen to any of our friends either. It’s got to be you Tia. And...I’m sorry for...bringing all this up like I did.”

The storm of emotions within the goddess sitting across from me slowly died down as she let her guilt and churning anger just...slowly faded away. I don’t know how she did it, practice I guess. There probably was something to being an ancient alicorn when it came to controlling one's temper. By the time she spoke, Tia was back under control. “I’ve had several students over the centuries you know. Some of them went as far as Twilight, and others...not so much. Sunset…”

She sighed and leaned her head over to rest it against the couch. “Sunset was the only orphan I ever taught,” she went on as I got the feeling she was talking to herself as much as me. “She was the only one who…needed me in that special way. That’s where the Sunny Skies identity comes from, you see. I could hardly go to a celebration without causing so much of a fuss it ruined the day for everypony else. And don’t start going on about Ponyville. Yes I went there during the last Summer Wrap-up and took home the hoof-wrestling trophy, but that place is just weird! Luna coming on Nightmare Night and Twilight living there now…” She smiled. “Those ponies actually know how to treat royalty the way we want to be treated.”

After a second, Celestia shook her head furiously as if to clear it, then kept talking. “And Twilight...I had waited for her to come for so long! A mare with the Element of Magic for her cutie mark…”

“Wait a second,” I spoke up. “You...knew about Twilight before she showed up?”

Celestia sighed. “Not exactly,” she replied before smiling. “Twilight…I knew there would be a pony like her one day. But...Applejack, Pinkie, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash. I found six mares where I had only expected one. I...I’m getting off track again.”

After another moment of silence she looked back up at me. “If my...if Sunset and Twilight need my help… I will see you tomorrow night, and every night afterwards before we go to sleep. And...bring the others too,” she added as an afterthought. “I think it’s time I really got to know the ponies that are always saving this world in a less formal setting.”

I chuckled at the thought of how the girls were going to take sitting down at the dinner table with Tia. The last party they had been at together had involved that damn bird of hers. “Wait...so, what about that whole Sunny Skies thing? You still coming to my class next week?”

Tia let out a snort. “Of course I am, oh...and have a partnered activity for next week. Lectures are fine to lay some groundwork and all, but...active participation is usually the best. Perhaps a competition? Oh, and have it be in pairs!”

“You know for a student, you’re awfully bossy,” I commented with a frown. “And I can’t, next week is the Equestria Games tryouts.”

Celestia let out a disgruntled sigh. “Ah yes,” she had mumbled as she crossed her arms. “I suppose that is a good enough reason for canceling classes. Some of your friends taking part, then?”

Another silence overtook the room, and I let out a long breath before gulping down some anxiety and going back to the thing that was really important, what Celestia had almost pulled me away from talking about, if unintentionally. “So...about Sunset and Twilight...I know it’s…hard for you to talk about, but-”

“No,” Celestia cut in. “I have had a great deal of influence in the lives of those girls and...if they need me, I’ll be there for them. With Luna back and up to speed on how everything works in Equestria, I need to start paying more attention to my personal duties instead of just my royal ones. I’ve learned that lesson all too well this past year.”

I slumped down on the couch in relief. “You have no idea how grateful I am to hear that.”

For a moment Tia just looked at me, and then she smiled. “No...you… Thank you. If you’re right about…” She paused for a moment, and let out a sigh. “Does she really look at me...that way?”

“I think the important question right now is, do you look at her like that?” I asked. I mean, if Celestia was looking for an out, or thinking that she had to fake her feelings towards Sunset to get her through a rough patch… I didn’t want to finish that train of thought it was so bad.

Princess Celestia was quiet for a long time, and then she uncoiled a bit and gulped. “I...” she half-replied before stopping for a minute.

“You know, no matter how much time we spent together, Twilight and all of the others...they went home at the end of the day unless they had some project to work on that kept them up all night. And they’d talk about their parents and their families, and go on and on about what happened on Hearth’s Warming, or Nightmare Night, or what happened at all the fairs. But...Sunset...all she had was…I was with her for every single one.” Tia let out a tiny chuckle, and rubbed the bridge of her nose while a new mass of emotions began to form inside of her. “Presents for her birthday and candy on Nightmare Night…I fed her when she got the pony pox and canceled a meeting to make sure she got better and... From a certain point of view…” she said before looking back at me as terror took root in her stomach. “Oh pony feathers, I really am her mother, aren’t I?”

Unable to stop myself, a smile smirk cracked my lips. “Scary...isn’t it?”

“Fuck,” the goddess whispered before my legs became trapped underneath her feet her voice increased in both volume and speed. “So that means, what? Parenting books? I’ll need to see if there’s something on not letting your child feel supplanted by another student...which Sunset already does because Twilight is an alicorn, DAMNIT!” the goddess cursed as she slammed her fist into the couch.

“Uh...Tia?”

“Okay, need to see if the Canterlot library has anything on repairing relationships with progeny when it might already be too late and…” she paused and looked back up to me. “You said Sunset was a teenager again, right? How much of a teenager? Are human teenagers different from pony teenagers? Do you even know anything about pony teenagers?”

My mouth hung slightly open as the millennia old being underwent her first crisis of motherhood. She didn’t even slow down to hear my answer as her rambling continued. “And now I know where Twilight gets it from.”

“Twilight!” the goddess suddenly exclaimed. “I can’t ignore Twilight! If I start doting on Sunset, she’ll feel rejected and...her friends! I’ve got to connect with them too and…” Celestia paused to glare at me, she she deflated and went back to slumping on the couch before she let out a groan. “This isn’t going to be easy, is it?”

Once again, I couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “All you have to do is work a job from sunup till sundown, set a good example, connect with your newfound family, make some friends, and pretty much commute from the Everfree to Canterlot on a daily basis,” I said as a smile formed on my face. “Welcome to the life of a single mother.”

The goddess of the sun frowned at me, and pinned my legs with her own again. “Just...do your thing,” she grumbled before looking over to the television. “And what are we watching tonight? If I’m going to have to deal with all this tomorrow, I’m going to want something to keep me from worrying about everything until it’s time to raise the sun.”

I went back to helping Celestia relieve some of her stress before turning on the television. “Yes, Princess Mommy.”

“Oh shut up,” Tia grumbled right before she gently kicked me in the leg as the picture appeared and the movie started playing. “And what does that say, just because I can speak English doesn’t mean I can read it you know.”

“After Decades of warfare, Agamemnon, King of Mycenae has forced the kingdoms of Greece into a loose alliance. Only Thessaly remains unconquered,” I read for her before the words faded to reveal a less than accurate map of the land around the Aegean Sea.

As I moved my attentions back to Celestia’s body, the goddess cleared her throat, and I looked back up hesitantly. “Yeah?”

Celestia licked her lips nervously, and sighed. “Omnifarious...before we get started on all this and I forget everything… I just want to say...thank you for...telling me what I needed to hear.”

“No problem Tia. I’m happy to tell you off any day of the week.”

Chapter 16:The Incredibly Boring Day of Labor

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Chapter 16: The Incredibly Boring Day of Labor

After being able to use magic and fly for about a week, I’ve got to say that pegasi are probably the luckiest of the three tribes when it comes to just who got the best inborn abilities on average. Yeah, you’ve got your unicorns and their magic, but there’s maybe fifty unicorns in all of Equestria that come anywhere within a hundred miles of Twilight when she didn’t have wings. The rest of the lot are like Rarity, they’ve got one particular spell that they just kind of stumbled into, and some floating magic that can usually only pick up something of equal weight to their own bodies at the most, with other living things being a lot more difficult to fling around.

Now, pegasi…every single last one of them can fly. While the speeds vary from Fluttershy to Rainbow Dash, they call all catch air, hang out on clouds, mess with the weather and kick lightning into anyone who fucks with them. Plus there’s that whole protective magic stuff they’ve got going on that lets Rainbow crash into junk at a speed that should turn her to paste, but usually ends with her breaking through anything in her way. Oh, and a few of them, about equal to the number of magic-type unicorns, can do some emotional effecting junk with their eyes or voice.

It was a combination of the first and second to last abilities that allowed me to enjoy something that few humans ever did before, mostly out of that ungodly instinct for self preservation. I was skydiving, and without a parachute.

“WHOOOOOOHOOOOOO!”

The wind wildly whipped around my mane without bringing tears to my eyes thanks to the goggles Rainbow had lent me, and I dove straight down with my fake alicorn wings held to the side. I simply enjoyed the feeling of falling at a speed that had surpassed terminal velocity some time ago.

“Okay now we’re coming up on the ground, pull up in ten…five…no-”

As per Rainbow’s instructions, I unfolded my wings and flapped them as hard as I could before I…crashed into the dirt made two bouncy skips along the ground that spun me both backwards and upside down before I impacted a perfectly positioned tree and slid down along the ground with a moan.

But, apart from a strange urge to hurl despite my empty pseudo-stomach that didn’t really exist, I was pretty much fine. A little sore, groggy and all kinds of woozy. It was the ground that had the problem! The damn thing just wouldn’t stop spinning.

Then a pegasus with some kind of magical triplet condition walked into my view, and I fought to keep them all in focus as the three Rainbow Dashs gave me this bright smile while phasing into one pony, and then breaking apart again. “Hey not bad,” they said with only one voice between them. “Way better than last time, I think you actually managed to slow down before crashing. Now shake it off and lets get up there to do it again.”

When the three pegasi finally became one, I pointed a hoof at her and glared. “You’re not my favorite pony anymore.”

To which she responded by grabbing my tail in her teeth and yanking hard enough that my ass fell forward and I landed right side up before she started to drag me away from the tree. “I said shake it off,” she managed through a mess of my ass hairdo before spitting out my tail. “If you want to be in the Equestria Games, you’re going to have to learn how to turn like a real pegasus!”

“Alicorn,” I corrected her with a moan.

“Whatever!” she exclaimed before going back to glaring at me. “If we’re going to qualify for the relay race, then we’re going to need you to be able to turn on a bit, and this is the best way to do it!”

Once again, a moan escaped my lips. “Still don’t see why we can’t do this over water or something,” I grumbled.

Rainbow let out a huff. “Crashing builds character,” she replied with a frown. “Besides, crashing in water is…tricky. It gets all in your nose and..ugh!” The pegasus shivered for a moment, and I was caught wondering just how did ponies do underwater swimming. “Now get your cute little plot off the ground and back up in the air.”

For a moment, my mind raced to try and delay the inevitable return and fall from on high. At first I was just going to pretend to be out of gas and ask Rainbow for some extra juice, which would serve to shorten our practice time by making her too tired to continue. But then I found an oddity in Rainbow’s instructions that I couldn’t resist needling her with. “So, you think I’ve got a cute plot?”

Embarrassment flooded the pegasus’s scent, and I got up to look back at her and saw a huge blush covering her cheeks. “W-What?” she nearly shouted while I grinned at her, and then shook my ass a bit in her general direction.

“No!” the flustered pegasus practically shouted as she backed away from me.

“Oh yes you do!” I went on with a toothy grin.

More embarrassment came through her scent, and I swear her cheeks went red. “I do not. Your brain must be broken.”

I giggled. “It’s okay, Rainbow Dash, i mean, look at it,” I said before turning around and shaking it at her a bit.

“Gah! Cut it out!”

I wanted to continue with the whole thing but…messing with ponies who weren’t a bazillion years older than me just wasn’t my thing. And hell, I knew I was sexy from Celestia. If Rainbow was…checking…out…my…butt…

Yeah, okay, maybe it was a little weird. I blame my actions on a concussion.

My grin turned to a smile, and I didn’t pursue the issue any more. “Okay Rainbow I’ll drop it. But…um, if we’re gonna work out some more,” I added a little hesitantly, “can I get something to eat. Twilight skipped breakfast this morning.”

Rainbow gulped. “Oh um, yeah...sure,” she replied before she took a step forward. “if you need some l-friendship, I’ve got plenty. Rainbow Friendship Dash. Right here.”

I didn’t need the extra energy but…it would give Rainbow an out to end our practice session a little earlier than usual and maybe take a nap. And um…I’m sure there was some other reasons in their too but…the sooner I could get away from Rainbow, the better. Plus, turning into season one Rainbow Dash, the one that crashed through everything when it came time to make an entrance...it wasn’t all that appealing.

So I approached her and Rainbow kind of just crouched down as if to brace for a punch or something and closed her eyes. “Okay ready.”

The usual reaction from Rainbow got a roll of the eyes from me. “You know, most other ponies kind of like me…feeding off them,” I said after picking my words carefully. Admittedly my diet consisted mostly of Twilight, and I had just eaten Celestia that one time and the rest of the girls a maximum of three while Rainbow had gotten about seven or eight since we hung out so much.

“…that’s kind of the problem,” she mumbled.

Concern got me to stop, and I put a hoof under her chin to lift her head up to look at her with wider than usual eyes. “Rainbow, am I hurting you or something?” As far as I knew, the magic I took from the girls via their love wasn’t life threatening as long as I didn’t gorge myself too much, but…if Rainbow was hurting because of me…yeah, that scared the shit out of me.

The pegasus shook her head. “No! You doing your…thing. It feels…good,” Rainbow mumbled before she cleared her throat and looked at me in the eyes with a frown. “Now just hurry up and get it over with, okay?”

I shrugged, and did as instructed by the pegasus, taking a step forward and taking in a deep breath while inhaling part of her mystical essence. Rainbow tasted like…well, she was somewhere between Twilight and Celestia as far as overall flavor went on the strength of her love meter. It was had actually gone up some since the last time I ate her on the way back from pirate island.

As for the flavor…Rainbow was some fiercely excited and kind of a little spicy with a touch of apprehension…as if she was afraid of being my friend for some reason that had cropped up since I came back from my interdimensional adventure.

But hell, I was a changeling, and Dash had only really known me for a month. I could see why she would be a little worried about stuff like me turning out to be a bad guy. Especially considering we were all just waiting for the other horseshoe to drop when Discord performed his sudden but inevitable betrayal.

I chugged for about three minutes on Rainbow’s emotions, and she crouched down on the ground, shivering with what had to be effort to keep on her proverbial feet. When it was over, I offered a hoof to steady her, and waited for the pegasus to recover from the draining.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to do it that long,” I told her, actually being honest. “Um…if I feed to quickly…well…it’s like you having a bit too much cider, the hard cider I mean.”

Rainbow chuckled as she stood back up to her full height. “You drunk? That might be fun to see,” she said with a smile. “Now um…look…I uh…should probably go check on Fluttershy and see what she’s up to. Knowing her, she probably got distracted by a baby bird or something. Uh…keep…practicing till lunch.”

Before Rainbow could dash off, I snagged her tail in my TK, and she frowned at the sudden tug that happened right before takeoff and kept her from jumping into the air. “Oh uh Dash, I kind of um…have this thing at my place tonight. I’m getting Pinkie to cater and stuff so…”

“You’re having a party?” she asked. “What for?”

“Human holiday,” I quickly said, already gotten that much of the lie down pat. “It’s um…traditional…or something.”

Not being a complete idiot, Rainbow gave me a measuring look. “What holiday is that?”

And it kind of caught me flat footed. “Um…” Thanksgiving? I asked myself before the picture of a turkey appeared in my mind and I X’d it out. I had already gone over the whole Yule/Christmas thing with Twilight now that she and I were walking about human stuff. They already had cider season to double for Saint Patrick’s Day as well as Hearts and Hooves Day so… “Labor Day!”

Rainbow’s frown took on a bit of confusion. “Uh…what?”

“It’s a day that um…humans celebrate by getting together at the end of the day and eating burgers and…stuff,” I finished rather lamely before the pegasus shrugged.

“Eh okay,” Rainbow replied. “I’ve heard of weirder reasons for a party. Everypony else coming too, right?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Uh, what non-foal birthday party doesn’t include the six of you around here?”

“…good point.”

Once Dash left, I kind of hightailed it out of my practice session one hour and fifty minutes earlier than she told me to. Hell, I still had a ton of things to do other than just invite the girls over. I needed to have lunch with Twilight, have sex with Twilight, cuddle with Twilight until she woke up again, and hold court in Ponyville to settle the local disputes that had kind of been backing up since I took my vacation.

Sure the old court system was basically just show up, wait in line, and yak about some problem, but Twilight had me revise the system a week into the whole thing. Since I was just her regent, I kind of had to play by her rules. Instead of a long que of petitions that showed up and waited around for whenever I decided to come around, they sighed up on a schedule sheet outside town hall sometimes as much as three days in advance and turned in a written grievance that I could go over beforehand and take some time to think on the proposals.

However, some proposals required little to no thought at all…

“This is the third time you’ve shown up trying to get me to sign off on your stupid plan this month,” I said while sitting on my less-than-imposing overlord throne that had either been a piece of patio furniture, or a cheap director’s chair before I commandeered it for my personal use. I looked across the room at my petitioner that was surrounded by a pair of changelings that appeared to be twin blank-flank black pegasi.

Filthy Rich cleared his throat and held his head a little higher. “Princess, I’m asking you to be reasonable,” the stallion replied. “Despite it’s status as a country town, Ponyville has shown next to no economic or population growth in over fifty years because we do not tap into the natural resources of the region! If you would simply look at the plans for-”

I put a sound dampening dome around myself and reduced the inane droll that the rich earth pony was going on about for the third time to a barely audible buzz with the fair play side of my conscience told me that if this had been any other small town that wasn’t inhabited by about twelve talking ponies I absolutely adored and would do anything for, I would have been signing off on his plans to make use of the regions hidden resources. After all, the guy did have a pretty good point when it came to the uselessness of Ponyville.

As a town, Ponyville was…kind of a failure. The whole reason that small towns existed in Equestria was for young adult ponies to meet up, and then move to the bigger cities as they sought their fortunes. While several ponies also liked to raise their children in the countryside, the whole purpose for quaint little towns like Ponyville to exist was for them to help a somewhat gender slanted population hookup while they were still young and idealistic.

However, thanks to the Everfree Forest, Ponyville wasn’t considered much of a hook-up or breeding town as say…Dodge City, Hollow Shades, the village in Gelding Grotto (yeah Ponyville had less same-sex hookups than a town with gelding in its name) or New Horseleans. Even though the woods danger rating were going down and I had made it easier for new businesses to move in as well as the whole princess thing, Ponyville hadn’t gotten anything more than a flood of tourists in the recent months to see where the new princess lived. Then the ponies got really disappointed upon being directed to Twilight’s library.

But considering the weirdness that Ponyville underwent weekly, and sometimes daily, the fact that it had technically been destroyed in a parasprite attack, a Spike rampage, been the landing point for two separate invasions of monsters, a changeling infiltration, and was in constant danger of timber wolves, ursa, manticore and all sorts of other Everfree junk…no one in their right mind really wanted to move to Ponyville.

Of course it did have one good thing going for it. Ponyville was extremely rich in mineral resources. I still wasn’t quite sure how gem development worked in Equestria, but I knew they weren’t just a bunch of shiny baubles ponies didn’t care anything about. While not up to the millions and millions of dollars that humans would price them as, they were still pretty valuable.

And yeah, Rarity was actually...kind of rich.

So what did Filthy want to do?

Use some new and ‘special’ mining techniques to make sure we get all the gems with no risk to the miners whatsoever!

“I know what strip mining is you idiot, I know what it does,” I cut him off. “Of course ponies don’t want to move here, its on the edge of the Everfree, which nearly invaded a few months ago! We’ve got monsters and mad warlock attacks, and I think we’re actually overdue for an alien invasion. No pony in their right mind would want to settle in here. But the ones that actually have survived all that and are still around, they like it here! They don’t want it to change. They don’t want oversized mega malls, mage towers, and some snooty university ponies that only put half their plots into their work coming into our town and messing it up. So I’m denying your request for building, removing, or doing anything to this town. Next!”

Thankfully, several other petitioners weren’t as annoying. Toe-Tapper needed the right to use town property for a public concert involving some Pony Tones group, there was a slight disagreement over who got how much space in the ponyville market for stand advertising, Pinkie actually came in with a request for me to invent a new holiday that I took under advisement before informing her of a need for a low level dinner party for tonight for me and the girls with special guest, Cheerilee actually came by towards the end with a request for a changeling to use in an upcoming lesson, and then there was the donkey…

“So we discovered that you had created these wonderful toys and were wondering if my company might be able to purchase the rights to mass produce the Princess Twilight Sparkle action/collectable/doll figure,” a mule in the business suit said before pointing to his nearby graph that showed his squiggly little line giving a drastic incline. “As you can see, we projecr-”

I held up a hoof. “Excuse me, but what company did you say you were from again?”

The donkey blinked. “Um, it’s a small one in Manehattan. The Hasburrow-”

“BEGON DEMON!”

Beelze-a-burrow sputtered. “W-What?”

“Guards! Remove him at once!” I commanded the disguised changelings. “And seize the collectable vinyl figurine!” How the pony version of Evil Inc. had gotten their claws on one of the precious purple pony princess likenesses that I had created with dark magic the day before, I didn’t know, but I’d be damned if I let them keep it for their satanic rituals of knockoffing.

After that, I got about three more requests done before a pair of royal guards arrived and cut to the front of the line. They were Tia’s usual perfectly white pegasi with the hot, boy toy physiques that she liked to surround herself with and had me wondering if the whole Molestia thing wasn’t all that far from some hidden kinky side she had stashed away somewhere.

As soon as I finished listening to Rose’s complaints that the weather team always packed too much water in the clouds above her house and promised to take it up with Changeling Dash, I got around to addressing them.

“Gentlecolts...please tell me Princess Celestia has finally decided to end my mad reign of terror and return Twilight Sparkle to her rightful place on the throne of this town,” I asked evenly, which got a pair of confused looks from the guards.

Honestly, those guys had no sense of humor.

And if you want me to be one-hundred percent honest, I was kind of hoping that’s what they really were here for. Sure, Twilight had bitched to me a day or so after I got back from Tambelon that she had actually been feeling a tiny bit of unfulfillment, what with being a princess and not ruling anything, but a few days of running Equestria had cured her of that. Which meant my insanely boring and inane job as her regent had quite of bit of security.

Oh how I hated her...in a loving way.

“Princess Celestia has summoned you to Canterlot,” the pegasus on the left said before the other one picked it up.

“You are to come with us at once.”

For a moment I just stared at the two pegasi, then looked back to the line of ponies waiting on the answer to their written requests. And...okay, the job sucked and was as boring as hell ninety-nine percent of the time, but I was kinda still their um...princess...replacement. Just ditching them even though court had been running for a few hours was really kind of a douche move.

Which meant…

“Sorry every pony,” I apologized. “Princess Celestia needs me for something very important in Canterlot. So...I’ll be...holding court for one hour longer tomorrow to help make up for lost time. And if you have a business proposal that requires some sort of permit, give whatever information you have to my attendants so I can look over it later. Don’t hold up the line.”

As I heard a few disappointed groans, grumbles, and other sounds that said ponies were sad (or mad) to see me go, I turned to the guards. “So we grabbing the girls and,” I paused for a moment, and remembered that the Elements were stuck in a tree, “um, we grabbing the girls or-”

“Just you.”

I blinked. “Oh...okay,” I mumbled a little...thankful actually. Without the Elements to throw around anymore, there was no way in hell the girls would ever be put in danger if I had anything to say about it, thank you. “So just why is she summoning me then?”

I found myself kind of put off by the scene in front of me as I stood in the princesses private chambers while she looked at a full princess-body length rectangular mirror. The thing was obviously enchanted, but not in the cool kind of way that let you see into the depths of Hell. Which...okay, after that whole goat thing, I kind of glad for.

“What do you think of this one?”

No, the mirror Tia was using allowed to try on dresses without actually trying them on. That was the enchantment, some kind of weird...dress mirror.

Yeah. A summons by the god-princess of pony-kind. A forty minute flight and ten minute walk through Canterlot Castle. All to look at her try on dresses for a casual dinner party.

When did this become my life? I asked myself while she turned around and shook her ass in front of the mirror.

I cleared my throat. “Um...Princess?”

“Tia.”

The giant pony’s words made me blink. “Huh?”

She looked back over to me with an almost-blank-but-slightly confused stare. “Call me Tia.”

“I thought you hated that nickname.”

A shrug of her shoulders came before she spoke again. “It’s grown on me,” Celestia said before she looked back at the mirror. “Now what do you think of this one? Too blue? To be honest, it’s hard to find a color to go with my mane.”

It was at that point my confusion over the whole situation just gave under the weight of everything, and I moaned. “Wait a second. You’re telling me you called me all the way from Ponyville when I was in the middle of court, to...help you pick out a dress for the party?”

“Yes.”

“Um...why?” I managed to ask. Well, I could think of several reasons, but they all kind of fell under that umbrella term called trolling. Except the few that were more along the lines of pranks, and then there were all the gag, joke, and good-natured ribbing that it could be.

Then all of those ideas cleared when Tia gave me this serious, but sad look. “Do you not remember what I said to you the other night when we slept together?” she asked with those special words that kind of made me want to groan, if not for the sheer weight of her words. “You are the only pony I know that will give me his honest opinion.”

For a moment I got a look at the ‘other’ Celestia. And…

Okay look, there’s kind of two Celestia’s walking around...or three if I count the one in dreamland. There’s ‘Can Do No Wrong’ Celestia, the pony everybody sees, and the pony she is for most of the time. She’s the perfect sun goddess that rarely raises her voice, always has the answer to everything, and possesses this unwearing resolve in the face of unimaginable adversity. It’s not a public face or a mask, it’s just...the pony she is when everything’s going the way it’s supposed to be. You know, its how people are when everythings going great, or they can at least ignore the stuff that’s gone wrong.

Then there’s...Tia. Tia is the pony that looks around every now and then to see all the ponies that have long since turned to dust beneath her hooves, the fact that no one wants to acknowledge her faults, wants to know her on a personal level, or cares to spend time with her as a real friend. After century upon millennia of ruling Equestria, Tia kind of got locked away when everyone started using Celestia’s name as a curse, and thinking of her as the be all and end all of everything. She wasn’t the super sad, woe is me immortal that cried herself to sleep every night, but...she was the pony who was starting to realize that getting happiness vicariously through her subjects wasn’t going to cut it.

Oh, and then there was Molestia, the woman of my dreams that sat around naked and had me put my hands all over her body in all the wrong places. But, who cares about her?

“You want my honest opinion?” I asked.

Celestia nodded. “Yes.”

“Okay…”I began before taking in a breath.

As usual when I was in my palace of a home and wasn’t about to go down on Twilight, as the ancient structure really wasn’t meant to repel invaders and thus couldn’t be classified as a castle, I had returned to my bugish form and was getting everything ready to receive guests.

The dining table was your basic circular one, with enough space for twelve ponies on it if we bunched things up. There weren’t any insignias or marked pillow chairs like with the briefing room that had been made for the girls to meet during a time of crises. Hell, there was even a large double door leading out to a balcony large enough to park a chariot on. It was just a place to eat with a nice view.

Perfect for an informal get together.

Applejack was the first one to arrive, a little ahead of schedule. “Howdy partner.”

“Heya Applejack! Ready for a limited amount of moving around fun, followed by some super yummy food and after dinner games, dancing, and tone deaf singing called Care-E-Okie?”

Well, except for Pinkie, she actually had to set up the party. It didn’t take that long with the changelings helping out though. Quick funny story, after I kind of told everyone I was a changeling, I had this idea to help Pinkie with the whole party pony thing by using changelings disguised as Pinkies for free of course. Took everyone a few hours to find out that the Pink Herd wasn’t a bunch of mirror clones. Took even longer to get them out of their houses. Even then, idea kind of turned up as a bust.

I looked over to party pony and smirked as she moved around the table with a tray of drinks. “Hey Pinkie, you don’t have to be setting out the food, I’ve got changelings for that.”

“Awww but it’s fun to set up parties,” she whined, kind of killing my attempt to make things easier for her. So I just let her do her thing.

She set out the orderves as kind of buffet table as we waited for everyone to turn up. I asked the usual questions when it came to AJ, how her family was doing, if she’d been having trouble with the farm, needed any help, that sort of thing. We may not of been all that close, working relationship friends is what I’d have to call us, but it was cordial enough.

“Granny’s doing well, Ah suppose. Although with the rainy season starting up in a few months, she’ll be fussin ‘bout her joints soon enough. Applebloom’s been wonderin’ when you can come ‘round and look after her again though.”

I raised an eyebrow at the farm pony. “You do remember the last time I sat, she was abducted by an interdimensional monster intent on...um...eating her, I think.”

Applejack laughed a little, but it was one of those forced things. “Yeah, and she got out of it just fine cause of you. Considerin’ how much trouble them girls usually get into...it’s nice to have somepony else around Ah can trust to handle their level of...catastrophe.”

I sighed and hung my head in defeat. “Just tell me when and we’ll work something out.”

Then came Fluttershy. She flew in from the balcony along with Rainbow. They took a look around, said their greetings and then went to check out the food.

“Hello everypony.”

“Sup guys.”

Twilight and Sunset popped in a few seconds later. Literally. I mean they just appeared in the middle of the room, right next to the dining table. Twilight had her saddlebags on from a full day of work going over the information Tia wanted her to check, and Sunset...clutched her stomach and had to lean against the wall.

“Ugh, didn’t you ever learn to carry passengers when you teleported?” she moaned.

Twilight winced. “Sorry,” she apologized with a flinch. “But...I warned you my long-range teleportation magic is a rough ride.”

I chuckled and walked over to the girls. “Never mind her Twilight, humans just have weak stomachs,” I told her with a wave of my holey hoof. “They can’t even handle grass.”

“Ugh! Fairy please. Don’t...grass...ick!” Twilight told me. “Teleporting long-range teleporting isn’t that easy on my stomach either you know. No bad food jokes.”

That of course made me look up to Sunset with a frown. “Okay seriously, what is it with the no grass thing? They’re equines, right? I know it has to be edible to them.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Humans,” she mumbled before looking down at me. “So uh, what’s what the...bug you? I hardly ever see you looking like that.”

“Yeah,” Twilight added.

I mained at the question. “Oh come on! I’m in my kind of borrowed house,” I replied. “Can’t I at least look like myself?”

“Says the creature that used to be a male human, that got turned into an asexual insect, who prances around most of the time as a pretty pony princess,” Sunset countered in a dry tone. Then a smirk appeared on her face. “I’m surprised you haven’t had an identity crises.”

Twilight nodded in agreement. “No kidding. That I would have at least understood. But what do I have to deal with? Guy who thinks he got put into a cartoon. Seriously, do I look like a cartoon character to you?” the incredibly bright and colorful equine asked with as her magical wings spread out to make herself look bigger.

I just looked back and forth between the two girls, and got a very horrible feeling in the pit of the organ that passed for my stomach. Honestly, I think I like the two of them better when Twilight kind of secretly jealous of Sunset and guilt tripping herself. “So um...I see you two are getting along better.”

“Are you kidding?” Twilight asked with a smile. “I finally have someone I can talk magical theorems with! A real study buddy! I just...um…”

Sunset let out a tiny breath, and reached down to touch Twilight’s mane. “It’s okay Twilight. Soon as we get this...whatever Celestia wants out of the way, we can start working on your boyfriend’s problem, and help him with mine.”

A second later, Twilight leaned over and put her head up against Sunset’s thigh. “Thank you again...for forgiving me,” she softly said.

“For the seventeenth time, there’s nothing to forgive,” Sunset told her. “Circumstances and lack of information, plus everything I did is why I’m like this. Not you.”

Before Twilight could start a counter argument, which I’m pretty sure those helped add to those seventeen times, I cleared my throat to get some attention and masterfully moved the conversation to a less important topic that no one in their right mind would probably care about. “So...where’s Spike?”

The pretty purple pony princess looked over to me and rolled her eyes. “He’s helping Rarity look after the girls while she finishes a last minute rush order,” Twilight explained. “So, neither of them can make it.”

I winced, not because of the absence of Rarity, but because Spike was being taken out of his working non-disaster zone. I hadn’t actually seen him be the terror he had been on Applejack’s farm...mostly because she had banned him from ever helping her again, but the guy got a little accident prone when he didn’t do the things he usually took care of around the library.

The sun started setting, and we were greeted by night time about three seconds later. I repressed a shudder at the giant ‘fuck you’ to all known laws of celestial mechanics...that I knew anyway, and looked around the room. “so Rarity and Spike aren't coming, that just leaves-”

Equestrian timing kicked in, and was a bright golden flash of magic before the number of alicorns in the room increased. “-Tia.”

All the ponies in the room froze at the appearance of the goddess, or rather...her appearance. She didn’t have on her crown, the overly large golden necklace thing she called a torc, or her royal horseshoes that she had to have remade after giving them to the Earthquestria girls. In fact, she didn’t have anything on.

“Princess Celestia?” Twilight cried out in shock.

Probably because...

“What happened? You’re-” Fluttershy managed before Rainbow flew in front of her.

...well...

“Somepony’s flank we gotta kick?”

...it wouldn’t have fit.

Sunset walked over and looked down at her adopted mother, that was currently four feet tall, and looked a lot like a normal pony, if a normal pony had wings and a horn I mean. I had tried to talk her into getting rid of the ethereal mane too but, that was apparently not an option. “So...you lost weight,” she said with her arms crossed before her face became serious. “Metamorphic reconstitution?”

Celestia chuckled. “For tonight anyway.”

The mare standing in the center of the room had the same celestial mane and longer than average horn, but she could have looked Twilight and the others in the eyes easily. Mostly because she was on eye level with all of them.

“But-what the? Why Princess?” Twilight asked.

The also little pony princess gave her former student a look with a pair of eyes that just screamed semi-sad. “Twilight, why are you still calling me that?”

Twilight winced. “Sorry.”

“And for that matter, why aren’t your friends calling you Princess?” she went on.

The purple alicorn looked away. “It just feels...uncomfortable. They’re my friends, not my...subjects,” she said before looking back to the goddess. “Well, I mean, they’re technically my subjects, but...I don’t...think of them that way. I wouldn’t be where I am without them. And I...well...I don’t want to put myself above my friends.”

After a moment of thought, Celestia nodded. “Then tell me, is it so wrong for me to want the same thing?”

Every pony in the room, and one human, cocked their head at the goddess. But Twilight was still the only one who spoke. “W-What?” If barely.

“Twilight, I’m old, not dead,” Celestia went on before she moved around the room and stole a glance at me, and then Sunset before turning her attention to all the girls. “I spent a thousand years without my sister, getting used to...being alone. I’ve tried to show ponies that I’m not impossible to approach, but when they see this six foot giant that I am in comparison, a pony that commands the sun and has been around longer than the grass, the trees, and monuments of Equestria, how can they not shy away from her?

“But now that Luna has been returned to me by all of you, I find myself wanting more than what she brings. And if anypony in Equestria can overcome the...difference between me and what they are, it would be all of you. Those who saved my sister and embody friendship. The six of you are-wait a second…” she paused before looking around a moment. “Um...where’s Rarity?”

I cleared my throat. “She had a um...emergency dress order and had to cancel. She’s probably back at her shop working on it.”

Celestia let out a sigh. “The best laid plan of ponies and parasprites,” she mumbled before looking over to Pinkie. “Pinkie Pie dear, could you collect the food?”

“Um sure but...what for?”

The goddess took a look around the room. “Well if she’s in need of help with a dress order, what do you all say to go and helping her? And I think she’s appreciate a good dinner instead of whatever she manages to whip up while working.”

Fluttershy spoke up. “Well um, I do know how to sew.”

“Cutting out patterns in cloth with telekinesis isn’t that hard,” I added with a shrug. A second later everyone looked at me and I frowned. “Yes I helped make dresses when I worked with Rarity, so sue me.”

“Ah suppose Spike could use a hoof or two lookin’ after the foals,” Applejack added. I just thanked God she wasn’t going to try and make anything like a burlap dress again.

Twilight looked around the room and chuckled. “Okay, okay everypony. Let’s get going. Um, do you want to do the honors….Celestia?”

The princess nodded once. “Gather around everypony.”

“So uh...P-Celestia,” Rainbow Dash spoke up. “What’s with the shorter look anyway?”

Tia looked back at the pegasus, then down at herself while the others walked towards her. “Oh this? Well, my height tends to intimidate other ponies, so I thought to...tone it down for tonight. And...I was hoping...maybe about, once a week?” she asked while looking around at the girls before a bit of uneasiness came into her voice. “Um...Luna has expressed an interest in coming as well. If you all...want to have us, that is.”

I didn’t need to turn on my emotional senses to smell everyone’s surprise, it was written on their faces. Couldn’t blame them either, I mean...I at least had the whole empathy thing to kind of prepare me for the tiny glimpses of emotional Tia. They got hit with the usually invincible goddesses vulnerability full on with that little question.

Fluttershy actually managed to speak first. “Oh, I think that would be lovely.”

And that opened the floodgates.

“Well shoot Prin-Celestia. If’n that’s all ya wanted, why didn’t ya say so earlier? Yer sister done the same last Nightmare Night, don’t see why we can’t all be doing the same.”

More agreements quickly followed Applejack’s words, before Twilight finally stepped forward. “Princess,” she said, drawing a frown from every single pegasi, earth pony, human, and changeling in the room. “I mean, um...Celestia. If you wanted to be friends, all you had to do was-”

“Remember the tea party Twilight?” the equally tall alicorn asked with a raised eyebrow. “Or the other times I had you all at Canterlot, or the days before the wedding? I will admit that I needed to keep a certain distance, being your teacher, but...do you really think such a thing would have been possible beforehand?”

Twilight sighed. “Okay...point taken.”

A laugh escaped from Tia lips and she gestured with her head. “Okay my little-um...everypony,” she managed before learning her throat. “Gather around. It’s easier to do this the closer you are.”

After we did as instructed, there was a flash, followed slight sensation of vertigo, and when everything cleared, we were standing outside Rarity’s boutique. Twilight took the food in her magical grasp while Celestia approached the door.

Either Rarity had left the door unlocked or Tia knew a spell to circumvent house security, because she opened the door, and Rainbow rushed in a second later, in mid-step for Celestia. Apparently, the goddess had already reached that level of casualness with the pegasus that let her just throw away her manners.

“Hey Rarity take a break for a second, we got something you need to see.”

I heard the unicorn groan from inside her shop. “Rainbow please, I-” was all I paid attention to before Tia leaned over to whisper instructions in my ear. They were corny as hell but...I went along with it anyway.

“Rarity, this is an emergency, something’s happened to the princess,” I said running in after the pegasus.

As usual, the unicorn’s shop was a complete mess, as it always was when working on a huge project. Rarity had ‘tornado’ organization skills that allowed her to just put anything everywhere and know where it was...until the next morning when it came time to find the one thing she forgot to clean up and could no longer locate it anyway.

Twelve things fell from her magical grasp, and she looked at me in shock. “The Princess? What happened? Is she alright?”she asked before her shock became a quizzical eyebrow raise. “Wait, which princess?”

Then little Celestia came in behind me and ran up to Rarity. “Ms Rarity you must help me! My new diet worked far too well and now I need all my dresses resized to fit before the next diplomatic summit with the Griffon Empire for tomorrow, or Equestria is doomed!”

“You know, in Rarity’s defense, I think it was your height, not your request that made her go all gaaaaaaah, and faint,” I told the humanoid goddess as she sat upright on the couch next to me for once in our little dream house.

Celestia let out a tiny chuckle. “Well let’s see you come up with a gag in ten seconds flat,” she told me before one of her arms laid across my back and she she let out a content sigh. “But the rest of the night was lovely, and I think the transformation worked well enough. They were certainly seemed more at ease around me than usual. I think I’ll keep trying it.”

Then came the awkward silence as I sat in an an empty house, next to a naked sun goddess that could double as the ultimate sex symbol. “So um…” I tried. “You know how to sew huh?”

“Excuse me for picking up a few interests in my centuries of life,” Tia told me with a smirk.

I nodded. It made sense I guess, someone as old as her would have picked up plenty of talents as time went on. “So um...how’s your talk with Sunset go? I saw you two talking after Rarity’s order got finished, and um...”

The question got a nervous sigh from the sexy woman. “It went...good.”

“But?” I prompted.

Celestia sighed. “It’s...going to take time,” she told me. “I can say there’s no need for forgiveness, and put in as much I love yous as I want, but...I can’t just go out and say, Sunset, you are my daughter. At least not without making things too uncomfortable for her...more than they are anyway. The last thing I want to do is make things worse.”

Then came another awkward pause, and I found myself wracking my brain to think on how to put an end to it. Tia did it first when she yanked me next to her, and I found my head resting on her shoulder joint. “Thank you for talking me into it.”

And with the destruction of my personal space, I blushed. But...with Celestia being in the mood she was in...yeah, couldn’t really get all indignant about it. “N-No problem Tia.”

If anything, her grip became tighter after that, and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

I cleared my throat. “So um...movie?”

“I thought we were watching that...Annie May, was it?”

“Oh, you liked that?”

She giggled. “It was...interesting. Certainly better than stories about wars being fought over a woman, or an empire built on the backs of slaves that forced them to fight to the death for sport. And your world was really like that once upon a time.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her is still was in several areas. “Yes. Now um...here’s the second episode.” Then I turned on the television.

“This is the story of a man, who has yet to realize his destiny…”

Chapter 17: The Incredibly Startling Revelations Before Rainbow Falls

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I came out of my changeling info coma about an hour after Tia left to get ready for the day, and was met with a mess of dark purple upon opening my eyes. It had been such a long time since I actually slept kind of slept with Twilight, as in the kind that involved me going to sleep with her instead of the release of bodily fluids, that I took a moment to enjoy the feeling. The back of her body was pressed up against my front, and I found my forelegs were still around the princesses chest, or barrel, whatever the upper pony part was that could have been a chest on a human.

Thankfully, Spike had been called back to Canterlot the day after Tia’s dinner party, and that meant me and Twilight got snuggles after sex. Call me crazy, but I think she actually enjoyed that more than the massive orgasm that left the alicorn laying on her side, with her tongue hanging out for about three minutes. But ponies did tend to put more importance on the whole physical contact backed by emotional intimacy than they do on just for fun sex.

It was strange, but true. Hell, more snuggling went on in Ponyville’s red lights district than banging. Oh, and talking about their feelings, and their day, and a bunch of other things that makes reviewing any memories gained from that brothel I own kind of a letdown. A big letdown. But at least it gives me lots of gossip.

I mean, did you know that Colgate had a thing for Raindrops? I always thought she had a thing for that unicorn she’s always with, but…Raindrops.

Other than that, we got to sleep at the library. And have sex, in a library. Public indecency wins again!

Okay it was the back room of the library where Twilight slept in her cozy little bed, but it was still kind of a public place. At least I thought it was. I would need to check the zoning laws or something to be sure. Hell, for all I knew, public sex wasn’t even frowned upon by ponies. They did tend to walk around in the nude a lot.

Twilight stirred and let out a moan.

Since I couldn’t get a good beat on her face, I went for the back of her ears. As soon as my lips touched them, her body stiffened at the contact, and she turned her head a bit so I could get at her cheek.

The kiss got a giggle out of her. “Forgot what it was like to wake up with you in the morning.”

“Better give you a good reminder then,” I said before working on her neck since I couldn't get at her lips with her head still half-turned around.

Twilight moved around a bit, and I had to stop my make-out session with her neck to let the mare move onto her back. But then I got access to both cheeks and muzzle, so it was worth the wait. My inability to leave a job unfinished moved me back to her neck again, and the little goddess ran her hooves along the side of my body. “So frisky,” she told me as I made it to her pony collar bone. “What’s got into you this morning?”

That made me stop my attentions to her body, and I shuffled back up to look at her in the face. “What do you mean?”

“You’re being all…super affectionate,” she managed before I pecked her on the muzzle again, which got another giggle from her. “You’re not usually this way when we wake up together.”

I gave the alicorn a carefully raised eyebrow to keep from scowling. “What do you mean?”

Twilight just rolled her eyes. “Well usually its bang, suck, snore, and back to work with you. Don’t get me wrong, I still love that too, but...you haven’t been this...playful with me since...a while, actually.”

“Wait, you mean the lunch sex?” I asked for clarification. It was Equestria after all, miscommunication could easily snowball into something capable of destroying entire lives and drive pink ponies to further insanity.

“Well,” Twilight drawled out for a bit. “Yeah.”

The little bit of hurt in her voice, and disappointment in her Scent got a sigh out of me. “Well, I thought…you know…I had just fed off you and…um…you always have your work to do these days. Plus I’ve got that thing going on with Dash and the Equestria Games.”

That put some fear, and then a bit of shame into the melting pot of Twilight’s emotions, and I couldn’t help but cock my head a second before those Smells just disappeared. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied a little less than one hundred percent enthusiastic. Bit of guilt hit her too.

Thus came the sign that I had said something wrong.

See? I was learning to pick up on stuff.

Two seconds too late, but...I was learning at least.

I sighed. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

“I just,” she managed before licking her lips. “I just miss this…I guess. When the castle was being rebuilt, we woke up together like this all the time and…I miss it.”

Yeah, she totally had me there. Hell, we usually did a lot more together than I had been doing since I got back. At least, a lot more social stuff. Sure, Twilight was kind of a nymphomaniac, wanting sex at least two times a day and usually turning the whole thing into a marathon, but…she was still a pony first and foremost. She still loved the cuddling and talking too.

“Okay then…you want me to move back in?” I asked.

That got a bit of a reaction out of her. Twilight stared at me with wide eyes for a moment, and took in a breath. “Um…but…Spike…”

“I mean, the whole sleeping at the castle after Spike goes to bed didn’t work cause he might wake up at night with you gone, I get that,” I told her while repressing my mad rage towards the dragon of relationship ruination. Seriously, the little clingy bastard with abandonment issues wants to get busy with a woman that’s about ten years older than him, but I’m not suppose to have my time with Twilight because he’s around?

Double-standard dragons suck.

Twilight let out a sigh. “And he’s too afraid of the changelings to move in there.”

“So, I’ll just move in here,” I concluded. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but at least we’d get more morning time romance. “A few spells to make sure he can’t see or hear us and…”

Then something else occurred to me. “Except…Sunset.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “What about Sunset?”

“Look, I know she’s a grown mare and all, but…she’s still my responsibility,” I told Twilight. “I’m not exactly comfortable with leaving her alone at night.”

“Don’t you have dozens and dozens of changelings looking after her?” Twilight asked.

I cleared my throat and looked away. “Well it’s more like a protection detail of two. That also assist her with anything she needs thanks to a lack of magic on her part.” True, I had assigned them just last night, but…they were there now and that is what counted. “But I still don’t feel right leaving her out there Twilight she…well…Sunset may not act like it sometimes but…she is just a teenager again, and she’s still scared and…I can’t just shove her to the side or throw her to any pony else to take care of.

“And I can’t just be a jerk and try for something like,I dunno, try and force you to move into another house,” I went on. “I know you love this place. Plus we’d have to move Sunset in until I can do something for her and…pony houses aren’t really made for humans. Not to mention there’s the big evil storehouse of dark magic that I need to keep safe from vault hunters.” When something did come like Equestrian law said it would, I doubted the changelings would actually be able to stop him, her, or it, but they’d be there to raise an alarm.

Twilight turned my head back to her, and kissed me on the lips. It wasn’t a peck, or an invasive tongue wrestle. We just has a nice, long, normal kiss as I Smelled the love coming off her in waves that washed everything else away. “Well then, I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” she said with a smile. “Now, how about some breakfast?”

I tried to clear the distressing thoughts from my mind, but…it wasn’t all that easy. “Sugarcube Corner?”

Then Twilight put on her sultry smile. “I was thinking breakfast for you…professor,” she said as her legs spread further apart beneath me, which kind of made me gulp as the whole need to ravish her started to kick in on top of my hunger. “Sorry but, I was up all night with my fillyfriend, being naughty. Does that mean I’m going to get punished?”

It had been awhile since Twilight had done the whole teacher role-play thing, but…at least she had put away the school desk and chalkboard. Now it was just a bunch of dirty talk full of double entendres. That I could deal with.

I swear, the way she was before…it was almost silly. Not to mention a little weird when Celestia had been her personal teacher.

“You know the rules Twilight,” I told her before reaching down to rub her cutie mark. The things weren’t exactly g-spots but…Twi did seem to like it when I messed with them. “Missed work means you get licks until you complete your paper on…”

Twilight looked at her horn in thought for a moment. “How about…Starswirl the Bearded?”

I did my best to hide my disappointment. If it wasn’t for the fact the old bastard disappeared thousands of years ago, I might have been a little worried Twilight was going to cheat on me or something. But then again, I had Rainbow to worship, so it was only fair she had her heroes too. “Okay then. But just remember, it’s ten licks to start, and there will be a penalty when you don’t finish.”

“You mean if,” Twilight corrected as I was moving down towards her more private pony parts that she had exposed. The girl’s sex already smelled of need, and I hadn’t even begun.

Twilight never really did get around to telling me when he invented the anamorphic spell. Hell, she barely got past the whole magical advisor to Celestia part before having her first orgasm. Then she just kind of went with it.

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” I asked Twilight after we sat down to the Sugar Cube breakfast table. I didn’t really need to eat, at least not food, but the social interaction part of dining was always good.

“Well school’s in recess for today because of the big tryouts sendoff ceremony, so I thought Sunset would like to spend time with all of us instead of the castle. I know we’ve got to get more work on this project for Princess Celestia, but the next summit isn’t for awhile, and we just got the information from Vanhoover yesterday. Not to mention I’ve done with all the smaller towns. Thankfully, Sunset finally decided to do it by region too. At least now our data isn’t going to overlap.”

“Still no idea what all this is for?”

Twilight shook her head. “No, but with Princess Celestia asking for it, it’s got to be something important. Then after lunch, we’re all going to Rainbow Falls of course. And that will probably put an end to my work for a few days. I really don’t want Dash to think I’m just pushing her off to the side. Plus…I kind of have a bad luck thing going whenever I try to support Rainbow and I don‘t want to get too caught up in other things this time around.”

That little confession got a little frown out of me. “What do you mean?”

Twilight gave me this look that just kind of said ‘are you some kind of moron?’ before her horn lit up. “Okay Ms I’ve watched you from the very first day,” she said right as a magical image of the Best Young Flyers crown appeared. “Remember this?”

Then the image changed to a turtle. “Or when she got her pet?”

“I seem to remember you guys talking behind her back a little, but-”

Twilight cleared her throat. “Okay, that was a little rude, but…she got trapped in a rockslide Fairy! Could have gotten killed, and…I should have known Dash would have finished the race before all the animals! Then there’s the whole Mare Do Well thing…buck! I didn’t even have a problem with that until you rode me about it for a couple of days, and yes I agree, we should have talked to her, you happy?” she asked in a huff before going on.

“Oh, and then there was the time we went to the Wonderbolts training camp,” Twilight went on. “I think that might have given her nightmares! Not to mention Rarity hasn’t gone up in my balloon since.

“Then there’s that whole thing with Daring Do where we thought you died,” she stressed. “And do I even have to mention the pirate incident on the Galloping Ghost Islands?”

Then Twilight’s voice became soft as she kept speaking while dropping her eyes to the table. “Rainbow took so long teaching me how to fly, and I know I was a terrible student. But she didn’t get angry at me once, and she was encouraging, and to be honest…it was the first time I really saw her like that! And then there was that time on the islands, when I almost…and she said… So…” Twilight slammed her hoof down on the table and let out a huff. “This time, I am making absolutely, one-hundred-percent certain that everything is going to go off just perfect for her!”

As…inspiring as her words were, the way she said them, with that angry…guilty kind of Scent on her… “Twilight, are you okay?”

She looked at me for a moment, then took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m fine,” the princess told me before her voice kind of dropped a bit. “I’m just...fine.”

“Twilight, what’s wrong?” I asked before she opened her mouth and I had to add, “and I got the empathy thing going so…I can kinda tell when something’s wrong.”

With that kind of evidence against her, the alicorn sighed in a way that said ‘I capitulate’. “It’s just…okay look, after Sunset…I kind of started looking around at all my other friendships and…there’s plenty of good times too but, every now and then we do tend to…do some pretty stupid things.”

I shrugged while trying to come up with something to reassure her. “Well um every pony makes mistakes.” Okay, I settled for basically just telling her brush it off but…close enough.

Twilight nodded. “I know, we have plenty of days when lunch goes just fine with everypony, or we just go relax, but…well…Rainbow Dash has kind of stopped hanging out at the library after she got all her own Daring Do books, and I’m having a hard time getting her into something else, and I just owe her so much and-”

Some magic around her mouth stopped the sound from coming out, and I got a glare from the purple goddess before I could speak. “And now you’re guilt tripping yourself about your other friends like you did with Sunset, I get it,” I told her before letting out a sigh and taking a moment to think while she undid my magic.

“Look,” I told her. “Mistakes were made. Okay. If you want to be forgiven, then ask for one and…don’t make anymore.”

“I just…it just…” Twilight let out a long sigh. “Okay, you’re right. Told myself before. It’s the same with Sunset. Need to have a new start. It’s in the past. Learned from it and done.”

I sighed in relief at the averted crises and looked down at the table. Where Twilight had found the need to kick herself over…some problems I sort of caused, I’ll never know, but at least she didn’t go into full-blown freak-out this time.

“So…schedule?” I asked.

Twilight gave me a blink look for a second, and then kind of just gave a start like she had been shocked. “Oh right, schedule!” she exclaimed “Okay, well…after I realized the problems involving my interactions with Rainbow Dash revolved around me not having a plan and last second decisions, I investigated what everypony else was doing to show their support and find our niche!”

Our? I asked myself when I noticed the plural. “But um, Twilight-”

“I mean, I know Applejack is handling the catering for the team while we’re at Rainbow Falls so she’ll be fine, and Rarity is still getting the team uniforms done, and you’re helping with the training, but that’ll be finished when its time for the qualifying flight. So I was thinking we could all join Pinkie in Rainbow’s cheering section!” she finished with an excited smile.

And then I got the feeling. You know the one, that spider sense feeling of dread and danger when you’re in a dark alley and you know you’re going to get mugged? Yeah, that’s the one.

“Um,” I began to try and draw out the other shoe falling as long as possible. “What do you mean, we all?”

“You, me, Pinkie Pie, and Sunset,” Twilight finished. “Oh don’t worry, I already asked her last night. There’s even special cheering uniforms with rainbow mane styles! Hey, do you know that pompoms were probably a result of human dimensions effecting Equestrian development? And teacups? I mean, I always thought that we got the designs from the griffins because of the claws, but now that I think about it, back when I had those hand things, the tentacle appendages really would have been perfect for holding teacups.”

I held up my hooves. “Wait, wait, wait a second Twilight,” I told her while focusing on the part that didn’t sound like she wanted to put me into a cheerleader getup. “What do you mean by, helping Rainbow Dash train?”

Cue slightly confused face and… Twilight tilted her head. “What do you mean, what do I mean?” she asked. “Rainbow Dash said you and her were training for the relay together.”

“That’s…because I’m in the relay team Twilight,” I told her. In fact, I’m pretty sure I told her that…or something to that effect. Hell, with my changing memory, I could even remember my exact words. They were “Me and Rainbow Dash are helping Fluttershy get ready for the-”… Oh shit. That’s…all I actually told her on the subject. Those exact words. Not you know, that I was also training to be in the relay, just that we were helping to prepare Fluttershy.

And judging from the slightly worried look on her face…and the big amount of worry I could Smell on her… “Um…okay…what’s wrong?” I asked cautiously.

Twilight did her whole breathing thing to calm down and…okay, since she only does that for you know, super freak out prevention, I was starting to get really worried. Especially when it only took her from a level seven Sparkle Panic Scent to a level five.

Yes, I had developed a rating system for Twilight’s freak-outs based on her psychic scent. Level ten was only theoretical though, as I had only seen Lesson Zero, not experienced it.

“Fairy, you can’t compete in the Equestria games!” Twilight exclaimed in a near-panic.

The worry in my gut became kind of a jaded concern as the darker side of my mind came up with the possibility that Twilight was only saying that because she had made a plan, and I needed to stick to it. But then I crushed that thought down and kept my expression to an eyebrow raise. “Um…why not?”

“Because the Equestria Games is a contest of strength and skill for all the ponies of Equestria!” Twilight told me with a bit of panic in her voice. “Nopony is allowed to use magic!”

I blinked a few times while trying to settle the fear in my gut. “So I just won’t use magic.”

Twilight pointed a hoof at me. “You’re using magic right now! Transformation magic! In fact…I don’t even know if changelings are allowed to compete. We allow griffons, but that’s only because the Griffin Empire raised such a fuss, and it’s just in the flying events,” she said. “And even if you change into a pegasus, you’re still using magic, so…”

“Um,” I began while to forestall Twilight’s panic approached level six. “That’s um…okay, Rainbow wouldn’t just sign me up for an event if-”

“Teams don’t sign up until they get to the qualifying location,” Twilight told me.

I grasped at a straw. “But we’ve been getting ready for two days. It’s not like Rainbow wouldn’t read the…rules…and just…oh pony feathers,” I mumbled while leaning over to rest my head in my hooves with my elbows on the table.

Then the worry in the pit of my was replaced by…something else. The kind of something else that made me want to throw up. I looked up to the purple mare. “Twilight…she’s been looking forward to this since…hay, since before I even got here. If she can’t compete because of a stupid technicality like this…it’ll crush her,” I mumbled before thinking of the other pony this would hurt. “Fluttershy’s been looking forward to it too, and…we’ve got to do something. I mean, you’re a princess, can’t you just…order some ponies around and fix it?”

“Not in,” she said with exasperation in her voice before looking over at the clock before turning back to me. “Three hours…. THREE HOURS? We only have three hours to fix this?”

Twilight went up to panic level eight, and I kind of just sat there while trying to think of a solution. There was that one pony Fluttershy had mentioned, so asking him was definitely an option, but…we also needed to do a few things first.

“We need to tell Rainbow what’s going on,” I said.

“Are you crazy?” Twilight demanded as she glared at me. “You know…buck, you know how she’ll react! And I’m pretty sure it’ll be two words that start with F and O.”

She was right of course, Rainbow was not going to take this well. Hell, she’d probably be hurt by it worse than Twilight! But still… “And if we don’t do anything and fail, then it’s going to do more than crush her spirits Twilight. I mean, what if the train whistle blows, and she finds out she have no business even going to Rainbow Falls? Or we spend our last few hours on the train, looking for some pony to fill in and when we get the signup, her team is disqualified?” It took everything I had to keep my voice even with all that going through her head.

“...buck it all.”

It took us some time to double-check the rules and find that it was true about alicorns not being allowed to compete. As for the changeling thing, even if we could get some kind of special ruling to allow my species to compete, that would have taken days. Me and Twilight had hours.

So with our hopes of telling Rainbow she had nothing to worry about dashed, we had to break the news to her. By the time we found her, a whole hour had passed, leaving us with even less time to fulfill our nearly impossible task.

She was on the outskirts of Ponyville, doing some last minute running through the course that actually resembled something doable at a pace that had probably been impossible for her when Twilight came to Ponyville. I didn’t know whether to be uneasy as Rainbow Dash just kept giving Sir Isaac Newton the bird as she zipped and zoomed around while banking at speeds and angles that were scientifically impossible, or just be impressed by the whole thing.

And since I was technically a girl at the time, I could enjoy the sight of a cute little pony that looked like she shot rainbows out her ass when she flew around the obstacle course that was made from fluffy clouds and rainbow rings.

Oh who am I kidding? I would have thought it cool even as a guy. Rainbow was in her element, and it was just fucking beautiful. She wasn’t even really trying to go super fast, she was just having fun. So much so that I could Smell her at twice my normal range.

And now I’m going to ruin it, I told myself while the playful pegasus just zoomed around happy as can be.

As soon as we approached, Rainbow just turned away from her third run through the course, and landed in the shade of a nearby tree. We didn’t even have to shout or anything, she just looped around after flying through a ring and landed.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” the slightly sweaty, but still somehow gorgeous pegasus asked us.

I took the initiative, and told her the bad news.

Rainbow took it about as well as anyone could have expected.

She shrieked. And by that I mean really shrieked, in that super sheik voice of her's that gets that way when she’s going to be having a panic attack. “WHAT?”

Twilight sighed. “I’m sorry Rainbow but, we checked. Short of going to an official committee and explaining our special circumstances, which we don’t have time for...Fae won’t be able to compete in the Equestria Games. Much less the qualifying rounds,” Twilight grumbled at the end.

That was apparently all Rainbow could take. A second later, she was up in the air and having a Twilight-style freakout.

“What’re we gonna do? What’re we gonna do? What’re we gonna do?” she repeated over and over again as she flew around and around in a circle, zooming every which way about a foot off the ground

Twilight tried to get a hoof on her, I used horn magic to ensnare the girl and pull her back down to the ground before she flew in so many circles and kicked up a twister. It was actually pretty hard to hold her too.

Not super impossible hard, but with changeling magic being a bit rougher than unicorn or alicorn, I didn’t want to hurt her or anything. So, I kind of got that feeling of holding a panicking bird in my hand. Too much pressure and it gets hurt, not enough and it flies away.

Hell, she was so out of it that she didn’t even seem to care that I snagged her like she usually did when she got TK’d and the poor pegasus’s chest was just going in and out to such an extent, I thought a heart attack was imminent.

Twilight was the one to talk to her though. Don’t think I could have held her and played the reassurance part with the way Dash was acting. “Rainbow calm down! We’ve still got two hours before the train leaves,” she assured the pegasus. “Now, do you know anypony in town that could still be on the team?”

“Any pony useful?” I asked to reinforce the fact it couldn’t just be some Joe Average pony. “I mean, some ponies had to have tried joining your team before you went after me, right?” Even if Fluttershy was a member of the team, there had to have been some semi-athletic ponies left in town. Even a normal Ponyville pegasus would have been okay.

Despite its small size, Ponyville did have a lot of athletic pegasi. Tons in fact. On average, from what Twilight had told me ten minutes ago while she was trying to cheer us both up, the normal Ponyville pegasus was at least thirty-percent faster and stronger than the Equestrian average. Hell, Dash was certain they were going to break the wind speed record that one time after all, and she didn’t have a lot of pegasi to pick from like Manehattan did.

Or Fillydelphia, or...whoever the hell was still the title holder because Ponyville got jipped.

The reason being was of course, the Everfree. One did not live across the street from pony Mordor without being one tough son of a bitch. Sure it kind of kept everyone else from immigrating to Ponyville, but the threat of constant monster attacks in years past, plus all the crazy shit that started happening when Twilight moved to town had pretty much made every pony in town the equivalent of a first year royal guard at the least.

I think Twilight even mentioned how they held off a damn invasion from moon monsters at one point. So…yeah, Ponyville had faced an alien invasion after all, and kicked its ass.

Okay, they were nightmare monsters from the moon…but…that still counts as extraterrestrials, right?

“It’s the very last day,” Rainbow whined as she slumped in my grip, and I let her go before joining Twilight in the comfortable hoof patting. “Where are we going to find somepony like that?”

“What about Bulk Biceps?” Twilight asked. Luckily, I managed to resist my urge to gag. Not to mention murder her for speaking such a name. “He’s pretty...athletic.”

Rainbow sighed and moaned at the same time. “And big and...look, I didn’t want to tell this to Fluttershy when she suggested him, but...that pony is too big to fit through the rings, not to mention even slower than Fluttershy and...not the best coordinated,” she said sadly voice. “I’m super fast, but its not going to matter if we get five minutes added onto our time because he avoids all the rings, or I never get chance to fly because he gets stuck in one.”

“What about Cloud Kicker?” I asked.

“She’s got family in Canterlot, so she’s flying for them.”

“Raindrops?”

“Weighted flight and endurance race,” Rainbow replied.

Twilight nodded. “Makes sense, she is kind of strong.”

“Thunderlane and Blossomforth?”

“Sprinters,” Dash replied.

I groaned as I tried to think of any other pony that might be of help. “Cloud Chaser?”

“He also in the sprinters.”

Twilight sighed. “Oh! What about Cloudchaser?”

I looked over and frowned at her. Didn’t I just ask that?

“Synchronized diving with her sister Flitter.”

With that oddity out of the way, I moved on. “Crafty Crate?”

Rainbow shook her head. “Too old.”

I racked my brain for a pony, any pony. “Um...Surprise?”

The look on Rainbow’s face turned to confusion. “Um, why would she join the team? And...how? She’s not even from Ponyville.”

…

My brain shut down for a second. When it started up again, all my muscles just kind of twitched, and I looked at Rainbow eye to eye. “Wait a second, YOU MEAN THERE REALLY IS A PEGASUS PONY NAMED SURPRISE IN EQUESTRIA?”

Rainbow snapped out of her funk to look at my like I was crazy for a second. “Um...yeah?”

“How is that even...wait,” I said before pointing a hoof at Rainbow Dash. “How do you even know about her, and off the top of your head?” The chances of that were so freaking slim I didn’t even want to think about them.

Twilight groaned. “You’re not going to start going insane again, are you Fairy?”

“Beeecause she’s a Wonderbolt,” Rainbow Dash told me as she started to back away from what she probably saw as a unstable, semi-godlike being. Not that I blamed her though.

I sighed and shook my head. “No, but...okay, what about…” I wracked my brain, trying to think of another pony in Ponyville we could use, and tried my bestest to keep my mind on task.

But hell man, Surprise was real! In Equestria real. Did that mean that Firefly and the others were running around somewhere? Well, me and Tia ran into Grogar, so...I suppose anything is possible.

I shook my head to try and clear my thoughts, and flew up a bit. The whole using my wings wasn’t as...unconscious as it was with Dash, or even Twilight. In fact I kind of had to keep my mind on task while doing it, but it was like people kept their mind on task while driving a stick.

It didn’t help clear my mind, more like jumbled it with extra stuff so I absolutely had to focus on what I wanted to think about.

I got above the tree we were standing next to, and then it hit me.

Or she did anyway.

We tumbled back to the ground together.

“Ouch!” the pegasus pony declared when she kind of landed on top of me hard enough for my natural changeling defenses to actually throw off the transformation magic and incase me in my protective outer shell while giving me a bit more height, masculine features, and fangs.

A tail of dirty blond hair obscured my vision, and umm...her uh...butt kind of pinned me to the ground in one of the most embarrassing of positions. I mean, she was sitting on my neck and all so...yeah.

“Oh my gosh, are you two alright?” Twilight asked.

“Come on Derpy, get off her.”

As soon as the unnatural weight was lifted from my neck, I got up and looked back at the wall-eyed mare. She was...extremely apologetic. “Oh, I’m sorry Princess Fae! was just flying by and...well...I just don’t know-”

“My fault,” I assured her as I raised a hoof.

Derpy was...well, Derpy. The girl could burn half of Equestria to the ground, and I wouldn’t care. Snapping my neck beneath that WMD she called a plot was nothing.

Okay, maybe I was a little mad but...it really is impossible to stay mad an an apologetic pony. Especially Derpy.

“Well, as long as nopony was hurt,” Twilight said as she breathed a sigh of relief. “Now what about-”

As Twilight spoke, I studied the newcomer as she gave her wings a test flap. Derpy wasn’t exactly an athlete, but she was a delivery pegasus and a mailmare. That meant she had built up some powerful wings thanks to hauling all her stuff around everywhere. Be they packages, or just sacks of mail, and she wasn’t as blind as most made her out to be. She probably had some stamina too, but that wasn’t the most important thing in a relay, it was all about speed...and cornering when it came to Equestrian air races.

“Derpy!” I practically cheered.

She looked back at me and blinked. “Um yes, Princess?” the mare asked.

I ignored the whole princess thing. Like I said earlier, Derpy.

Then I looked over to Dash, and back to Derpy. “Are you on a team for the Games?”

Rainbow got a bit of a horrified look on her face when Derpy became kind of thoughtful, and zipped over to me. “What’re you doing?” she hissed in my ear.

I gave her a nervous laugh. “Oh come on Rainbow, you need a third member and...we’re running low on available pegasi.”

“There’s plenty of Ponyville pegasi left that haven’t been poached like Cloud Kicker,” Rainbow replied. It actually took me a second to get that one.

Once I did though, I raised an eyebrow. “We went through the entire weather team and then some. I know we’ve got plenty of pegasi usually Dash, but...how many of them have gone off to somewhere like Canterlot?”

“Um,” Derpy spoke up, “I was planning to take Dinky and Sparkler to the tryouts to watch, but I’m not on any teams. Why’re you asking me?”

Rainbow looked at me with nervous eyes, then back to Derpy. “Um...well...ya see,” she managed.

I just kept my mouth shut. Choosing a side between the two pegasi was getting kind of...impossible. I couldn’t force Dash to take her, but I wasn’t going to start fanboying over Derpy’s special talents either. Mainly because I didn’t know them.

I needed a second opinion. “Uh Twilight...some help here?”

She looked back and forth between the two, then to me. “Um...well, I suppose we could try putting her down as an alternate. I mean, there is a small chance we could meet with the committee during the time trials, but...if we’re going to take her…” she paused and looked over to Derpy. “Um Derpy, do you want to try out for the Equestria Games? There was a bit of a mixup with the relay team and...it turns out they might not be able to compete unless we can find another pegasus to take Fae’s place, if the review board won’t accept her as a legitimate competitor I mean.”

The gray pegasus tilted her head. “What? Why won’t they let Princess Fae play in the Games?”

“Because she’s apparently a changeling,” Rainbow grumbled as she got into the air and crossed her forearms. “And somepony forgot to tell them changelings aren't evil anymore.”

I cleared my throat. “Technically, changelings are just as evil as ever,” I corrected her. “I’m just a hash dictator that won’t let them feed off real ponies and provided an infinite food source that requires willing participants that need to be in a state of happiness when they use the Mirror Pool for that food to be useful. Plus, I’m the only changeling that will be able to lay eggs upon full maturation,” I explained with a shrug. “They kind of have to follow me or...die out.”

“Oh...no idea what that means,” Rainbow replied before she turned back to Derpy. “So, you in?”

Twilight wasn’t so willing to blow that off. “Wait, what?” she asked as she spun around to face me.

“Sure!” Derpy told Dash, “I’d be happy to help if you all need me.”

I ignored Twilight and nodded at Derpy. “Great! We’ll see you at the train station in an hour then.”

After Derpy left and Rainbow dashed off to get her things, Twilight kind of paralyzed me with her pissed off purple pony eyes, and I let out a sigh. “Yes Twilight?”

“What’s all this about full maturation? You never mentioned anything about full maturation when you were telling me how the hive worked!” the nerd exclaimed before her angry curiosity became the normal kind and she got all bright eyes and in my face with a smile. “So, just how does it work? The maturation thing I mean. Full maturation, you already told me about the accelerated growth and your physical age.

Just thinking of it made me shudder. “Twilight, it’s gross, I...really don’t want to talk about it.” I also think about it, or access Chrysalis’s stored memories in the hive-mind to get all the disturbing details of the process; never mind the dangers of putting a psychopath's thoughts in my head. Compared to what I had found out about becoming the breeding machine of the hive since Mom’s death, the egg laying was the least gross thing about it.

Of course Twilight didn’t take no for an answer, and followed after me. “Oh come on Fae, it’s just biology! There’s nothing wrong with knowing how another species works,” she said as she chased after me. “Faaaaaairieeeee, do it for science.”

“Science nothing!”

“Pleeeease?”

“No.”

“Please tell me.”

“No.”

“Please, please, please, please?”

“...you really aren't going to respect my personal choice to try and do my best to forget about this whole thing, are you?” I deadpanned.

Twilight let out a long breath. For a second I saw a hint of sadness in her eyes that said I just might have gotten to her, but it was gone an instant later behind a adorably curious smile. “Nope!”

I sighed.

And surrendered to the cute little pretty purple pony princess’s demands.

My walls crumbled.

And I told her on the way to the castle to pack and pick up Sunset.

At least the whole thing made her get all green for a few moments from hearing all the specifics.

“So you just have to-”

“Eeyup.” I told Twilight before she could go into any details that would remind me. Also had to repress a shudder.

“And in three months-”

“More or less.”

“What about Celestia?” Twilight asked.

I shrugged. “I’d still be connect to her of course. So...we’d probably still meet up...maybe? I’m not sure.”

“What if you never do it? Won’t the changelings...rebel or something?”

Okay, that one I actually had to give a little thoughtful thought to. I mean, I was more of a hands off guy than Chrysalis ever was, so I didn’t have the tyrant stamp on my head to breed resentment...but then again, there really wasn’t something like that in the Changelings didn’t really care about being ruled by a tyrant as long as they could eat.

On the other hand...possible end of the species. Our time in the Everfree hadn’t been completely without losses. Minor ones, but still losses.

But then they didn’t really care, as long as they could eat. And grow...but, that was more just so they could find better feeding grounds and kill stuff.

Like I said, complicated. Didn’t like to think about it.

“Well, it’s only been a month or so, and it’s not like she’s going anywhere,” I said with a shrug. “Plenty of time to mull it all over, right?”

Twilight rolled her eyes as we landed at the palace. “Procrastination leads to problems Fairy.”

“And major life changing decisions can’t be undone Twilight,” I told her.

She sighed and looked to her wings for a moment. “Doesn’t mean it would be all bad.”

I sighed and looked back at the alicorn. “Look, do you want me to disappear for three months?”

“Well...no,” she admitted.

“Problem solved, now lets go,” I told her before walking in from the balcony.

Twilight groaned. “We’re not finished with this you know.”

“Yes we are,” I told her without looking back.

“No we’re not.”

“Yes we are.”

“No we’re not.”

It went on like that till we got to Sunset’s room and I opened the door to see what she was wearing. It had a sky blue top, the Ponyville symbol for the Equestria games, and the skirt was very...rainbow. Although the pompoms were just one color.

“So Twilight, did Pinkie come up with a cheer for us to do?” she asked. “And...where are your uniforms? Shouldn’t we be wearing them for the Sendoff?”

I stared at the cheerleader and suppressed a groan while I drew in on myself. Oh right...knew I forgot something.

Chapter 18: The Incredibly Rainbow Overloaded Town of Rainbow Falls

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So after I um...fought down the urge to...run screaming out of the palace after seeing Sunset in a cheerleader’s outfit that Rarity threw together on short notice the day before and looked pretty good even with the translation belt worked into it, Twilight turned me back into a mare, and we all got ready to head back to Ponyville with Sunset’s new servants.

Of course the idiots just had to open their damn mouths.

“Hey there Princess Twilight Sparkle,” the dark coated male unicorn said as he raised a hoof to the purple goddess.

“Long time no see! You got any spare love for some old semi-acquaintances?” the female pegasus that could have been the unicorn’s twin sister spoke up.

Twilight just stared at the mass produced wannabe background ponies in cautious confusion before she backed up a little. “Do I know the two of you?”

I sighed and stepped in front of the idiots before they could talk some more. “You remember the three guards I had with me during that whole Flash Sentry thing?” I asked before pointing at the unicorn first, and then the pegasus with my hoof. “Meet changeling number six six six, and number six one nine.”

Once again, Twilight gave them a scrutinizing onceover. “Wait...didn’t you say they stabbed you in the back?”

“Yeah well...technically, they were being loyal to the rightful queen of the changelings so...I let them off. Kind of...I mean,” I told her. “They already know the ponies around town and...using talking changelings to clean out the palace septic system really is a waste of their talents. But they’re not smart enough to run a telecommunications hub like I have the two through ten do...so here they are.”

Sunset frowned. “Wait...you gave me a pair of traitors as my bodyguards?”

I smirked. “Highly motivated traitors that know I’ll turn them inside out if even one little red hair on your head gets hurt,” I assured her before looking over to them with a frown. “Right guys?”

The two changelings gulped before backing into the hallway’s wall, and Twilight sighed. “Fairy, you’re being mean. If they’ve...well,” she paused and frowned at the ground. “Hmm, I can’t really say change of heart since they’re technically still loyal to the queen, which is you now, so...you should give them a fair...chance?”

I raised an eyebrow at the less than convincing love and tolerance speech.

Which she frowned back at me for. “Well then why did you put Sunset under their protection?”

“Because they have the most experience dealing with Ponyville citizens,” I explained. “And admittedly, they aren’t that stupid. I mean, they fooled you guys into thinking they were guards for awhile.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and sighed. “Okay then, let’s go.”

As we managed to actually get out of Everfree Palace, I looked up to Sunset. “So, what’s with the whole cheerleader thing?” I asked. “I mean, you don’t really strike me as the type.”

Sunset actually gave me a guilty smile with a hint of blush in her cheeks. “Um...well...I saw plenty of them when I was going to school, and it always kind of looked fun,” she admitted before her whole demeanor started to change from slightly hopeful to forced stoic. “Plus...look, after the whole demon thing...it was hard for me. No one outright remembered the transformation and fight I had with Twilight, but...something about it did linger in their minds. Fluttershy and Rarity and the others were the only ones who even tried to be my friends. Sort of. And… Well...it was bad, but not as bad as what’s going on in Ponyville.

“There, I was the monster-slash-alpha-bitch that suddenly stopped being bitchy and turned kind of vulnerable,” she told me. “Here, I’m just the out of place human that seems a little strange. Least the foals have kind of started to like me, and Cheerilee’s nice.”

“You tell her about the other dimension?”

Sunset frowned. “Parallel universe,” she corrected in a way that sounded way too Twilight for my taste. “And no. I mean, who the hell wants to hear about a non-magical land where another species version of you is doing the exact same thing as the other you?”

I had to admit, she had a point.

Thanks to talking Twilight into using her royal privileges, the ride to Rainbow Falls was made in the lap of luxury. It was nice of her to be a princess of the people and all, wanting to ride with other ponies in the less than comfortable, average cars. But I wanted to take advantage of the friends with a princess benefits package. So instead of having to park my ass on hard wood with the danger of getting splinters in the wrong place, I got a nice comfy couch of a seat next to Twilight, while Rainbow sat across from us.

Sunset and Fluttershy ended up next to each other, and seemed to be getting along well enough again. From what little I could make out of the conversation, it was about the differences in the animals between here and there.

“You mean buzzards don’t really buzz in human land?”

Derpy and Dinky were looking out the window at all the rolling hills, with the younger of the two showing a childish level of enthusiasm as she probably hung out a bit too far. I would have been a little less at ease over the whole thing if not for the fact Sparkler’s horn was lit up with the a telltale glow of magic that matched the TK field around Dinky’s back hooves while the older sister read a book.

Applejack and Rarity were talking to each other too low for me to overhear, and Pinkie was...missing. Which kind of had me worried since I was the last pony in after leaving my minions at the door, and we were the last car on the train.

“So Rainbow, mind if I ask you a question?” Twilight spoke up. “Um...why Fluttershy?”

The pegasus looked over to the little pony goddess, and I found myself kind of wondering that as well. I mean, I know she told me a few days ago, but...it had been kind of one of those thing you just blew off. For her part, Rainbow looked away from the window and shrugged. “Well, she wanted to be in the Games, and um,” the pegasus paused for a moment and looked at her happy friend as she shared a laugh with the human before dropping her voice so none of the other ponies could hear. “We all know Fluttershy isn’t the best flier, so I thought I’d help her out a bit. I'm sure I can pick up the slack and get us to the Games.”

I fought hard to conceal my nervousness at that statement, not to mention my agitation. Sure I loved Fluttershy and all, but...well...from what I saw, the Equestria Games really weren’t about giving non-athletes medals. I mean, they sure as hell weren’t the Olympics insofar as a giant one-upmanship contest. Ponies actually meant the part about how their games were a symbol of unity, harmony, and friendly competition.

But at the same time, it was a bunch of athletes that took pride in their abilities. While Fluttershy had plenty of nice qualities...her flight speed wasn’t on the list. It just...well...it just seemed pretty damn wrong to me that someone like her was even competing.

There, I admitted it!

Fluttershy did NOT belong in the Equesrtria games!

She was just being an evil, parasitic little leech, sucking off the talent of her friend! Okay, I understood helping a friend out, or spend time with them and all. But not when you cost them something they wanted! For something like that, Fluttershy deserved to be tared and...something else, because she already had the feathers.

What the hell had she ever really given Rainbow anyway? I mean really gave that actually meant some kind of huge self-sacrifice kind of thing?

“Fae, are you okay?”

I snapped myself out of the mental image of putting Fluttershy in her place, and looked over to the concerned alicorn, judging by her Scent anyway. She tilted her head a bit. “You looked a little angry for a second there.”

“I’m fine,” I told Twilight before something more important than my...rather disturbing mental imagery of Fluttershy covered in black goo disappeared from my head. “And, we are going to be meeting with the committee before the qualifying races are done, right?”

As Twilight opened her mouth to say something, which I was really hoping to be something reassuring, I heard a screech, and looked over to the other side of the car just in time to see Dinky slip on the window and fall. As the little foal tumbled forward, Derpy dove after her...a bit too far thanks to the fact Sparkler’s magic held onto the smaller filly and kept her in the car by her legs while Derpy’s leap carried her all the way outside it.

Everyone ran up to check and make sure the little unicorn was alright a second before me, Twilight and Rainbow could get out of our seats, trapping us where we were. Once everyone took a good look at Dinky to make sure everything was fine, and got assurances from Sparkler that Derpy had just forgotten about the child security spell when she saw the filly slip, we were left to look out the back door of of the rail car while Derpy tried to catch up with us rather unsuccessfully.

After a minute of Applejack grumbling about not bringing a rope, Twilight just teleported her back in and all the ponies resumed their seating.

“Sorry about that,” the ditzy mare apologized. “I um...kind of forgot about the foal security spell Sparkler cast.”

The pink unicorn sighed. “Mom, it’s the only reason you even let her look out the window in the first place.”

“It’s okay sugarcube,” Applejack assured her. “Celestia knows Ah woulda done the same in your place even if Applebloom had been hogtied to the seat by mah own lasso.”

“Quite so,” Rarity agreed with a nod before she became little apprehensive. “Although, perhaps it is best to stay in the car for the rest of the ride? We should almost be there by now.”

Rarity wasn’t that far off with her guesstimation, and we got within sight of Rainbow Falls in under ten minutes. In short order we found our rooms at the hotel that was booked to house the athletes, put our things away, and decided to use the rest of the day to just look around. Me and Twilight went with Rainbow to scope the entirety of the town out, while Fluttershy stayed with the non-fliers to come and get us in case there was trouble. Sunset’s changelings took one look at the place, and decided to stay in their room since Shimmer had plenty of friends to help her out in case of trouble.

The place was a definite tourist trap, or destination, depending on your point of view, mine was firmly in the trap category.

Rainbow Falls wasn’t that much of a town, and had a definite ‘pegasi only’ vibe to it. Although it didn’t float in the air or anything, the place was built on a mountain range. Not next to it, actually on top of a damn mountain range. There were tons of houses, shops, and other junk that were completely disconnected from the center of town and made ponies who didn’t have wings just shit out of luck when it came to getting to them. The parts of the town that weren’t a pain in the ass for anyone who didn’t have wings to get to, where the train dropped us off at, was actually smaller than Ponyville. It had all the overpriced shops, made for tourist kind of restaurants, a ten story hotel built into the mountain that housed us and the other athletes, and a shop that sold collected rainbow water from the rainbow river for sale.

Oh yeah, and then there were the rainbow falls themselves. I didn’t know what they hurt more: my eyes, or my brain.

They were waterfalls...of rainbows. Rainbow waterfalls.

And they came from this light cloud cover that constantly hung over the town and spit them out. Some of them just fell down and down into another batch of cloud cover, which were apparently connected to the top clouds, creating an endless loop of running rainbows. Others didn’t fall into the clouds, and hit the ground where it pooled a bit before making a rainbow river that cut through the center of the small tourist part of the town.

I had seen Rainbow’s house before, with its rainbow waterfalls and all that. Used sparingly, rainbow waterfalls and collection pools were kind of awesome in a way that didn’t make a guy feel like his balls were shrinking.

But Rainbow Falls was just rainbow overload.

And it didn’t stop with the rainbow falls!

The entire rainbow tourist trap town was nothing but rainbow themed decorations. They had rainbow colored parasols on top of the restaurant outside seating, rainbows painted on the freaking buildings, the rainbow town insignia made a gay pride parade flag look drab, and on top of what I’m pretty sure was the bank, they had a sign with a rainbow and a pot of gold at the end of it!

Now, I know I was in the land of bright, technicolor and pastel ponies, but while standing in the middle of Rainbow Falls, watching the rainbow falls next to Rainbow, I was wondering how half the ponies in town weren’t in seizures because of all the rainbows!

And it sure as hell didn’t help that the damn rainbows were bright, really bright. Cartoon level bright. Twelve AM catoon level bright when all the other lights are off and you’re sitting much too close to the television like your parents told you not to. They glowed all colors of the rainbow, all the time.

I mean, the ponies had their brightly colored coats but...they didn’t glow. Not when the horny ones weren’t using magic anyway. Even then, it was like comparing a forty watt bulb to something in the triple digits.

After a rather extensive look around thanks to Twilight’s research of the area beforehand that let her know all the spots to see that made me want to throw up, the three of us landed a bit away from the tourist rap area for some privacy...and so that Twilight could examine Rainbow Falls rainbow ‘juice’ to see if she could discern any differences from the kind of rainbows that were produced in Cloudsdale.

“Okay so…” I managed to say to Rainbow while trying to do the impossible in Rainbow Falls by not looking at all the rainbows. Hell, I couldn’t even look down since flowers had been planted everywhere to make rainbow patterns that could only be seen from the distance. Which we were at. “Why exactly are the tryouts being held here?” Unless ponies liked eyestrain, I couldn't see any reason to ever come to this shiny hellhole.

Rainbow looked over to me, and then pointed away from the rainbow falls of Rainbow Falls so I could see the sky track that the race would be held on. The lane was marked by a line of banners that were every color of the rainbow, and of course the checkpoint rings that the pegasi had to fly through were colored rainbow, while the finish line was actually a real rainbow attached to the outer layer of a cloud to make a circle that the pegasi were supposed to fly through.

“The rainbow pigment isn’t that long lasting once it's taken out of the clouds, so they have to dunk the basic hoops in the river once a day,” the weathermare explained before she looked up to the finish line. “But that cloud looks to be good for the week.”

“Rainbow...I got some bad news,” mumbled before blinking my eyes a few times so they could have a rest. “Um...I don’t think it’s going to matter what the committee says.”

The poor pegasus didn’t take the news very well. “What? How come?”

A second later, Twilight was at my side while I continued to blink my eyes. “Fae are you alright? You aren’t getting sick again, are you?” she asked before looking around. “Um...I know I saw a hospital around here somewhere.”

I held up a hoof to put it on her shoulder. “No it’s not that. I just...look, changelings aren’t really built for bright lights,” I told her.

Rainbow let out a snort. “Is that all? We’ll just get you some sun glasses then,” she said before reaching under her wings and pulling out a pair of shades to stick on my face.

While I was wondering how Rainbow Dash had managed to think of such a basic solution before I could, Twilight looked over to her with a raised eyebrow. “How did you even do that?”

“Wing folds,” Rainbow answered simply, before she opened up her other one and held out a hoof. “Keep my money in the right one.” A few seconds later a bag full of bits dropped for her to catch.

I blinked at the Pinkie-type oddity.

Twilight just examined her own alicorn wings in surprise. “I didn’t know we could do that.”

The second day were were at Rainbow Falls, or first full day we were there at least, was a mad rush to get everything ready while what seemed like every single pegasus ever did their thing. And I’m not joking about the every pegasus ever either. Hell, I even think I actually saw Firefly from a previous generation at one point.

To keep everything on schedule, we divided into two teams. Twilight decided to stay in the hotel room for a bit and fill out a couple of forms so that we could meet with the committee and check my eligibility to compete. I had the changelings stay with her. I offered to stick around as well, but she pushed me out with demands that I train in case everything worked out. It was a little too optimistic for my ideology, but...ponies.

But thanks to a pair of tinted goggles we got for way too much at a gift shop, flying around without having my eyes bleed was now a viable option.

As for team two, we had to set up our...less than spectacular tent that seemed to be little more than four sticks and an oversized pink bedsheet. Everyone else had something that looked like it belonged a renaissance fair, and we got a pink tarp and the most basic wooden poles there were. Apparently, Ponyville hadn't seen fit to provide its team with anything, which was why so many of Rainbow's friends had come along to help out. I was a little pissed at the mayor for not allocating the proper funds, but...the disaster relief fund for Ponyville did eat up a lot of the budget.

Since Sunset was around to help set up, I let her take the lead on the embarrassing situation. Like any good padawan of pointing out the BS, she took one look at the completed thing, crossed her arms, and frowned. “Okay...why does our tent look like it came from the Barnyard Bargain's used rummage sale of junk that nobody wanted?”

Rainbow let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, about that,” she chuckled nervously. “Because Fluttershy...um...well...nopony else wanted Fluttershy on their team, even with me joining with her, so we kind of had to sign up for a team that Ponyville hasn’t fielded in a few years. Which means we don’t exactly have the best stuff.”

I sighed and shook my head kind of dejectedly at Rainbow’s lack of preparation and inability to check everything before hand.

Then I realized I was starting to act a little like Twilight, and needed to concentrate on keeping Rainbow from feeling bad. “Not really a problem.”

After that, Sunset reached down and put her hand on Dash’s head. “Or your fault.”

The pegasus went rigid at the girl’s touch, and then looked up at Sunset. “Um...are you...petting me?”

I...just looked at the scene for a few seconds. And...yeah, I couldn't really get all indignant about Sunset's actions. Hell, if I were still human and in Equestria, I would have been snatching up the local inhabitants left and right before handing out pettings, ear scratches, belly rubs, and hug that yanked them off the ground. What can I say? They were just that fucking adorable.

“What’s wrong? Want some more?” Sunset asked with a smirk before she started scratching behind one of Rainbow’s ears.

Dash’s eyes went wide, and for a second I thought she was about to lose it when her wings ruffled right before her whole body shivered and just sagged in relief. “Oh...sweet Celestia. That’s…”

A few seconds later, Sunset withdrew her hand, and Dash just collapsed. A quick shake of her head put an expression back on Rainbow’s face that didn’t look like her brain had turned to pudding, and she cleared her throat while the whole group just hid our chuckles.

“Ahem, right...so...uh...what were we talking about again?”

The sound of...something loud and boomy that wasn’t really a sonic boom caught my attention, and I looked up to see three slightly familiar figures zooming around in formation. I didn’t know the one with the white hair off the top of my head, but the male Wonderbolt with the blue hair had to have been Soarin...and I had to wait till they landed to find out the one in the lead was Spitfire, and not her brother.

“It’s the Wonderbolts!” a pegasus behind me cheered.

“I hear they’re flying for Cloudsdale.”

My mind kind of put on the breaks upon hearing that little bit of info, and I looked over to Rainbow Dash. She looked about as excited as everyone else, except maybe Sunset. I kind of shared my ward’s lack of enthusiasm.

“Hey Dash, did you know about this?” I asked Rainbow before she could start her fangasm. She I had to poke her in the shoulder, and ask again. When she responded slowly to the second question, I judged myself to be just in time.

Rainbow looked over to me and smiled. “Well, yeah!” she said before trotting over towards where they were going to try and land.

I...didn’t share her enthusiasm as I followed her along with the others.

Although I knew them by the massive amount of Wonderbolt merchandise that Dash had, it was the first time I’d seen them in person. They were...kind of disappointing actually. Thanks to a combination of pony anatomy lessons from the pre-Tia hive and Celestia herself, I could tell at a glance that the Wonderbolts weren’t quite the athletes that Rainbow Dash was.

Or, maybe I was just being biased.

I mean...okay, Spitfire looked...hot. She was a great mix of fitness and femininity, and the fact her flightsuit left nothing to the imagination let me judge that fact perfectly. Even her hair was done up great, as opposed to Rainbow Dash’s windblown mess. She also had a bit more in back than her number one fan.

Soarin’s and Silver Hair’s were also styled up great.

The whole thing made me fly up a bit so I could talk to the six foot giant face to face. “Okay, is there some kind of magical mane...styling stuff that just lets their hair stay like that?” The damn things looked like they stayed combed, despite the insane speeds the Wonderbolts had to be able to go.

“I know of a few things that would do it,” Sunset told me as Rainbow talked with her idols. “But they’re all pretty expensive. Why’d you ask? Wanna look good for Twilight when you cross the finish line?”

I rolled my eyes at the little smile on Sunset's face, and watched the Wonderbolts go over their pitched tent with…

“Give us some Clouds!”

“Give us some Dale!”

“What do you get?”

...thier rather unoriginal cheerleaders that seemed to be actually trained to do cheers judging by how they could flip around and twist their spines in ways that was unnatural to all things pony, professional trainers, burly support staff, and an emergency extra Wonderbolt with a white coat and wild yellow hair. The only thing they didn’t have going for them was an alicorn of their own. And for a second, I even thought I saw one of those just standing off to the side!

The whole damn thing left a bit of a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Okay...this just ain’t right,” I mumbled to Sunset as I looked at the assembled crowd of ponies. “I mean, they’re rockstar level celebrities with military training and government funding...and they’re competing in the Games? Shouldn’t they be off...saving kittens from trees or something?

“It’s bad enough we got the winged lions over there,” I grumbled while glancing over to the griffons. “Their stupid little empire sends one team to compete in every event, and I can guarantee they’re like the best of the best for their entire species. But now we’ve got to deal with a bunch of pegasi that do nothing but fly around all day for a living?”

Sunset let out a snort. “If life was fair, I’d still have my horn.”

I winced, and landed back on the ground. “Um...yeah...sorry about that.” Reminding Sunset about her disability, if inadvertently, made me want to kick myself.

A second later, I felt the human’s hands touch me on the head, and I jumped away while pointing a hoof at Sunset. “Whoa there girl! You’re not using your human nerve scratch on me!” That damn thing was like the Vulcan neck pinch for ponies!

The bad feeling I had was wrong.

It should have been this all-consuming dread that sent me running for the hills that surrounded Rainbow Falls.

Since we still didn’t know if I was going to be eligible to compete, Derpy took my spot on beginning the relay when it came time for practice. Since she would be the starting mare, that meant she needed a good takeoff.

“And a good takeoff is very important,” Rainbow Dash went on as she flew back and forth in front of her mares while sounding kind of military-ish. Not outright drill sergeant, but still pretty bossy.

For Derpy, it seemed to be working pretty well, she was standing up straight and had her eyes...well, her head was moving to follow Dash at least, so I knew she was paying attention. “Yes Ma’am, sir!”

Behind her, Pinkie’s new cheerleading buddy jumped up and down. Although, with her size, Dinky was only able to use one pompom in both hooves. “Woohoo! Go Mommy-wah!” the foal yelled before she fell backwards from being on her hind legs for too long and Pinkie had to catch her.

Rainbow ran Derpy through proper quick takeoff techniques a few times, then gave one of her usual motivational speeches combined with the go order and Derpy looked like she got a pretty good takeoff. She pushed off and gave a strong flap of her wings at just the right time to provide a proper push without the wing movements making her lose any momentum. Everything was looking pretty good until anti-flying-pony fire struck her under the chin and Derpy let out a scream and I heard something go squish. “Ahhh! Projectile imitation muffins!” she shouted before careening out of control. The ditzy mare went into a tailspin, and I managed to snag her tail in my TK before she hit the ground.

She hung an inch from the grass, and I had to admit that Twilight had the right idea with using a pony’s tail to stop a pegasus. I could grasp the back of it as hard as I wanted, and there were no bloody explosion of gore. Always important for when grabbing friends. The blind rage from seeing some dumb as shit moron throwing something at my favorite gray pony helped my magic to react in time as well.

It would also allow me to cripple whatever idiot thought hitting Derpy with their food was a good idea in short order.

“Sorry,” a rather familiar voice with its southern drawl called out, drawing my attention onto one of the few ponies in Equestria that was completely safe from my wrath.

Rainbow got the words out before I could. “Applejack! What the hay?”

With my eyes actually on her, I managed to see what the farm pony was doing. Using her thick-haired tail, Applejack was throwing the bite size apple brown betty that she had made in their cupcake-like containment crusts into the air, and into the paths of the fliers. Hell, she threw one up at Rainbow right as the mare was shouting at her.

Then the damn farmer had the audacity to look all confused like, and done looked up at that thar pegasus with the fancy rainbow hair. “Ah got the idea from them?” she said before pointing over to where the Cloudsdale gourmet chefs were putting miniature cakes on little catapults and launching them into the air.

“Hooves down cakes up!”

I groaned and flew up to Rainbow. “I’ll um, take care of this...you go work on the horseshoe-baton practice.”

She sighed. “Thanks Fae,” she replied before turning around to look at Derpy. The ditzy mare was getting help from Sunset to clean the apple gunk out of her eyes. “Um...when’s your meeting with the review board again?”

“Night before the qualifying trials,” I replied. “Don’t worry though, I can hold stuff and kick off the ground just fine, but...you sure Fluttershy wouldn’t be better as the starter? I mean...look, we’re all friends but...Dash, what happens if she freezes up?” I didn't wnt to do it, but...someone had to be the voice of reason in our little group. Crule, harsh, evil reason.

Rainbow winced at the question, and I could tell she had been thinking about it too. “That’s why she has to be in the middle,” Dash told me. “On the ground, she may just want to stay there. If she keeps her wings moving, she should be fine.”

I could feel the doubt radiating off her in wave after wave while Pinkie shouted a cheer as loud as she could in Derpy’s ear with her megaphone. “Fae...please don’t let these guys stop you from competing. I...don’t know if…” Dash stopped and shook her head. “No reason to get nervous over stuff you can’t control right?”

Even though I didn't really feel it, if Dash needed some kind of confidence boost... I gave her my best reassuring smile. “Oh come on Dash, world’s fastest pegasus and the best young flier, right?” I reminded her with a hoof to the shoulder. “Everything’ll be fine, even if the jerks on the committee say no.”

There was a spike of fear, and then she nodded before flying off, leaving me just flapping my wings in the wind. What was that about? I wondered.

Then I went to go talk some sense to who should have been the most sensible pony about throwing stuff at Derpy of all ponies and expecting her to catch it. I'll admit, it took me a good ten seconds to calm down enough not to yell at her.

Then came the baton passing.

It was...even worse than the jumpstart.

The two mares floated up in the air while Rainbow did her coaching thing, and prepared for the handoff. As for me, I just waited on the ground next to Pinkie and Sunset.

Pinkie was...nervous. She was biting her hooves, and as Derpy and Fluttershy separated a bit then came closer to simulate a racing situation, she let out a cry of terror. “Ohmygosh! I can’t look!”

While Pinkie became a quivering mess, Sunset rolled her eyes before putting on a humored smirk. “Pinkie, it’s just a handoff, what could possibly go wrong?”

As my ears quickly conveyed the ultimate warning of innumerable death and terror within Equestria, I looked up at the two mares while my mind quickly found the most logical response to Sunset’s question. Oh God, THE HORSESHOE BATON IS A BOMB!

It made perfect sense. The easiest way to remove the Bearers from the playing field before...well...okay I knew they didn’t have the Elements anymore, but there was that box that the Tree spit out so, once they solved that thing and opened it, there was...probably something inside?

Yeah, okay, maybe the theory wasn’t so sound, but I was in Equestria. Something had to go wrong.

“Are you really, really, really sure you're ready?” Fluttershy asked as she floated in front of Derpy.

“Yep!”

“I don’t want to take it from you if you’re not ready.”

“I’m ready.”

“Are you really, really sure?”

“Really sure.”

“Really, really sure?”

“Really, really sure!”

“Really, really, really-”

“Oh just take it already!” Rainbow Dash nearly-shouted.

Derpy cried out in surprise and threw out the hoof holding the baton towards Fluttershy...and missed.

Then when Fluttershy tried to move up to the grab it, Derpy moved her foreleg down to where Fluttershy’s had been, and then they tried again…

...and again…

...and yet again…

And after the third, or fifth try that was supposed to be the charm, Rainbow reached out and grabbed Dery’s foreleg. “You! Just hold it there,” she said before looking over to Fluttershy. “Okay, now grab it.”

The technique proved effective, and Fluttershy managed to get the horseshoe and…

Okay look, pony...grabbing ability...it’s not like we have suction cups or anything. I can’t just fly down and attach my hooves to the top of a box, then fly away. We’ve got these weird phantom fingers that we can’t really feel but kind of know about. However, it's still magic. And...if the pony doesn’t believe they can do something with their magic, then the whole thing just falls apart.

So when little Fluttershy got her horseshoe and probably got a wave of self-doubt or something, it just popped right off. He forelegs flailed around a ton in an attempt to keep it, but...in the end it was a wasted effort and the baton fell to the ground.

Then of course, Dash started looking all depressed at the situation and...immediately perked up two seconds later?

While I was wondering what was going on with Rainbow, I saw Rarity snatch the horseshoe off the out of the corner of my eye and was thankful someone was being helpful. Then Rainbow got so excited I could Smell her from down below, and I looked up to see her looking at something on the ground.

“Twilight!” she shouted before zooming down to the ground, and I turned around in time to see her land in front of the alicorn. “Oh, please tell me you have good news. When’s the meeting? Or did you already have some meeting and managed to talk them into letting Fae on the team or…”

I Smelled it before Twilight even said a word. Judging by her sadness and just a hint of fear...it wasn’t going to be good. “That ba-wait a second, there’s no way you would have met with the committee without me,” I said. And didn’t she say the meeting was the day before the Q round anyway?

If anything, that made Rainbow even more nervous. “Oh mare! Did something bad happen? Is everypony okay? Did Discord turn evil already?”

“Well-wait, what?” she asked with a frown. “No! There’s...Princess Celestia had a letter waiting for me when I went to turn in the paperwork. Um...you two better read it.”

I looked at the thing, and skipped the usual intro.

As much as I know this will pain our friends Twilight, I should tell you that there is no possible way that the Equestra Games Committee will allow changelings to compete, short notice or no.

Unfortunately, this is mostly due to political reasons. The Griffin Empire’s presence in the Games, and the exclusion of all other races on the planet is a show of our close bond with the land across the great sea. Allowing another kingdom such an honor would insult them, and griffons are a type to take everything personally. During such a time as this, when our relationship with them could be better, I am afraid I cannot allow the same honor to go to a former enemy, even if it is my dearest of friends.

Please give everypony that was hoping to see Omnifarious compete my deepest apologies.

I looked up from the letter before I got to the signature, and groaned. I knew telling Tia about what was going on was a bad idea. But no, she just asked me how was your day, got a friendship report or something, bla bla bla. If not for that, I could have rigged the vote or something.

Dash just slumped.

Twilight spoke. “I’m sorry everypony, I know how much this meant to the two of you,” she said. “But um...we still have Derpy...that’s...good, right?”

Dash opened her mouth, some cheerleaders yelling form over in the Cloudsdale camp about ‘practice practice practice’ made me turn around with gritted teeth. “Hey you idiots, can’t you see we’re trying to have an emotional moment here? Enough with the-oh that doesn’t look good!” I said as I noticed Soarin zooming around some of the waypoint rings right before he went through one with his flappers extended and got his wing caught on the thing, which made me wince.

Although a pegasus’s magic protected them from blunt force trauma just fine, when a pony zooms into something and gets her wing caught on something like a tree branch, there’s a kind of...yank that’s hard enough to sprain, cause dislocation, and sometimes even break bone if the angle is bad enough. It was how Dash ended up in the hospital for a week.

Rainbow rocketed up into the sky a second later to catch the competition, but I stayed on the ground to look at Tia’s letter. At the moment, Soarin’s skull could have shattered on the ground, and all I would have done is tell Rainbow how lucky she was that the Wonderbolts now had an opening for her on their starting line for air shows.

Because I knew she was going to need some major cheering up.

Chapter 19: The Incredibly Disturbing Dilemma of Rainbow Dash

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“Can’t you do anything?”

It was a reasonable question to ask a god.

Hell, it wasn’t even one of those ‘are you there God? Because if you’re there, you’ll help me’ kinds of things. I knew she was there. She was sitting on my couch, or at least a reasonable copy of it that existed inside my head.

Well, it was more like a shared consciousness of the changeling race. But, it was still my couch. Celestia was still there, and we were talking.

“You know I would if I could,” Celestia replied, which made me slump down in an actual chair half a room away from my usual spot next to her. Not as good for television watching but, arguing while sitting next to Celestia was usually a bad idea. Mostly because she was naked, and arguing with impossibly hot women sporting giant breasts that loved to hug you made it really, really hard to keep up an argument. “Does not competing in the Games really bother you that much?”

I groaned and half-turned my head away from Tia. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least looking forward to it,” I replied. “But...well, I just don’t have what you’d call a competitive nature. So I’m kind of disappointed, but…” I tried to put my thoughts into words. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, at least the training. The part of it where I didn’t crash, I mean. Or when Rainbow was yelling instructions at me, or how stupid I must have looked after plowing into the ground and…

You know what?

Forget my previous statement, the training sucked. On top of which, there was no payoff. I don’t mean not being able to go to the competition either. Pressure to perform didn’t make me freeze up like Fluttershy, but I wasn’t completely unaffected by it. The payoff was...well…

“I wanted Rainbow to...well…” I managed while trying to find the right words.

Celestia gave me one of those bright smiles of hers that could probably have literally lit up the room if she had been her normal sun goddess self. “So you joined for the sole purpose of helping your friend.”

“Thank you for making it sound incredibly lame,” I grumbled before crossing my arms in this thing that wasn't a pout. Then came the goddess’s musical laugh that sounded way too good for a human voice to produce, and I just slunk down more.

“I think it is one of the most admirable things imaginable, giving your own time and effort, all for the sake of a friend,” she replied with a smile.

I sighed and looked away. “That’s the problem.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow at me. “What do you mean?”

For a moment I just turned and looked at her while debating whether to continue the conversation, then I sighed. “Look, Rainbow Dash isn’t stupid. There’s a big difference between qualifying for the Equestria Games, and actually winning anything. And I think she’s kind of figured out when she saw we were up against the Wonderbolts and the damn griffons. With Fluttershy and Derpy on her team...oh hell, she’ll be lucky to get to the Games, much less walk away with anything.”

“I thought you said the only reason she joined the Games was for Fluttershy,” Tia replied.

I ran a hand through my hair and...paused for a moment at the feeling of fingers in my hair. I missed hands. Oh God, I’m turning into Lyra, I told myself before shaking it off and putting my mind back on task as I looked over to Tia. “No that’s not… Look, Rainbow always wanted to go to the Games, and then Fluttershy was probably all ‘me too’ and then...well...I had to cancel and... She’s probably just now getting how screwed she is and…”

Celestia crossed her arms. “The Equestria Games are not about competition Fairy. They’re a celebration of our unity. A symbol of how each tribe can come together and-”

“Oh come on Tia,” I cut in with as much sourness as I could. “They’re a lot sweeter than any human competition, but they’re still a competition. That kind of stuff is important to Rainbow. Really important. Fluttershy just wants to play around, and say she was there. Rainbow needs to win. Really needs it. And I’m not talking about some ego trip either.”

For a moment the goddess just looked at me blankly, and then the expression on Celestia’s face became pensive. “What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath of the non-air that always threatened to bring me into a Matrix moment of ‘is that really air you're breathing right now?’ and let it out to help clear by head before I focused on answering that rather complicated question. “Okay...this is kind of private but…” Well if I couldn’t talk about this with Celestia, then who could I told to it about?

“A few weeks after I got here, I was on this train with Rainbow and...she had some leftover fears from when her cutie mark got swapped around,” I told Tia, which got a bit of a guilty feeling from the goddess. “I know you never meant to hurt them but…

“Look, Rainbow...her cutie mark says two things. One of them tells her she’s going to be a success at her dream, and the other...well...the other thing her cutie mark is telling her is that her dreams aren't for her. It says that she’s going to be stuck in a job that she can do better than anyone in town but...she sees that as a failure and...it terrifies her!

“I think she sees on some level that the Equestia Games as a way to put those fears to rest. It’s more than just a gathering of friends to go and have fun. For Rainbow, this is her chance to really prove to herself that she really is capable of doing what she wants to do with her life.”

“And if she can’t compete, she’ll never know,” Celestia said, finishing my sentence before her eyes got all kind and messiah-like. “But that’s why she has friends Fae. They’ll support her-”

I glared at Celestia. “If she loses her dreams?” I asked. “Yeah, we’ll be there for her, sure. But at the same time, all we’re really going to be saying is, I’m sorry you’re such a loser and you’re dreams have crumbled to dust while we have everything and rub it in your face every day!

“I mean...Twilight has you and me, and...Spike,” I grumbled a bit before moving on. “AJ’s got her farm and her family, Rarity’s got her business and her parents. Fluttershy is just fine and happy with her animals. Pinkie and the Cakes are practically family and she’s got two jobs going for her. They’ve each got their own little success story and people close to them that can constantly with the support they need. Rainbow has a dead end job that she doesn’t want to do for the rest of her life, and lives alone while everyone else she spends all her time with is is happy and successful, and surrounded by loved ones at the end of the day!” All Dash had was a fucking tortoise that she treated more like a best friend than a pet.

I sighed and leaned back in my chair a little. “I know Rainbow is amazing, and I don’t just mean her physical abilities. She has the ability to encourage and inspire other ponies like no one else. She can pick other ponies up when they’re down, and make them do amazing things, but…that doesn’t mean she finds any value in it! Or that she even wants to!

“Time and time again, I’ve seen her just collapse because...she draws so much of her self-worth from the eyes of others for the amazing things she can do,” I said before letting out a long sigh. “And now that I’m actually here and can pick up on her emotions. I just...there’s always this tiny little thing in the back of her mind just...radiating self-doubt, and sadness and a dozen other things that are just constantly threatening to tear her down while she has to keep being perfect just to satisfy everyone.

“She hides it from the others but...I’m a freaking empath that can’t turn it off Tia. I can feel it in her every moment were together, but if I confront her about it, she’s just going be...Rainbow! So I-I try and help her as best I can. I wait around to catch her when she falls and-and figure out a way to finally give her what she wants and needs, but she can only get through success and the cheers of a crowd. Her friends are just going to be seen as...nice ponies that don’t really get her.”

“You love her.”

Those three words made my body clinch. But, there was no way in hell I was going to deny it either. Not inside the Dream House. I sighed, and hung my head as I rested my arms on my knees. “Yeah...yeah. I do.”

It was a love from afar, not-well, if I could have made it romantic if Twilight wasn’t around. I would have been going after Rainbow in an instant if not for that. But there was no way in hell I was doing something like dumping Twilight. And it wasn’t out of obligation either.

The past two days of going to sleep with her. Just two mornings of waking up with her. Just spending time with her again like we used to before she even knew I was a changeling reminded me of just how amazing it was to be in Twilight’s presence, to hear her laugh and see her smile. To be honest, I think I may have actually forgotten about the fact that just being around her made me blissfully happy during my little self-imposed exile. Not to mention the time we spent apart because of Tia’s stupid population project, while I was dealing with Sunset’s transformation solution on top of our separate sleeping arrangements.

So...yeah, I had a thing for Rainbow. But it was just a thing, and I wasn’t about to let it become anything more than that.

I sat up and put my hands in my lap. “I’m not much of a passionate man Tia. To be honest, I can just about turn it on and off,” I told her. Hell, I think I had actually gotten used to Celestia appearing as she did night after night. If that wasn’t proof I could also gain full mastery over my pony libido, I didn’t know what was.

“But there’s always that part of me that keeps telling me Twilight needs this, or Rainbow deserves that. I feel protective of all the girls, and I really can’t say no when they ask me for favors and stuff. The thought of any of them being hurt or let down in any way just makes me want to hit something. And when I see it with Rainbow time and time again and...it just infuriates me.”

My fists clenched in anger, and I let out a sighing groan to try and clear my thoughts. This time, there was no simple solution that came into my brain though. Other than the one that was already there. But that one was far from simple. Rainbow had her team and...well...they hadn’t been signed up for anything yet, but we all knew what was going to happen in the long run. All the rest of the first day, I had Smelled Rainbow’s conflicting emotions of boredom, worry, and even a little bit of fear as we watched the girls practice.

Rainbow could only take so many failed handoffs, and I had let her slink away to cool her head more than once to have some private flight time, or whatever she was doing to cheer herself up. She had come back and left twice but since she was a lot happier when she came around and not a stumbling drunk, I sure as hell wasn’t about to question a good thing.

“Selflessness.”

Tia’s words drew me away from my thoughts, and I looked up at her. “Huh?”

“Your love, it’s a selfless one, you shouldn’t feel so guilty about it,” Celestia went on.

Calling what I had selfless...kind of...didn't fit in my mind. I frowned back at her. “I’m not feeling guilty.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow in response before speaking. “You’re angry...and about things I’m not even sure you should be angry about. Sad, maybe. But angry?” she asked before talking again so quickly I became somewhat certain her question had been rhetorical.

“But I can understand it and...I’ll see what I can do,” Tia told me.

That got me a little curious, not to mention hopeful, although it was a cautious hope. “Like...try and get me in on the games what you can do? Or…”

Celestia held up her palms. “I’m afraid getting you to compete in the games is still not an option,” she replied. “But your concerns… I’ll see what I can do.”

We sat around in silence for ten more minutes, and then Tia woke up.

The second day of preparations had me wishing I had faked a cold.

Okay, the whole waking up part was nice. I mean, snuggling with Twilight was beyond contentment and had me making plans for either getting rid of Spike in the burial kind of way...or just kind of talking to him about me and Twilight to figure something out about the whole living situation. But it also lowered my awareness of things because I was daydreaming about all the stuff we were going to do when we got back to Ponyville. Non-sexual stuff too.

Plus, with Rainbow constantly going off to get a pick-me up that didn’t leave her drunk, I kind of needed to supervise Derpy and Fluttershy’s training. Thankfully, they learned how to pass things correctly, even if they needed to come to a complete stop in order to do it. Derpy just stopped, held out her hoof to single she was sure that she was one hundred-percent absolutely ready, and Fluttershy grabbed it in a firm grip before going as fast as she could. It was far from perfect, but at least Fluttershy learned how to get a good grip on the things, and Derpy’s poor aim problem was negated.

Getting through the rings was never a problem for either of them, so we didn’t have a Soarin mishap like Team Cloudsdale. Which was good, because we also didn’t have an emergency stand-in to take either Fluttershy or Derpy’s place.

Although, after I saw Rarity’s team uniforms...I was pretty sure all the lights from the waterfall, or maybe some kind of rainbow fumes coming from the river made ponies who spent too much time at the falls crazy.

The things were...bad. Just...freakishly bad.

In sooooooo many ways.

Imagine if you can, that is if your imagination is disturbed enough, a pony nightgown with a tailhole and space for the wings. Now add a crown of flowers, and the pony equivalent of wristbands that also had posies on them, and that was what the team...u...ni….forms looked like.

Hell, I couldn’t even really call them uniforms!

They were more like...like...athletic...death shrouds!

If Dash and the others went out in the flowery nightgowns of...blech! Not only would they lose badly, they would be laughed at to the point of Fluttershy never leaving her house again, and Derpy wouldn’t be able to show her bubbly butt in Ponyville at all! Dash...she would have to hang herself to escape the shame.

Rarity must have apparently noticed something amidst all my internal threats to puke, eye twitches, and shaking knees as I held myself back from nearly murdering the seamstress at the demands of the pony fashion sense she managed to beat into me thanks to day after day at her shop. She looked over at me with an innocent expression she had to be faking, and asked, “Too much?”

My whole body shivered as I fought down the urge to shout ‘YES’ and add ‘YOU IMBECILE!’. Instead, I forced my breath out through my teeth and tried to come up with a reason that we couldn't use the uniforms without hurting Rarity’s feelings.

Or kill her. Because the things she put the girls into warranted a death sentence.

Okay...okay man, calm down, you got this, I thought before looking around for help. Where in the hell was Sunset now that I really needed her? She would have been able to tell Rarity how insanely sucky her stuff was! But, Sunset had gone to help Pinkie get some cheering supplies, and I hadn’t seen her since breakfast. So I was alone, abandoned to the horrors of the fashion nightmare that Rarity had created in her hour of madness.

“Um…” I managed while trying not to shout that her outfit looked like something that needed to have a bit more fire added to it, as in real flames. Then the ashes needed to be buried in a deep hole, out in the middle of whatever ponies called their version of Death Valley.

I summoned up all my strength as my body clenched with effort. “I don’t think we can use them,” I told her finally. It felt like passing a kidney stone out my mouth.

Rarity looked back at the outfits for a second, and then over to me in confusion. “Why not?”

“They um…” Suck...majorly suck. They suck so much that I’m having trouble breathing. Not to mention they’re completely-“Not aerodynamic!” I exclaimed, grabbing onto a hard fact that Rarity couldn’t discount and might not really hurt her feelings. After all, this wasn’t insulting her fashion sense, just her...lack of a practical design.

It actually worked, because she looked back at them and blinked. “Not what?”

My way out discovered, I grasped onto it and rode the idea to freedom. Oh thank you Twilight for teaching me how to come up with scientific arguments on my feet. “Look, Rarity...you’re a good seamstress and all, but...what the team needs is a suit that isn’t got to catch the wind and slow them down, or…”

I winced as Derpy flew around a bit to test hers out...and winced when she descended, getting a face full of nightgown for her trouble. “...that,” I finished.

With my argument picking up steam, I pointed over to Fluttershy. “Plus, they don’t have the Ponyville symbol. What kind of team outfit doesn’t have their symbol?”

Rarity hmmed as she grabbed the absent Rainbow’s in her magical grip and hauled it over to examine the uniform closer. Of course, Rainbow had taken one look at the thing while Rarity put the finishing touches on Derpy’s, and that was the last I saw of her. “I suppose you have a point there,” she admitted. “And the clothes should allow for a pegasus to change altitude if they needed to.”

“Plus, they don’t exactly seem wind resistant,” I went on. Being on the roll I was, it was like a rockslide down a mountain. No stopping me now! “Or durable for that matter. So Fluttershy and Derpy would just get slowed down, and Rainbow would be lucky not to have hers fly off in mid-flight. And what if it ended up getting tangled in her wings, and she crashed or something? They could crash and get hurt! Plus-”

A hoof to the mouth stopped me from continuing to point of the insanity of Rarity’s uniforms. “Very well, I concede, I concede!” she told me before looking away from her Frankenstein monster level creations. “So what do you suggest for uniforms? I still have some fabric and enough time to make some more.”

That made me think a minute.

And the solution was perfect.

The solution?

Well, with Applejack trying to rip off the Wonderbolts, and Pinkie buying more cheerleader junk to compete with their cheering section, I figured Rarity might have been able to use her skills to make reasonable facsimiles of their uniforms.

But for that, she needed a design to copy.

And being a changeling, all I had to do to get one was wait around until Spitfire or Fleetfoot, the silver-haired pony girl I had seen for the first time in person just yesterday, or their replacement flier got done with practice and make myself a double of them. Then I could just walk into their tent, snag their stuff walk out. Hell, even if one of them caught me, I could just go on my merry way. Nothing wrong with Spitfire taking her clothes to be cleaned for the actual race, right?

It was a simple plan in which nothing could go wrong.

That is until I found Twilight standing next to one of the few pure water lakes in the area, and my curiosity got the best of me. I mean, she had been distracted all morning too. Not run off distracted like Dash, but still pretty unfocused. So in order to keep my good boyfriend status and not let me conscience kick me in the balls...I kind of had to ask her what was going on.

The Smell I was getting from the girl said things weren’t good, worse than when I had last seen her when she was playing with some pompoms. So I walked up behind her while staying a distance that kept me out of kicking and wing flap in my face range. “Hey Twilight, what’s going on?”

She gave a little jump, and then looked back at me. The annoyed anger Smell quickly dissipated as she calmed down. “Oh Fae, it’s you,” she mumbled while using the nickname that she called me when not angry. “I was...looking for Rainbow Dash.”

“Um...okay,” I replied, a bit confused. “Well, she’ll be back with the others soon enough, so-”

“And I found her,” Twilight said as she pointed a hoof over to a nearby tree.

Underneath it, I saw Rainbow Dash...taking off a Wonderbolts uniform?

Oh, and it wasn’t some costume like I had made for her using dark magic. Rainbow had a skintight suit underneath a silvery getup, complete with goggles that protected her eyes. It was the flight suit that matched the kind the Wonderbolts were using for their practice runs.

I blinked at the sight and looked over to Twilight. “Okay um...what’s going on?”

“Let’s ask her,” the lavender alicorn grumbled.

I followed the rather disgruntled princess as we made our way to where Dash was crouching near the like. She opened with the usual level of tact Twilight had when ticked off. “Not easy practicing with two teams, is it?”

Her sense of timing was also perfect, as Rainbow was in the middle of getting a drink of water. Thankfully, she just spit it out instead of letting it go down the wrong pipe, but the terrified look on her face Rainbow and way her voice just got all panicky told me plenty. “W-What? You guys know?” she quietly shrieked before huddling down. “Does anypony else?”

I held up a hoof. “Um...actually, I just got here. Rainbow what’s going on?”

Twilight frowned at Rainbow, and the pegasus let let out a moan. “Well um...you see...with Soarin hurt and all, the Cloudsdale team needed a third pony to practice with. So they asked me and-”

“Wait,” I spoke, holding up a hoof to stop her. “What about that third one I saw with them yesterday? The one with the white coat and bright yellow mane?”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “You mean Surprise?” she asked, kind of leaving me dumbfounded. “She had to go back to Cloudsdale on Wonderbolts business.”

My back legs went out from under me, and the glasses I was wearing nearly fell from my face. “T-That was Surprise?”

Twilight turned around to look back at me with one of her caring frowns. Not the kind she had just shot at Rainbow Dash, the kind when she was thinking hard while looking at a friend. “Is there something wrong Fae?”

“I’m just...disappointed,” I said with a sigh before looking down at the ground. She didn’t have a poofy mane, or Pinkie powers, or...anything! She might as well of been a normal...background pony.

“Okay-okay I know!” Rainbow cried out like she was confessing to murder for some reason. “I know I shouldn’t be sneaking off and practicing with the other team but...it’s just so much more fun!”

I looked up at Rainbow Dash, and tried to get my mind back on track to figure out just what the hell she was talking about.

“Ponyville will still qualify,” Rainbow went on. “I can get us to the Games, no problem!”

But it’s what happens when you end up in last place once you get there that concerns me, I thought to myself.

“Hey Rainbow Dash, you got a minute?”

Whatever argument we were fixing to have, and which I knew was coming by everyone’s Scent, kind of just died when we heard the new voices. I turned and looked, and there was Spitfire and Fleetfoot, in all their glory.

We shared a look with her, and then Rainbow trotted off to talk to the other pegasi. A few seconds later, I heard something that made my fake coat hair stand on in.

“It looks like Soarin won’t be able fly in time for the competition. We want you to fly with us,” Spitfire began.

“Of course, this means you won’t be able to fly for Ponyville,” Fleetfoot added before she looked over to our tent where Derpy and Fluttershy were passing the baton back and forth like we had practiced. “But um...let’s face it, even with you on their team, they’re not going anywhere.”

Oh crap, I told myself as the rather horrible weight of the situation made itself known. It wasn’t just Rainbow being asked to join a Wonderbolts team for non-military maneuvers, the whole reason she wanted to be in the Wonderbolts in the first place. It was them asking Dash to be the big hero and save them. After all, no Soarin, no flight team.

Not only that, but...the loss her team would experience really wouldn’t matter if they had no chance to even get to the Games. I...didn’t really know what to think about that one. I mean, Dash was usually overly-optimistic for her assurances to mean much, and Fleetfoot may have had a rather douchey way with words, but she was a professional athlete and had probably been to dozens of races. If she didn't think they could win...they probably couldn't.

A little voice in my head murmured that they might be lying but...I doubted it. Ponies didn't do stuff like that. Not good ponies like the Wonderbolts anyway.

While Rainbow Dash started her predictable fangasm of a reaction, I groaned and leaned over to Twilight. “Can you grab her and get us back to our room when she gets over here? We’ve got some things to discuss and...I really don't want the others overhearing."

Travel was fast when you had a purple pony princess popping you around. The moment Dash landed next to us and talked about how coll it was Cloudsdale wanted her, Twilight had snagged her up in a lavender glow. Within the next second, we were all in the room me and Twilight shared. It was what you’d expect from a princess’s room…when she wanted to live like the commoner that is. We had a single bed of average worth, some curtains for the windows to keep out the light, and a writing desk. Aside from the lack of technology, it almost looked like I had gone into a normal, human hotel room.

“What the?” Rainbow cried out as she struggled in the purple pony's magical grip a second before she was released. “Hey! What’s going on Twilight?”

“I just wanted some privacy while we talked,” I said before Twilight spoke up.

“Listen Rainbow, if you fly for Cloudsdale, Pinkie Pie won’t have anypony to cheer for, Rarity’s uniforms will never be seen, and Applejack will have slaved over those apple brown betty’s for nothing.”

As I watched Rainbow Dash get more and more depressed at Twilight’s words, my inner favorite pony fan shoved my best pony fan to the side and whispered in my ear. “Oh come on Twilight, you’re guilt tripping her?” I asked before a frown crossed my face and my voice started gaining steam. “Pinkie would support Dash no matter who she flew for, it would be a blessing for Rarity’s uniforms to never be seen, and I’m pretty sure we can find plenty of hungry ponies that’ll get a lot more use out of that not so nutritious cooking Applejack is force feeding our athletes!”

I wasn’t kidding about the last part either. I don’t think Derpy had been able to get a muffin the whole time we had been at the try-outs. It was all Applejack’s overly done apple-themed food. Constantly. The same thing, over and over again. I was surprised the mare with the bubble butt hadn't gone epic rage time on the farmer.

The alicorn stepped away from me with wide eyes, and winced a little when I noticed that I had been shouting in Twilight’s face. Then it got all concerned, and maybe even a little hurt. “W-What?”

“Uh…you okay Fae?” Rainbow asked.

I spun my head over and looked at Rainbow. “Am I okay?” I nearly demanded. “Dash, what about you?”

She just stood there for a second and blinked. “I’m…okay,” she said a little too hesitantly for my liking. “I mean…I just got to…um…tell the um...” Then Rainbow paused, and looked to the alicorn, and then back to me with one of the most pitiable expressions I had ever seen on her. “I…guys…what do you think I should do?”

I paused with my mouth half open, unsure of what to say.

Then when Twilight started to open her mouth, I turned to her and started talking before she could do more than say ‘I’. “Twilight, I swear, if you’re going to just tell her to fly for Ponyville…” I paused unsure of just where to take that little threat. “Well…I don’t know, but…it’s not going to be good.”

“W-What?” Twilight stammered. “Fairy! I wasn’t going to-”

“Tell her to choose her friends over her dreams and happiness, again?” I exclaimed as I threw up my hooves.

Dash looked over to me. “Say what now?”

I looked over to the pegasus with a groan. “Oh come on Dash, we both know you don’t have a…snowflake’s chance in Summer of actually winning anything at the Games, even if you do carry Fluttershy and Derpy across the finish line at the qualifying round.”

“You don’t know that!” Twilight exclaimed as she stomped her hoof on the ground. “And so what if she doesn’t win! That’s-”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh come on Twilight, we’re talking about the best fliers in Equestria! Do you honestly think Fluttershy with her…hay, let’s round it up and give her a wing power of three! Do you actually think that she has any business being in a contest for athletes?”

“HEY!” Rainbow shouted at me, making me turn and back away from a glare glare I got from her. “Don’t talk about Fluttershy like that!”

The look Dash was giving me kind of just made me wilt. It wasn’t the stare…if I could even be affected by such things since they were a form of mind control. Still, I raised my hoof to keep some distance between us. “Dash, I don’t mean anything by it and…Tornado Day or not, you know it’s true. Fluttershy…she… I’m pretty sure that no other team in Ponyville would take her, and...look, I know you’re going to hate me for saying this, but...it’s almost like she’s using you so she can just... play around in the Equestria Games when you’re here to seriously compete in them! Rarity, Applejack...all of them, they're treating something that's as important to you as their farm and fashion are to them like it's a game!”

Rainbow glared at me for a few more seconds, and then broke eye contact when Twilight spoke. “Well, I don't exactly agree with Fairy’s delivery, but…she has a point about Fluttershy’s lack of athleticism,” the purple pony said before she looked over to me to say something without talking.

I sighed and looked back to Rainbow. “Sorry,” I apologized. “This whole thing is kind of making me...you know. I get angry when you girls...have problems."

“It’s okay...I know Fluttershy isn’t the most...athletic of ponies either.”

Rainbow’s words hung in the air for a minute, and after a moment of thinking, I decided to press the issue. “So um...why is she here anyway?”

After a few flaps to get some height, Rainbow levitated over to the bed and laid down. “Well, she...wanted to be in the Games,” she replied, which kind of set off my inner anger demon on a Fluttershy punching bag before Dash spoke again. “She...I think after Twilight got her wings, and then you showed up, Fluttershy...started to feel kind of...left out.”

I raised an eyebrow. Twilight was the one with the words. “The three of us have been doing a lot together.”

“Um...okay but...why the Games?” I asked. There were plenty of other things that the two of them could have done that wouldn’t have ruined Rainbow’s chances of getting the boost to the self-confidence I had been feeling she needed. Then, before Rainbow could take it the wrong way, I put in some elaboration. “Look, I may have missed a few things here and there, but you girls can’t tell me she doesn’t still have her stage fright?”

Rainbow nodded. “Why do you think I agreed to be on a team with her?” she asked.

The counter-question made me wince. “But you know...she isn’t...um…”

“I know she’s a terrible flier,” Rainbow replied softly. “Still...I had been hoping...with you, we might have be able to win something. And maybe Fluttershy would have been able to...fix her problem.”

Twilight trotted up to her. “Winning isn’t everything Rainbow.”

“Says the alicorn princess,” I grumbled to myself, which got a confused...and kind of surprised look from Twilight. “What?”

I frowned a bit, more at myself than her, and let out a sigh. “Oh come on Twilight. Winning is just as important to you as it is to her,” I replied before pointing a hoof at Rainbow. “You just express it differently.”

Twilight frowned back at me. “No I-wait...what?” she asked, obviously becoming even more confused. “What are you even talking about?”

For a moment I looked at her, then threw off the transformation magic that had me look like a hot mare with a charcoal coat, and took the purple pony princess’s form before drawing on my considerable acting talents. Which were mainly there because of my ability to perfectly mimic Twilight’s voice. “Princess Celestia expects a letter from me every week Spike. Not every other week. Not every third week or something! Every! Single! Week!”

To kind of help drive the point home, I reared on my imitation-Twilight rear legs and danced around. “Oh no, I’m tardy! I’ve failed! I’m a complete and total failure! I didn’t win! I didn’t turn my letter in to Celestia in time! I lost against time! Like in a race! Now I feel absolutely and completely useless!” I went on before I dropped back onto all four hooves and cleared my throat. I felt a major change in my voicebox, and felt it go back to normal. “Or something like that.”

Twilight and Rainbow just stared at me for a moment. I blinked, and looked back and forth between the two. “What?”

Rainbow snickered. “Oh mare, that’s just…”

“Creepy,” Twilight continued for her. “Hearing your male voice from my mouth.”

“Hilarious!” Rainbow giggled for a bit longer until I turned back into my natural form and gave Rainbow a half-lidded look.

After letting her have a much-needed laugh, Twilight studied me for a moment so hard I could practically see the gears turning in her head. Then she turned to face Rainbow. “Is that really how you feel? About winning, I mean?”

The laughs stopped, and Rainbow froze. “Well...I’m not going to go all...you, but…” she sighed and nodded her head. “Flying in the games...getting a medal. Come on Twilight, with the way things work for us...this could be my only chance to win one.”

“Oh,” Twilight mumbled. She looked away from the other mare for a moment, and then took a deep breath before focusing her attention back on Rainbow. “I’m sorry for putting the extra pressure on you Rainbow. I know all of this must be pretty hard for you.”

Not to be outdone by Twilight, I cleared my throat. “Sorry about the Derpy thing too. I...probably shouldn’t have forced her on you like that. She just kind of...showed up, and…”

Rainbow waved her hoof around at me and Twilight. “It’s cool. I know you guys were just wanting to help out.”

“Help out,” Twilight said in a low voice before she hung her head to sigh. After another second of silence, she looked back up at the pegasus and smiled. “Rainbow...before we got here, I promised myself that I would help you get what you wanted. I know I haven’t done that a lot lately. So...let’s do it!”

Dash frowned back at her. “What the hay are you talking about Twilight? You help me all the time!”

The alicorn let out a little snort and rolled her eyes. “Dash-”

“Hey, I do plenty of stupid things too Twilight. Don’t think just because your a princess now you get to be the only one who messes up,” the cyan pegasus told her with an accusing hoof shoved in the alicorn’s face.

I couldn’t help it, I snickered. The sound drew the attention of the girls, and I held up a hoof to stop them before a question was asked. “Okay...okay…” I said before looking over to Twilight. “So, how do you think we should help her Twilight?”

Good God, was that question a bad idea.

Apparently, Twilight’s ‘help’ consisted of deciding to help Dash’s inability to think ahead by creating a double pros and cons list that put joining the Cloudsdale team question up against the Team Ponyville option. By the time she was done, night had fallen, two pony stomachs were growling, and I could swear Dash’s eyes were spinning around in circles for a few seconds before the pegasus fell back on the bed. Even Twilight seemed a little tired with the way the sheets of notebook paper wobbled in her grip.

“So, you can fly for Ponyville, and have a thirteen-percent chance of winning a bronze medal with the Wonderbolts out of the running,” Twilight told her before she looked over to the other list. “Or join Team Cloudsdale, where the Wonderbolts have a one-hundred-percent chance of winning gold...barring any unforeseen slipups, like with what happened to Soarin.”

I was a little surprised by her estimations that Ponyville had a chance to even do anything at all, but...according to Twilight, my views on the average pegasus flight speed had been a bit jaded by living in Ponyville and hanging out with Rainbow Dash so much. Apparently, the normal pegasus wasn’t even half as fast as her.

Rainbow Dash groaned. “And no matter which team I pick, the other team is going to automatically lose. So no matter what I do, I’ll let somepony down,” she said before looking over to Twilight. “Can’t you just...fix Soarin’s wing or something with your magic Twilight?”

The alicorn shook her head. “While healing spells are within my purview now, Celestia hasn’t really taught me anything about using the higher level magics like that.”

I kept my mouth shut of an option I could provide. “So...if Soarin was okay, you’d pick Ponyville?”

“If Soarin was fine, I wouldn’t even have a decision to make, would I?” Rainbow deadpanned.

I gulped, uncertain whether I could just reminded them that I was a shapeshifter that could just take Soarin's place for the tryouts. Long as nopony knew, there wasn't really a problem. But then that would be cheating, and I wasn't sure how they'd react to the option.

Twilight put down her notes on the corner desk and sat down on the floor. “Well, that’s everything. Population, expected turnout at the Games, emotional investment of bringing home a medal, history with the Games, chances of winning a medal. I hate to say it but...everything I look at says that the citizens of Cloudsdale has more to lose if their team doesn’t compete.”

From her place on the bed, Rainbow rolled over onto her stomach and looked at Twilight, then turned her head towards me for a few seconds before she went back to Twilight. “And you’re not going to be mad if I go with Cloudsdale?”

After looking at her papers on the table for a moment, Twilight looked back up at Rainbow, and shook her head. “To be honest, it’s the logical choice, in both for population, and...for you. I mean...flying with the Wonderbolts? It’s like a practice audition!” Twilight exclaimed while I could Smell she was choking down the worry in her heart and...a great deal of simmering anger. Although why she was feeling guilty...I couldn’t figure.

“And…” she went on slowly while Rainbow just looked at her with an odd expression. “Fae’s right. Rainbow, I’m your friend. But not because you...do things for me. Something like that...doing things out of...obligation,” she cursed. “I can’t...no. You’re my friend, and I want you to be happy. I just...don't want you feeling regrets later, is all. But if this is really what you want...go for it."

Then the other five ponies in the room that had been there since they came back from having dinner before the sun went down and Twilight managed to get about a forth of the way through her information, along with the human leaning against the wall chimed in.

“Well darling, it’s not as if my designs were going to be used even if you did fly for Ponyville,” Rarity said before lowering her head in shame and shaking it. “Can’t believe I didn’t see the aerodynamics flaw back in the planning stages.”

Applejack shrugged. “Not like we were going to eat all my ABBs anyway. Bucking cart full of the things and...they’re startin’ to sour.”

“Ohhh! Does this mean I get cool pompoms like the Cloudsdale cheerleaders have?”

After poking the ‘imitation muffin’ with her hooves a few times, Derpy shrugged and took a bite. “Well...you kind of just dragged me into this anyway. So if you don’t want to go...its okay with me.”

“Oh Rainbow Dash, you don’t have to chose us,” Fluttershy told her.

“Yes I do.”

Everyone in the room gave a start, even Sunset, and she hadn’t even given the little pegasus her signoff on ditching Ponyville for a brighter future.

I recovered first, and cleared my throat. “Rainbow...this is about what you want.”

“I know,” she said before looking back to the girls. “And I want to fly for Ponyville.”

As the ponies gave each other little smiles of happiness in some shared moment of harmony or something, I moved closer to Dash and whispered in her ear. “Dash, you don’t have to do this. I know you. I know-”

She turned around and smiled at me. It wasn’t her usual cocky grin, or something overly excited. It was calm, and gentle. Something I didn’t see on Rainbow all that often. “Yeah well, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think,” she said back at the girls for a second as they were trading their goodnights. “When they said they would support me, even if I didn’t do what they wanted… It was like something just hit me.

“You know, for the longest time, the only reason I thought anypony wanted me around was because I could do stuff for them. Cloudsdale wants me to win a race,” she said before motioning to the others with her head. “They want me to be happy. I’d rather be a loser and surrounded by ponies that care about me, than a winner who only has a bunch of ponies trying to use her so they can get ahead in life.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “What do you call the fact that you’re carrying the team then?”

Dash chuckled. “I call it being awesome.”

Not too long after that, the whole thing broke up. Most of the ponies headed off to bed, but with Twilight's rather comprehensive comparative analysis of Dash’s choices, neither Rainbow nor her had gotten anything to eat. I may not have fed off solid food, but with me and Twilight only really spending time together during meals for the days leading up to the qualifying rounds, making mealtime into our conversation highlight of the day was a big deal. Thankfully, with Rainbow Falls being a tourist trap, most of the restaurants were open all night, and we exchanged the usual apologies after the meals.

There was the ‘sorry for putting pressure on you’ followed by the ‘sorry for ditching you’ and I threw in a ‘sorry for putting words in your mouth’ and a ‘sorry for yelling at you’ and...well, I think I topped the number of apologies Rainbow and Twilight threw around by a good twenty percent margin with promises to try harder with Fluttershy and some other junk.

By the time we got back to our rooms, Twilight was too full and tired for sex, and...to be honest...I wasn't in for the mood for it either. I wanted the other thing you could get from sleeping with a pony.

I just pressed up against her back, and held her close before resting my head on her neck. “You know...I missed this.”

Twilight shifted around a bit from where I was spooning her, but she didn’t really change position as she turned her head to look back at me. “Missed what?”

“This. Going to sleep with you, waking up with you,” I told her. “Just being with you all night, in my forelegs, or me in yours. I forgot how nice it was.” We really needed to work something out so that the two of us could go back to sleeping together. As in actually sleeping together, not just the cheap sex stuff we’d been doing.

I took in a whiff of her, and frowned when I still Smelled something wrong beneath her naturally intoxicating scent and lavender shampoo. “Twilight, what’s wrong?”

The goddess sighed. “It’s just...earlier tonight...something occurred to me.”

“What?”

“Rainbow...she’s going to leave us one day,” Twilight mumbled.

I frowned at the back of Twilight’s head. “Huh?”

Twilight gulped deep enough for me to pick it up, and shuffled around until she was out of my grip and looking back at me after she rolled around. “When we were comparing everything, it just hit me. The Wonderbolts,” Twilight began. “She’s going to join the Wonderbolts one day, and...she’s going to go away. I don’t want her to but...every time I hear myself even think that...it makes me feel so terrible.”

So that’s what all that guilt she’s been holding onto, I thought to myself.

“It’s her dream and...I...I don’t want her to have her dream!” Twilight went on in a depressed panic. “How horrible is that Fae? I don’t want one of my best friends to be happy! How...I can’t even…”

I pulled Twilight back in close to me and held her before she let out a sob. “And every time I think about it, I...all I can think of is how I became a princess, but I’m still in Ponyville, and why can’t she be like that, but then I just want to kick myself because that means she won’t be able to join the Wonderbolts, and you saw how much being a weathermare for the rest of her life scares her, and-”

Before she could hit the panicky rock bottom, I clamped her mouth shut with magic. “Twilight, you’re starting to spiral,” I told her. Then she blinked at me a few times, and I watched as she breathed in and out slowly to help lower her heart rate.

She finished her breathing exercises with one long sigh, and I backed off from her a little bit. “Better?”

“A little, but...I can’t…” Another long breath. “It’s still there. Rainbow’s going to join the Wonderbolts, and...if she doesn’t...it’ll crush her. But if she does...I don’t want her to leave. If she does...if we become separated...then...what if we stop being friends? We didn’t get any letters when she was training with the Wonderbolts. It’s out of sight, out of mind Fae!”

Looking at the depressed pony, I wracked my brain to try and figure out a way to reassure her everything would be fine, but most of it just felt fake. I needed something else to convince her. Something with empirical evidence, what with this being Twilight and all.

She needed reassurance that a pony she didn’t see in a long time...was still her...friend.

And then it hit me. The perfect way to reassure Twilight that everything was going to be alright. It came with a flash of horror, dread, and realization that I would have to cross paths with the most terrifying being in Equestria, but...for her… “Well, isn’t Cadence still your friend?”

“Huh?” Twilight asked.

“Cadence. We haven’t seen her in months,” I told her while pushing down my fear of the pretty pink pony princess and the last time we met. “Just like if Dash were to join the Wonderbolts and go on tour. If the two of you are still friends, then it’ll be proof you can stay friends with some pony, even when they’re not around all the time.”

Twilight blinked at me a few times. “That’s...brilliant!” she exclaimed. “We-we can even get the records from the Crystal Empire, and the mirror since Shining didn’t bring it down last week. Oh, and we can take Spike! Cadence was asking why he wasn’t around when the Games inspector came to check out the Empire! It’ll be perfect!”

Well, I suppose it will give me time to talk to the dragon, I told myself. It wasn’t that I avoided Spike or anything, it was just...he was kind of all over the place, and I didn’t know how to connect with him.

The little guy was a forteen-year old kid crushing on a twenty-something woman while he held onto some abandonment issues with Twilight because she was branching out for the first time in his life and despite how nice the girls were, there was that age and species wall, not to mention the gender barrier to separate their interests.

I think he spent a lot of his time with Big Mac and the CMC when he wasn’t taking care of chores for Twilight. I just had my stuff to do, and he had his. It was as simple as that. Plus...what me and Twilight did together, it really wasn’t something you bring a kid along for. It was our time together, full of plenty of sexual innuendo and things that Sunset could pick up on and make herself scarce when me and Twilight started the more risque stuff.

A kiss put an end to my thoughts, and Twilight smiled at me. “Ready for dinner?”

“I thought you weren’t in the mood,” I replied.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t mean I don’t love you,” she said before kissing me again. “Now eat up.”

I did as told, and a few seconds later, Twilight really was in the mood. But, that was how feeding worked. Having all that love energy flow through her stimulated the alicorn’s body and memories, and the next thing I knew, she was rubbing up against me in desire.

So, we did it, and went to sleep.

The following nightly meet up with Tia came and went, and I was kind of surprised to find what she had planned when it came to what a goddess that ruled a country could do in regards to our Rainbow Dash confidence problem. That was followed by another great start to the day with Twilight, and then the qualifying rounds came and went. By the time were on our way home, the events of the qualifying races had lit a fire under Rainbow…

“Gah! Can you believe those ponies!” Rainbow exclaimed as she looked at the Wonderbolt pin in her hooves while the train sped back towards Ponyville and we all sat around our private car.

Derpy was having a long needed muffin. Dinky was being paralyzed by Sunset’s touch while Fluttershy watched on in attention. Sparkler was trying to read her book, but kept glancing back at the human’s interaction with her little sister as Sunset scratched Dinky’s belly.

The rest of us were just listening to Rainbow rant on.

“They were just going to turn their backs on their teammate! Hay! I bet Surprise wasn’t even called away! They just told her to get lost too! What a bunch of bucking jerks! Just thinking about it, and the way they got all ‘Oh Rainbow Dash we’re so cool have a pin’ afterwards is just...GAH!”

“Rainbow, you gotta admit, you were thinkin’ the same thing with our-”

“Hey!” Dash shouted as she spun around and pointed a hoof, cutting Applejack off. “I had to choose between letting Cloudsdale not being able to field a team at all, or going with Ponyville! There’s a big difference between that, and kicking your teammates to the curb just to win!”

Twilight raised an eyebrow when Rainbow stopped. “And losing, you forgot the and losing while on Ponyville part.”

The pegasus spun and faced Twilight with a frown, her qualifying ribbon hanging from her neck. “Oh no!” she replied. “We are not losing anything! When it’s time for the Games, we are getting gold! And then I am going to take that gold medal, and rub it in Spitfire’s face!

“Derpy! Fluttershy! As soon as we get back to Ponyville, we’re going to start the most intense, extreme, bone breaking training regimen that anypony has ever done!”

Derpy looked over to the raging pegasus. “Um...but I have work.”

In response to the question, Dash threw a hoof out towards me. “That’s what changeling doubles are for!”

I looked down at the hoof, and moved closer to Twilight. “I...I think we’ve created a monster.”

“Think you should tell her about Princess Celestia’s idea for the Wonderbolts reserves?” Twilight asked.

The mention of what I told Twilight after my meeting with Tia made me chuckle nervously. I guess after hearing me go on and on about Rainbow’s fears that first night, Tia had done something about them. To be more specific, she was having plans drawn up for a whole new branch of the military that would train pegasi who were talented enough to be in the Wonderbolts all their moves, and even put them on a roster to do a show every now and then, completely at the volunteers discretion.

So basically, Princess Celestia was going to create an entirely new branch of the military to keep a single pegasus and alicorn happy. And I thought I abused my power by keeping my little town the way it was.

“Down with the Wonderbolts!”

I looked back as Rainbow cried out with a hoof raised into the air, which was then followed by Derpy and Fluttershy.

“Down with the Wonderbolts.”

“Um...down with the...Wonderbolts!”

“DOWN WITH THE WONDERBOLTS!” Rainbow yelled louder.

Upon seeing Twilight’s look of worry, I shrugged. “Eh, just go with it. It’ll probably be out of her system by morning,” I said before joining in the chant. “Down with the Wonderbolts!”

Twilight looked back at the pegasus, and smirked. “Down with the Wonderbolts!”

“Down with the Wonderbolts.”

“DOWN WITH THE WONDERBOLTS!”

“DOWN WITH THE WONDERBOLTS!”

As the final cheer went up, the tension finally broke, and we all had a little laugh before Twilight reached into her bag to pull out our qualifying picture photo that had to two of us surrounding Rainbow Dash. “And I think it was nice you wore the cheerleader outfit after all Fae.”

I groaned, and wished I was sitting Lyra-style so I could have just slumped in my seat instead of everypony bench style. “Can you please never mention that again? Like...ever?”

Twilight giggled. “I dunno, you looked so hot in your wig, and skirt, and pompoms. I may have to put this picture next to my bed.”

I covered my head with my hooves and whined again. “Just...no more cheerleading...ever again, please?”

Then I looked over at the pony who had given up a possible in with the Wonderbolts and a gold medal in order to keep her morals intact and do a favor for the rest of the girls at the cost of the reassurance she so desperately needed to validate her self-worth and give her hope for the future. Th sight made me sigh. “The things we do for friends.”

Chapter 20: The Incredibly Destructive Trip to The Crystal Empire

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The five days after we got back from Rainbow Falls passed rather slowly.

On the first day, I woke up, took Sunset to Ponyville, met up with Twilight, flew with her back to the castle, left her alone to work on her project, and went to study magic by myself. We had a quick lunch and I got what was possibly the worst feeding I’d had since me and Twilight started dating before I went into town to see what was going on for a few hours and did my regent thing, picked up Sunset and spent some time at Fluttershy’s while they visited and I was stuck feeding the animals, took Sunset home and then went back to my own studies under her supervision while she worked on Tia’s project. Then Twilight left at nightfall.

On the second day, I woke up, took Sunset to Ponyville a little earlier so she could help Fluttershy with the morning chores, met up with Twilight, flew with her back to the castle, left her alone to work on her project and went to study magic by myself, had a quick lunch that was still pretty bad, supplemented my hunger with mirror clones, got blown off by Twilight in favor of her research, went into town to see Rarity for a few hours and judge ponies, picked up Sunset and spent some time at Fluttershy’s while they visited and I was stuck feeding the animals, took Sunset home and then went back to my own studies under her supervision while she worked on Tia’s project. Then Twilight left when night came.

The third day, I woke up, took Sunset to Ponyville a little earlier so she could help Fluttershy with the morning chores, met up with Twilight, flew with her back to the castle, left her alone to work on her project, and went to study magic by myself, had a quick lunch that was the worst ever, supplemented my hunger with mirror clones once again, got told by Twilight she was too busy to do anything when I asked, went into town to get AJ for some cloning, picked up Sunset and spent some time at Fluttershy’s while they visited and I was stuck feeding the animals, took Sunset home and then went back to my own studies under her supervision while she worked on Tia’s project. Twilight left after the sun set.

Day four, I woke up, took Sunset to Ponyville a little earlier so she could help Fluttershy with the morning chores, met up with Twilight, flew with her back to the castle, left her alone to work on her project and went to study magic by myself, groaned as Twilight skipped lunch and I just ate mirror clones, asked a purple pony who didn’t bother looking up from her work to respond to my questions if she wanted to do anything, went into town to hang out with Pinkie for a few hours, picked up Sunset and spent some time at Fluttershy’s while she gave the pegasus a massage and I was stuck feeding the animals, took Sunset home and then went back to my own studies under her supervision while she worked on Tia’s project. Twilight left after the sun set.

On the fifth morning, we went to Fluttershy’s and found her doing her usual routine…

“Up and down. Up and down. Up and down.”

I shared a nervous look with Sunset as we watched the yellow pegasus pushed herself up from the ground using her wings while a squirrel sat on her back to provide extra weight.

Fluttershy had apparently taken Dash’s orders to train hard pretty seriously. It had been some time since the qualifying rounds, and she was spending several hours a day trying to get in shape for the competition that was months away. Although considering with what happened during the whole Tornado Day montage and everything, I truly believed that if she applied herself, Fluttershy might actually of been able to hit average pegasus speed in time for the Games.

What I found impressive was that Dash wasn’t making her train. Rainbow had kind of lost interest in the idea of being Fluttershy’s personal trainer out of the need to keep in shape herself, and to coax Derpy into taking up the whole changeling double offer so the gray pegasus didn't have to give up time with her kids to play in the Games. So Fluttershy was actually getting up to work out without anyone else telling her to. She was even putting her animals on hold the first day we came by.

“Hey Fluttershy, you got a minute, we need to talk to you for a bit,” I called out when she got to her tenth wingup and began to falter.

“Just…one…more,” she managed before falling on her stomach. “Ouch!”

Sunset winced, and moved over to her side. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” the pegasus replied as she got to her proverbial feet and took a cleansing breath before she looked over at the two of us. “What’s going on girls?”

The two of us shared a nervous look, and then I took the lead. “Um…Twilight’s gotten the go ahead to visit the Crystal Empire and…we’re going to be going with her. So, I’m afraid the whole animal feeding that we’ve been helping out with so you can exercise is um…on hold.” And using changelings to do the work for us wasn't really an option. I think they still scared Fluttershy half to death.

Fluttershy got a little disappointed at hearing the news. “Oh…that’s…okay. You told me when Twilight sent the letter to Cadence after all.”

“We’ll be back in a few days, swear,” Sunset promised.

To which I had to add, “So I’m afraid no more help with the animals in the morning.”

Another spike of disappointment tickled my nose as Fluttershy took in a breath. “I understand.”

I waited around for a few seconds, then looked over to Sunset, and back to the guards I had following her around. “Escort Sunset to the train station and wait with the luggage.”

The human looked down at me. “But there’s still plenty of time-”

A look silenced the girl, and I inclined my head towards her guards.

As Sunset headed off, #619 spoke up. “Hey boss, are we gonna get food this time? Because you didn’t ship any with us when we went to Rainbow Falls and I was kind of starve-okay going now,” the disguised changeling said when I glared at it.

Although, it did kind of have a point. Note to self, have some McDonalds loaded for changing food, I thought. Big Macs weren’t the most filling Apple we had, but they were nutritious enough.

Fully alone, I turned back to Fluttershy. “Okay Fluttershy, what’s wrong?”

She flinched, and fear quickly went up to outpace her disappoint. “Wrong? Nothing’s-”

“I’m empathic, remember?” I reminded her. “The magic kind, which means I can tell what your feeling. So please don’t try and give me the same lines you feed everyone else. If there’s something wrong, tell me and…maybe we can fix it. I’m trying to help you here.” It came out a little grumpier sounding than I would have liked, but a week getting the shaft from Twilight was kind of getting to me.

Not that I was a clingy...changeling-friend, but when a girl comes over to your house to read papers...it tends to get annoying.

Fluttershy’s nervousness skyrocketed, and I was starting to wish I had kept my mouth shut. After waiting a good three minutes, she finally spoke. “No you’re not.”

That…

Okay, that kind of made me stop. Just…stop.

“Um…it…wait, what?” I managed as my brain tried to process what I had just heard.

For her part, Fluttershy just pulled back on herself and hid behind her mane. “I…I know you don’t like me,” she went on. “I know the only reason you come here is to walk Sunset through the forest, and…that you’re mad at me because I wanted to join Rainbow Dash’s racing team.”

“Oh…um…okay that’s um…” I managed to uh…manage.

It was like…I’m not exactly sure how to describe what was going through my mind at that moment because, it was just…huh?

I felt as if…well…people always talk about how the most evil kind of people in the world like to kick puppies. When Fluttershy said that, I kind of felt like I had just woke up and realized that’s what I had been doing for the past several days.

The logical side of my mind jumped up in my defense and said I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, and I was right for not wanting her in the race with Rainbow because she majorly sucked when it came to her speed. Then, when it won out over the emotional side of my brain and declared kicking puppies wasn’t all that bad a thing to do, I kind of just stood there.

My brain just lurched along, and I could only just barely think of something to say. “Well…no…I’m not really mad at you,” I mumbled. “I mean, Dash talked to me, and…I guess if I’ve got to say I’m upset at anything, it would have to be this weird…disconnect there seems to be between the two of you.”

Fluttershy looked over at me in confusion. “Disconnect?”

I reached up to scratch my head, and then realized I had hooves half-way up before putting the foreleg back down. My nights as a dreamy were-human were starting to give me bad habits. “It’s…okay…I know you and Rainbow have been…drifting apart lately,” I told her, which got another spike of sadness from the pony. “And I know, some of it…maybe even a lot of it is because I’ve been doing my best to hang out with her.”

“I know I shouldn’t be upset about it,” she mumbled. “The things she does with you…and Twilight sometimes…I just…I wish I could do them too. But…” she looked down at her exercise gear, and sighed. “They’re not really for me.”

“So…why’d you want to join the Games?” I asked. The biggest athletic event in Equestria, with all the ponies watching her and pressure to perform really didn’t seem like Fluttershy’s cup of tea. In fact, it was like anti-tea for her.

Fluttershy sighed. “I wanted to…show Rainbow that I could do those kinds of things with her too,” she went on before half-hiding behind her mane again. “And um…well…there was a…tiny, tiny part of me that…got excited about it.”

“Being in the Games?”

Still in her half-withdrawn state, Fluttershy nodded. “There are…um…well, I don’t really like exciting things but…when they’re over, there’s this rush of a feeling in me, and I feel really good even though what happened was scary. And then I thought about the Games, and how they’ve got all those ponies around to help if something goes wrong, and I just…um…well…I thought it might be…fun.

“But, I know I’m not the best flier so…I’m…doing what Rainbow Dash asked me to. I-I don’t know if I’ll be good enough in time for the Games, but…”

Well crap, I thought to myself as Fluttershy just stopped and looked away from me. Considering my face was in restrained pensive mode, she probably thought I was holding back some disagreements with her. “That’s actually…pretty responsible of you Fluttershy. I’m impressed.” I honestly was too, and...it really is hard to be mad at anyone that’s actually trying their best. Not the whole, 'I’m not going to do any preparation at all best' but actually putting time and effort into something.

Fluttershy looked over at me. “Well…I did hear you…back at the hotel room when we were in Rainbow Falls,” she said. “And if I want to spend time with Rainbow Dash, doing things she wants to do, then I need to make sure I can do those things instead of just…letting her carry me through them.”

I winced. “Sorry about that,” said the insensitive jerk that was me. “I um…I’m just very protective of Dash.”

“I am too.”

We just stared at each other a bit, and I cleared my throat. “And…um…I’m sorry if it seems like, I’ve uh…been avoiding you lately. It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just…um…” It actually took me a few moments to put what I was trying to say into words.

“Look, I’m from a completely different world where tons of things work differently, and I used to be human like Sunset.”

Fully out of her shell constructed from her mane and coat, the pegasus nodded. “Yes. I remember that. I’ve been talking to Sunset a lot about how animals are in the human world. What she says is very confusing. Why do you have animal shelters, but then not take care of a lot of them?”

I just thanked God I had been around Sunset and Fluttershy enough for the past few days. I didn’t really drop in on their conversations, but Sunset was kind of loud for pony ears when she got going.

“Oh…that, um…well…” Once again I had to pause for a moment. My explanation needed to have a nice G rating. “For the most part, animals where I come from get along fine by themselves. We also have pets of course, but it’s mostly just dogs, cats, a few people have rabbits or turtles, but it’s nothing like…well, you and your bear friend…or the snakes, and birds are just kind of a thing you can put a feeder out and watch.”

Fluttershy brightened up considerably at that. “Oh my, that’s nice of you. The birds must really appreciate it,” she told me. “But where you’re from, it’s like the Everfree is…everywhere?”

I half-shrugged. “More or less. I mean, we have farms with cows…for the um, milk,” I kind of explained since pony's didn't need to know about our bovine death camps. “But…nothing with like what you’ve got.”

Then, I looked around for a moment. “I guess one of the reasons I try to um…avoid…you…no offense,” I added as quickly as I could. Of course there was also the reason I found Fluttershy the hottest piece of tail around and…hell, I could get a pony with a timid, will of jello personality like hers in bed without mind control. Hell, she up and Stared down the vampire fruit bats after saying no to the whole idea, even though the little pony didn't take the Stare lightly.

“What do you mean?” Fluttershy asked.

I sighed. “It’s just…well…okay, let’s try this… I adore Luna, but that whole night sky thing she does…it’s just so different from the basic fundamentals of how I know the universe should work that I tend to stay the hay away from her to keep it from ever being brought up. With you…it’s not as bad, not nearly, but…when I come around here and see a bear hanging out with a rabbit,” I had to pause for a second to think of how to say what I wanted to without confusing Fluttershy or upsetting her even more.

Which was of course another reason I tended to avoid her. Twilight, Rainbow, Applejack and Rarity would call me on saying something stupid. Fluttershy, and to a lesser extent Pinkie tended to just let me kick them in the proverbial crotch and suffer silence. Which wasn’t really silence, since I was a changeling and had the psychic sniffer thing going on. She'd get upset and wouldn't say they were upset and...it was like pulling teeth to talk to Pinkie when she was down.

“I have to choke down years and years of knowledge that says bears are to be avoided,” I finished without adding ‘or use my newfound magical powers to blow him up’.

Fluttershy looked thoughtful for a few seconds, and then turned her attention back to me. “So, you’re still adjusting to being in Ponyville…or, Equestria, I mean,” she told/asked me. The question was obviously rhetorical, because she just kept going on after she nodded to herself. “I can understand that. It took me a long time to get used to living in Ponyville, and…well…you’re not even from Equestria. I’m sorry, I just forget that sometimes.”

And stop apologizing for everything, I mentally commanded her in the non-psychic way. Seriously, it’s one of the most fucking annoying things in the world, and I can’t get mad at you for it because you’ll just fucking cry! “No it’s um…I’m the one that needs to make the adjustments.”

A shake of her head told me Fluttershy didn’t think she conversation should be ending there. “No, I should have been more considerate,” she said, obviously thinking something was wrong if the distance between us wasn’t her fault. “It’s just you know so many things about everypony, I sometimes forget you’re still new here.”

I sighed and just let her have the guilt. My inner hero didn’t get off the couch for people who weren’t at least trying to save themselves, and I was still holding onto some resentment to another pony thanks to what had been happening all week. “So um…are we better?” I asked. “I mean…I know…we’re not…um…”

Hell, when it came down to it, I didn’t even know how to talk to her.

Fluttershy apparently picked up on what I was trying to say, which made one of us, and nodded. “I understand. And…I think so,” she said before pausing in thought for a moment. Then, she got this kind of…hopeful expression on her face. “Oh! Um…next week, I’m going to western Equestria for a seminar on breezes, and I remember how Twilight said you were very interested in Equestrian wildlife when you first got here. So…I was wondering…um, if you would…like to come? And…maybe ask Sunset too?”

Well, if she was offering an olive branch, it wasn’t like I could refuse or anything. “Um…sure,” I agreed less than wholeheartedly. “But um…what’s a breezie?”

“Well, you remember when you made Rainbow Dash really tiny and cute?”

After getting all the extra luggage and happy meals loaded, I caught up to Sunset and apologized for the whole forcefulness thing and Fluttershy's trip. She was kind of put off by it considering it would cut into my time of learning how to turn her back into a quadruped, but agreed to go along anyway if I brought some studying materials.

Then we went into Twilight’s private car and I had found she had gotten the interior redone, despite the short amount of time it had been idle. Ponyville’s quick refurbishing and rebuilding business had made a few changes to the interior to reflect its new passenger needs as well as a few minor improvements.

There was still the six bench seats with places to sit front and back, allowing for twelve to twenty four ponies to ride in the car, depending if they sat laying down or doggy style. Although, they had been raised up half a foot, and an armrest had been added to the isle area. A few obviously intentional grooves had also been made in the floor between the seats, although what they were for I could only guess. The other adjustments though…I was pretty certain a taller than the average pony bipedal creature would be much happier sitting down than she usually was.

There was also two creatures waiting for us inside. The bigger purple one smiled as we came in, but the smaller one with more scales frowned at our appearance. “Oh, you’re bringing her along?”

“Spike!” Twilight scolded him.

Spike looked back at her mother/sister/owner/employer that never paid him anything unless you counted the gems, in which case he was way overpaid. “Twilight, she’s evil! She almost-”

“Go check the bags,” Twilight ordered as she pointed towards the princess car’s rear door to where our private luggage and sleeping car was attached.

As soon as the dragon was gone, the pretty purple pony princess turned back to look at the two of us and gave a nervous smile. “Sorry, he’s just…sore about stuff.”

I had to fight the urge to glare in Spike’s direction. No need for his fucking owner to get mad at me for being angry with her dumb animal. I was having enough cold shoulders from the purple pony as of late.

“No, it’s alright,” Sunset sighed and sagged, which made me clench my teeth.

“Has he been like this since Sunset got back?” I asked in a grumble. My time at the library since then had decreased significantly to something approaching nil. There had been one night about…maybe two weeks ago when Spike had been out of town and we finished a date in the library but other than that, it had been pretty sparse.

Hell, I had barely seen Spike at all since I stopped being Flash Sentry. Even the gems he got from me were via Twilight, when she picked up a few on the way home.

Twilight sighed and nodded before she took a seat one of the cushioned benches and I laid down next to her before we had our forelegs meet and she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. That and the Smell coming off of her told me I wasn’t going to like her answer.

“Why do you think I go over to the castle to work since Sunset and I made up?” the alicorn asked with a sigh. “I…may have even let Spike’s animosity affect my thinking when I was…upset with Sunset’s return.”

Equestria’s lone human let out a low moan and slumped in her seat. “I can’t really blame him. I did kidnap him after all.”

The sight of Sunset getting her mood killed again ruffled my feathers. Especially considering just who was the one doing the down putting. The same creature that had kept me from actually sleeping with Twilight for the past couple of nights and made me come out of my Tia companion coma to be greeted by an empty bed.

Yeah, despite the ‘plans’ to talk with Spike, Twilight had taken the whole idea to do it in the northern Empire to heart. So after several days of doing nothing, followed by a few days of crystal correspondence for Twilight to get permission to visit the Crystal Empire from her own fucking sister-in-law, we were finally getting to go.

Several days of falling asleep without Twilight beside me. Several days of waking up without Twilight next to me. Several days of having to study magic that wouldn’t do a damn thing to help Sunset while all I got to eat was some zebra clones and a little snack from Twilight at lunchtime because she didn’t want to be too tired to get through the rest of the day. So after a fucking week of near starvation, no contact with Twilight outside of business luncheons where I got her off but next to nothing in return, and not a single fucking word about her plans to do anything about trying to make us a closer couple, I was pretty fucking apathetic towards the girl and her wants for me and him to get along.

Screw Spike’s feelings when it comes to me and Twilight, I told myself with a snort before coming up with a counter-character assassination. “Oh please, like he’s one to judge,” I in a grumble before looking over to Twilight. “How much property damage and endangerment did he cause we he let his greed run amok?”

Sunset got a little curious while Twilight winced. “He did where in the what now?” the redhead asked.

“Princess Celestia paid for the repairs,” Twilight said in a sad tone. “And…gave the ponies who wanted to move away twenty percent above the appraisal price for their homes.”

That caught my attention. I didn’t know any of the ponies in town had decided to run off. But...I guess there was a big difference between living next to the Everfree, and having a ticking time bomb of a monster in town beside you.

Somehow, being the talented bug-pony of a person that I was, I managed to feel vindicated, interested, and guilty all at the same time as I looked over to Sunset. “You were alone in a world with no magic, where you didn’t have jack after Tia kicked you out of the only home you’ve ever known,” I told her before the proverbial voice in my head said I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that last part in a grumble. “And now you’re trying to get free of that, turn yourself into a better pony. So ignore stuff like that. Especially when it’s coming from creatures that, despite being surrounded by loved ones and told not to do something, still go through with their indulgences.”

Twilight cleared her throat and talked to me in a cheerless tone while she Smelled of emotional pain. “Okay Fairy, that’s enough. You made your point.”

Needles to say, the day section of our trip to the Crystal Empire was less than super-rifficly fantabulous of an enjoyable ride.

It turned out the grooves in the floor where to place the pegs of tables that might as well have been TV trays with their size. Thanks to the seating, we ended up playing a very long game of pony scrabble using teams, with me and Sunset set against Twilight and Spike. Of course we had to switch things around, and I ended up sitting next to the human instead of being able to grab a few minor caresses from Twilight, but I was used to the lack of real intimacy in favor of her just giving Spike a glorified nightlight.

Of course, things were tense the whole day. There wasn’t any fighting or screaming or anything, but I didn’t need to hear anything to know how everyone felt. Twilight was upset, Sunset was down, Spike was angry, and considering that I could detect the later two’s emotions even while in pony form, when my sense of Smell is so strongly attuned to them that I can’t shut it off kind of out of whack when it came to other species, it was some pretty heavy depression, which just pissed me all the more off at the dragon. Then, the time came to hit the hay and the four of us went to get some sleep. Unfortunately, the sleeping car we were using was made for ponies, and while the dragon could sleep in it just fine, the human looked a little cramped.

But my bed in the wall wasn’t much better, half of it was taken up by an irritable alicorn that wanted to lay on her back rather than be involved with close physical contact. I managed to get her into a fetlock lock, but Twilight didn’t turn over or anything.

“You didn’t have to be so rough with Spike, Fairy,” she told me shortly after I climbed into bed.

I let out a sigh and looked over to Twilight. “Twilight, after four days of bliss being together with you in Rainbow Falls, being able to be with the mare I love, I have to go back to getting a quick nibble and cuddle at lunch,” I told her. “All because he doesn’t want me…what is it with him anyway? I mean, okay…I get the no sex thing at the treehouse, he still sleeps next to you and has some abandonment issues, and he woke up and you weren’t there and…I get it. But I was in the castle before Sunset came around.

“Ever since then, the library has been a no relationship zone, and I’m just wondering what the buck is going on,” I continued. “I know I’m not the best special somepony, and I ran off for four days and lied about who I was, but…I’m the one with the relationship problems that you fix, and you’re the one with the personal problems that I can solve. That’s our…thing. It’s how we balance each other. And I’m just wondering what the hay is going on when you’re the one who’s bringing relationship problems to the table.”

Twilight sighed. “I don’t know,” she mumbled sadly.

“Have you talked to him about us?”

“No.”

I groaned. “Well why not?”

“He doesn’t want to go to the changeling castle so we can all talk, and…well…I don’t really know how to bring the topic of you up with him,” Twilight went on.

“Um, he does know we’re together, right?” I asked.

Twilight snickered. “Yes, I think he may have been able to pick up on that,” she said before rolling over towards me. “Can you just…try to be a little more accommodating?”

The question made me tense. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

“W-What?” Twilight asked.

“We already don’t sleep together, or spend time with each other most mornings, especially since we got back from Rainbow Falls. You come over for lunch and we have some cheap sex, and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this but, that’s a bad thing. At least when we had it,” I told her. “Our last real date was two weeks ago when Spike was out of town and you didn’t have to run back and eat the dinner he was preparing so his feelings wouldn’t be hurt, and I know I am sounding like the needy fillyfriend here, which once again is just sounding wrong and freakish considering I’m supposed to be the guy in this relationship Twilight, and I know I don’t have much of a right because I ditched you for four days but…what else do you want from me?”

“Just…give him some time, okay?” she asked.

My rather focused ant-Spikiness let out a resounding NO at the words and I felt like hitting something, but after a nice long intake of breath, I managed to not get up and slay another dragon. “You gave me time,” I told myself more than Twilight. “And I have kind of ignored the issue so…fine, okay. You can have all the time you want.”

To be honest, it pissed me off. Fuck love and tolerance and all that shit. More often than not, I spent my day doing Twilight's job, then helping another one of her friends out with her job, then going through the motions learning magic with Sunset because it knew it was all a waste of time that I was just doing to give her enough time to get used to being stuck as a human, and it was starting to become annoying that I wasn't getting anything out of it.

But oh no, I couldn't tell Twilight that.

So I rolled out of our little hole in the car's wall.

“Fae. Where are you going?”

“Where I belong apparently!” I snapped back at her, ending the conversation before it could continue when I went into the cargo hold where the other changelings lay unresponsive in stasis.

It was a little after sunrise when we got to our destination.

The Crystal Empire looked in much better shape than the last time I had seen it. Of course since the last time I had see it the place had been recovering from a changeling invasion that my mother had spearheaded while under the effects of what was probably the second most powerful mystical artifact in Equestria, the bar had been set pretty low. So instead of seeing frightened ponies huddling in their homes, I was greeted by a roaring crowd of ponies that were so disorganized in their cheering, I couldn’t even make out what they were saying.

Although, it took me about two seconds to figure out what was going on. I looked over to Twilight and smirked. “Well, it good to know some ponies in Equestria know how to treat their heroes,” I told the alicorn as we got off the train with Sunset trailing behind us.

I couldn’t help it. I was still pissed off as hell at her for all this fucking give Spike everything shit she was pulling, but...the fucking alicorn princess deserved some God damned recognition considering she had risked life and limb to save the Empire from Sombra.

Twilight blushed a giggled a bit at the attention before we took a second to look at the signs.

Welcome Oh Brave And Glorious One!

“I don’t think all those words should have been capitalized,” Twilight mumbled before her eyes darted to another banner of a sign while mine followed suit.

THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE WELCOMES ITS ONE TRUE CHAMPION AND SAVIOR!

That one got a few blinks of confusion from me before I leaned over to whisper to Twilight. “Uh…I thought the whole Sombra thing was a team effort with them buying you time to get the job done.”

“It was,” Twilight mumbled back to me.

ALL HAIL HE WHO SAVED THE EMPIRE!

That sign made me blink. “Wait…are they talking about me?” I asked myself when he met up on the platform when Sunset walked out. “I mean…sure Tia and the girls would have gotten mangled or something, but I’m pretty sure getting my plot kicked for ten minutes before I got in a lucky shot doesn’t really classify me as a hero.”

“To me it does,” Twilight said before she gave me a light nuzzle, making it a little harder to remember I was mad at her.

Then Twilight’s servant exited the train while lugging her saddlebags over his shoulder while three crystal ponies managed to push their way past the guards and to the edge of the platform.

“Look! There he is!”

“Oh my Celestia it’s him!”

“I wanna have his foals!”

I quickly hid behind Twilight before the mob of screaming naked women could do unspeakable acts of depravity to me. “You know I wanted to be called a guy again, but…I’m starting to think this is a bit much.”

Aaaaaaaaaand then, everything started to go insane.

“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE!”

“Huh?” I managed.

“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE!”

Twilight cocked her head in confusion. “Say what?”

“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE!”

“Twilight…what’s going on?” I asked.

“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE!”

“I’m…not sure,” she replied.

“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE!”

We got behind our escort and walked towards the castle at the center of the city.

“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE!”

Except for Spike of course, I had to jump aside to keep from being run over by a palanquin…twice, once for coming, and one for going. Thankfully my guards were there to carry our bags.

“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE!”

But of course that didn’t stop the mob from trying to rupture my eardrums with their inane chanting.

“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE!”

And of course as soon as Spike left, the tidal wave of the crowd decided the road no longer needed to be sectioned off and quickly surged to block us.

“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE!”

The mob of ponies (or herd?) stretched from the train station, all the way to the crystal palace. Apparently, Spike was some sort of big hero in the Crystal Empire because he carried the Crystal Heart for a few feet…or fumbled the damn thing before Cadence got it on the recovery.

There was even a giant statue of him that looked about three times the size of your average pony outside the place holding the damn thing in one hand. We saw it after a good two hours of wading through the crowd of fucked up fans that actually thought Spike was worth something.

Two.

Fucking.

Hours.

And no, Twilight didn’t want to fly, because we’d be leaving our escort to the mercy of the mob.

So, we walked a little, and waited a lot, and walked a little, and waited some more. For two fucking hours.

Didn't matter that some of us were royalty, or Twilight had some business with their princess, or anything else, oh no. The bunch of wannabe earth ponies just wanted to get in our way to celebrate Spike for some reason I didn't want to know about while I got stuck with a girl that would rather have her nose in a book than talk to people, and a borderline danger-zone depressed human. And when you were plenty pissed off at a purple pony princess, two hours flt like forever.

But, we did get to our destination, eventually. “Okay, would some pony around here mind telling me just what the hay that was all about?” I asked as we made it into the palace and the door closed behind us to keep out the insanity. And by that I mean the ponies screaming Spike’s name like he was some kind of hero instead of Twilight. Even as irritated as I was at her, I wasn't about to not give the little goddess her due.

While a new guard approached, I found myself looking around the rather large entrance hall that the guards had brought us into before saying we needed to wait inside for Princess Cadence.

The crystal-ness of the crystal palace could not be overstated. It was actually pretty cool looking, like something out of Frozen, only the natural designs and multi-layered surfaces went beyond anything that CGI could match. Plus, it was a hell of a lot more colorful, crystals of all colors were splayed throughout the place to give color to the walls, floor, and everything. Thanks to the thickness of it all, nothing was transparent, and I could see my own reflection in pretty much everything except for a few crystals that were so opaque they didn't even give a reflection, but those were a rarity.

The first room was big enough to double as a parking garage floor. The layout consisted of some fancy star designs on the floor, and four large double doors made from opaque crystal that were each flanked by a pair of crystal pillars were arrayed in front of us at about ten feet intervals, while a pair of stairs led up to the second floor of the palace was set between them all.

“You mean you don’t know about the Brave and Honorable Spike, the Brave and Glorious even though you’re traveling with him?” an orange pegasus in golden armor that drew Sunset’s attention as soon as he opened his mouth. “I’d be happy to tell you all about it and even show you at the state dinner the monument Princess…um…I can’t seem to remember your name. And…why is your flank blank?”

I didn’t let Flash finish speaking and dropped my disguise before giving him a level stare. “I trust this is sufficient explanation?”

Oh how I wish I had been trying to get a read on the pegasus’s emotions at that moment, because the way his eyes just widened in fear and he let out this ridiculously girlish scream. “Changelings!” Flash shouted as he rose into the air in gold old unbridled terror. “Invasion! Changelings! THE CHANGELINGS ARE ATTACKING! ALL GUARDS TO ARMS TO ARMS! GET WORD TO THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS THE CHANGELING’S ARE ATTACKING!”

I laughed at the reaction and turned to Twilight with a smile on my devilishly demonic face that showed my fangs. “Oh look Twilight, Flash remembers me.” Or at least had enough psychological trauma left over for the whole ordeal that changelings where now a phobia of his.

It was nice to know I left a lasting impression of unbridled terror in some ponies.

“FAIRY!”

“Oh lighten up Twilight, it’s not like I actually did anything,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

“Then maybe you should take a look around!” she grumbled before pointing to some of the other guards in the room.

I did like she asked and frowned at what I saw. Several of the guards were scowling at me, their legs were tense, and a few of the ones that were carrying actual weapons had them out of their sheaths, or reared back to throw. “What the buck is up with them?”

Twilight sighed. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time changelings were in the Crystal Empire?”

“Yeah,” I replied with a growl. “I tried to get myself killed just to buy Luna and Tia enough time for them to rescue you and Cadence.”

“They don’t know that,” Twilight told me in a low voice. “The story we told everypony was the princesses did it all, and you surrendered after Chrysalis was defeated.”

That little reminder had me gritting my teeth. In my defense, it probably wouldn’t be rubbing me the wrong way so much if we hadn’t just walked past the Spike fan club that he got for carrying the crystal luggage while my near sacrificial experience had earned me the animosity of the very ponies I saved. So this is the feeling the X-men were trying to convey, I told myself while making a decision. If I ever stumbled on the Marvel Universe, Magneto would have my full support. Fuck the ungrateful humanity.

It sucked, a harkening back to the first few days I had been in Ponyville and…oh hell, it wasn’t even that! Most of the ponies there got to know me as an alicorn first and foremost, then learned I was in fact the changeling that terrorized their town in the least destructive rampage of Ponyville’s history. Even then, a combination of looks and pheromones kept the stallions wanting me, and a free brothel during that time of the month kind of had ponies warming up to changelings in less than a week.

But not in the Crystal Empire!

Oh no!

They had been conquered and spared from certain death by the changelings and…yeah, I should have been understanding, with love and tolerance and all that shit but…after days and days of getting blown off by Twilight in lieu of her research project when I had been expecting things to get better between us…I wasn’t in the mood to start kowtowing to a bunch of sparkling ponies.

“Now let me just reapply your disguise and-”

Or a Sparkle pony either for that matter.

“No.”

Twilight blinked. “W-What?”

I looked over to her with a frown. “I said no. In fact…” I looked over to my minions. “Drop the disguises and don’t change form for as long as we’re in the Empire.”

As #619 and Beast followed my orders, I walked past Twilight while she was running her damn mouth. “What in the name of Celestia is wrong with-”

“ANNOUNCING HER ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCESS CADENCE AND THE GREAT AND POWERFUL SPIKE THE BRAVE AND GLORIOUS, SAVIOR AND CHAMPION OF THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE AND DEFENDER OF THE REALM, THE GREATEST HERO IN ALL OF EQUESTRIA!” a booming voice called out from the door at the top of the stairs, cutting Twilight off and drawing my attention.

Once again, I found myself grinding my teeth in annoyance as the baby dragon was carried in on his fucking miniature throne by a quartet of guards while another pony in servants garb trailed behind him with a bucket of gems tied around her neck like a basket. As soon as they stopped, she fed him one.

A few seconds later, Cadence trotted down the steps and…frowned at me. “Omnifarious? Why are you um…I thought you couldn’t look like that while in Equestria?” she asked in an odd tone. “The treaty you sighed-”

The reminder of that stupid treaty got a growl out of me and a narrowing of my eyes. Honestly, I had no idea what the fuck I was thinking, signing something that had a stipulation like that. Anyone with half a brain knew that a black-coated pony without a cutie mark was a changeling. “So then lock me up already!”

“W-What?” Cadence asked as she reeled back in surprise. “Nopony’s going to-” She looked over to Twilight. “Twilight, what’s going on?”

Twilight sighed and shook her head. “I have no idea. She’s been…cranky all morning.”

Oh, so now even when I sound and look like a guy, I’m still female, I grumbled to myself. And here I thought she was sympathetic to my gender problems. So much for that theory.

“Well um…maybe you’ll all feel better after brunch?” she asked sweetly in the way only ponies seemed to be able to do. “A lot of the crystal nobles are going to join us, and we’re going to have a bard reciting. I know it’s a little old fashioned but…Crystal Empire.”

As Twilight started talking about how nice that sounded and trotted past me to talk to Cadence, I made it a point to glare at the guards that got too close to me, Sunset and her escort before following them up the stairs to a meal that was pretty much useless to me.

As it turned out, the food was useless to Sunset too, and she poked at what looked like some kind of gemstone pineapple on her plate while she sat next to me and my changelings took up a seat on our sides while more than half the guards in the room were stationed at our backs; ten in all. They weren’t much for conversation.

Twilight was sitting next to Cadence, while Spike had the seat of honor next to Shiny, followed by an older-looking pony that seemed to be an advisor, and then a snooty noble, followed by a stuffy noble, a fat noble, a nervous noble sat where the table started to curve, and then there was a skinny crystal noble, one wearing glasses, a mustached noble, a pair of twins, and then a bug-pony sat next to a bipedal creature with red and yellow hair that sat next to me, who was stuck next to a smaller bug pony at the end of the table on Shiny’s side.

Basically, I was shoved out to the ass end of nowhere, and was a little put off by it. I wouldn’t have minded, but…

Okay, yeah I minded it. I minded it a lot. No stipulations either. I minded it so much that I sent a glare towards Cadence that she didn’t see, although Twilight apparently caught a glimpse and actually scowled back at me for some fucking reason that just made me want to punch a pony. The whole thing made me short in disgust while I listened to the damn entertainment.

“And then, the great and powerful Spike heroically battled the dark crystal golems that the mad king did send against him-”

It did wonders for my mood. The kind of wonders that turn normal people into psychopaths. “Would somepony care to explain to me why a royal dignitary and his charge are getting insulted like this?” I growled to no one in particular.

“Quiet monster!” one of the guards that was wearing armor a bit fancier than the others ordered. “The Great Spike told us about you and your pet demon! I wouldn’t let you within a thousand miles of the Crystal Empire if it weren’t for you being pets of Princess Sparkle!”

Sunset flinched at the demon comment, and my whole body shook with rage as I really did use everything I could to keep from turning around and beating the stallion behind me to death. After all, Twilight wouldn’t like it. It would cause a disturbance. Sunset might get hurt in the crossfire when I decided to see if crystal ponies got broken bones, or just shattered on impact with a wall.

It didn’t help I had to listen as the heroic tale of Spike the invincible champion. The dragon who single-handedly saved the Crystal Empire by overcoming Sombrero's dark traps, minions, and his own worst nightmare to retrieve the Crystal Heart and bring it to Princess Cadence just in time for her to activate its magic and repel the unicorn king. But thanks to my inability not to pay attention when only one person is talking thanks to years of college lectures, I lost that battle.

No…angry wasn’t describing what I was feeling at the moment as I saw Sunset slumped down in her seat. Blinding, murderous rage was closer to the actual emotion that was trying to consume me. But of course, if I ripped out the guard’s tongue and shoved it down his throat, Twilight would be upset all from her seat next to her fucking sister-in-law that stuck me in no man’s land on the word of an overgrown iguana that apparently lied a few things into the royal ears while the rest of us were fighting through his mob of adoring fans.

But…somehow, I didn’t. Maybe it was the fact that it was ten to one, and any murders might draw the wrong kind of attention. Maybe it was the fact that Twilight had frowned at me for some reason. Although I’m going to be altruistic and blame my lack of killing a crystal pony that so deserved to die on the fact that there was an off chance that Sunset could get caught in the crossfire.

Hell, for all I knew, crystal ponies exploded when they died and Sunset would have been hit by crystal shrapnel.

So, I grit my teeth and took it while reminding myself that we were just here for a day or two.

Then the bard began the tale of how Spike freed the princesses from the evil Chrysalis, and led them in battle to drive the evil beings out of the Empire before he single-handily slew the changeling queen and forced her inept daughter into a surrender as I apparently begged for my life. That got a chuckle out of the guards.

Well why not? I told myself while making sure to memorize each other their faces for when I sent my best five changelings in to kill their children and rape their wives in front of the bastards before killing the fools with an overload of pain nerves. They still celebrate Nightmare Night after all. Coming down each and every year just to eat children really made me wonder why Luna didn’t just take over Equestria back then.

Unless of course, you know...it was total bullshit and she never ate a single foal even as Nightmare Moon or spent a single second free before her imprisonment ended. But hey, that was impossible! Impossible I say! After all, if an entire fucking holiday was created celebrating the moon tyrant and how she enjoyed eating children, then it must be true!

If the damn breakfast/lunch had lasted any longer than the half-and-a half it took to tell the three brave tales of Spike the Glorious and whatever the fuck else title a stupid horse could think up as he saved the Crystal Empire from Sombra, led an expedition into an unknown land of bipedal monsters like Sunset (which was the sparsest of the tales even though it did mention her demonic transformation), and managed to rescue all four princess’s from Mom’s evil clutches before making me surrender, I think I would have murdered someone.

Then, when it was FINALLY over, I watched as the royals and their ‘hero’ were taken out of the room. Oh but when I tried to get up to follow Twilight, I caught the hint of a glare shot in my direction by the purple pony, another fucking guard came over to where we were sitting and glared down at us. “Princess Cadence orders that the changelings and their demon are to be taken to proper quarters until she summons them.”

I whirled on them and glared. “Excuse me?”

“The orders of the princess are not to be questioned by monsters you filthy bug!” the guard in the fancy armor spat.

It felt like every single part of my body wanted me to lash out and kill the pompous idiot. I would have too, I REALLY would have, but…something stopped me. It was nothing physical, or magical, or…anything really. It was like that tiny voice people claim to hear inside their heads when they really don’t hear anything, telling them that what they’re doing is wrong, or that jumping off a skyscraper was a stupid idea.

So once again, despite being ready to foam at the mouth, I held back.

God did I hate it.

And what made me do it in the first place.

The quarters we were given as honored guests of the princess and royal dignitaries was smaller than a Japanese college studio apartment that had been cut in half. The only thing it had was two pairs of bunk beds and even then, the door couldn’t be opened all the way. In order for us all to just fit in the room, I had the changelings get on the top bunk and enter hibernation. I did the same for a good thirty minutes to check on the hive-mind and relay some instructions to the changelings at the castle, as well as one of the changelings in my telepathic communications network stationed in Canterlot.

It was about an hour before I managed to calm myself down a little to actually talk some with Sunset. “Sorry about what happened at breakfast-lunch. You want to talk about it?” I asked while doing my best to sound…sympathetic, I guess. Truth was, a I was still pretty grouchy.

“It’s okay-”

“If you start saying something like you deserve it Sunset, I swear I will-”

“No!” Sunset told me as she raised her hands to stop me from talking. “You…you’re right. These ponies don’t know me. Whatever they just say is just stupid words, and I’m much too smart to let something like a bunch of stupid words to affect me.”

That a least made me smile a little. “That’s…good to hear.”

“I think I asked you this once but…why are you so…on my side so much?” she asked while hunched over thanks to the fact pony beds didn’t lend well to human heights.

I sighed and licked my lips. “Because…I guess…you’re the oddity,” I told her while trying to make sure it came out right. “I mean…okay… Twilight drove an entire town into a riot, Discord tortured ponies for fun, Luna let the Nightmare into her and tried to kill every living thing on the planet, and you? You threw a book at Celestia, and told her no. They get forgiven at the drop of a hat, and you? You get banished to the human world, permanently.”

Sunset flinched at that, but I forced myself to keep going. “Celestia showing up was an accident, and Twilight? She left you there, and every time I think about that I just…I just want to scream at her!” I exclaimed before on this rather nice rant that I had developing. “Oh, and now we have Spike! Yeah, apparently when a pony lies about how she beat up a space bear, or accepts praise for things she’s actually done, or gets a trophy for it, that’s bad! But when a dragon lies his rear-end off, turns a whole bucking kingdom against a girl doing her best to try and turn her life around, oh nononono! He can go ahead and do that!”

“F-Fae, you’re starting to scare me,” Sunset managed.

“SCARE YOU?” I demanded…before I realized I was yelling and…had been for a little while now. The girl in front of me was trembling in fact, and I couldn’t help but gape at the sight just a little. “What? You…Sunset, I’m not…” I took a breath to help me get some time and looked back to her. “Oh come on Sunset, I managed to hold myself back from tearing apart a few guards, I think I can keep myself from laying a hoof on you! Give me some credit here.”

She sighed, and nodded. “Not like I have much choice,” the girl mumbled before Sunset looked back up to me. “But…um…you seem a little…on edge lately. Is anything wrong?”

“No,” I grumbled before we went back to waiting.

Sunset went pretty quiet after that, and for a long time too. Another hour passed, and then another. I thought of leaving, but oh as it turned out, the fucking guards outside our ‘guest quarters’ wouldn’t hear of that.

Oh how I wanted to snap their pathetic necks. But no…no, I couldn’t do that.

Then came a question I’d been wondering. “Okay, I have to know…did you ever meet Cadence? Before now, I mean.”

Sunset let out a groan. “Yes.”

My brony world-building hunger became aroused. “Well…you can’t just leave me hanging like that. I mean…come on.”

“Look, it was before I found out that Princess Celestia can turn ponies into alicorns, okay?” she grumbled. “I met her, thought she was a real niece instead of adopted, and thought she was the same as every other pony I had met, wanting to be friends and stuff. She must have been new to the alicorn thing, because her magic sucked. Needless to say, we didn’t hit it off.”

And that was the end of the great Cadence meets Sunset story. From the way Sunset looked, she didn't want to talk about it, and there was no way in hell that I was going to press her on it. In fact, it had to have been close to seven o’clock by the time I got around to talking to Sunset again. We made some minor conversation about television shows, movies, and I had to correct her on several things that Earthquestria got wrong, most of them name-related. It was eight o’clock before I got to anything real important.

“Okay you’re right, something is bothering me,” I admitted to the girl.

Sunset’s stomach growled, and my lips curled. “You okay?”

“Just a little hungry,” she replied while holding her stomach. “But hey, misery loves company. So…what’s eating you?”

That became the signal to open the floodgates. To be honest, I couldn’t even believe Sunset needed to ask that question. She was there for most of it.

“You mean despite the fact that the pony I chose to have a relationship with has kicked me to the curb in order to do paperwork?” I demanded. “Oh sure, as soon as we get her away from that, it’s all lovey and dovey and bla bla blabla! But the minute we got back to Ponyville, Twilight’s Twilight-ness goes into overtime, and I’m lucky to get an hour a week with her. Hell, I’m living off artificial love again! And do you have any idea how much worse it tastes that the real thing? Not that I actually think I’m getting the real thing anymore!"

I got to my pony-feet and tried to pace around the room. It didn't work so well. So I just ended up all the more agitated, and sat back on the bed pony-style, which was more of a laying down than anything. “So, I guess this is how it ends,” I grumbled.

“What ends?”

“Me and Twilight!” I snapped at her. And that was just the beginning. “It’s been hours since we see her, before her idiot of a sister has us shoved in this room and for what? Showing ponies what I really look like? Well Excuse me for being born a changeling and, oh, I don’t know, RISKING MY LIFE FOR EQUESTRIA! No! The dragon that carries the luggage gets all the fame, even though it’s a bucking lie! So you know, what? Let her have her dragon, let her have her stupid…whatever, but the next time I see Twilight, I’m telling her it’s bucking over!”

I panted a little bit at my rant and... Okay, there's some psychobabble about how ranting is supposed to be good for you, how its supposed to get things off your chest and clear your head, get rid of all those bad thought and bla bla bla. But for me, the truth is that it just reminds me about everything that's wrong with...well, everything. Instead of getting some dark emotion off my chest and cleaning myself, I was madder than ever thanks to going over the 'reasons that I'm pissed off right now' checklist.

“W-what?”

“Oh come on!” I yelled at Sunset. “You’re actually there to see all this! You see all this bucking manure I have to put up with from her over the past week! It’s all project, project, project, for Princess bucking Celestia! Buck, I didn’t know just how much of a shaft I was getting until she stopped doing it for half a week up in Rainbow Falls! Getting a pat on the head from Tia is obviously more important to her than anything else!” Hell, even back before that, Twilight didn’t even visit me when I was having my stupid psychotic episode because Celestia told her not to so…fuck her!

Sunset looked at me with wide eyes. “I-I didn’t say anything!”

After hearing that, I don’t know why I was in any way surprised when the door slowly opened, as much as it could anyway, and I saw Twilight standing in the hallway. I was in Equestria after all, and stupid rants about girlfriends just wouldn’t be right if they weren’t overheard by the ponies they were actually about.

Twilight had an odd look on her face. It wasn’t the angry scowl she had on earlier, or some hurt expression I half-expected to see. There was just this…blankness to her look. To be honest, I didn’t give much of a damn about her feelings after being stuck in a broom closet of a bedroom for a day with a starving teenager. Plus, since I was one-hundred-percent changeling, her feelings weren’t forced on me and I could tell her to fuck off without having to smell her God damned mood. All part of the joys of going au natural.

So I just let out a growling sigh. “Oh, well great. You here to escort me to the dungeon now for being a changeling?” I asked with a frown. “Because I think I’d actually have more room than what your bucking sister gave me.”

The alicorn jump-flinched at the question and looked around the room. “What? I-I didn’t…” She stopped and looked at the guards standing outside our room. “W-Who ordered you to put my friends in here?” she demanded.

“The Captain did, Princess.”

“S-Shiny didn’t order this! He’s been with me and Cadence all day!” Twilight exclaimed. "Just like me!"

Yeah, I told her through my non-existent telepathy. And I’ve been down here, waiting for YOU!

“The Captain, Princess Sparkle not the Prince.”

Another voice outside snickered from outside. “Shiny! Gotta remember that one!”

“Well then let them out, I need to talk with my…um, with the changeling queen,” Twilight said, which got a scowl from me thanks to the female mention. Dar God in Heaven did I hate that. Not just the female thing, but Twilight of all ponies/people calling me that when I at least looked and sounded like a guy.

“So now I’m the changeling queen huh?” I snapped at Twilight. “Good to know Princess.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that Princess.”

Twilight turned away from me to glare at him. “And why not?” she demanded.

“Only Crystal Royalty gives us orders ma’am,” the guard on the right replied. “You’re just the boss of…um…hey Glimmer, what’s the Prince’s little sister supposed to be the princess of again?”

“Ugh! Fine!” Twilight exclaimed. “I’ll go get my brother! Fairy, just…stay there! I need to ask you…just…please stay there. Please!”

I frowned back at her as the door slammed shut before I could say anything. “Oh well that’s nice.”

It took an hour of waiting before I finally heard hooves outside the door again. Which means it was about nine something. I had gone back to grumbling with Sunset about this whole fucking thing. That alone was probably why I didn’t just kill the guards outside the door, make my way to the Crystal Heart, gorge myself, and level the whole fucking Empire.

“Why are four of my guests being detained in the abandoned servant’s quarters?” the familiar and angry voice of a certain pink pony princess demanded from out in the hallway.

“Ma’am, the Captain said-”

“If the Captain of MY guard decides to put ponies that are accompanying my little sister here under invitation, into rooms so small they’ve been made obsolete, then don’t you think there’s something a little wrong with that? And don’t Ma’am me, it’s HIGHNESS! Now open the bucking doors before I get angry.”

The crystal doors opened, and I saw Cadenza standing out in the hallway with a scowl on her face. “Ugh! I can’t believe they actually put you all in here.”

I scowled back at her. “So what the buck took you so long Cadenza?”

Cadenza gave me an odd look with a raised eyebrow and then let out a sigh. “What happened between you and Twilight?”

“She showed up, promised to go get Shining Armor, hours ago!” I shouted. “What’d you do? Have tea?”

The nervous laugh told me everything I needed to know. “Well…yes,” she replied with a sigh. “I’m sorry it’s my fault. Twilight ran to me in tears saying how she made you angry, and with everything else-”

“What everything else?” I asked in a low tone.

“Um…” Sunset spoke up, “before we start talking…can I please have something non-crystal to eat? Fruits aren’t that lasting and…human mouths aren’t made for crystal food. Please…I’m hungry.”

After the two of us got some food from Cadenza that Sunset could eat and unloaded a couple of Big Macs for my changelings to snack on, Cadenza led us to what I guess was a private dining room, and I sat down at the empty table built for about four ponies, or maybe six. To be honest, I wasn't paying much attention to anything beyond my own simmering anger at the moment.

“I guess I should start from-no,” Cadenza stopped herself. “I should apologize. The two you’ve been treated in my Empire is…disgraceful.” She bowed her head, and I took the moment in which she wasn’t watching to roll my eyes at the apology.

“I had no idea what was going on. I was with Twilight and Shiny the whole day showing her the sighs after we um…grounded Spike,” she told me with a wince.

That caught my attention and peeked my interest a bit. “Why?”

Cadenza cleared her throat. “While you were…headed to the castle. Spike decided to tell everypony about how you and um...Sunset the demon, had apparently bewitched Twilight-”

“HE WHAT?” I demanded before getting all indignant and stood up while I reached a whole new level of anger because...

The whole idea behind warping a pony's mind was two things to me: frightening, and sickening. On the frightening part, I was afraid of it because the idea was just so tempting. I mean, one little mental nudge, and Twilight would have been back with me. I could have easily made it so the past week would never happen again. And while I was at it, I could have made her never argue with me again, never try and get me into a dress again, kick Spike out of the house like the little shit deserved, and...well, make her do whatever I wanted, no matter how dark, twisted or raunchy. And I had a pretty dark and twisted imagination even by human standards.

As for the sickening part, well...I was an American. We abhorred the idea of slavery to the point where it might have well have been religious fervor on general principal. And mind control was pretty much the ultimate form of slavery. It wasn't just putting a person in chains and forcing them to choose between work and pain, or servitude or death. It was actually taking that choice away from them altogether. So, yeah...hated it so much the very thought of using that kind of magic even in the simplest form disgusted me.

“Fae, please-”

“What?” I demanded of the pink princess. “Calm down? Or maybe, forgive him? Or hey, how about, roll over and die, because another member of Twilight’s stupid family thinks I’m using mind control or something on her? Hey, while we're on the subject of me messing with a pony's mind. What do you think Cadenza?”

Once again, Cadenza sighed and shook her head. “I would have thought you would have been more understanding. That’s what Twilight has been saying about you at least.”

“Yeah well, after a day of watching Sunset starve, Twilight can suck it!” I barked back at her.

At Cadenza’s confused look, Sunset cleared her throat. “It’s a um, human euphemism. It basically means…um…well I guess the best translation would be he just told Twilight to go fuck herself since-”

Cadenza sighed. “I understood that much,” the pink pony princess said as she looked over to Sunset. “And how are you Sunset?”

Like usual the human just hugged herself and looked away. “I’m fine.”

“That’s human body language for, I feel terrible,” I told her. I decided to leave off the part about how Sunset was having trouble sleeping at night, how she couldn’t go back to sleep, sometimes cry and other times you just scream into her pillow because she had a pair of hands. I also didn’t tell Sunset there were four changelings outside her window at all times in case she tried to jump. Until she did that, or came to me asking for help, there wasn’t all that much I could do. She avoided the subject of how badly she was doing pretty good.

Cadenza sighed again. “I see.”

“So are we done?” I asked with a frown. “Because I have to be asleep by ten thirty to keep Celestia’s consciousness from being torn apart by the changeling hive-mind.”

“I’m trying to tell you what happened!” Cadenza insisted.

“I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!” I shouted back at her. “Twilight decided to get all insecure because one of her stupid little friends doesn’t want to hang around some nothing little town for the rest of her life! So then she ran to you, and locked me in a closet all day while the two of you connected. Did I miss anything?”

And once again, Cadenza sighed. “That was because of Spike. He…he said that you…threatened him to try and stop you from…well, he’s a terrible liar, so it didn't long to figure out what was going on. Twilight of course grounded him and we spent the day-”

I rolled my eyes. “Doing whatever the buck she wanted,” I cut in. “Just like how she blew me off for the past five days-”

“Listen, Twilight doesn’t mean to-”

“I don’t care what she means to do, only what she does!” I exclaimed.

Cadenza held up her hooves. “You’re angry, I understand that, but… Twilight came to me an hour ago, saying you were going to leave her, and I told her to have a drink and calm down, and tell me what was going on-”

“Meanwhile, I’m in a box,” I added.

“Yes, you were still locked in a room. So if you need to be angry at somepony for that, be angry at me,” Cadenza went on.

“I told her to calm down for ten minutes, and drink some tea, and you must know how she gets when she’s explaining things, so please, I’m begging you,” she said in a tone that was far from begging. “Just please, tell me that you’re not planning on ending your relationship with her. Please tell me that was just Twilight overacting.”

I opened my mouth to tell her to fuck off, but…she just looked at me with these pleading eyes that were just…not Cadence. At least not the Cadence I knew from when we ran into each other last time. Last time she was all bossy, and scary…now, she was just fucking terrified.

And of course, it did to me what every fucking pony face did on the verge of panic, or tears, or some other shit did. I sighed, groaned. “Fine. Give me the whole bucking story.”

From the way Cadence told it, Spike had shown up without us and listened to the rather embellished story about how he ‘saved’ the Crystal Empire by carrying the luggage through traps, monsters, the son of Sombra, and whatever the fuck else the bard decided to think up at the time. The tale about the how he saved the Crystal Empire from me was of course complete bullshit, rather than the eight-percent pure like the first tale of Spike the bla bla bla, and the part about him leading an expedition to Earthquestria had been made up five minutes prior to my arrival with his help when he told all the ponies about Sunset.

“And Twilight let this junk…just…happen?” I demanded.

Cadence cleared her throat. “Um…well…she said, you’d…probably like it better if we just let him have his day in the sun,” she said. “I take it that wasn’t the case?”

Well that fucking figures, I told myself. I bitch to her about Rainbow Dash, and the next thing I know, the worst possible circumstances happen to…what? Try and prove me wrong?

Okay fine, Equestria morals win. Any type of fame is bad and can only end in disaster as it turns good people into Tiger Woods. So, yeah, I fully expected Spike to be sleeping with crystal hookers when next I saw him.

“And then what?” I asked in a grumble. Because getting an explanation of everything was not helping my mood. It was just reminding me why I was pissed off.

“During the breakfast, that’s when Spike told us about how you’ve been...threatening him, and then the meal ended and Twilight walked out in a huff,” Cadence went on. “We talked to Spike and…Twilight started asking questions. She wanted details about how you threatened him and he couldn’t answer without stuttering or adding details in after he told them. Honestly…I think Spike thinks you’re trying to take Twilight away from him.”

I let out a snort. “So first her bucking pet and now me?” I asked.

Cadence nodded. “She said you know about Spike’s abandonment problems and-”

“I honestly don’t care about Spike’s stupid little problems when he decides to try and sic and entire bucking city on a girl who can barely sleep at night and tries to guilt trip her to death,” I told Cadenza evenly before she could go on about poor Spikey-Wikey. “And I really don’t give a buck about Twilight’s hurt feelings after she left a girl who hasn’t eaten anything all day to starve while she talks to you about her relationship problems. Me getting shoved aside to do paperwork for Celestia is one thing, but leaving a girl who hasn’t had food all day so that she can whine about things to you-”

“I told you that was my fault!” Cadenza went on. “If you’d just calm down for a second, and listen.”

Fuck that, I thought to myself. I was through listening. I was done being the rational one that got shoved aside and put on hold when ponies like Rainbow got an exception to Twilight’s Celestia worship.

I took in a deep breath, and fixed Cadenza with a level gaze. Then, just to let all of this hit home, I lied through my teeth. “I am calm,” I told her. “That’s the thing about raging anger, it burns out pretty quickly when you're just sitting around. So now that I’m nice, calm, cool and collected. So you can do me a favor and tell Twilight something for me, because I have to go to sleep before Celestia in the next few minutes.”

Of course I was far from calm and all those things, but there was no need to tell her that. That was the thing with being locked in a fucking room all day, it tended to let your anger boil pretty easily.

Cadenza gulped. “Omnifarious,” she began as she raised a hoof. “You’re still angry, and-”

"Where's Twilight?" I demanded loud enough to cut Cadenza off.

"Well, she was upset so...I said I'd handle this, and-"

“The day Twilight’s parents decided to scream and run away rather than give me a chance, I made a decision if it came to a choice between her family and me, I would make her choose her family. Spike’s part of her family, so she can have him. Because I’m done. I’m not gonna turn this into some stupid tug of war between me and him. He wins, it’s over, and I’ll be heading back to Ponyville at first light. You want to handle something? Go tell Twilight if she doesn't even want to bother meeting with me now, then we're done!”

“You know, as I remember, you left her for five days too,” Sunset spoke up. “At least, that’s what Princess Celestia said about how she and you came to get me.”

I looked over to the redhead and frowned. “And?”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “So…don’t you think you should be a little more accommodating?”

“You’ve been in a human world. News flash, we’re all hypocrites,” I replied before walking away.

“Omnifarious! Just wait until tomorrow morning and-” was all Cadenza managed to get before I teleported away.

One thing good about being locked in a room all day was that it meant I knew the damn place well enough to just pop right into the middle of it. After making sure the guards weren’t around, I looked at the two sleeping changelings, and then kicked #619 and #666 awake.

“Wake up, I’ve got a job for the two of you.”

For a minute I thought about telling them to just go snag Spike and throw him off tallest tower in the Crystal Empire. Oh how tempted I was to just murder the little bastard. Or hell, there were a few normal ponies around whose shape they could take. I could have them be angry guards that heard about Sunset being a demon and decided to take care of the problem. A few broken bones, and the guilt would crush his sorry little heart and get Twilight so pissed off at him…

But I was through with this pony relationship shit and playing second fiddle to everything else in Twilight’s God damned life, and none of that would solve any of my problems, I decided to just cut my ties here and now.

“Go find Spike the dragon and tell him it’s over, he won,” I said. “Tell him he gets Twilight all to himself.”

The changelings gave me an odd look. #619 was the one to speak. “That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t get it,” Beast told me.

I snorted as I climbed into bed. “Of course you don’t. You’re not supposed to. Now do as you’re told, I have information to review.”

When used correctly, the information processing ability of a hive mind is more powerful than any computer on the planet. A drone can read a message, or a page with information on it, go into stasis, in a magical cloud network of over nine thousand brains. Fifteen hundred intelligent drones and warriors can go through a room full of birth records in death certificates in a little under four hours. From there, all the information is stored in-mind, and ready to be called up to accessed and downloaded.

For a quick comparison on just how fast information can be absorbed. It takes a pegasus about three months of flight camp to become a kind of decent flier, and your average unicorn twice as long to get magic down. I gained complete mastery of my changing magic and wings from being the equivalent of a newborn in less than a minute after coming out of my pod.

All of the information on Equestria’s births and deaths for the past thousand years took considerably less time to process. On top of which, I got the big picture as well as all the little details. I didn’t quite understand what Tia was needing to know, it was all pretty basic information and showed what anyone with a brain would have expected. Five minutes after looking at all the mental graphs and charts showing the only five things that Twilight’s search had in common, or as close as you could get to looking when the world was just a gigantic mass of thoughts and information.

Then I found myself human in a familiar house, sat down, and waited for Tia to show up.

She didn’t disappoint, a second later, the goddess appeared in all her glory. She looked down at me, then sighed and spoke. “So, anything happen to you today?”

“Nothing really important.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “I thought you said we couldn’t lie here.”

“Like I said, nothing really important happened,” I told her. “Well, according to me, anyway. Something happen to you?”

“I felt a…mass of anger, earlier today. From you."

That peeked my interest. “Since when can you feel my emotions?” Ad was it just today? Or always? Back in Tambleon I had been a changeling like today, so...did that have something to do with it? I...

I choked my curiosity over that little fact to death. What the hell did I care if Tia knew I was pissed off? It wasn't like she wasn't going to get a full report when we met up every night.

Tia shrugged. “I did it once before…back in Tambelon,” she told me. “I wasn’t sure what it was but…today was so much stronger and…what’s going on?”

“Hmm, probably has something to do with me being in changeling form,” I mumbled.

“Omnifarious,” the goddess spoke again.

“I’m not selfless.”

Tia frowned at me. “What?”

I reached for the remote. “I said I’m not selfless,” I told her. “Now sit down and watch the damn movie. We’re starting with episode four and then going to five before hitting the first three to do it like a flashback but...you’ll get it when it’s over in a couple nights.”

Being all cautious and junk, the goddess took a seat next to me. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Just watch and you'll get it soon-”

“No, not the movie...what’s wrong?”

I grit my teeth. “I...finished with all your data today. Call your fucking summit.”

Celestia frowned at me. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Are you going to?”

“Not if you want to know about all that stuff you told Twilight to read.”

Tia sighed. “I’ll get Luna and meet you in the Crystal Empire tomorrow afternoon for the summit then.”

The news made me frown. If Celestia was coming like I had just asked...there was no way I was going anywhere. So much for leaving at dawn.

Chapter 21: The Incredibly Annoying Assistance of A Pretty Pony Princess

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Chapter 21: The Incredibly Annoying Assistance of A Pretty Pony Princess

The changeling hive-mind is a wonderful thing for those who like to live vicariously through their minions. After the whole Tia connection thing, I kind of stopped using it as much. But everything I needed for entertainment purposes was still there. I could review fights changelings had with Everfree animals, all the juicy gossip of Ponyville, the telepathagrams my changelings were paid to send from city to city…and even some pony porn if I wanted to.

Not that I did look at pony porn. Memories didn’t really have a very good tactile sensation for changelings. Which meant memories of combat didn’t come with any pain, but it also meant the other stuff didn’t have much in the way of sensation either. Plus, having memories of ponies like Cheerilee getting banged like crazy by Big Mac would have kind of made seeing them on the street awkward. Oh, and it was immoral…or something.

But, I wasn’t going to use it for any of that tonight. No, what I wanted to observe was the crushing reaction to my little message to Spike. Since Equestria didn’t have text messaging, I did the biggest douche bag move I could think of when I came to breaking up with Twilight I could manage: minion message relay.

I plugged myself into the network and accessed the information that my goons had deposited when they trotted over to Sunset’s room go to sleep near her bed. I got a nice first person view from Beast’s perspective as he followed #619 down the crystal hallway, following Twilight’s scent back to her room after a few twists and turns by using our better than the average pony’s sense of smell.

On the way, guards gave the changelings a frown, and the changelings growled back. Guards promised to restrain them, and changelings promised to kill before pointing at one specific guard, then told them to throw the first punch. In the end, it was the ponies who backed down. After all, changelings were the big bad monsters of the Crystal Empire and ponies didn’t go through with final solution type stuff.

After about four encounters, my goons made it to the door where they could hear Twilight and Spike’s voices.

“But Twilight, they’re evil! Remember what Sunset did? And the changeling-”

“She has a name Spike,” Twilight went on. “And what other lie are you going to tell me? You know how much I hate it when you lie to me!”

“B-But, that was…that was the only way you’d believe me!” he cried. “They-they take you to that castle every morning and they do things to-”

“I do work for Princess Celestia! She gave me an important assignment to do! It’s stupid and crazy and takes up all my time but I have to hurry and get it done or-”

“That’s just what they’re making you think!”

Twilight let out a groan. “Spike, you can send messages to the princess whenever you want. Just check up on it!”

“She’s already been taken over when the changeling queen kidnapped her! It’s just like with Shining Armor and Chrysalis, but now you won’t believe me!”

“I saw Chrysalis using her magic on Shining! What big evil thing did you see Fairy do that isn’t a lie?” Twilight demanded.

“She-she used her changeling magic to take over the town, and she made all our friends like her, and she mind control Princess Celestia and brought Sunset Shimmer back, and now she’s turning you and Shining Armor and Cadence against me! You have to fight it Twilight! Please!”

Twilight let out an aggravated snort. “Spike I can’t,” she said as her voice cracked. “I-I can’t deal with this again right now. I’ve got…there’s just too much for me to deal with right now. I can’t, I just…can’t.”

“But Twilight! She’s going to take the Crystal Heart and use it to take over Equestria! You-you have to stop her now before it’s too late!”

“Go to sleep Spike.”

“But-”

“GO TO SLEEP!” Twilight shouted.

When the conversation finally died down, #619 finally opened the door and walked halfway into the room.

As soon as she appeared in the doorway, the dragon let out a scream and cowered behind Twilight. The alicorn just looked over at the changeling with a tired expression before she spoke. “What do you want?”

“Our leader has a message to Spike the dragon,” the changeling with the double-female voice said.

From his place behind Twilight, Spike let out a scream. “They’re here to brainwash me Twilight! Do something!”

The alicorn sighed. “Go ahead.”

“It’s over, you win. You get Twilight all to yourself,” #619 explained before it turned around to leave.

“What?” Twilight asked as my changeling left the room and started to close the door behind her.

“Those were the only words were we told to convey,” #619 answered as she finished shutting the door.

I opened my eyes to the semi-dark room that was just illuminated by the refracted light that came from the moon’s glow that was absorbed and transferred throughout the whole of the crystal palace. Although the scientist in my wanted to cry bullshit at the event, the pony part of me played the magic explanation card and shut his bitch ass up. As for me, I didn’t give much of a damn, and had more disappointing things on my mind.

Like the fact that the changelings hadn’t stuck around to see Twilight’s expression when she was the pony getting left out in the cold. It aggravated me, but since they were wherever the hell Sunset was at the moment, I doubted my annoyance would last until I found them.

And then there was Spike’s…whatever the fuck that was.

Twilight’s mom and dad, I could understand. The only changelings they had met had shoved them into cocoons. But I had lived at the library, or at least around town, for months. About two of them now.

But Spike was still holding onto his fucking anti-changeling crap and…spreading it around apparently. Two months of me being in town, and he was still being like…the way he was. There was no changing people like that.

The door opening interrupted my thoughts, and I found a purple pony with wings standing on the other side of the door. She had a frown on her face, and looked around the room. “You actually slept in here?”

“Obviously,” I grumbled back. “Now what do you want Twilight?” I swear, if she wanted to do some stupid let’s makeup crap, I was got to slam the for into her face, and then shut it as hard as I could after the damn crystal door gave her a bloody nose.

Twilight gave me an odd look with a raised eyebrow, then shook the expression off and let out a cleansing breath to just give me her normal expression. “Look um, I talked to Sunset…and…well, the last time I was here…before you were around I mean, not during the changeling occupation, Shiny and I discovered an underground system of caves and we all thought it might be a nice experience to…explore them together.”

I sighed. “Don’t I have a mirror to look at?” my surly voice asked.

“Sunset said she doesn’t mind,” Twilight told me before her eyes widened a bit, shoulders drooped, and her mouth quirked just a little downward. “Even with last night, I really would like you to come along.”

That’s when the creepy oddity of the situation hit me. I had broken up with Twilight last night in the most insensitive way I could imagine and…she was just standing in front of me like nothing was wrong. I knew my minions had delivered my message, I had just seen them do it and had to listen to Spike bitch about how evil I must have been because I was covered in black chitin.

And now she was standing in front of me like nothing was wrong.

It wasn’t creepy.

It was scary.

Not the psyco, Twilight Snapple scary where she turns a town into a bunch of Gollum rejects fighting over the one ring kind of scary. It was super terrified over Twilight’s mental state scary that left a hole in my stomach.

“Twilight…are you okay?” I asked the mentally unstable alicorn.

She actually smiled. “I am, and…thanks.”

I didn’t feel like asking questions. I was actually running kind of low on power and another alicorn with her mental sanity intact when it came to dealing with...whatever Twilight was going through sounded like a definite plus as far as I was concerned. “Okay um…I’m going to go get breakfast, and I’ll…meet you in the palace.”

Twilight gave me a slightly confused look, and blinked her eyes a few times. “But I’m right here.”

“And I’m going to the train to get the stuff we weren’t allowed to bring to the palace, so I can eat,” I told her in an uneasy tone.

After a few seconds, Twilight had a moment of clarity and nodded. “Ah good idea. We didn’t find anything when we discovered the one cavern, but their might be something dangerous in this one. I doubt it but…better safe than sorry.”

The possibility of a threat made me tense. Pissed off as I was at her, I didn’t want Twilight to die. Hell, I couldn’t even stomach the idea of her getting hurt. Really hurt, not that emotional crappy hurt that girls get when stuff doesn’t go their way. “Whatever.”

“Fae,” the unicorn called out, which made me turn around and look at her before she started talking again. “I um…” Twilight paused, then looked around. “This really isn’t the best…place. Um…I’ll meet you in the palace gardens when I find everypony, okay?”

“Fine,” I told her before walking away and trying to get rid of my more disturbing thoughts as to why Twilight was acting the way she was.

She was a practical woman. If there really was danger, then it made sense to bring along as much muscle as possible. Hell, she didn’t try and kiss or nuzzle me or anything. I didn’t even get a good morning, and that scowl that was on her face.

Yeah, she wasn’t crazy, she was just being practical.

Breakfast sucked. It was like…

Well, eating Twilight was like eating the most well cooked and delicious burgers possible. Twilight was the kind of burger that can only be made with super fresh meat found in those really successful mom and pop restaurants with their one-hundred-percent home grown vegetables. Clone artificial love was McDonalds, the McDonalds dollar menu…in a neighborhood that skimped on the mustard and ketchup so you had to actually taste the imitation, recycled rat meat that was ninety-percent pink slime. So breakfast was like eating bad McDonalds food from a below average member of the fast food chain in a seedy neighborhood.

After eating eight Big Macs and lamenting my inability to wash out my mouth, I left my minions in the train since they wouldn’t be getting anything to power their magic for the day. Then I walked my way back to the castle amidst the terrified shrieks of the crystal ponies as they prayed to Celestia to come and save them from the dark goddess that was me.

Unlike with my goons, when the guards saw me coming through the city, they quickly decided to patrol a different street, or suddenly remembered they left the stove on at home after I gave them a dark look. What I gave them was no Fluttershy stare. I actually had some teeth to go with the unbridled terror I was sending their way through my gaze. Fluttershy was an angry pony, I was a predator looking at my prey.

Then came the Crystal Palace, and I decided to skip that little ordeal entirely by taking to the skies and flying around the damn place to find just where the hell the royal gardens were. With the bird’s eye view, it didn’t really take that long.

The royal gardens weren’t all that big, about a fifty by fifty foot area, walled off and surrounded by spells that kept everything nice and quiet. It was just a little place full of flowers and a few trees that seemed to exist for the sole purpose of letting Cadenza and Armor have a place to be sort of outside and not mobbed by ponies.

As soon as I got there and passed through the noise pollution barrier to land, I noticed something was wrong.

Very wrong.

I had lived in Equestria long enough to know a setup when I saw one. But whatever was going on wasn’t some malicious pony plan, their scheming abilities went about as deep as a kiddy pool. Unless of course they were convinced you were an evil changeling…and then…okay, even then, their plans weren’t all that complicated and backstabby. Direct confrontation was what ponies did.

Even when faced with a godlike being wearing empowering jewelry and all they had was speed and the magic abilities of a dress-maker, they still warned me of their presence, made some heroic speech, and even gave me a chance to fight back before charging to their certain doom. It was cool and brave, but hardly smart.

But ponies really didn’t need to plan a setup. This was Equestria, and that meant they had some weird fate/coincidence thing working for them that just put people in the right place at the right time. Like how I just came into the royal garden and found Cadenza waiting for me alone when Twilight was supposed to be getting the whole gang together.

After last night, being along with the pink pony princess kind of made me a little nervous. I mean, she was in the top five powerful beings in Equestria…maybe? To be honest, I never actually saw Cadenza throw down except for that shield spell thing, and from what I knew about magic, that was more of a Shining Armor & Cadenza combo move that relied on their love.

Cadenza looked over to me and smiled. Then, something weird happened. I noticed that when she wasn’t standing next to a little douche of a dragon or surrounded by guards, the bitch was…impossibly hot.

I mean, really, Super. Hot. Not up there with impossible to touch Celestia hot, but…she was that barely obtainable by mortal hands hot with her bright pink coat, long and extra spiral horn, multi-colored mane, and lavender eyes that made me know if I had been a male right then, my sword would have been unsheathed because of the perfect mare standing in front of me.

I actually had to remind myself to be mad at her and on my guard for a few seconds before I shook it off.

When I trotted over in my sour mood, the pretty pink pony princess smiled at me brightly. “I’m glad to see you’re still here,” she said. “I knew once you got some sleep everything would look-”

“Changelings don’t really sleep,” I corrected her. “We go into a hibernation and connect with the hive mind while our body rests, but we don’t get any stress relief from it.” At least we didn’t anymore. I was pretty sure Chrysalis might have been able to do something back in the day. I mean, there weren’t any of those voices I head in my head from when she around, whispering in my ear a few times but I had no idea if that was true or not and didn’t want to risk finding out.

Cadenza gave me a surprised look. “Oh…well, then I’m glad you calmed down. And didn’t do anything rash while you were”

I put a stop to that little sentence then and there. “I broke it off with Twilight,” I told her before let out a growling groan.

For a second Cadenza gave me an odd look. “Um…are you sure?”

The question had me giving the pink mare a raised eyebrow. “Trust me, changelings don’t forget things unless we really want to, or if they’re not that important.”

Then Cadenza just gave me another once over, and there was this odd weighing look in her eyes. “Why?” she asked.

“Why what?” I replied.

“Why are you rejecting Twilight’s feelings for you?” the alicorn asked as this weird buzzing started to happen on the edge of my hearing. “Because I can see that your thoughts revolve around her too.”

Then, Cadenza started tapping a hoof to the ground, and I realized what was happening. “Oh Celestia no,” I grumbled as distant tune that didn’t really seem to come from anywhere and…

I just did what I had learned to do in the craziness that was Equestria and rolled with it.

“Fairy, what’s so wrong with Twilight?” Cadenza asked before her voice took on a bit of a more…musical tone before she started prancing around. “I mean…”

Is it the cloppy way she walks
Or the dorky way she talks
Or that she act-chu-lee once...ate...meat?

I blinked in confusion as Cadenza leaned in close to whisper in my ear. “Yes, I know what a hamburger is. Griffons eat them,” she said before a foreleg reached around my neck to pull me close as Cadenza shook her head a little with the beat as she went on one line, then broke off to do more dancing that had me turning in circles so she just didn’t pop out of nowhere on me.

But you’ll never find girl who’s just as sensitive and sweet

Then the dancing that was way too close to my personal space started, and Cadenza made me back away from her while she continued to gain ground with her musical assault.

I know she’s a bit of a fixer-upper
Yeah, she’s got a few flaws
Like her peculiar brain
Or that thing with her mane
And how it just tends to burst into flame

“You know about that too?” I asked as I forced and the music seemed to become more background than foreground.

Cadence rolled her eyes. “She’s my little sister of course I-”

“Sinster-in-law, it's because of marriage,” I pointed out with my hoof.

Which Cadence slapped away before bopping me on the nose. “No. It's because of my love for her,” she countered before the singing continued, and I found myself huddling in on myself.

She’s a bit of a fixer-upper
But this I’m certain of
You can fix this fixer-upper up
With just a little bit of love

I groaned at the taller alicorn and gave her a flat look. “Cadence, the whole song and dance thing doesn’t really work on me,” I moaned as I lowered my head before I felt her muzzle on the back of my ear.

“Well considering you just called me Cadence instead of Cadenza, something’s got to be going on in that head of yours,” she replied in a whisper that made me look up to see her smiling face while her annoyingly cheery music continued to go on in the background. “But this is about Twilight. Now tell me…”

Is it how snakes make her scared
Or that she’s socially impaired
Or that she used to leave a wet spot in her bed?

“TEE EM I CADENCE!” I shouted at the smiling alicorn.

Or are you holding back your love
Because you’re uncertain of
If she can reciprocate it in an honest way?

I frowned at Cadence when she got close to put her weight on me again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She has a problem voicing her emotions,” Cadence replied with a roll of her eyes before she let me go and went on.

I know she’s a bit of a fixer-upper
She’s got a couple of bugs

“What that supposed to be a pun on my species?” I asked.

Her prolonged isolation
Is conformation
Of a desperate need for loving hugs

Sure she’s a bit of a fixer-upper
But this is what I’ll dooooo
I'm gonna take that filly of a fixer-upper
And fix her up with you!

Despite the drain it would cause on my magic, I let out a burst of energy and disrupted the magic around us, then glared at the pink pony when the music died down and I wrapped her up in my magic to pull her close to me. “Cadence! Enough already!”

“So, you see the light and are willing to give it another shot?” she asked with a sweet smile. “We can just tell Twilight last night was-”

I stomped my hoof on the ground. “No!” I yelled at her. “I am-”

Cadence broke out of my magic with a bust from her own horn, then glared at me for a moment. “You know Omnifarious, you’re not perfect either,” she went on before taking a deep breath.

I’d say you’re a bit of a fixer-upper
But that’s a minor thing
You’ve got some anger issues
That’ll make her need tissue
But without passion, love ain’t got no zing

I groaned and couldn’t resist the urge to face hoof as Cadence got all in my space again with that gentle smile thing she had to of learned from living with Celestia for God knows how long as she got a bit less excited and a little more feeley in her singing.

Look I’m saying you can change her
Cause ponies they don’t really change
All I’m saying is love’s a force
That’s powerful and strange

Turning me into her foreleg rest again as she sang the last line, Cadence then pulled me back to a bench and sat us both down before her magic conjured a chalkboard and she had her TK draw a frowning earth pony, a cowering pegasus, and a sweating unicorn.

Ponies make bad choices
When they’re angry, scared, or stressed

She added a plus sign and a heart next to the faces.

But throw a little love their way
And then comes out their best

Then some equals signs and the same three ponies in much happier situations.

Everyone’s a bit of a fixer upper
That’s what it’s all about
Lovers mothers sisters brothers
We need each other
To fix us up and round us out

A flap of the pony princess’s wings took her into the air and another quickly knocked her away from me as her horn started to glow.

But when push comes to shove
The only fixer that can fix a fixer upper is
Trruuuuuuuuuueeeee Love!

I blinked as Cadence released a bust of magic that created a pink heart firework effect around her that sparkled in the daylight as the music finally died down and I was left actually thinking about what she said for a moment instead of calling bullshit on it all.

I’m not saying her siren song sung with at angelic voice coming from the personification of pony beauty messed with me at all. Cause it didn’t. Not. At. All.

“Wow, that...it’s been awhile since I’ve been able to use the Magic of Harmony like that. Felt good,” the pink pony princess said to me as she came down to the ground. “And, is that an epiphany I see?”

I shook off the last of the effects of Cadence’s musical number and opened my mouth.

Only to shut it again when I heard a loud groan coming from behind me, and I turned around to find my least favorite pony had joined forces with the evil serpent of selfishness. In order words, Spike was there, riding Flash Sentry in the completely non-sexual way that the pegasus deserved to be ridden…by a stallion. A BIG stallion. “Twilight, what’s she doing here?”

“Fae’s coming with us Spike,” Twilight told him in a tone that reeked of forced cheeriness before she trotted up to me and her smiled softened to something so much cuter and genuine. “Look, I know you think that some time apart will calm Spike down and help to get him to accept you. But that’s just running away from the problem and…that’s not fair to you. Plus, with this stupid project I don’t get to spend enough time with you anyway so…maybe this is a way the two of you can bond.”

My mouth dropped open as I came to a very horrible conclusion, and I had to force it shut. “Okay,” I managed to mumble while my brain was saying, you have got to be fucking kidding me.

“Great!” Twilight exclaimed before she rose up on her horsey toes and gave me a quick peck of the lips. Then her eyes widen and she shuddered. “Right…forgot what changeling tasted like,” she said before turning and trotting towards the exit. “I need to get something to wash the taste out of my mouth. Shiny’s waiting for us at the catacombs entrance.”

And a second later she was gone, with Spike and his personal flying monkey trailing behind. “But-but this is the real Flash Sentry Twilight, you don’t need that jerk anymore!”

Me and Cadence just stood there for a moment.

“…I thought you said you broke up with her,” the alicorn managed.

That allowed me to talk, if barely. “I um…did.”

“Are you sure she got the message?” the pony-Aphrodite asked.

“Yes.”

“And understood it?” Cadence asked. “Because it seems to me, she is hardly acting like somepony who just lost the love of her life due to some foolish neglect and a flared temper.”

I felt something punch me in the gut. Looking at things the way she had said it...

“…um…pony feathers,” I mumbled before slumping over…from the weight of a big pink alicorn putting her weight on me again.

Cadence got so close to my ear I could feel the breath from her nostrils when she whispered to me. “So what you’re saying is, my job is more than half done.”

“Cadence-” I got out and she practically hopped over me.

The alicorn let out a laugh that sounded WAY too much like one of Celestia’s as she pranced ahead of me that made her impossibly hot ass jiggle ever so lightly before she looked back with a knowing smirk I fucking KNOW she got from Tia. “Of course, you could just walk in and do it now. Clarify your intent and say this is all one big misunderstanding. I won’t do anything to stop you, but…”

I frowned.

“We both know it would break Twilight’s heart.”

I growled.

“Send her back into a fit of tears.”

I flinched.

“And utterly destroy her.”

I sighed, and looked away from the larger alicorn. “You are really starting to get under my skin here Cadence.”

The goddess of love let out a little laugh. “That’s what family does, and I have a feeling you’re going to be joining mine soon enough.”

I groaned and slowly followed after the goddess while making plans in my head. If Twilight really did want to go exploring in some spooky cave that may or may not have connections to Sombra, there was no way in hell I was going to distract her by breaking things off now.

It could all wait until after we had gotten a minute. Then I could just let her down gently. She…deserved that at least. One last hurrah, and then it would all be over.

Done.

Finetto.

And all that.

Chapter 22: The Incredibly Dark Machinations of Spike the Dragon and an Evil Insect Overlord

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Chapter 22: The Incredibly Dark Machinations of Spike the Dragon and an Evil Insect Overlord

Okay so, Shining Armor, Flash Sentry, Spike and me walk into a cave with Twilight, Sunset and Cadence, along with the captain of the crystal guard.

No, it’s not the beginning of a joke, it’s my life. It just sounds like a joke. Especially when the captain of the crystal guard was that same ass of a crystal pony that was standing behind me and barking orders all during brunch turned out to be named Twinkling Guardian. But…when your life sounds like the beginning of a joke, and a bad one at that, you tend to get very pissed off angry sad depressed irritable.

And yes, that’s an emotion.

I mean hell. Can you blame me? I had just put up with a week of dealing with Twilight’s obsessive compulsiveness that even managed to overpower her alicorn-sized nymphomania. Then got stuck in the middle of the worst room in Equestria while she just trotted off to play with her Big-Sister-in-law-Best-Friend-Forever. On top of which, the freaking pony goddess of love that had kind of forced me into a relationship with Twilight in the first place after the purple pony princess kind of um…dragged me into her bed at the end of our third time together despite it being only our first official date and did what came naturally…to ponies that walked around naked all the time, was constantly giving me this knowing look that was way to Tia for my taste.

Anyway, after flipping this switch in some obscure room, the guy named Twinkling and Shiny led us down into what was apparently some maze of hidden caverns beneath the Crystal Palace. I let Captain Red Shirt go first, but pulled Shining Armor aside and slowed my pace down to talk with him and make sure Twilight’s big brother didn’t get caught in whatever trap the wannabe background pony would hopefully trigger. Plus, I actually did have some legitimate questions to ask when the unicorn next to me gave a kind of complaint that I had been missing.

“You know, if Twily wanted some family bonding, we could have just gone to the hoofball game they were holding today in the stadium.”

Ignoring my need to ask about the games ponies played since Rainbow had kind of filled me in on pegasus sports, I focused more on the tunnels we were being forced to walk down thanks to the well-meaning but still pretty annoying alicorn. “So um…how exactly did you guys find all this in the first place?” I asked.

Shining looked over to me and smiled. “Well…Twilight came to visit me a few months ago when Cadence was away on business,” he began. “There were some missing books and reports of a ghost, so the two of us went to check it out and found that the books were being stolen by a creature called a crystal bard, which everypony thought was a ghost.”

A slight continuity error crept up in my head. “Uh Shiny? The guy for yesterday didn’t look so…ghostly, or creature-ish.”

“Oh no, the bard left weeks ago to take a look around Equestria,” Shining explained. “But he was pretty popular so, we have ponies that are good at telling stories still do recitals and book readings. The Crystal Empire is still kind of traditional like that.”

Then the only other real guy of the group besides myself, since Flash Sentry didn’t count and anything that sparkles when exposed to sunlight like a crystal pony didn’t deserve the title of man, cleared his throat. “Um look…Cadence said you were a little upset with how everything happened yesterday.”

I groaned at the reminder. Still, I really didn’t want to get on the nerves of the only other guy in the room. Cadence would probably have probably jump me the second I was clear of her husband, and not in the good way with the hot and passionate sex. So I choked down my indignation and told him, “It’s fine,” as evenly as I could.

“No, it’s not,” he replied softly. “You have given my sister real happiness, and saved her life and…I’m sorry that I let a bunch of…politics dictate how I should have treated a friend.”

God damnit, I thought to myself as my feelings of rigorous indignation started to slide further away from the right side of the feelings scale, and to the more petty ones. At least when it came to Shining and Cadence. I was still plenty pissed at Twilight thanks to the week of nothing and Spike.

“But Twilight! Just look at it! It’s not even a real pony!” the dragon’s voice carried through the cavern. “How can you possibly think you belong together?”

At that point, the entire group just turned around and looked back at Spike. The dragon just blinked at all the attention and sudden loss of motion. But it was Twilight that said that was probably on all our minds. “Seriously?”

Spike just blinked. “What?”

“Great Spike! The changeling must be controlling them!” Flash Sentry said as he crouched down. “Just give the word mighty one. I’m ready to run away at any time!”

A groan came from Twilight and she trotted ahead to catch up with me and Shiny while Cadence stepped in to start trying her luck with talking with the boy. “So Spike, ummm…how’re your friends in Canterlot doing?” the goddess of love that obviously had no idea what to ask the dragon…well, asked.

“They’re okay.”

I stumbled at hearing that, and looked over to the whiney dragon expert of the group, my abandonment issues forgotten for the moment. “Spike has friends in Canterlot?” Took me a lot to say those last two words.

Hell, I was surprised to hear Spike had friends, Period!

The look Twilight gave me spoke tons about how surprised she was at the question. “You didn’t know that?” she asked with wide eyes. “He goes up to visit them about once every week or so and get some business in Canterlot done for me.”

And yet, when someone new moved into Twilight’s life, he still got all bratty little brother. I wondered if it was some dragon thing and he was trying to horde Twilight. I hadn’t exactly seen a stallion around any of the girls either aside from Blueblood at the Gala. Sure there was the whole female-centric population thing, but considering how amazing the girls looked and were, I would have thought there was at least one stallion who chased after a Mane 6 filly.

Then I remember just who I was talking to and that I was supposed to be mad at her, and looked on ahead into the cavern. The Crystal Caverns beneath the Crystal Palace were…well…full of crystals. So much so that there were times when I had trouble not thinking I’d wandered into Superman’s fortress of solitude. Sure, there was plenty of normal things like rocks and dirt, but the crystal content of the caves never dropped below forty-percent, and in some places the unicorns had to turn down the horns in order to keep the light from getting to blinding levels.

As for the path, it was pretty straight forward. Well, there were a few twists and turns, but it was extremely obvious that the way we went was the only way to go. Other pathways had ground that was way too uneven to be used by a pony, were too small, or were actually closed off by ancient-looking boards that made the place look a little too much like a mine.

Which, considering the makeup of the Crystal Palace, it probably was.

So, surrounded by the junk and next to an encyclopedia with four legs, I couldn’t help but ask. “What is up with all the crystals anyway? We have a castle of crystals above us, tons of them down here… I know Equestria is full of gems to the point of ridiculousness, but I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to use them for the main building material in a castle.”

“Actually the majority of the Crystal Empire’s capital city is made of crystal,” Twilight told me as she became a little brighter. “It’s not just the palace, but most of the roads too.”

That rather useless bit of information that didn’t answer my question at all helped me grab some more anger and reminded me I was still supposed to be mad at the ex-unicorn. “You mean they walk on the stuff? That’s stupid.” Not to mentioning inane, insane, and overly costly. I knew asphalt and horse hooves didn’t mix too well, but they could have used something that wouldn’t shatter.

Shining Armor looked back at me for a second, and then to Twilight, who slumped a little before he answered my question. “Not really. The whole city is a giant magical amplification matrix tied to the Crystal Heart at the base of the palace. Without it, the heart wouldn’t have the reach it does to keep the weather at bay over the outlying farms.”

And with that explanation, our little conversation died a quick death. I was glad of it to.

At least until Twilight opened her mouth again as she turned back to look at the dragon. “You know Spike, I bet Fae would love to hear about your life in Canterlot.”

“Feh, so it can send one of its changelings to replace me,” Spike told her.

I growled at the several things wrong with that statement. “It doesn’t work that way you idiot.”

Twilight shot me a glare. “Fairy!”

You know those times when you say something you don’t really mean to because of a bunch of raging emotions that just won’t clear out so you can think properly and your mouth just moves faster than your brain can think? I walked right into one of those situations.

“What?” I demanded loud enough to make the cave ask that question itself a few times. “I haven’t done anything to him, and give you a bag of gems every night to take home for his dinner because I don’t know what else to do other than sell the things! I have barely said ten words to him a day since I got to Ponyville, and never harmed a hair on his head, and yet I’m the bad guy after he sics a whole bucking city on me! I’m the one that has to make the effort to be friends or something when, to be quite honest, I don’t give much of a buck about it! And you know what else? I told you and Spike that message the other night because-Gah!”

I stumbled forward when something impacted one of my back legs at the joint and sent me sliding to the ground.

“Sunset!” Twilight yelled.

“My foot slipped,” the human replied before I started to pick myself up, and felt the only fingers in Equestria grab my horn while I was trying to get up.

A frown crossed my face. “You really shouldn’t do that.”

Sunset let out a snort. “No way I’m letting you get off a spell to pants me in revenge or something,” the teenager told me. “Now-OW!”

The teen quickly removed her hand, and I let out a sigh before elaborating a bit too late. “No, it’s because the crookedness of my horn is all kinds of sharp and you might cut your hand.”

I took a look around to see our entire dungeon party had stopped and were looking at me with some nervous expressions while Sunset inspected her palm. Then my soft-spot for the teenager kicked in and I let out a sight before doing my best to check over her injury. It was pretty impossible seeing as how she topped me by the better part of two feet though. “You okay?”

“It’s just a scratch,” she replied.

Cadence came trotting over a second later. “Let me take a look at it,” she said before looking at the rest of the group. “You all go on ahead. We’ll catch up as soon as I heal Sunset.”

Once again, Twilight gave me one of her hurt and kind of guilty looks that threw some water on the fires of anger burning inside of me, and I grimaced. Why me? I asked myself. I mean, was it too much to ask that the pony I was mad at remain in a state that allowed me to stay mad at her?

“Cadence,” Sunset spoke. “I was never an alicorn, but I was around Princess Celestia enough to know that you need to have a good working knowledge of the creature you're trying to heal for that magic to work, or something to go off of like traces of previous healings. And I don’t think you’ve run into too many humans.”

The alicorn nodded. “You’re right, but now we’ve got Fae alone where she isn’t going to be just teleporting away from our conversation thanks to crystal interference.”

I frowned at the damn alicorn. Ponies may have sucked when it came to deviousness, but they sure as hell were an opportunistic bunch of bastards. “I hate you both so much right now.”

“You can ignore that,” the human told Cadence before she looked down at me with a frown. “And you! You can’t seriously want to break up with Twilight because of…what the hell is it that she did again?”

I frowned back Sunset, my anger unable to rise because I kept looking back to her injured hand and how it was actually dripping blood. “You sure you don’t need to get that looked at? At least bandage the stupid thing.”

A snort from the human told me what she thought of that idea. “What with? My shirt?” she asked with a frown. “Now answer the question.”

“Oh come on, you were there for most of it…at the end of the day I mean,” I grumbled at the end. “Celestia put in her stupid request, and Twilight just jumped at the chance to be useful to her again. She shoved everything else to the side for a pat on the head. And you know, I might actually be able to understand that, except for when Rainbow needed support, she threw it all out the window!”

Cadence let out a little snicker, and then managed a laugh. “And you’re complaining about that, why exactly?”

I rolled my eyes at the alicorn’s words. “That’s not a problem at all! Hay, I’m glad she went! But as soon as we got back I was out in the cold and then she just throws everything aside again to go visit you!”

“Like you told her to do?” Sunset asked with a much too smarmy smirk.

The question made me opened my mouth…and…that was as far as I could get. “Uh…well…”

Cadence let out another chuckle. “And you wouldn’t believe how many times I basically heard Twilight tell me how thankful she is that you were willing to sacrifice your time together so she could come here.”

My ears heard the word of the pony…

“I…wait…what?”

…and got all confused.

Especially when she let out another laugh. “Well, from what Twilight says, this entire trip was your idea,” Cadence told me. “As was having her spend the whole day with me…even though Shiny tagged along.”

Then the goddess of love let out a long sigh. “What happened to you yesterday was a tragedy, and shameful to me but…did Twilight have anything to do with it?”

As my mind went over the events of the previous day, I…couldn’t really find something to put any real blame on her for. Even the whole hour-long wait was more Cadence’s fault than anyone else’s and she had already apologized for that so much that I kind of had a hard time being mad at her for it. She hadn’t known I was locked in a damn room after all.

Not to mention I knew about Twilight’s single-mindedness when there was a task placed in front of her. She tended to ignore everything else unless someone came and got her, and even then, they needed to grab her attention first.

But I wasn’t about to just lose an argument with a freaking pink pony princess. “Yeah, well…um…she could have…done something…with me…at least once during the week.”

Sunset snorted. “Oh quit being a little bitch and man up,” she grumbled. “If you want to spend some time with your girlfriend, then actually put some effort into spending some time with her instead of just bitching when she makes time for someone else. Like you fucking told her to!”

To that argument, I could back down. It wasn’t fair arguing with Sunset anyway. She didn’t have any magical powers or four legs so…I needed to let her win.

I sighed in defeat and hung my head. “It’s not your fault for the guards Cadence,” I admitted slowly. “You didn’t make them all hate me.” For that, I blamed Spike.

In fact, everything that had happened since the trip had started was Spike’s fault. The guards, the rather annoying crowd, the getting locked in a room for most of the day instead of having time to study the crystal mirror and bond with Twilight, hell even the fight on the train was due to the dragon’s hypocrisy in blaming Sunset for what she did while transformed.

Twilight was just…in the wrong place at the wrong time. A poor, innocent pony that had been lured into my crosshairs by chance while the real villain of the story sat in the background, using me as a tool to break her heart. Hell, doing so would have even played right into his hands!

His little clawed hands.

Hell, Spike wanted me to breakup with Twilight! And if I did that then…

I couldn’t even finish the thought.

In fact, the more I thought about it, all the problems in the relationship between me and Twilight went back to Spike.

He apparently badmouthed me when I wasn’t around to anyone who would listen.

He made Twilight come home every night so we couldn’t sleep together.

He refused to live in the castle with me and the other changelings.

As the three strikes added up, I slowly turned my vengeful sights away from the poor purple pony princess that was just an innocent tool, and focused them towards the dark serpent that had attempted to manipulate me into doing something foolish. For that, he would pay. Pay dearly!

“Uh oh,” I heard Sunset mumble, which brought me out of images that had the little dragon roasting on a spit and made me look up at her. “You got that…sinister look in your eyes again.”

I curved my lips upwards in a smile. “Oh don’t worry. I’m perfectly fine.”

“Now you just look even scarier,” the human continued.

Cadence let out a nervous laugh. “Oh it’s the fangs. And well…she or…he…what are you anyway? Twilight and Auntie mentioned some sort of gender confusion, but they seemed pretty confused about a lot of things themselves when it came down to it.”

The question lot a long groan out of me. “Technically, I’m neither…or both, depending on how you want to look at it,” I told her. “And to be honest…I’ve kind of gotten used to being called a girl.” It only bothered me half the time.

“That just makes it more confusing,” the alicorn grumbled.

Then I put on my brightest face and trotted forward. “Well come on girls, we gotta hurry and catch-up to Twilight and the others.”

Of course the two girls kept talking to me for the ten whole minutes it took for us to find the main group. As it turned out, they hadn’t really gotten all that further ahead of us. This was probably because of the giant arch of obsidian in front of a rather large opening that led to well…

Imagine the Temple of Doom, or at least that one scene where Indy is hiding up on a ledge and sees the big room with the demonic statue and giant human skull between its legs. Now imagine that whole place redesigned by the pony version of Hitler, that apparently knew what demonic beings really looked like and decorated to suit the tastes of monsters that took joy out of causing pain and suffering by putting some 3D art on the walls.

Like the entrance, the entire cavern was just a mass of black crystalline rock with murals along the walls depicting various creatures that looked so inhuman I didn’t even know what to call them, or if they could even move around at all since most of them didn’t seem to even have legs. Although what was really creepy were the pictures that looked vaguely familiar, monsters from various religions, fantasy novels, and a bunch of other crap that just shouldn’t be.

The big monsters that just looked icky were one thing…but the crap that my mind could make a connection to from some old horror story? That actually sent a chill down my spine because of the possibility of them being real in one form or another. I couldn’t really argue with the possibility of their existence either. I had been reborn into My Little Pony after all, so all the dark monsters from my childhood’s imagination could have very well been waiting out there in the winds somewhere in one form or another.

Then, just to add to the creepiness, the unicorn part of me got that faint tingle that just screamed out the entire fucking cave was one giant, magical artifact that was just waiting to be used. On top of which, there was also a bit more ominous feeling coming from a bright red gem on top of the entrance that just screamed ‘DANGER’ and ‘FUCK OFF’.

“Okay so…big spooky cave great find guys, perfect bonding experience Twilight,” I told the purple alicorn as I walked up to her and put a foreleg across her back. “I feel closer to you than ever. Now let’s get the buck out of here.”

Spike let out a snort. “What’s a matter, you scared?”

I frowned at the dragon that was currently cowering behind a pair of royal guards, then made sure Twilight wasn’t looking at me when I shot him a sneer.

Beside me, Shining Armor took a step forward. “This place feels even worse than Sombra’s black magic library. We still haven’t mapped out the tunnels and entrances, so somepony could find another one and wander down here and disrupt something.”

The sheer impossibly of that made me roll my eyes. I had actually skimmed Sombra’s book on demonic magic and knew all the rules involved with the damn things, and it was a pretty complicated process that no one could just stumble into unless they had the worst luck possible. “Okay, what kind of pony could possibly…” I managed to say before my own imagination rebelled against me.

“CUTIE MARK CRUSADER CTHULHU CALLERS, YAY!” three little fillies cheered as the dark god rose from the deeps to devour us all.

“…never mind,” I mumbled before I cleared that rather disturbing thought from my head. “Okay so…how exactly are we going to do this?”

Shining gave me an odd look, then turned his attention back to the arch. “Well, first we need to get past that.” He pointed up to the glowing red gem. “It looks a bit more dangerous than Sombra’s usual security measures. After that, we just go in and smash the arcane symbols carved into the dark crystals. That should disable any hope of it being used to...do whatever its supposed to.”

I sighed at the overly dangerous plan. “Can’t we just collapse the tunnel with our magic. I mean, we got you, me and two alicorns with us. I’m pretty sure we can handle a bunch of rocks.”

“The entire cavern is lined with unfocused magic amplification and transmission crystals Fae,” Twilight explained as she cut in. “If we use destructive magic around it…well, I don’t want to think what would happen to all the ponies above us. Even moving things with our magic could be dangerous.”

Of course Spike took that opportunity to get in his jab too. “See Twilight! That changeling doesn’t care about anypony! It’s probably going to come back here when we’re and blow us all up!”

My hoof shook as I restrained myself from just knocking the hell out of the little bastard. I had dealt with brats before plenty of times in my former life after all, I just had to get used to it again.

Twinkle let out a grunt from behind me, and I turned around to glare at him while Shiny went to get a closer look at the arch. “Don’t worry Sir Spike, I’ll have guards posted at all the known entrances to make sure the creature doesn’t try anything.”

I groaned and looked over to Cadence. “How exactly did this idiot get the job of guard captain anyway?”

The idiot in question stomped his hoof on the ground. “I was the leader of the Crystal Resistance when King Sombra held power over the Empire!”

“So, you were the leader of the Loser Brigade,” I surmised before my nastiness reared it’s head. “Tell me, how did it feel when my mother came here and took you all down in, what? Three seconds? Hay, the Hive operated in the Empire for weeks, right under your nose, walked right up to the Crystal Heart multiple times as tourists and everything.”

As I watched the other pony practically seethe with anger, Twilight poked me in the shoulder. “Fairy, stop it.”

I looked over to Twilight with a glare. “I get locked in a room while Sunset starves for a day, and I’m supposed to just drop it?” I snarled. “Why the hay should I?”

Twilight’s ears wilted, and that whole guilt thing kicked me in the gut, which took the wind out of my sails for a moment. “Sorry,” I managed before the fucking dragon cut in and kept me from going on.

“No you’re not!” Spike yelled. “See Twilight, that’s what its really like!”

“EVERYPONY JUST BE QUIET!” Twilight shouted before I felt a bit of magic clamp down on my mouth.

Then she glared at me. “Just because somepony is being mean to you doesn’t mean you can be mean back to them!”

And then Twilight turned to Spike. “And I’m tired of hearing this from you! I invited the two of you along so you could learn to get along! Not so you could antagonize her!”

“And you!” Twilight exclaimed as she looked over to the guard. “How dare you talk to my friend that way!”

A burst of magic from my own horn dispelled Twilight’s magic, and I glared at the purple pony. “So, now I can’t even defend myself when-”

“Wait a second,” Shining’s voice cut in. “Omnifarious, use your magic again.”

I poked my head out of the fatal-four way of an argument that was about to build into an all-out brawl, and just charged my horn with magic while Captain Douchebag tried to get in the last word.

“You do not give orders to me little filly. I was commanding the battle against darkness before your great-grandfather was even born!”

Cadence’s voice rang out. “But I do Captain! And if you ever speak to my little sister like that again, they’ll be calling you Private Twinkling Guardian!”

“Feh, the ponies of the Crystal Empire would never allow such a thing!” the guard’s voice rang out. “I fought against both Sombra and the bugs while all you did was hold up the crystal heart that our hero delivered, and ran away when we were in true danger from the changelings.”

My mood soured even more at hearing that news. “Why in the hay did you give that idiot such authority anyway?” I asked the white stallion.

Shining let out a tired sigh. “It’s complicated,” he mumbled while I just gave him a look that said he needed to uncomplicated it. “Look, although the Crystal Empire is part of Equestria, after Sombra took over, a lot of the crystal ponies felt betrayed by the Princesses when Celestia and Luna didn’t immediately come to their rescue. In fact, Sombra was in control for years before they did. Then there was the whole thousand years of banishment and…there’s a lot of resentment towards the alicorns, especially since the royal family had always been unicorns.”

That peeked my interest. “So, the Crystal Empire was always ruled by unicorns?” I asked. “I thought Sombra just showed up and took the place over or something.”

“No,” Shining Armor replied. “Sombra really was the rightful ruler by inheritance. But then he turned to black magic and…I’m sure you know the rest of that story. But with everything that happened, a lot of the nobles are grumbling about how the rest of Equestria has abandoned them because we didn’t do anything to try and bring the Empire back sooner, and now they’ve got a new alicorn princess that’s...um... Look, there’s some uproar about how a crystal pony should be in charge of crystal ponies despite them being a millennia out of date with everything.” He let out a disgruntled sigh. “Seriously, we just got plumbing installed in the city last month…it really helped with Cadence’s popularity too.”

I nodded, then looked back at the guard captain with a frown for a minute. “And I can take a guess at who would be taking control of the Empire if a crystal pony was put in charge.”

Shiney moved his head in confirmation before he looked back at the arch. “So, going by some of Sombra’s previous enchantments…I think I’ve figured this one out. It’s designed to only let ponies like Sombra come and go as they please. If not…” The unicorn levitated a bit of non magical rock up from the ground and threw it into the archway.

There was a bright red flash as dozens of beams of red light shot from the arch. Dust landed on the other side.

“Well that’s just great,” I grumbled. “If it only let’s Sombra through and flash fries everything else, how in the hay are we supposed to get in? I take it teleportation isn’t an option?” I remembered it didn’t work to well when Twilight tried it on Sombra’s last security system.

Shining shook his head. “I said ponies like Sombra. As in male unicorns powered by dark magic.”

It took about three seconds for me to catch on to what Shiny-hiney was talking about. “Oh…okay then.”

I looked the unicorn over for a bit and sampled his aura. A few seconds later, and I was the spitting image of Shining Armor. After I gave myself a quick once-over, noticing how handsome I looked now with my righteous physique and…quickly realized I was kind of checking out Twilight’s brother with a bit of revulsion. Oh…damn you Celestia.

Pony girls were bad enough. I did NOT need to know what was hot, and what was not when it came to the stallions.

And then I felt the other thing I had been lacking for the past long while, other three things really. Having a manhood again was…comforting, awkward, and a little alien all at the same time. I mean, yeah they were guy parts, but they were pony guy parts. Years and years of experience and nightly reinforcement as a guy actually made me feel a little awkward about having pony junk again.

Oh God…did I just think it was weird to have a freaking penis? I asked myself with a shudder. If it wasn’t for the fact that the hive would have killed me if I went and did the permanent male transformation mess-up thing Twilight had created out of fear of me never being able to lay eggs, I would have gone female alicorn and demanded Twilight use her gender-bender magic on me right then and there.

“Um, you okay?” Shining asked.

I coughed. “Sorry, it’s been awhile since I’ve been a stallion. Trying to enjoy it a little.”

Shining laughed. “That’s right, you two don’t…” He looked back to the other group that was still arguing, albeit softly.

“But Twilight, Flash Sentry! You liked him just fine months ago, and now you don’t! That’s proof that you’re being controlled!” Spike went on.

Once again, I felt the need to just bitch slap the dragon across the face and repressed it. If the little bastard kept going on like that, I might just find myself actually mind raping the girl when her guard was down, and then ordering her to throw Spike out on the street and forget about him.

Oh how tempting it was.

Twilight groaned. “I never liked Flash Sentry, Spike,” she said before glancing over to the pegasus for a second. “No offense Flash.”

“Yes you did!” Spike countered.

“No I didn’t!”

As the battle between brother and sister degenerated, I looked back to the elder of Twilight’s siblings. “Hey you know Spike. Any idea of how I’m suppose to get him off my back about this whole thing?”

Shining frowned. “I thought that’s what this was supposed to do. Make you two friends or something.”

“For that to happen, I actually have to want to be friends with him,” I grumbled while I looked back at the serpent. “Considering he hasn’t been all that inviting with me, and this little stunt he’s pulled with the guard. It’s not really helping up my want to be friends all that much either.” Hell, I had killed a dragon for less than what Spike was doing and mounted its damn head on my wall.

Can you two please just get this over with so we can get the hell out of here?”

Sunset’s request that came from the girl as she walked up to the two of us put my mind back on track and I groaned and walked forward. A small tingle of magic in the air had me a little nervous…but since I didn’t feel any mystical pressure building around me that would have signaled a trap, I kept going until I was in the center of the arch.

A wave of magic hit me, and I tense before I realized what was going on. The doorway’s magic read my own, and after a second, linked with me to ask for instructions. About two seconds after the whole process started, the arch shut down from my mental commands, and I walked into Sombra’s Temple of Doom remake to take a real look around while dropping my unicorn disguise.

Apart from the murals and statue at the back that I had caught sight of before, I noticed the whole place was covered with faint indentations that were too perfectly sunken to be natural. A closer inspection showed me a few of the markings were alike and I put two and two together. “So the whole floor is covered with some kind of writing. Doesn’t look Equestrian though.”

Ponies wrote in some kind of horse-language cursive. What I was looking at was a standalone letter system, or some type of runes. Which was odd considering Twilight never mentioned any kind of magic like that in all our talks on the matter during my first few weeks in Ponyville when I practically grilled her on it.

“Let me take a look,” Sunset said as she stepped forward.

“NO! YOU MUST NOT LET THE DEMON INTO THE CHAMBER! STOP HER!”

“Do something Flash!” Spike cried out.

I looked up just in time to see Captain Edward Cullen break away from his argument with Cadence to give his stupid order, and Flash Sentry leapt to obey the dragon on his back while Twilight let out a surprised squawk when Spike landed on her and they both went while tumbling out of the way before Flash Sentry heroically rammed into a teenage girl as she turned around and put her arms up in defense fast enough to send her flying a good seven to ten feet further into the room, slam onto the floor, and slide all the way to the altar while leaving a trail of blood behind her.

The sight made me freeze.

“Alright Flash you did it!” Spike cheered. “See Twilight! All they wanted was to get to Sombra’s magic and…” Spike said some other crap to Twilight about how he was right and kept his mistrust, and followed his instincts just like she did during the wedding, and some other shit. I really didn’t give a damn at that moment.

All my attention was on the redhead laying on the ground with her mouth open trying to breathe while she clutched at herself, and the trail of blood that sliding across unforgiving rock had left behind.

In my life, I had seen people get hurt before. Really hurt. Even experienced such pain myself a few times back when I worked with horses and got kicked hard enough to break bone. It’s not like stubbing your toe where there’s this rush of pain and you hop around for a bit until its gone.

Getting really hurt, doesn’t really hurt that much. Not at first anyway. The human body just kind of freezes up as the brain gets all these sensations and blinked before muttering ‘Holy shit, am I really that fucked up?’ double checks everything, and then nods to itself before sending over to the conscious parts of the mind to let you know just how bad things are.

For Sunset, there was no cries of pain or anything, not at first. The blow from the pegasus, which had to have been close to a car going fifty if that lighting bolt on the soon to be crippled pegasus’s butt was any indication, had knocked the wind out of her. So she was both trying to scream and drag in breath at the same time, which made it sound more like she was half-choking on something.

“OH BE QUIET SPIKE!” Twilight roared at her little brother. “This! You’re saying that you’re happy about THIS?”

I was by Sunset’s side in an instant. The sight of the numerous cuts and blood running down her back made me wince, but I did my best to hide in and looked into the girl’s eyes while trying to sound as reassuring as I could. “It’s okay Sunset. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

The girl let out a tiny whine and curled up into a ball. As much as I hated to admit it, I was glad for it. Being hit with a flying pegasus and landing on her back could have easily done some serious damage of the paralyzing kind. But I wasn’t stupid enough to think she had gotten away without some major damage of some sort.

“It hurts,” she managed to get out in another tiny cry of pain.

“What the buck do you think you’re doing Captain?” Shining demanded.

“Finishing the job! I won’t see the Crystal Empire fall to the monsters, NOT AGAIN!” the crystal pony shouted.

The words of the crystal pony made me look up in time to see him leap at Shining Armor, and then I remembered the presence of the other member of the crystal guard that was in the room with me. The pony that had hurt Sunset in the first place.

I looked upon the pegasus’s paling face, a target for all my rage and hatred that had been building up for the past several days. He must have felt it, because Flash Sentry immediately went to cowering when I focused my attention on him. I wanted to kill him. I even knew how I was going to do it. I would rip off his wings, gouge out his eyes with his own feathers, and snap his other limbs with telekinesis before I drained him as dry as I could then left him on the ground while I wanted to see what would kill him first: the loss of his wings, some kind of internal damage, or if he would make it all the way to starvation while I laughed at his suffering.

But…none of that would have helped Sunset.

And there was a much bigger pony than me who had an even greater claim on Flash Sentry’s hide than I did for his assault on her daughter. Revenge would be her job.

Mine was to make sure Sunset lasted that long. And for that I needed help.

I looked up as Shining Armor wrapped the guard captain in an almost opaque amount of magical energy that seemed closer to his shield spell than normal unicorn telekinesis. “You aren’t laying a single hoof on anypony!”

“TWILIGHT! CADENCE! SUNSET NEEDS HELP!” I called out to the two alicorns that came running as soon as I uttered her name, leaving the dragon in the dust.

Twilight winced when she came in and looked around. “Is that…blood?”

I glanced over to Cadence. “Is there anything you can do?”

“I told you healing magic doesn’t just work like that. She needs a doctor,” the alicorn said before she looked down at the girl. “Or a…vet. I’m sorry, it’s just, I doubt a normal doctor has much experience treating monkeys.”

Twilight gulped down her shock a second later and looked down at the girl. “Sunset, I’m going to use a full body paralysis field. It will keep you from moving and being jostled just, please straighten out. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay curled up like that.”

“SENTRY, FINISH THE MONSTER OFF!” Twinkling shouted from inside Shining’s magical hold.

I glared at the pegasus as he backed up all the way to the end of the room. “Please try it, please just give me an excuse to rip something off.”

“Fairy we have to go now!” Twilight ordered rather loudly in my ear.

The demand go a frown from me. “What? Why me?”

“Because you’re the only one of us who knows anything about human anatomy!” Twilight exclaimed.

A second later I was following her out the door while Shining tossed the captain of his guard into the obsidian room with the pegasus a second before entrance was surrounded by one of his shields. “Since I can’t risk carrying either of you through the caverns with all the crystals, I’ll be back with a detail of guards to escort the two of you to a cell. Until then, enjoy your accommodations.”

The three of us didn’t get very far past the stallion before Spike jumped out to bar our way with his tearful eyes. “Twilight wait-”

I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. “WHAT? Are you still going go on about how evil we are NOW THAT YOU GOT EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANTED?” I demanded to the cowering child’s face.

“Fairy-”

At my name, I turned to glare at the purple alicorn. “If you dare try and defend him after this-”

“No, but Sunset needs help now! We don’t have time for this,” she told me before getting past me.

I let out a growl of a sigh, and followed.

Judging by the sounds coming from behind us on the way out, Shining picked up the boy.

Two hours after we exited the crystal caverns, I found myself looking over Sunset while she was laying in a quick mishmash of three pony hospital beds that provided for her extra size and height. By the random chance fate thing of Equestria, she had managed to avoid getting any actual broken bones from being hit with a flying pegasus. Although, her back was a mass of scrapes and cuts that was covered by one gigantic bandage. Of course her front wasn’t much better. Some of Sunset’s ribs had been cracked by the impact and one of her arms had begun to show a very purple bruise where Flash had hit her.

But according to the vet, Sunset life wasn’t in any real danger. Although we turned down the offering of her shots, a flee bath, and spaying before I threw the idiot out the nearest door. Thankfully, he had already doped Sunset up and put her to sleep.

“This is all my fault.”

I reached over with my darkly colored and once again feathered wing of pseudo-alicorn disguise-ness to wrap it around the purple pony sitting next to me along with a foreleg and pulled Twilight close. After bringing her head in underneath my own, I stroked her hair using my fetlock and gently hushed her.

It kind of hit me that even after all the crap that had happened, I still couldn’t stand to see her sad. “Oh no Twilight no. It’s not your fault,” I told the little pony princes before I took off the kid gloves of the family VS relationship conflict. “It’s Spike’s.”

As far as Spike was concerned, he had lost that whole right of me not putting myself between Twilight and her family. After this, I was going to take Twilight away from him, and laugh in his face as I did.

Me and Twilight would work through this whole…dead relationship time…thing, and grow closer and more loving and all that.

And every step closer together would take us further away from him.

Twilight flinched in my pony-arms. “Fae…he…”

When the girl couldn’t bring up a counter-argument, I pushed her away slightly, and switched to holding her by the shoulders and looked into the alicorn’s big purple eyes. “Don’t you dare say he didn’t mean for this to happen, because this is the only way his little…whatever the buck he’s planning could have gone, if not worse. Humans are extremely fragile compared to ponies, and we got lucky!”

“I just don’t understand what’s wrong with him,” Twilight said as she looked at the ground. “This...this isn’t the Spike I know and love.”

I grit my teeth and forced myself not to shout. “The same thing that was wrong with the whole of Ponyville on Nightmare Night. Only this time, it’s not a reformed goddess that can defend herself from pretty much anything, but a frightened little girl that is getting guilt-tripped enough by her own conscience.”

Twilight sunk down even more, and I pulled her in for another hug.

It lasted for about a minute before the door to Sunset’s hospital room banged open and Cadence ran in with a slightly worried look on her face. That broke our little embrace, and kind of made me a little worried. “Twilight, um…Auntie Celestia is here with Princess Luna and your friends.”

The news pulled the two of us apart, and Twilight looked over to Cadence with a frown. “They’re what?” Twilight asked before she let out a groan. “Oh right, tonight’s our weekly meet-up for dinner. I can’t believe I forgot about that.”

Cadence frowned at us, and I could Smell her confusion mouth. “Dinner? But she said-”

“Yes,” Twilight replied with a sigh. “Princess Celestia wants us all to meet up for a meal once a week. The first one was actually…well, it kind of fell through when Rarity ended up needing help with her work. But then the princess brought us over to help with the sewing and everything ended up being pretty…fun, actually.”

The stomp of a hoof on the floor cut into Twilight’s giggling before it really began. “Twilight! Celestia says she’s here for a princess summit and mentioned some project the two of you were working on.”

“WHAT?” Twilight shouted right next to my ear, getting a wince out of me while she went on. “T-That can’t be right! I’m not finished, nowhere near finished reviewing all the data! It’s going to take me months to go over all the records from the major cities! How could she possibly think I’m ready now?”

Before the alicorn could really get into her hyperventilation, I cleared my throat. “Um…right about that,” I cut in before telling her what was going on. I left out the part where I had only done it to show Twilight up in front of Celestia thanks to an angry rage being locked in a little room by the crystal guard had put me in. Instead I just went with, “I’m sorry if you're angry or something but…I just got so tired of being shoved aside every day for a bunch of stupid papers and your bucking project for Princess Celestia.”

Cadence frowned at me. “You managed to do in a single evening what would have taken Twilight months?” she asked. “How?”

I opened my mouth, but managed to stop myself from saying ‘Shadow Clone jutsu’ and just went with, “I have thousands of changelings under my command, and we all have a shared memory. Simple mare power allows me to have several changelings read and memorize reports, then store the information in the hive-mind for my personal access. Where she could put in one hour of work, I could put in hundreds.”

“Are you telling me you could have had this stupid thing done weeks ago?” Twilight grumbled.

The anger in Twilight’s voice put me off balance. “Um…what?” I asked. I had expected her to be upset, but…not angry upset. “Twilight? What’s wrong?”

The alicorn glared at me. “I have been having to put time with my friends aside, time with you aside for a week to make up for the backlog of hours that the Equestria Games qualifying round and this trip to the Crystal Empire is going to cost me all week just to keep on my projected schedule,” she growled. “AND YOU COULD HAVE HAD IT DONE IN A DAY?”

I winced. “I-I thought you…um…would have been mad?”

“Why the buck would I have been mad about being able to spend time with all my friends again?” she demanded in a much lower voice that still managed to convey that angry emotion just as well.

“Um…because I…outshined you in front of Tia…or something?” I managed.

Which got a half-lidded stare from the alicorn. “That is the stupidest reasoning I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.”

I slumped, Twilight sighed, and Cadence smirked at us. The kind that reminded me of Tia way too much, or how an older sister that looks at her younger sibling. “So, you did this…yesterday?” she asked. “When you were angry at her and everything?”

“Oh be quiet,” I mumbled. “And where the hay is Tia? Shouldn’t she be here to check up on her-Sunset?” I knew the sun goddess would be kind of pissed if I let it slide about the whole idea that she wanted to pretty much adopt the unicorn-turned-human before she could ease Sunset into the idea.

The question successfully killed Cadence’s smirk, and she cleared her throat. “Um, yes…when I told her what happened…Auntie Celestia may have…melted a few things…after bursting into flames,” the alicorn said reluctantly. “Luna told her it was a good idea to take few minutes and calm down.”

“And now that I am, I have come to see her.”

The voice coming from the door wasn’t loud, but…it still had an air of power to it that made my bones vibrate. Tia looked…slightly different. Her white coat had turned slightly golden, and I could feel the heat coming off of her front the doorway. She looked to be in a halfway state between what I had seen during her fight with Grogar, and what she normally looked like.

Well, speak of the God Empress of Pony-kind, and She shall appear, I thought to myself before Tia spoke again. “What. Happened. To. Sunset?”

Twilight cringed. “P-Princess, he didn’t mean to…” she got out before the Goddess’s gaze fell on Twilight, and she stopped talking.

“This is calm?” I asked no one in particular with a raised eyebrow.

Tia fixed me with a steady gaze, and I had to lock my joints to keep from looking away. Finding my voice was a bit easier though. “Oh please Tia,” I grumbled. “I spend every night with you, so tone it down. And do you think it’s really smart to give Sunset a twenty degree increase in temperature when she’s been hurt?”

The giant alicorn let out a long breath that I’m pretty sure had steam in it, and after a few more seconds of obvious concentration and breathing, her coat was back to normal. “Now tell me what happened.”

I did.

I didn’t leave anything out, not even my misplaced anger towards Twilight.

Going over everything again helped me get a little perspective on a few things, like the week of crap I had to go through. I was still pretty angry about Twilight blowing me off and spending less and less time and energy on us, but…I also figured I could have made a much bigger fuss about it at the time and…there was no way the little alicorn wouldn’t have listened. Twilight knew plenty about friends, but full-on ‘adult’ relationships were something a bit different, and she apparently needed a few lessons on the dos and don’ts.

Calling it quits after a single mistake, especially after all the ones I had made, it just wasn’t worth getting rid of all the possible future happiness that could exist.

“And where is the dragon now?” Celestia asked evenly as she looked over to Twilight.

The smaller alicorn slumped. “In my room. He’s back to being grounded,” she explained. “Shiny brought him back and locked him there before he went to go find a few guards that wouldn’t turn on him while he was escorting Twinkling Guardian to a real cell.”

After a minute of silence, Twilight spoke again. “Princess…Spike…this was all an accident. He-”

“Leave Us,” Celestia ordered.

Twilight cringed at the words, and slunk out the door, followed by Cadence, and-

“Not you,” the goddess commanded as I made it halfway to the door to find it shutting on me with an aura of golden magic.

I gulped, and slowly turned around while Celestia made her way to Sunset’s bedside. “Um…yeah?” I asked cautiously while wishing I could be out there comforting Twilight.

Tia just…deflated. She let out a long breath and just slumped down over the slumbering teenager. “I know nothing about humans except what you’ve shown me in my dreams,” she mumbled before looking up at me. “How bad is it?”

“Honestly?” I asked the mother standing over her child as she visibly braced herself. “She got off lucky, very lucky. I know how fast a pegasus can fly and… If Sunset hadn’t of rolled with the impact, or gotten her hands up, or turned around in time…she would have died, or been crippled, or…a dozen other things.”

Despite her preparations, Tia shook and gasped for breath like I had punched her in the gut. “It’s…strange,” the goddess mumbled weakly as she fought to get herself under control. “I have seen countless ponies pass from this life. I have mourned the loss of students, of guardsponies, and others. I lost my sister to madness for a thousand years. But this…the sight of her laying there…of what you said…it fills me with dreadful terror I have never known before.”

I let out my own depressed sigh. “I’m sorry,” I told her as I lowered my head. “You trusted me to keep her safe and…I didn’t.” A dozen different scenarios played out in my mind. If I had just been a bit more forceful and demanding, brought the changelings I had with me on our little excursion, raised a fuss about Spike’s stupid little escort, if I had done…something different, none of this would have happened.

“No,” Tia told me with a shake of her head. “Do not blame yourself for the actions of others. You restrained yourself. You…did everything right. Well, dropping your disguise was something I can’t agree with, but…we never really agreed what would happen if you did and…it’s not like everypony can’t spot a changeling from a mile away when they see an adult pony without a cutie mark.”

A moan from the bed stopped our conversation, and we turned away from each other and the alicorn’s eyes widened as Sunset began to shift around before mumbling something in her sleep. “M-Momma?”

Not even a second later, Celestia’s muzzle was inches from her face. “I’m here. I’m here Sunset.”

For a second I just stared at the sight, and then felt like sighing. Right, I taught her English. “Um look, maybe I should um…go.”

Sunset opened her eyes, and took in sharp intake of breath. “P-Princess! I…um…” She cleared her throat and breathed deep, then winced before letting out a little cry of pain.

“What’s wrong with her?” Celestia demanded.

Oh, so that’s why I’m here…humanity expert, I told myself before trotting over to the girl. “Sunset, your ribs are cracked. You shouldn’t take deep breaths…or laugh…or do much of anything that might aggravate them.”

Sunset blinked a few times to get the sleepiness out of her eyes, or maybe tears. “M-My back…hurts.”

“Your back was scraped up pretty bad,” I told her. “I had the vet put some disinfectant on it before we put the bandages on-”

“A VET?” Celestia roared. “YOU HAD MY-”

A tiny moan from Sunset silenced the raging goddess, and brought Celestia’s attentions back to her. “Good idea. I’m…not exactly a pony…anymore.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, then looked back to her. “When we get back, we can have Zecora take a look at you.” I’d trust the zebra over any Equestrian doctor when it came to exobiology any day of the week. “Prescribe some things. She’ll probably have some potions or something to fix you right up. Until then, you should really take it easy.”

Celestia cleared her throat, and for a few seconds I saw Tia become slightly uneasy. “Your friends are worried about you,” she said before looking over to the pile of clothes we had to cut and peel off the girl. “Um…I know they won’t be able to understand you… I’ve been working on a translation charm so you can talk to them using a necklace instead but…I’m still working on the diction.”

“Yeah, English is pretty stupid,” Sunset agreed. “P-Princess.”

The addition of her title made the goddess slump a little. “This is not a royal audience, nor are we in public, and my name is Celestia,” she said before bending down to kiss the girl on the forehead and whisper in her ear. “And while there is another title I would love to hear from you, I find myself unworthy to ask for it yet.”

Sunset’s eyes widened. “W-What?”

Celestia cleared her throat again and looked away. “Yes well…your friends will be wanting to see you, and I think Pinkie Pie will soon be at her limit of sitting still. We will…we will speak of things…later,” Tia finished quickly trotted to the door and opened it.

I don’t know why I was surprised to find Fluttershy in the seat closest to the door. “P-Princes. Is Sunset…going to be okay?”

Once again in control of herself, Celestia took in a deep breath and looked around. “Sunset is injured, but she will recover. You can all go in to see her. However,” she added before raising a hoof. “She is still very tired, and very hurt. Her ribs have been damaged. Do not force her to talk too loudly, or laugh.”

All the girl’s looked pretty downcast at the news, but Pinkie Pie took it worst of all. “WHAT? Not allowed to laugh? WHEN I GET MY HOOVES ON THAT FLASH SENTRY AND SUNLIGHT SPARKLING PONY!”

“And keep the shouting to a minimum,” the goddess added in an even tone before she looked over to Twilight.

The purple alicorn lowered her head. “I told them what happened.”

And how its not really Spike’s fault and so on, I mentally asked her. And here I was hoping to turn the whole group against the purple iguana. Well, I still had the more altruistic-seeming option that I had come up with while watching Sunset bleed her way through a cave and intensive care.

One way or another, that stupid little dragon wasn’t getting off on this with a basic apology and crocodile tears. I intended to bring that little twerp’s world crashing down around him. I was going to make his worst fear a reality, and laugh at the look on his face when it happened.

Over the past month and a half or two of living in Ponyville, I had grown complacent. All the ponies with their love and tolerance crap had turned me into a fucking doormat for anyone to walk on, and smile as they fucked me up the ass.

And now one of the people I cared about the most in the whole fucking world was laying in a hospital bed because I didn’t do what I needed to make sure no one was stupid enough to try anything against her.

“Twilight, has your brother retrieved the perpetrators?” Celestia asked, the last word practically a growl.

Twilight raised her head, then shook it. “No. Not yet. He only wanted to use non-crystal ponies because of Twinkling’s history to escort them-”

“I will be taking them to Canterlot myself,” Celestia said, cutting Twilight off. “And return tomorrow morning for the Princess Summit. Omnifarious, consider your class for tomorrow canceled.”

I nodded before Celestia looked back to Twilight’s friends. “Now, the three of us will be going to find Shining Armor. Please be gentle with Sunset. She isn’t wearing her translator at the moment, but…I’m sure you’ll all be able to work something out. Luna will be by in an hour to ensure she gets back to sleep.”

But before they could all go in, I turned to the pony who was last in line. “Hey Applejack. I got a question. Has Spike ever told you anything weird about me, like how I’m mind controlling Twilight and all of Ponyville or something?” I asked while making rolling crazy eyes to pass it off as a joke.

AJ chuckled. “Aw shoot, he did mention somethin’ like that a couple weeks ago,” the farmer told me. “Why’d ya ask?”

It took us all of five minutes to find Shining Armor. Celestia just went right to him. She either had some finely tuned magical senses, a tracking spell on her nephew-in-law, or was just very lucky. Whatever the reason, we were nearing Sombra’s Temple of Doom within half an hour of leaving Sunset.

But that was long enough for me to talk with Twilight as we trailed behind the brighter ponies.

“This isn’t something you can’t just ignore,” I told her as we walked along.

The alicorn looked away. “I know that! Don’t you think I know that?”

I sighed and put my wing over her back. “Twilight…I’m not saying this to be mean or anything, but…” I went over everything in my head to make sure it came out perfect. “Think about it. What does Spike want to be when he gets older? What does he want to do now?”

“He-he just wants to be my assistant,” Twilight whined.

“And what does he want to do for himself?” I continued to ask. “He’s not a pony and he doesn’t have a cutie mark, but…even human children have a basic idea of what they want by the time their his age.”

Twilight leaned into me. “I know.”

“You didn’t see what he was like when he was doing all those favors for Applejack,” I went on. “It was like he couldn’t not do things for other ponies. Just go and ask Rainbow and AJ. That kind of behavior…it’s not healthy Twilight.”

The alicorn looked back up into my eyes. “How is just wanting to help your friends not healthy?”

I let out a tired sigh. “It’s one thing to want to help your friends, but Spike…it’s like he only finds value in himself when other ponies are making him do things. And now Sunset’s helping you with your project, and the two of us are spending so much time together…and he just lashed out at us. Like…remember when you got your pet owl?”

“But…but Owlowiscious wasn’t a replacement, he just helps me when I have late night projects,” Twilight protested. “I don’t love Spike any less because of him, or you, or Sunset! He just thinks you're…evil!”

It took some work to keep my tone neutral. “I’m not saying you don’t love him. But he needs to learn that…well…usefulness and love do not go hoof and hoof,” I told her. “And you need to also start thinking about the best way to…solve this problem, and what’s best for him.”

Twilight’s face turned to one of confusion, but before she could ask any more questions, we got to Sombra’s ritual chamber where Shiny’s prisoners were waiting.

The two ponies Armor had locked up there were waiting for us behind his pink bubble, but I noticed a disturbing difference on the ground that caught my eye. There was a trail of glowing runes on the black floor that led from the entrance, all the way to Sombra’s alter in the center of the room that Sunset had run up against after Flash Sentry had crashed into her. “Hey Shiny, did we leave the lights on when we left?”

Before the other guy of our group, or only guy at the moment, could answer me, Captain Twinkie sneered. “Well if it isn’t the fat alicorn herself. I see the monster brought his biggest puppet to do his dirty work and clean up the mess.”

Celestia frowned down at the little pony. “If you honestly believe me in the thrall of changelings, I would glad submit myself to examination to prove you wrong,” she replied without a touch of emotion in her voice. “And then I will throw you down into a deep, dark hole in which you will never again see the light of day for what you have done to one of my most precious of ponies.”

“HOW DARE YOU JUDGE ME YOU OVERGROWN SOW!” the crystal pony shouted with a rage showing on his face. “You come here after thousand years and place a puppet upon our throne! You become the plaything of the monster that tried to turn us into food! You have no right! You have no right to do ANYTHING within the Empire! The tribes of flesh may have been stupid enough to name you and your lunatic of a sister their leader, but the ponies of crystal never gave you such authority!”

The giant alicorn sighed and shook her head. “Nor did I ever claim such dominion. Luna and I were given our positions to protect and help unite Equestria, the power we now hold was only given to us after centuries of life. Given willingly. Princess Amore and her line understood this, as does her descendent that rules over you now.”

I frowned and looked over to Armor. “Uh…hey Shiny, Cadence is related to Imperial royalty? But, wouldn’t that mean that she and Sombra…”

“Yeah,” the unicorn replied with a wince. “Um, she’s kind of from a…cousin of Sombra’s that got kicked out of the Crystal Empire when he took power. So they’re distantly related. Very distantly.”

I took the hint and put my curiosity back in its box.

Twinkie stomped his hoof on the ground. “And now she is nothing but your puppet, an ascended pegasus! Nothing more than a dressed up cloud farmer! The Empire still reeks of the stink of their droppings when they served the bugs!”

“Hey!” Flash Sentry whined from his place next to the crystal pony before looking over to the rest of us. “Can I just say I’m not with him and was only following orders?”

Of course, Twinkie didn’t seem to hear the pegasus standing next to him. He had gone full tilt zealot rant mode. “But I won’t let them! I won’t let them have the Empire again! NOT THEM, OR YOU!” he shouted before reaching over to his side and drawing a dagger that looked like part of his armor.

“Shining Armor dispel the field!” Celestia ordered as she looked to the shorter pony.

And then, Twinkie jammed the dagger into the top of Flash Sentry’s throat, where it was unprotected by his armor before opening it all the way. Flash let out a gurgle that caused the blood running out of his throat to bubble. “I will save my people from your tyranny!” the crystal pony yelled before he took Flash’s dying body and slammed it onto the sacrificial altar. “And rule over them as the CRYSTAL EMPEROR!”

“You know, in hindsight, it was probably a bad idea to leave the xenophobic zealot alone in the demonic room of black magic with a pony to sacrifice,” I commented while Flash’s blood ran down into the altar, and then out its base in a web pattern to touch all the runes in the room that hadn’t been lit up.

The ground around us began to rumble, and Celestia leapt back before covering the three of us with her wings and a golden field of energy while the murals on the wall in the room ahead of us stretched out with dark tentacles to flow into the mouth of demonic statue at the center of the rear wall.

“Gee, ya think?” Twilight grumbled as the statue that was three times the size of a pony took on a dark continence and began to move. She just looked up to the tallest pony of the group. “Princess Celestia, what’ll we do now?”

Celestia took a look back at the hallways full of explosive crystals behind us that responded to too much magic, and then to the monster summoning room in front of us as the ground continued to shake. “Come with me and hold on!” she shouted before I felt her wings touch my butt and nudge us all forward as the goddess leapt into the chamber in front of us, half dragging us all along.

A second later, the ground went from slightly trembling to full on Star Trek space battle camera shake where actors go flying across the room after the Enterprise takes a torpedo up its ass. The tunnel behind us just fucking disappeared, and I found that hooves were the worse then to expect traction from when it came to dark crystal.

Celestia grunted and Twilight shrieked while me and Shining let out cries of manly terror. The telltale pressure of a moving elevator overcame me, and I slumped down to the ground as everything continued shaking.

Then I heard a rather loud explosion and the trembling came to a stop as we hit…daylight?

I blinked my eyes and looked up at the sky. For a second my mind was preoccupied with the question of where the roof had gone before the telltale sign of crackling energy made me look down and around to see the walls had also dropped away and begun to spread across the grass of what kind of looked like a football stadium. A stadium that had a full compliment of ponies watching from the stands and…judging by the bands that were currently on the field, was in the middle of halftime.

“Well,” I began as I looked around at the stunned crowd. “Looks like we got to the hoofball game after all Shiny.”

Tia sighed. “While your movies exploits have shown me the human penchant for witty banter before combat, I do not believe this is the most opportune time.”

I looked back to the giant white pony. “It’s right before combat,” I replied. “You said it yourself. How is this not the perfect time for witty pre-battle banter?”

“As interesting as your debate is Princess,” Twilight spoke up rather loudly. “Can we please focus on the demonic monster giving animation to its corporal shell?”

At Twilight’s shout, the confused ponies all around us let out a scream of terror and turned around to run away from what was soon to be the battlefield. Although strangely, the ones in the stands just sat around on their collective asses.

“CITIZENS OF THE EMPIRE! DO NOT FLEE!” Captain Is Going To Go Crunch When I Break His Bones said as he held up his hooves. “I have come to liberate you from the tyranny of the alicorns!”

I looked over to my girlfriend and let out a whine. “How come he gets to say his silly stuff but I can’t go on about mine with Tia?”

Twilight shot me a glare. “Fairy! Are you even taking this seriously?” she shouted.

“Oh please.” I rolled of my eyes. “We’ve got four alicorns, me, your brother, and all our friends,” I said before pointing over to the bad guy. “He’s got a walking statue full of black Gak and a stupid belief that won’t let him endanger bystanders because then he won’t be saving his precious Empire.”

I looked back to the demonic statue thing as it seemed to swell, taking on a different shape as it lower jaw changed to something like you would have seen on a cartoonish bulldog, and its lower body just became a mass of dark mist as the skies overhead darkened and the wind kicked up with the classic lighting spewing forth from the black clouds. By the time the transformation was over, I felt like I was looking at a fit version of Jabba the Hutt with horns and made of nothing but condensed dark smoke.

“WHO DARES CALL UPON ARABUS? LORD OF STORM AND SHADOW?” the dark that looked like little more like a mass of thunderclouds with arms a slightly doglike head, and a pair of horns.

“Okay, introductions done.” And with a lack of name recognition from what I could remember from the original MLP, I reared up on my hind legs and balanced myself with my wings before bringing my hooves together. “Now let’s love and tolerate the shit out of him.”

Twilight looked over to me with a frown on her face. “That statement makes absolutely makes no sense in our current situation.”

Chapter 23: The Incredibly Rocking Battle for the Crystal Empire

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Chapter 23: The Incredibly Rocking Battle for the Crystal Empire

After skimming Sombra’s Big Book of Demons, or Big Book of Demon Summoning, or Demonic Magic, or…well, it had something to do with demons. Anyway, after reading Sombra’s black magic spell book, I realized something: people that summon demons are morons!

Sure, there’s all those stories about how this or that guy met some demon on a crossroads and traded his soul for whatever, and several years later the devil went down to Georgia to collect. The whole problem with this idea is that a demon actually needs to bother making some kind of deal for a casual summoner’s soul.

I mean think about it. You’ve got this infinitely age old being of great cosmic power that gets called up by some dumbass that is pretty much an ant in comparison and taken out of his cozy hellish home to do some kind of favor? For the guy’s soul in some kind of deal that the demon has to work at?

Yeah, that’s not going to happen for so many reasons.

But, just for shits and giggles, let’s say you actually decided to call on some hell spawn to try for that whole, ‘I’ll give you my soul if you make that hot chick love me’ kind of thing, or money, or a neat truck. You’re already summoning a demon with little experience on the thing, so yeah, you’re stupid enough to sell your soul for a truck.

Now, for starters, the demon doesn’t need to actually work to get the your soul. You just summoned a demon, you’re already damned. In fact, the damned status of your soul makes it pretty unclean, and therefore, unwanted by the majority of all things below. They’ve already got tons of them. What the fuck would they want with yours?

Second off, demons are mean, egotistical bastards. Even if one of these things did what your soul, a demon isn’t going to sit around doing some stupid job that may take hours, days, or years, when he could just reach forward, smash your body into little pieces, eat your soul right then and there, and then go home. Possibly causing a little bit of genocide before he leaves because…well, he’s in the neighborhood and as long as he’s in Florida, might as well go see Disneyland.

In fact, the only guys that should be summoning demons are the guys that can beat them down, wrap a chain around their necks, and make them their bitch. The kind of guys that don’t really need them in the first place. Sombra was one of these guys. He could deal with the monsters as an equal because he was already a pretty powerful unicorn before going to the dark side. Even the bigger ones had to make deal with him, because trying to just kill Sombra and take the goods would have been too troublesome.

Twinkling Guardian however, was just your run of the mill dumbass. He had no awesome magical powers or weapons to make the demon wonder if messing with the guy would have been a bad idea He just knew how to put the money in the coin slot and make the phone call to area code 666.

And so, when the dark demon of storm and shadow said that whole dares thing, I kind of got this little sinking feeling in my gut that the innocent bystanders that were just standing by were fixing to kind of get caught up in a crossfire after Twinkie got smashed in the non-alcoholic way. I dropped the whole disguise to increase my armor class and got ready to fight after dropping my on all fours once Twilight had kind of killed the bonus attributes given by my battle cry.

“I have summoned you demon! Now bow to my will and destroy all those who stand against me so that I may be crowned Emperor of the Crystal Empire!” Twinkie shouted as he pointed a hoof at the thing with fists as big as his whole body.

For a moment, I contemplated sucker punching the monster like what happened with the last shadowy monster since the ponies around me were apparently too nice to even think of such a tactic, but…as long as the monster in question was going to do our job for us, I really didn’t see the reason to do anything until after Captain Twinkie had been squashed.

Thunder rumbled overhead as the demon spoke. “Blood has been spilled, and the contract fulfilled,” the monster stated with…rhythm. “You sent for me, to state your plea. Now prove your mastery!”

It was then that I realized just what kind of monster I was facing. Truly, it was from one of the deepest pits of Hell, more terrible than Lucifer himself. Oh God, it’s a rhyming demon, I thought to myself. Out of all the hellish creatures that could have been summoned, this was indeed the worst.

Aside from that, it was also one of those contractually obligated demons with some kind of code. Once again, they don’t actually do anything unless the summoner can make them, but there are some sort of rule involved to expedite the process and give more options than your basic brawl of a power struggle where the demon might end up getting killed if someone who knew what he was doing called on it.

“W-What?” Twinkie managed to say as he turned around to look up at the monster cloud. “I summoned you! You will obey me! Kill the alicorns and the bug!”

Arabus let out a roar. “You called on me to do some deed, but broke the agreement so on your soul I shall feed!”

I fought down the urge to laugh in Nelson-style as the demon dog cloud thingy opened its mouth and let out a roar before dozens of tendrils lashed out to wrap around Twinkie. They pulled. He screamed, and a few seconds later I was watching as his shadow got torn from his body and lifted into the monster’s mouth. A second later it swallowed, and the crystal pony dropped to the ground, unmoving.

“It would seem close quarters combat is ill advised,” Celestia said before her horn lit up and she stepped forward. “Shining Armor, enclose the field in a barrier spell! I do not what this creature escaping to wreak havoc on the Empire! Allow Cadence and Luna to enter when they arrive, but that is all. Twilight, Omnifarious, with me!”

Tia leaped forward and lowered her horn while me and Twi did the same. A second later, she came crashing down on the dark crystal beneath us, shattering the obsidian on the ground before she fired a blast of her bright golden magical energy right at the towering demon with two more of purple and green not far behind. The three beams of magic struck the demonic smog cloud and…passed right through him on the way to Shiny’s energy barrier.

“Oh that’s just not fair,” I grumbled before our magic struck Shining’s shield, and he let out a painful cry.

I glanced back for a second to see Shining go down while letting out a cry of pain, and his barrier flickered on and off for a few seconds before he recovered and looked back at the three of us. “Hey! Watch it!”

Twilight winced. “Sorry!”

At which point Arabus let out a bestial roar and turned his attention in our direction. “You dare to attack me, little pony?”

Then the demon let out another roar, and more of his multi-tongue tentacle things shot out of his mouth and the three of us scattered in different directions to avoid the Japanese porno attack. But instead of chasing after us, the tentacles turned in direction and went straight towards the member of our group that couldn’t get airborne.

“SHINY!” Twilight cried out as she charged her horn while me and Tia just kind of watched as the demon’s attack grabbed Shining Armor. A purple aura surrounded the unicorn for a moment and there was a loud pop of magic, but after the teleportation magic cleared and Armor dropped to the ground, I just watched on in shock as the pony’s shadow was pulled towards the demon’s mouth. Meanwhile, his body lay on the ground with a glassiness covering his empty eyes.

All at once the protection spell failed, and Tia’s body was surrounded by a flaming aura of power before she charged towards Arabus. The Goddess of the Sun lit up her horn with a light that made her body’s flames seem dim in comparison. I was left to grab Twilight when she just forgot to keep flapping her wings and dropped like a stone in shock.

While I snatched up the purple alicorn, the flaming one rammed into the demon’s gut at full speed and proceeded to punch the monster with her front hooves several times while her horn worked to somehow cut at the shadow tentacles coming out of the dark storm cloud demon. With each punch and slice the creature cried out in pain.

A few of the monster’s frog tongues of darkness touched Tia, and were quickly burned away as the alicorn fought for a few more seconds to free Shining Armor’s shadow before she grabbed it in her teeth and yanked. Switching to a retrete, Tia began beating her wings in powerful strokes to both push herself away from Arabus and create a gale force wind that also kept the demon from approaching her.

Tia tossed her head in the direction of me and Twilight and let go of Shiny’s shadow. It landed on the ground and slithered along before coming in contact with the pony’s body, which immediately gasped for breath.

Seconds later, Tia landed in front of us and spared a second to look back at the unicorn. “Twilight, is your brother alright?”

“H-He’s breathing,” the little alicorn answered in an unsteady voice.

I stepped in front of the siblings to address the flaming goddess. “Mind sharing just how you did that?”

Tia let out a rather satisfied humph, and smiled. “It’s a demon made from clouds and darkness, and I am part pegasus and the Alicorn of the Sun. This will be over in short-AGH!” the goddess shrieked as I heard a loud crackling sound, and she was knocked to the ground before her flames died out.

A purple shield of energy appeared around the four of us in time to block another bolt of lightning, and another, and another as the Arabus quite literally hurled giant masses of electricity at us with his hands as if he was pitching small spears. By the fourth one, Twilight winced. “Really wishing I had a magical lighting rod right about now.”

With Twilight covering the defense and my changeling magic not built for such a job, I looked over to the other alicorn. “Hey Tia, are you okay?”

“A little tingly, but otherwise…fine,” she managed. “Just let me get the feeling back in my hind legs.”

I looked back up at the straining purple alicorn as bolt after bolt of lightning struck her shield. “Yeah…I don’t think we have that long.”

“In that case, I will handle defense,” the goddess told me. “Twilight, see if you can rouse your brother. We only need to hold out a few moments before Cadence and Luna arrive with the Crystal Heart.”

I looked over to the monster and frowned. “To be honest, I’d rather be standing over his corpse and ask what took them so long,” I said before looking over to Twilight as a few more magical lightning bolts hit the shield Celestia had erected. “Any ideas? I can kind of mimic Tia’s flames but…nothing like what she can do.”

“Well…um, we saw the dark magic flow into that figure before it became that…thing,” Twilight replied as the sound of lightning crashing in the background went quiet. “It has to act as some sort of anchor for the enchantment. If we can destroy it, then-oh no!”

As Twilight’s face turned from a thinking frown to a horrified expression, I heard several screams behind me and looked back to see just what was going on.

With Shining’s barrier taken down, the crystal ponies had attempted to flee the stadium en masse. However, there was plenty of congestion around the exits, and the demon that had been hammering at us rather unsuccessfully had turned his attentions towards the much easier meal of the trapped masses. Dozens of tendrils shot out from the being, wrapping around ponies and tearing out souls bound to pony shadows and delivering them into Arabus’s waiting maw. With each one, he seemed to increase in size, and grow even darker.

“Okay buck the heart, we have to at least provide a distraction,” I grumbled before looking back to the goddess. “Tia, cut the shield.”

A second later, the golden barrier winked out of existence, and Celestia got to her feet. “I am recovered,” the goddess said before she once again became a raging inferno. “Remember, each blow must carry pegasus magic to be effective.”

Twilight moaned and winced. “I never really got to that part in my flight training,” she said while I looked over to her in worry. Hell, Twilight was still nervous just sitting on clouds.

For a moment, Celestia locked eyes with Twilight, then nodded. “In that case, you’ll be our support. Hang back and teleport us away from combat if we are about to be overwhelmed.”

“No I can-”

“I would rather make use of your talents than foolishly see you risk your life in an attempt to prove your worth to me Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia told Twilight before she faced me and looked to the giant monster that seemed to have grown to at least fifteen meters in size from his gorging. “So…any ideas? Judging by your entertainment, I doubt humans lack for ideas when it comes to battle.”

I sighed. “I’ll create an opening, you hit him. Then I’ll use the opening your attack creates. We keep switching off and keep him off balance,” my strategic mind said before my survivalist brain functions could kick in and advise running away. Then I charged my teleport and, “Sind Sie das Essen? Nien, wir sind der Jagar.”

The two princesses just gave me an odd look before the world disappeared in a flash of light, and I found myself staring at the back of the cloud titan’s head before I called up my green flames to surround my hooves and drove them into the nape of Arabus’s neck.

As the monster let out a roar and turned while trying to swat me, I saw Tia reappear near his stomach and ram her own hooves into his body down there. I quickly put as much distance between me and the monster’s grabbing hands as I could as she did. Unfortunately, the giant hands of cloud moved a lot faster than they were supposed to, and I found myself moments away from being grabbed before the world disappeared in a purple light, and I found myself floating next to Twilight.

“Nice save.”

“Thanks,” she replied.

I looked around and pointed. “Now send me under his left arm.”

Our delaying tactic continued on like that for a good three minutes, with me and Twilight using her magic to teleport me in and bring me out while I took potshots at the monster and we both did our best to keep to Arabus’s back. At the same time, Tia would blink in and out, usually doing a lot more in the way of flashy tricks and damage than I could thanks to my less than healthy breakfast of Big Macs. This included punching holes in his body at random points, and at one point completely burning away one of his hands when the demon nearly caught her.

If she was about twice my size and a hundred times older, I might have been jealous. But then, I was only operating on some earth pony clones while she had full power and the whole sky to play with. Otherwise, I totally would have shown her up.

The assault had some effect on the creature, besides making him cry out in pain that is. Every blow we dealt reduced its size a slight amount, and Tia destroying his hand had probably knocked him down a good five feet by itself. Still, his position above the arena and pile of unconscious ponies underneath him had forced all the other crystal ponies to stop using half the exits, and the vast majority of them were left to huddle in fear on the opposite end of the stands while the crowd that was escaping barely moved at a crawl.

As Sparkle pulled me back for the twelfth time, I looked around and frowned. “Okay, where the hay are Luna and Cadence? I’d think a giant smog monster would actually-”

A loud…whooshing explosion filled my sense of hearing and Arabus let out a cry before throwing up his newly reformed hand to shield his eyes. In retrospect, that probably would have been a good indication looking in the same direction he was a bad idea, but I turned my head to the left anyway and was nearly blinded by the light of the crystal castle as it shot a blast of magical energy into the clouds above.

There was another boom of magical energy, and a second later, the skies were cleared of his black magic clouds, and my attention was drawn to a bright blue burst of magic on the floor of the stadium.

Twilight ported us down to where the other teleport landed and we found Luna waiting for us while Cadence checked over Shining Armor…and five other female ponies stood by the wayside.

“Cadence what took you so long, and what the hay are they doing here?” I demanded as I pointed at a pair of pegasi, earth ponies, and one white unicorn. “Get them out of here before they get hurt!”

A second after the words left my mouth, my vision was filled with blue fur, pink eyes, and a multi-colored mane as Rainbow Dash zoomed up in my face. “Hey! We’re not letting you cut us out of the heroics this time!”

For once, I wasn’t amused by Rainbow’s overly brave actions. They were charming back in Ponyville, but the thought of anything happening to Dash fucking terrified me like nothing else. “This isn’t a game Rainbow! That thing ripped out Shining Armor’s bucking soul!”

The thump of something hitting the grass drew my attention, and I saw Cadence just collapse on top of Shining Armor with a face full of worry as she continuously tried to gasp for breath. Behind her, the Crystal Heart just lay on the ground and…

I found myself staring at it. That delicious...delectable hunk of crystal with the love of an entire country. Removed from the Crystal Empire’s network, I just just taste the sheer amount of love held within it and I was amazed Mom lasted as long as she did in holding back from grabbing the thing.

It was love incarnate, everything I could ever want and more. With it I could crush the demon in front of me like a bug, I could protect all my friends, all of Equestria.

And it made sense after all.

Cadence just saw her husband go down. She couldn’t do anything. I could just take the heart up and use it to save the day, and...well...do anything I wanted after that really.

I licked my lips and...

Blinked when Twilight blocked my view of the Heart as she rushed up next to Cadence before a full on panic attack could start. “It’s okay! Princess Celestia managed to get it back,” she said before looking up as Tia continued to fly circles around the demon and blow random holes in him while Arabus’s fought back with movements much more sluggish than before. Apparently, the sunlight that he had blocked wasn’t doing him all that well.

“In that case, it is time to end this foolishness,” Luna said as she stepped forward and took a deep breath while I put up a sound dampening bubble around me and the girls.

“SISTER, STAND BACK SO THAT WE MAY END THIS CONFLICT!”

The flaming goddess looked down, then winked out of existence for an instant to reappear beside us a moment later. Her flames died down, and she nodded to Cadence before the pink pony princess grabbed the Crystal Heart in her magic again to lift it towards the demon.

Then, as the heart glowed with the delicious love of all the Crystal Empire’s citizens…their juicy...delectable...

“WAIT!” the monster cried out as he held up a hand towards us.

Please don’t start going on about how you’ve learned your lesson and want to be friends, I mentally begged.

Arabus lowered his hand that was still big enough to crush a pony, and growled at our little group. “Strike at me with discretion, for I shall destroy all of the souls in my possession!”

The threat made everyone in our group tense, and I grit my teeth. Oh well…that’s much worse. And actually, it had been awhile since we had a whole villain turning into a friend. Except Sunset of course, and…I guess that wasn’t too long ago. And Trixie, and…okay I guess we were due for an eternally evil bad guy after all.

As all the other ponies were giving each other hesitating looks, Celestia stepped forward and started up at the demon’s face. “Then release them, and return from whence you came!”

“NEVER! THAT WHICH IS MINE SHALL ALWAYS REMAIN!” Arabus replied. “BUT FOR MERCY I SHALL LEAVE THESE LANDS, NEVER TO RETURN AGAIN!”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed at the beasts words. “UNACCEPTABLE!” she shouted. “I will not allow you to threaten other lands.” For a moment, the goddess closed her eyes and took in a deep breath as she steeled herself, and I could feel Tia’s guilt already on the rise. “Cadence…prepare to use the Heart and deal with this monster.”

I frowned at myself as Celestia’s words ran through my head, as well as what the demon had said. All of that, and what had happened in the crystal caves. “Wait a second…this thing gets summoned when a pony spills blood on its runes, right? And whoever is responsible for spilling the blood gets to boss around the demon if he can beat it around, right?”

“Yes, I guess that’s how it works,” Twilight replied. “I mean, that’s why Twinkling Guardian thought he could control the demon. But what does that have to do with anything?”

I put on my best all-knowing evil grin and went, “Because Twinkie wasn’t the only one who caused blood to be spilled on those runes. Sunset also lost a few drops.”

Twilight let out a sigh and shook her head. “That happened because Flash attacked her Fae.”

“But I cut her hand on my horn before we ever even got there, and there was no way a wound like that had closed in just a few minutes,” I said before turning to face the demon and walking out of the group. And before Tia, Twi, or the somewhat groggy Shiny could raise a protest while everyone else was asking what the hell was going on, I pointed my holy hoof up at the monster and smirked. “Arabus, by the rules set forth in the agreement to summon you to this world, I claim the right to challenge you for the right to be called master!”

“WHAT?” most of the ponies that were around my size shouted.

A second later, Tia was beside me, “You cannot be serious!”

Thunder rumbled from the demon’s gassy body and it bent down. “Terms?”

“If I win, you have to take your sorry excuse for an existence back to where you originally came from before you were summoned, and give back the souls of all the ponies you’ve taken before you go,” I told him.

“And if I should win, I get you! Body AND soul!”

The threat made me flinch but…I let out a long sigh. There really wasn’t much else I could offer. “Agreed.” Although, I did wonder what he wanted with all of me. I mean, the guy ate souls, so what did he want my physical body for?

“NO!” both Celestia and Twilight shouted at me…I think the other girls did to but…Tia was pretty loud when she wanted to be, and Twilight’s close proximity at least allowed me to hear her buzz of a voice while Celestia went on. “You cannot do this. We can-”

I looked up at the goddess. “And if Cadence does that, all the nobility will turn against her. Ponies are already saying she’s just your puppet and junk. If we take any losses among the crystal ponies, we’ll have ten idiots like the pony who summoned Arabus by the end of the week.”

Celestia glared back down at me. “And if something happens to you, then what happens to all the changelings?” she demanded through gritted teeth, although a whiff of her scent told me she was much more frightened than she was angry. “Will they run rampant over Equestria? With Ponyville being their first stop?”

“NAME YOUR CONTEST, TO DETERMINE WHICH ONE OF US IS BEST!”

With Arabus back in rhyming mode, I found myself a little put off thanks to Tia’s questions. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought about that. But then…the girls could…probably handle things if things went bad…I hoped.

Pressure welled up in my chest. The kind that only comes when you find yourself in deeper shit than you intended, and needed to get out of things as fast as possible.

I looked around for inspiration while all the ponies just watched on in silence for a moment.

The sight of Twilight made me consider going with a trivia challenge or contest of riddles. But…a demon could just as soon ask me crap that I didn’t know about, and I had no idea just how much he knew of how the universe worked. So, that was out.

Looking at Rainbow Dash had me thinking of just trying to race the thing. But, I didn’t know how fast Jabba the Cloud could fly, and I was more than a little tired thanks to all the fighting I had done before.

Rarity…only gave me a fashion show for an idea.

While all the contests of strength that seeing Applejack brought up made me look to the ponies with the purely pink manes less than a second later.

Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie didn’t give me any ideas either beyond a staring contest, or playing the quiet game.

Then I looked over to Cadence…and then to Luna, followed by Celestia, and then back to Cadence…and inspiration struck. It was insane, stupid, and probably the most suicidal idea I had ever come up with since entering Equestria…

But on the other hand, if I really WAS in Equestria…there was no way in hell I could lose the challenge I was about to propose.

“Okay Arabus, I challenge you,” I said before pointing at the demon and striking a pose, “TO A ROCKOFF! As long as I can have some of the ponies behind me on the instruments.”

“AGREED!” Arabus shouted before he began gathering his magic.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the ponies behind me just stare for a moment in various stages of confusion and shock, with Rainbow going so far as to actually drop out of the air. “…WHAT?”

“Are you kidding me?” Twilight demanded.

Rainbow cocked her head to the side. “You can’t be serious.”

“Darling that’s so…”

“Stupid?” Applejack finished for Rarity.

I turned around and held up my hooves. “No, no girls I know what I’m doing,” I assured them. “I just need um…a backup band…or something.”

“Fairy…none of us know how to play any instruments,” Twilight told me.

I slumped in disbelief. “Say what?” I asked while looking around at the girls. “W-What about you Rainbow? I mean…what about…” I stopped myself from saying Rainbow Rocks just in time. To be honest, aside from the title of the movie, nothing else had come out about it before I got whisked about away to Equestria.

“Just because I listen to rock and roll doesn’t mean I know how to play the guitar Fae,” Rainbow told me as she got into the air and crossed her forearms while frowning at me.

As I looked at the other ponies in disbelief and began to contemplate my sooner rather than later demise, Cadence cleared her throat. “Well actually, I think Shiny knows how to play. He um…did serenade me during our school’s homecoming game.”

In the alicorn’s arms, the unicorn stirred. “Wha?”

I was on the unicorn in an instant. “Shining Armor, you gotta wake up and conjure your guitar or something!” I shouted while dragging the unicorn to his hind legs and fluttering my wings to keep us both aloft.

And then, there was the sound of a thunderous noise, and we both looked towards the gigantic demon as he began to play a set of cloud drums that seemed to be part of his body.

I’M A DEVIL
AND I PLAY METAL

A second later, Arabus’s instrument had changed to a guitar and he leaned down until he practically filled my vision.

I’M A DEVIL I CAN DO WHAT I WANT
WHATEVER I GOT I’M GONNA FLAUNT
THERE’S NEVER BEEN A ROCKOFF THAT I’VE EVER LOST

I CAN’T WAIT TO TAKE YOU BACK TO MY HELL
I’M GONNA FILL YOU WITH MY HOT DEMON GEL
I’LL MAKE YOU SQUEAL LIKE SCARLET PIMPERNEL

THERE’S NO WAY YOU CAN STOP ME
YOU NO DICK, SPAS-TIC FLUTTER PONY

“HEY!” I shouted at the demon, stopping his little song. “NO BODY CALLS ME A FLUTTER PONY!”

Then I looked over to Shining Armor. “Hurry up and summon or conjure your-” I got out before Shining’s horn lit up and his instrument appeared in his hooves. It was a… keytar. Oh dear God, my brain managed to say while I felt weak at the knees.

Shining let out a sigh. “I know…I mean… There’s just no way that we can win, that was a masterpiece,” he said. “He rocks too hard to be beaten by mortals man.”

Wait a second…I can’t just lose like this, I thought to myself. Not with everyone just standing there watching me.

So, I summoned up everything I had and looked over to Shiny before I grabbed the front of his coat with my hooves. “Celestia burn it all Armor!”

He’s gonna make me his sex slave
I’m gonna gargle his mayonnaise

“Oh no!” Twilight cried.

Unless we bust a monster mammajam!

The stuff I’ve been through was totally sick
Deactivated lasers with my dick
Now it’s time to blow this bucker down!

For a moment Shining hesitated, then looked up at the demon, then back to me, and nodded. We separated, and then Shining began playing on the unholy child of a piano and a guitar while I spoke to him. “Come on Shining now it’s time to doors down!”

“I hear you Fairy now it’s time to blow doors down,” Shining replied as he worked his…instrument.

Light up the stage cause it’s time for a show down
We’ll bend him over and we’ll take him to brown town!
OOOoooooh We’ll pile drive him, it’s time for the smackdown!

I turned and pointed my hoof back up at the demon.

Hey anti-Chrysler, Beelzaboss
We know your weakness
Our rock it’s sauce
We rock the casbah, and blow your mind!
We will defeat you, for all pony-kind!

You hold the scepter
But we have the key
You are a demon
We are pony!

We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony!

As Armor continued to sing, I quickly slipped back and whispered into Luna’s ear, and then into Celestia’s.

“Are you certain?” she asked before she looked over to Tia, who sighed before nodding her approval of what I asked.

We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony!

I nodded, then noticed something odd. “Uh…what happened to your old-time speech?”

We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony!

Luna cleared her throat. “Yes well...my sister did inform me of the reality of your knowledge some time ago, and since my followers aren’t actually watching me at this moment or reading of my exploits in your graphical novels…I decided it was best to integrate with my subjects.”

We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony!

“Ah, okay then…sorry about the lying to you thing,” I apologized.

We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony! We are pony!

Luna smiled and nodded. “It is alright,” she said. “To be honest, everypony would have probably thought you were crazy otherwise. Now, should I wait until-”

“OKAY THAT’S IT!” the demon shouted. “You’re not even singing! You forfeit the contest and-”

“HEY!” I shouted back at Arabus. “I didn’t even start to sing my song! That was just something to get Shiny in the mood to be my backup band and distract you while I talked to the princesses.”

Luna’s horn began to glow, and the moon rose to take a place alongside the sun while I trotted up to stand next to Shining Armor.

“Um…what’s going on?” he asked.

I let out an evil chuckle. “Just play whatever comes to mind,” I told him as I grabbed a set of drums and symbols from where the band had dropped their instruments to run away with my magic as I stood next to Shining Armor in the magical pony land, that created musicals on demand.

Then we played the first thing that came to our heads, and it just so happened to be.

Not just the greatest song in the world, but all of reality.

All thanks to the Music of Harmony!

And it went like this…

Apologies, but putting the lyrics to the greatest song in all of existence on this website would so overload it with its sheer awesomeness so much that the internet would forever crash and send mankind back into an eternal dark age.

I laid on the ground next to Shining Armor, gasping for breath as I looked at the torn up ground, sparkling skies, and northern lights that had come about during what was without a doubt the greatest thing I had ever heard, or would ever hear in a million, billion lifetimes.

“I…” Shining managed with a weak voice, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to rock that hard again.” With that, he collapsed and passed out. A second later, Cadence took him in her magic, and out of my sight.

A groan was all I could manage in response. The finale of the performance where I had raised into the air and somehow amplified the awesomeness of the music using my wings fluttering motions to blast Arabus into nothing and free the shadows trapped within him at the same time had drained me completely, so much so that I knew I would have been dead without that tiny spark of Tia’s magic within me.

Over in the stands, all the crystal ponies that had been climbing over each other to try and escape the demon now crowded the seats, and I think there were even more ponies than had been at the hoofball game.

Both Luna and Celestia stood there, completely stunned.

Rainbow Dash wept openly as her whole body trembled from where she sat on the ground.

Sometime during the performance, Applejack had removed her Stetson, and still held it over her heart.

Pinkie Pie tried humming the tune, but then grumbled something about a transmission…or maybe a transition. I wasn’t paying her that much attention to be honest.

Rarity just kept breathing heavily.

And Fluttershy was- “THAT WAS SO AMAZING!” -yelling a lot and jumping like when Dash had done her Sonic Rainboom.

As for Twilight…I found myself gently scooped up in her magic before her transformation spell once again restored my fake alicorn form with its blank flank. And then…we kissed.

But of course she had to go and ruin the whole thing by giving me a frown afterwards. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

“Y-Yes Ma’am.”

“Ever!”

I gulped, and then quickly shut myself down to get some rest.

Chapter 24: The Incredibly Terrifying Fate of Spike the Dragon

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Chapter 24: The Incredibly Terrifying Fate of Spike the Dragon

I was dreaming.

At least, I think I was dreaming. Being a changeling for as long as I had been meant I hadn’t experienced a real dream in months, not since coming to Equestria. So I wasn’t really sure, but it had all the hallmarks of a dream. I was kind of just walking around without any control of my body and everything seemed just a little off somehow, so I guessed that what was happening had to be a dream.

I was in a hallway made of crystal, with carpeted floors. Twilight was walking beside me with a really sad look on her face but…something was off. The purple alicorn princess was…short. Really short. So short she could walk underneath me if she just dropped her head a bit. But I still had four legs, and wings, and a horn, not to mention a hell of a lot of hair near my ass, so I was still a pony.

I was wondering just what the hell was going on as I spoke. “So, have you made your decision about Spike?” I asked in a female voice that was not my own, or my female voice. It was all calm and regal.

Twilight wiped away some tears as she spoke. “Yes,” she mumbled before looking up at ‘me’. “Princess Celestia…tell me I’m doing the right thing.”

I felt my mouth move, but it was the princess’s voice that came out. “I remember not too long ago, there was a pony that adored me so much, that she would do anything just to see me smile, and I wanted nothing more than to make her happy. I wanted to keep her by side, and so I did…for many years,” Celestia said. “But as she grew, I realized that in order to become the wonderful mare she needed to be. I needed to send her out into the world, I needed her to get away from her books and studies. I needed to let her walk and stumble on her own, to see her run without me beside her. And because of that, not too long ago, I was able to watch her soar.”

Twilight blushed, and Celestia smirked. “Of course then I had to watch her crash into a tree not even a mile outside of Canterlot, ruin her coronation dress, and then hide my hoof with my face as the fastest flyer in Equestria had such a hard time getting you out of that mess of branches it looked more like Rainbow Dash was trying to hump you rather than get you free.”

“T-That’s just because my legs got wrapped in tangle vines!” Twilight sputtered as her cheeks reddened. “A-And they got on my horn too, so I couldn’t teleport out! You know how sensitive an alicorn can get when magic is pumped through it!”

A loud and continent sigh escaped from Tia’s lips. “Oh do I ever,” she said before smiling again. “Has Fae given your horn any…oral attentions?”

If I had a body, I would have winced. Oh God no.

Twilight’s eyes widened, her cheeks blushed even more and then she shook her head fiercely. “No it…um…it makes her uncomfortable,” Twilight explained she said before looking down. “She um…well…it’s a human thing, she says. Apparently…it’s like sucking on a male’s…reproductive organ and its viewed as a…well…something not good in his culture. She wouldn’t even let me do it to her when she was in disguise. As Flash Sentry I mean.”

Mostly because the thought of Twilight sucking Flash’s Sentry’s cock made me want to puke. Hell, her sucking me off even made me uncomfortable. Twilight deserved so much better than that.

“Well, human culture is quite strange,” Celestia said. “And I share your confusion. All the stallions I’ve shared the experience with found it almost as enjoyable as I did.”

NO! BAD PRINCESS! You’re not supposed to talk about shit like that! I mentally shouted while trying to force Tia to say something else to change the way the conversation was going.

Twilight’s eyes widened. “Y-You’ve been with…stallions?” she asked with a bit of worry and disappointment in her voice.

“I am over a millennia old Twilight,” the goddess said as the world went around for a second when she rolled her eyes and I could feel a tiny bit of familiar annoyance creep into her emotions. Then, Tia let out a sigh and shook her head. “When I started hitting my growth spurts and stallions became…less than able to satisfy me thanks to my added size, then my experimentation phase started and I tried mares. Then came the horn pleasuring and found I rather enjoyed a stallion’s-”

“PRINCESS!” Twilight whined, cutting her off.

Thank you magical purple goddess!

Tia giggled and bend down to nuzzle Twilight. “I promised a week ago to be more friendly and open with all of you,” she said before returning to her full elevation. “And it’s been several years since I was able to talk to another mare about such things, so I’m needing to make up for centuries of lost time of girl-talk. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”

It took Twilight a good long time to turn from red to purple again. Thankfully, Tia didn’t say much of anything to continue the conversation and Twilight wisely found some other thing to talk about that wasn’t Spike. It kind of had me wondering if that was exactly why Celestia steered the conversation towards sex in the first place. “So, what’s going to happen to Twinkling Guardian?”

“Ah yes…the one soul I wish hadn’t returned,” Celestia grumbled a bit to herself before she looked down to Twilight. “Thanks to his actions, he will spend the rest of his days in prison, and I doubt the secession movement will be in favor anytime for a lifetime or two. If it doesn’t die off completely by then. Meanwhile, Cadence’s rule has been reinforced thanks to her actions during the…battle, her refusal to harm crystal ponies and her support of Omnifarious before he…proved himself. She has shown herself to be a wise leader, capable of seeing the good in ponies that the populace could not and doing the best thing for her people despite the political pressure not to.”

Celestia shook her head and sighed. “The fact that Fae had to do it in the first place…we never should have lied about what happened in the Empire the first time.”

Twilight looked back up to her and frowned. “Why did we? Lie, I mean?”

The world stopped moving, and I felt Tia shift around as she sat down and hung her head. “Because I just had to appear to be…perfect,” she explained as she practically spit the word before she looked over to Twilight. “For one thousands years I’ve had to rule alone. Before then, Luna and I…we had each other and were able to invite a companion or two every now and then to share our lives. But after Luna was banished…something happened. I saw what happened to her and thought I needed to be strong, unapproachable…unyielding and uncompromising. I’ve done it so long, ponies refer to my name as a talisman or a curse. To them, I’m not just a big pony with wings and a horn, I’m a goddess that nopony will question and…I have experienced what such infallibility can do to those that I love. Sunset’s problems, your constant worrying to please me…and despite her return, there is a wall between my sister and I that has been built up thanks to that perceived perfection.”

The goddess blinked several times as her vision became blurry. “My apologies Twilight…I’m afraid I got into the habit of rambling to my friends about my problems when we’re alone and-”

Tia’s body shook with a light impact, and she looked down at the little alicorn hugging her. “It’s okay…Celestia. That’s why you…started having dinner with my friends, right?” she said before the white alicorn wrapped Twilight in her wings.

“Yes,” she replied softly. “I have denied myself such things for so long, told myself that it was for the good of Equestria but…the smallest taste of it has left me become aware of a ravenous hunger that I only made myself unaware of for this past millennia. Only now do I see how wrong I was in trying to fool myself that the...working relationships I had with others was enough for me to live on.”

After a few seconds, the little tender moment faded, and Tia cleared her throat to signal Twilight she needed to dislodge herself before they went back to walking down the deserted hallways of the Crystal Palace. Nothing really else was said before they came to a door.

“Do you…still want some support?” Tia asked.

Twilight nodded. “Yes,” she answered hesitantly.

After the door was opened with magic, the two alicorns stepped into the room. Twilight slowly went first, followed by the giant pony that cut off her retreat. From what I saw, it was obviously a bedroom, and fancy one at that. The sun was still up so…it couldn’t have been that much later than when I had passed out. Hell, I didn’t even get to eat lunch.

The purple goddess cleared her throat. “Spike, I know you’re in here. Come out.”

There was the sound of something slapping on the crystal floor, and I saw that it was the kid’s lizard feet. He caught sight of the two alicorns and his eyes became a little worried. “I…I heard something happened at the stadium. Um…w-where’s the changeling? Did you finally beat it?”

Tia’s vision narrowed, and I realized she was frowning at the little dragon.

“You’re still…” Twilight paused and let out a breath. “You know what? Don’t care, that’s a problem for another time. Right now, I need to talk to you about something more important.”

Spike’s head swiveled back to Tia, then to Twilight a couple of times. “About what?” he asked cautiously in a voice that made him sound closer to Sweetie’s age than the dragon in his chronological teens.

“Spike…I’m sorry,” Twilight apologized as she lowered her head, which only seemed to make the dragon even more worried. “Ever since you were born, I’ve kept you next to me. You slept in my room, and when I spent more time with Celestia than I did at home you moved in there, and when I got so worried about getting messages from Celestia and she told me about how he could send messages through you, I talked you into letting her cast a spell on you so we could send letters instantly. And I was wrong to do that.”

The dragon gulped. “W-What do you mean?”

“Spike…what do you want to do with your life?”

Twilight’s question got a confused frown out of the dragon. “What do you mean? I’m your assistant!”

“No,” the alicorn replied. “That’s what I want you to be Spike! What do you want?”

“What’re you talking about?” he cried before looking over to Princess Celestia. “What’s she talking about?”

The larger goddess let out a sigh through her nose. “Best to just tell him,” she said to Twilight.

After taking in another deep breath, Twilight took a stance that stiffened her legs and brought her to her full height. Then she put on a mask of a face that I could tell was meant to add a little strain to her mouth muscles in order to keep everything under control. “I’m sending you back to Canterlot,” she said evenly. “You’ll go back to living with my parents.”

“What?” Spike shouted in anguished disbelief. “Y-You’re kicking me out?”

Twilight sighed and lowered her head again a little bit. “Spike, that’s not-”

Before Twilight could get three words out, the Spike cut her off. “NO!” he shouted before he came forward and fell to his knees at the alicorn’s hooves and reached little claws forward to grab at the mare. “W-What about me being your assistant?”

“I should have never put you in that kind of a position in the first place,” Twilight told him sadly.

The little lizard shook his head fiercely. “No! You…you need me to be your assistant, remember?” he said. “I have to write letters, and check your checklists, and do your shopping, and cooking and-”

“Spike, please don’t make this anymore harder on me than it already is,” she whispered just loud enough for Tia to hear.

For his part, the little dragon started taking in short breaths like crazy for a few seconds before he managed to speak again. “P-Please Twilight, whatever-is this about the changeling?”

“Spike-”

“I’M SORRY!” the dragon cried out as he latched onto one of Twilight’s legs all the way with his arms. “Okay-okay, I learned my lesson! I-I won’t talk about Sunset and-and your fillyfriend anymore! I’ll be good! I’LL BE GOOD! You don’t need to send me away!”

Twilight stomped her free foreleg down on the ground. “THIS ISN’T ABOUT THAT!” she shouted back at him, which made the dragon recoil and retreat for a second. Twilight’s face twisted in pain, and she took a deep breath before continuing. “What happened with Sunset…that’s just the symptom of a larger problem! Yes it was horrible, but just saying you're sorry isn’t going to fix what caused it!

“Your entire life has revolved around doing what everypony else tells you to,” she went on. “It’s become so ingrained in your head it’s like you can’t even do anything else! And when you’re not doing what somepony else wants…when somepony else is being helpful to me, you-you get like this! You get scared and desperate and…I just… And I’m the one that did this to you!

“You need to go home, back to Canterlot! You need to figure out what you want to do, not what everypony else tells you to do all the time! You need to be able to find some value in yourself that doesn’t rely on being a-an assistant to somepony else!”

“No!” Spike whined in response as tears formed in his eyes. “I-I don’t wanna go! Please Twilight, DON’T MAKE ME!”

Another breath was choked in by the dragon, and another, and another and…I actually found myself feeling sorry for the little guy for a moment. After all, being separated from Twilight was his greatest fear, and the alicorn had done exactly what I led her into. Not that I could have just told her to get rid of Spike of course, or even hinted at it. All I could do was point out the problem in a certain way and let Twilight do the rest.

Twilight cringed and lowered her head. “I’m sorry Spike.”

“But you said you’d never send me away,” he whined. “D-Don’t you love me anymore?”

Again, Twilight’s body seemed to move as if she had been struck. She flinched and blinked tears from her eyes. “Of course I still love you! And I will always love you, but I WAS WRONG!” she shouted in the dragon’s face before taking a deep breath as I watched her get herself back under control through Tia’s eyes. Still, she spoke quickly even after taking a moment to calm down. “Everything I’ve done to you is wrong! All I’ve ever done is hurt you until…I turned you into this! It’s like you don’t even have a life of your own, you just live to supplement mine! And if you can’t do it for me, then you find somepony else to take my place and do it for them! I need to get you away from me! I need to let you find out who you are, AND WHO YOU WANT TO BE!”

Then the purple alicorn collapsed in tears and I…would have let out an uncomfortable moan if I wasn’t currently mind-linked with Tia like I had been with my goons during my first real date with Twilight and her brother. Of course getting rid of Spike as an obstacle was my goal but…I didn’t want to cause such pain to Twilight.

Oh I’m sure she would run into my arms for comfort, and we would cry and have sex and the alicorn would latch onto me all the harder thanks to her pain. But…the fact Twilight was suffering so made the whole removal of Spike somewhat…bittersweet.

But it was better than the foul taste in my mouth caused by his presence, and there was a reason sweetarts had been around since the 1960s. A little bit of sour was worth what you got at the end.

Celestia cleared her throat, and both the inhuman purple creature’s looked up to her as I felt the goddess’s mouth curve into a tiny, apologetic smile. “Now, I have arranged transport for you back to Canterlot, and my sister will be accompanying you as well Spike. You can make your goodbyes after lunch. Of which all your friends from Ponyville will be there to wish you well,” Tia told the dragon.

As the dragon continued to sniffle, the white goddess ran her lips across her tongue. “Spike, this is hardly the end. Twilight and probably others will visit you…weekly, if I remember a certain class roster at my school,” said the alicorn that was in the freaking class using disguise magic that made her look like Fleur Di Lis’s hotter big sister. “Now come along. Your friends are waiting.”

“But…what about my stuff at the library?” he asked. “What about-”

Celestia looked back to him, and bent down to be level with his gaze. “All of your possessions will be shipped to you tomorrow, and I have found it best to take your leave as fast as you can. Simply waiting will only delay the event, and prolong the pain.”

The luncheon went pretty much as anyone would expect. There was food talking, goodbyes, crying, Twilight explaining what the hell was going on before also crying and needing her friends to comfort her. Spike pussied out about telling Rarity how he felt despite the fact that she said she would probably be seeing him the most out of everyone because of her Canterlot connections.

Of course none of the princesses mentioned that he was a total douchebag towards me and just talked about how after some considerations, Twilight had decided it was best for Spike if he went back to living with her folks. The indignation I felt helped me not give a damn about the little bastard at all when it came time for more water works from the girls, and all the goodbyes.

Also helped me get over the whole Tia spying and private moment eavesdropping too. I deserved to at last watch the sweet and salty tears of my victory fall down the little brat’s face as he was wretched from the one he loved the most, like with what he tried to do to me.

Other things happened too, but they weren’t that interesting. Flash Sentry’s funeral was planned, which…okay, I might have needed to stick around for that. Sure the whole transfer into Twilight’s guard after literally running into her kind of reeked of a stalker, but…um…it wasn’t good to hold grudges with dead people, or ponies. I figure I could bury the hatchet, and dance on his grave a little.

So, I backed out of Tia’s mind bond and into the internet of Equestria that was the changeling hive mind, read the e-mail of other ponies that they paid my changelings to send through our telepathy, checked in on the latest porn posts, took a look at some of the new ponies that got copied by the rule 63 changelings, and made a mental note of three stallions that ordered sex from Princess Cadence. Royalty and world saving heroes were off the menu after all.

Unless said hero was Daring Do, she was half off when it came to anal, blowjobs, hoof jobs, spankings, and…well, pretty much anything. Hell, she almost destroyed Equestria when being late for her damn book caused me, Dash and Twilight to track her down, which led to everyone thinking I was dead and Mom getting her hands on the Crystal Heart.

Or hooves…whatever.

Then, I searched around a bit and found my connection with Tia was still open.

And with my body still in recovery mode from the battle with Smokey the smog cloud from Hell… Well, I doubted she would care about me riding shotgun in her head unless she was in the bathroom or something.

Which she wasn’t. She was actually…coming into a hospital room. Well, it wasn’t really a hospital room, but just a room in the castle set aside for crystal guard training injuries and the like. Apparently the weapons of Equestria had been upgraded in the past thousand years, and the crystal guards weren’t quite used to wielding anything sharper than a pointy stick.

The light coming from the crystal walls and the fact that the crystal lamps were on told me it was after sundown. From the looks of things, I had wasted more time that I intended to looking through gossip and other junk on the bug internet.

Since Tia was probably about to want some alone time with her daughter, I got ready to jump out when…she didn’t walk silently over to Sunset, but to the bed next to her, where an alicorn with a light blackish-gray coat was currently comatose because her consciousness was currently riding shotgun in Celestia’s cranium. The Alicorn of the Sun just moved her fat ass over to my bed, and looked down at my sexy self that Twilight had changed before I had passed out from hunger.

It kind of weird, looking at myself. It wasn’t like a mirror, more like an out of body experience. Which it kind of was. So, I just kind of floated there in the back of Tia’s head, waiting for her to do more than just…nothing.

“Thank you for everything,” she told me softly while I was kind of getting a weird vibe from her and a sense that maybe it would be a good idea for me to jump ship before she went on.

But I was a bit too late. “You showed me the emptiness inside my heart, and helped me find what I needed to fill it,” the goddess said before her vision started to get all blurry and her voice dropped to a whisper. “But…something’s wrong.

“I now have more than I ever wanted in a thousand years,” she continued. “More than I’ve ever had, even before the weight of Equestria was put upon my back. Ponies have started to see me as me again, as the the citizens of Ponyville see Luna.” Celestia let out a tiny laugh. “Isn’t that funny? My sister who was so jealous of me for being the unapproachablely popular one, has an ability to connect with ponies in a way that I never will. Within a single night, she had all of Ponyville playing games and just calling her Luna. Now I find myself gaining a circle of friends, and yet…I find myself wanting more.”

Okay yeah, way past time to go, I thought to myself before jumping out of that little mental connection and posting a ‘DO NOT ENTER’ sign just in case some other changeling could wander on by. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if it was possible or not. Tia was linked with me, not them. But…better safe than sorry.

Then I opened my eyes, and blinked at the closeness of the goddess. Being on the receiving end of a giant pony’s snout sure made things look a lot closer than they appeared to be from her perspective. “Hey Tia…um…is that banana I smell on your breath?”

Celestia stood back to her full height and looked at me with wide eyed surprise for a moment before she got her face under control, if not her scent. She was a little angry, disappointed, embarrassed as hell, and…kind of all super friendship feelingly. “Yes well I…wait,” she mumbled before frowning at me. “You do understand I get that reference now, correct?”

I put on a nervous smile, and she rolled her eyes while I innocently blinked mine before giving a much more toothy grin.

“Oh never mind. Whatever pleases you,” she mumbled.

Then, a moan from behind her made the goddess turn around, and I was given a perfect few of the royal plot and… Well, it was bad enough getting a full view of Tia’s ass before I kind of realized she was the personification of pony beauty. Afterwards, I might have had a purely scientific fantasy or twelve of what it was like to go at it with a pony with a sex that big. Of course it didn’t help that her giant magical tail had decided it wanted to flow in a direction that didn’t cover her private parts at all!

So, with the love tunnel of a goddess just staring at me, all I could do is think, I could probably fit my whole damn muzzle in the thing for crying out loud!

“Sunset! Did I wake you up?” she asked while wiggling her ass in way that looked all too inviting.

“P-Prin-Celestia?” the girl replied.

“Are you alright?” Tia continued you ask as she sort of fidgeted nervously, and her butt jiggled as a side effect. “Do you need anything? Food? You need food, don’t you? I’ll have a servant bring you some food.”

I heard Sunset gulp, and I managed to summon up enough willpower to turn away from the royal plot while she talked. “Celestia…um...about what you said the last time you were here.”

I should really go, I told myself.

Princess Celestia shifted around a bit more, loud enough to be heard, and I peeked back to see she had back to see she had backed up closer to my bed. Oh come on! It was bad enough that I hadn’t gotten anything good from Twilight in a week. I really didn’t need a giant princess’s pussy shoved in my face!

“Y-Yes?” she asked.

“…what did you…mean by…other title?” Sunset asked.

After a sharp intake of breath, I Smelled Tia’s nervousness skyrocket, and she shifted around a bit more. “I…well,” she said before pausing for several seconds. “I know you’re a grown mare. You’re…what? Twenty-one?”

“Twenty-two, I think,” Sunset replied. “Human time and Equestrian time didn’t really match up when I came around. They were a few months off from where I was and…I kind of lost track for awhile. But I’m pretty sure I’m twenty-two.”

Celestia cleared her throat. “Yes well,” she managed before clearing her throat again. “I know you’re kind of old for it, but…I would like to adopt you.”

“…what?” Sunset whispered barely loud enough for me to hear.

“Y-You don’t have to decide right away,” the goddess went on as she degenerated into a ramble. “Take as much time as you want. As much as you need to think it over.

“I know we’ve both made mistakes in the past,” she went on just as quickly. “I know we’ve had our troubles, and I know you’re having trouble dealing with your problems, but I promise to be open and honest, and tell you anything you wish to know. No matter how fallible it will make me seem.

“Of course I’ll still love you just as much if you wish to remain your own mare, and you’d still need to remain in the Everfree for now. At least until you can be returned to your natural form and you could move back into the castle at Canterlot where we can continue your lessons. But I’d visit you as much as I am able, not-not just the dinners with the rest of the girls, although I’d be for you there as well. But...I’d try and come by to see how you were doing and talk…three times a week, maybe? I think I could manage a visit every other night.”

“Okay,” Sunset replied weakly.

Silence filled the room for a moment, and then Tia cleared her throat. “Um…good. You just think it over. Take as much time as you need, and…”

“No. I meant, okay…Mom.”

Once again, Tia backed up, and my bed jostled before I looked back to see her rear filling the whole of my vision. “Uh, Celestia,” I called out. “Not to interrupt this touching moment or anything, but you come any closer and you’re going to be sitting on my face.”

Celestia stumbled forward a bit, and looked back at me with a nervous expression. “Oh…Omnifarious, I forgot you were there,” she mumbled. For a second she seemed torn between looking to me and Sunset, and then she settled on the human. “One moment Sunset. Let me get him his food, and then we can…work out the details.”

“Okay.”

At her daughter’s permission, Tia turned around to face me fully. “Give me a minute to prepare.”

I cleared my throat. “Um, can’t you just send it through our-”

Before I could finish, Tia leaned down till her beautiful face was inches away from mine. Her magical mane fell down, completely framing her head and blocking out the rest of the world until all I could see was the face of the sun goddess. “Take as much as you want.”

Hesitation made me stop from just gorging myself right then and there. It had been a week since I had gotten a good, full meal, and Tia’s link with me didn’t taste like anything, it was just there. Which made me wonder why she didn’t just use that, but...my hunger didn’t care about my curiosity. So I inhaled…deeply.

The taste of Tia’s love was…absolutely divine. I had apparently been feeding off fast food for so long that the taste of real emotions, even friendship of Tia’s level, tasted like the most amazing thing to come onto my emotionally parasitic tongue in forever. Of course I had known Celestia would have tasted better than the first time I fed on her but…it was like expecting hamburger and getting steak. I couldn’t help myself, and I took as much as I love tolerance would allow, as much as I dared without getting high or leaving Tia a shriveled up pony just waiting to die.

Celestia let out a loud moan and buckled, which was my signal to cut the feed and pull my head back. The goddess backed away from me, panting for breath before her wings quickly unfolded to their full length into the air. “That was…more intense than the first time, I think.”

“Sorry,” I apologized.

A golden shod hoof went into the air as Tia waved the apology away. “No it’s…I um…enjoyed it,” she said before clearing her throat. “Are you full?”

I gulped down some air before looking back to the royal, and caught sight of her soon to be adopted daughter staring at Tia with wide eyes and enough shock that I could detect it even as a pony. As for Tia’s scent, her lust had apparently gone through the roof, but that was to be expected after a feeding.

“T-Technically, a changeling like me can never be full. But, I’m good,” I told her before slipping out of bed. “I should…probably go. You two have…stuff to talk about.”

As I made my way to the door, the scent of Celestia’s lust filled my senses, and images of spending a night with ‘Molly’ planted themselves firmly in my head as the sexy woman deiced tonight would be a good time for some friendly hugging that buried my face in her chest.

I got to the door and made my way into the hall while Sunset was talking to her mom to be. “So um, Celetia-”

“Mom,” the goddess corrected. “I’ll also accept Mother. Oh! I’ll also respond to… Hmm…I guess you’re a little old for Mommy though.”

Sunset groaned as I wondered if Tia was doing her totally random topic thing to distract the former unicorn. “Wait a second, are you-” she got out before I closed the door behind me and made my way into the hall.

Finding Twilight’s room was easy enough. I had gotten a rough estimate of where everything was when I was riding Tia, and just needed to look around for a bit to find something familiar. Then I backtracked along the route the princesses took when I first connected to the sun goddess. After finding it, I opened the door and found her just laying on the bed, curled up doggie style.

It was kind of weird how pony spines were so adjustable they could manage sleeping human or canine-way without any difficulty. Although, I knew enough about pony body language to tell what it meant. Stretched out and resting like they were people meant ponies were open and happy, if just a little tired. Curled up and drawn in tight meant they were sad and trying to protect themselves from the from the world in an unconscious kind of way.

I didn’t need three guesses to know what she was thinking, I had saw it happen. “Hey Twilight.”

The alicorn raised her head, and her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh…Fae. You’re…awake,” she replied before her head went back down halfway to the mattress she was on. “I’m sorry, I didn’t come and see you, I…didn’t…”

My almost instinctual need to comfort a sad pony kicked in, and I had to strain not to just go over and wrap my furry forelegs around the depressed alicorn and tell her everything would be okay. After all, nobody had told me Spike was gone yet. “W-What’s wrong?”

“Spike,” Twilight said, “I…sent him back to Canterlot. It was…after lunch,” she said before going into a rather lengthily explanation of the goodbye party and everything else that Tia had been there to watch. Despite the fact I had seen it all, hearing it from Twilight with her depressed spin on things made the whole thing…regretful.

Watching the girl get even more down in the dumps, real remorse washed over me, and I walked up next to her and prepared to head into the verbal minefield. “Oh…is this because of…what…happened?” I asked, forcing myself not to go ‘what we talked about’ to keep her from putting me and getting rid of Spike together.

Twilight shook her head, which surprised the hell out of me to be honest. “No, it…well, sort of, but…to be honest…I think Spike’s had a problem for a long time, and I…I just…ignored it because…”

As Twilight trailed off, I got on the bed next to her, and kissed the mare on the cheek before putting a wing across her back. She practically sunk into the contact and the next thing I knew, I was basically holding the alicorn up with my body. “Twilight, it’s…” I couldn’t say okay, that would have been too…happy. “Are you okay?”

“…I’m sad,” she replied before I received a nuzzle from the little purple goddess.

I got a foreleg free of Twilight’s pressing body and added it to the number of limbs I was holding her with. “It’s okay to be sad every once and awhile,” I assured her in a soft tone. “And…I’m sure…maybe when Spike’s a bit more…mature, you can see him again…in Ponyville, I mean.”

For several minutes, I simply held the sad mare. She didn’t cry, although whether this was because she wasn’t really breakdown level sad, or because she had shed a good amount of tears at the goodbye party, I couldn’t tell.

“…Fae,” Twilight finally spoke as she shifted her body around to lay on her back, and pulled me around with her so I was on top. “Make love to me. Not just…food sex, like we’ve been doing. Real love, like…like we used to. Please?”

I felt like grumbling that she had been the one to insist on ‘food sex’ because of her project but…the alicorn’s pained eyes kept me silent. I knew Twilight was hurting, I could Smell the delicious aroma of her emotional pain in the air that made me want to kick my stupid changeling senses for identifying Twilight’s distress as something desirable.

Instead, I just kissed her on the lips, and got to work after a few quick words. “Anything you say, beautiful.”

I took my time to make Twilight forget about her loss, more time that I had spent pleasuring her in weeks, even during our friendly vacation to Rainbow Falls. I kissed her on the lips several times, then worked on her wings as best I could since I had no real experience with the sensitive things beyond the fact they were sensitive. Every inch of the mare’s body was given attention before I even got to the space beneath her tail.

Six orgasms later that put Twilight’s earth pony stamina to the test, and the exhausted goddess barely managed to magic my mouth clean before I climbed back up next to her to wrap everything I could around her from behind and kiss my mare on her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a weak voice after coming down from the feeding-enhanced euphoria, “for not feeding you enough, over the past week.”

I held her tighter. “That’s okay. It’s over now, and I know how much Celestia means to you,” whispered into her ear. “I should have told you I was getting upset. We both made mistakes, and now let’s just move on. Okay?”

Twilight moved her head in what felt like a nod. “Can I…move into the castle with you?”

A little giggle escape my lips. “Twilight it’s your castle…I’m just keeping it warm for you.”

Somehow, the alicorn managed to snuggle in even closer, and I felt her tail kind of wrap around one of my legs. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And with that, her body relaxed in a way that only came with unconsciousness, and I was left to go meet with Tia.

Was what happened to Spike perhaps a little too harsh, what with it being his worst nightmare made manifest?

Eh…what the hell did I really care?

The little bastard got in my way.

Chapter 25: The Incredibly World Altering Pretty Pony Princess Meeting

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Chapter 25: The Incredibly World Altering Pretty Pony Princess Meeting

“So…how did it go with Sunset?”

I asked the question as soon as Celestia appeared in my mindscape while doing my best not to look at anything on the nude woman’s body…and failing miserably. When you’ve got a perfect expression of western beauty standing in front of you with hair that could only come from a fantasy world or the greatest dye job in existence, you didn’t not look at every inch of her body. It would be…rude.

Especially if she didn’t actually care about being naked, and actually went out of her way to kind of shove said things in my face because she was a goddess and didn’t get human squeamishness. So it was obviously something she worked to either get rid of, or drive me insane with. I think she also found it funny to see me blush.

Not that anything she ever did was overly sexual either. But when a seven foot woman who is literally a goddess (no matter what the hell she says, if you raise the sun and live past one thousand you’re a fucking deity in my book) hugs you, freaking cuddles up next to you during a movie, or stands there playing with her newly discovered tits after turning into an overblown example of feminine sexuality, you don’t need to try and be sexy. You just are.

The goddess looked around at the mostly-same room that she had always appeared in for the last few weeks, then frowned at the pair of chairs and table with the board game on top of it. “Well enough. Now, what’s this?”

“I thought we’d try something different,” I told her a little nervously. Different as in not sitting next to a naked woman for the hour it took to get used to her being next to me. “I still have television stuff planned, but…it’s becoming kind of…monotonous. We show up, watch stuff I’ve already seen, and you comment on it.”

Tia shrugged and took her seat. “Oh very well,” she said before sitting down and…rubbing her but on the leather seat while I mentally kicked myself for not making the chairs out of something else of the non-animal skin variety. “Interesting material.”

“So um…do you have anything like chess in Equestria?” I asked. Pinkie Pie had shown me plenty of games with human counterparts and others that were pony only, but sitting around board games where you had to think for more than ten seconds really wasn’t her style.

The goddess looked at the pieces for a moment, and then back up at me. “I believe we have something similar, but go over how it works if you would.”

I shrugged, and then did as asked. As it turned out, Equestrians didn’t have chess. At least that’s what I got from Celestia’s reaction to the explanation of all the names, movements, and goals of the overall game. When I was done, the goddess leaned back in her chair, and smiled at me while I could feel a bit of…mischievousness coming from her.

“What do you think about a little wager?” she asked with a smirk.

About a million alarm bells started going on in my head over that. I mean shit, even if she had never even heard of the damn game before, Celestia was still a creature that could count her lifespan in millennia, ruled over a country for over a thousand years, and was probably older than anything else in Equestria, even counting the plants and the top layer of the mountains that had probably worn down while she sat on her giant ass.

On the other hand, she tended to crack under pressure by making really stupid decisions when the chips were down. So… “If I win you have to put on some extremely baggy clothes that completely hide your figure and cover yourself up all the way.”

What can I say? It was one of those offers I couldn’t refuse.

“And if I win…well, I’ll think of something, I’m sure,” she said.

I frowned at that. That was like making a blank check for…well…Tia wasn’t really the devil or anything, but…she was one hell of a troll. I could come up with about ten embarrassingly stupid things she could ask for me to do within the two seconds it took for me to make my reply.

“Yeah sure, whatever.”

It wasn’t like she was going to win anyway…

Ten minutes after we began, Tia put her knight down and smiled. “And that’s checkmate.”

My eye twitched, and I looked back up at the naked woman and her chest of plus four distraction. “It…you…that was… Just how similar is the Equestrian version of this game to the human one?” I demanded evenly with a frown on my face.

“Except for the fact that the main piece is a prince and the queen is a princess, they’re exactly similar,” she said with a smile as I glared at the lying woman. Which…wasn’t really true. Because of how the whole mindscape thing worked, you couldn’t really outright lie since we weren’t really ’talking’ to each other, but Tia was good at finding loopholes. “And leading with your king? Honestly my friend, political philosophy makes for bad battle strategy.”

I moaned and slumped in my seat. “Fine, what do you want?”

The smile on Tia’s face took on an almost Cheshire look. “Oh…I’m sure I’ll think of something,” she said before giggling as I cringed. “Don’t look so worried, it’s not as if I’m going to make you do anything regretful.”

“Fine,” I drawled out. “But seriously…what is it?”

“I told you, I’ll think of something.”

The day Equestria forever changed started out pretty good for me. I awoke snuggled up next to Twilight after going through several hours of conversation and a few movies with Tia. As well as a few more rounds on the chessboard which she managed to win. Just because I let her of course.

I was nice like that.

But the important thing was I was snuggled up next to Twilight after spending hours with an impossible hot woman from a culture in which personal space was considered a bad thing. After that, I was horny as hell and right next to the perfect outlet for my non-love related hunger that was actually kind of related to love in the fact that I did love Twilight, but I just didn’t need to feed off her at the moment.

I just enjoyed the moment for as long as I could before the little goddess moaned and shifted, telling me that she was awake and ready for the day. “Morning beautiful,” I said into her ear before giving it a couple of light kisses. “How’re you feeling?”

Twilight turned around a little bit more until she was laying on her back, and smiled at me. “Better than I was last night,” she said before giving me a little peck on the lips. “But that’s to expected since I just woke up and had a full night of restful sleep to lower my levels of stress and-why are you biting my ear?”

I took a second to suck on the purple pony’s protuberance before letting go and rolled on top of Twilight. “Because your mouth was running too fast to catch,” I said before kissing her on the lips. “Now how about we start this off with a nice little breakfast that’ll give one of us something to snack on, and leave the other feeling good all morning?”

Twilight let out a few breaths of a laugh, and returned the sensual smile. “Sounds good to me,” she said with another kiss. “It’s been weeks since I got you off.”

With the conversation taking that weird five-hundred and twenty degree turn that made my mind go in circles for a few seconds, I lost control of pretty much everything as Twilight rolled us over until she was on top, and licking her lips. The sensation of movement helped me regain my mind though. “Wait, what?”

Or at least my speech.

“It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to taste you,” she said before kissing me again on the lips. “I missed it.” Another kiss. “Plus, it’s the morning, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to pee soon and don’t want to stop halfway though to go to the bathroom because somepony is doing things to me that would cause a loss of bladder control.”

The logic at the end was what made me unable to come up with an argument.

As for the sex as a girl thing. Well…me and Twilight did it sparingly at best. Despite her alicorn libido that could have doubled for pony nymphomania as far as I could tell, I had only been on the receiving end of orgasmic pleasure…less than ten times in total.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing against sex as a girl and an orgasm was an orgasm, but…I was still kind of a closet girl…sex…receiver.

So…long story short, Twilight played me like a little trumpet, pushing all the right buttons and getting plenty of sound out the other end she was blowing into. I don’t know if it was because she really was a girl, or if the purple alicorn had been reading a book on the subject, but by the time Twilight was done with me and went to the bathroom, she had to come back to carry me in to the shower. Then I became her bath toy for an hour, and I think her lips cleaned me off more than the water did.

Then we had to start all over with the actual washing, and by the time we were done, Twilight’s hooves had actually managed to become a bit prune from being in the shower.

We met up with the girls and guy (ie Shining Armor) to have breakfast with the princesses. Thankfully, it was a private setting rather than the political seating nightmare from the other day, and I parked my ass next to Sunset, who sat next to Tia, with Luna, then Cadence and Shiny, who was next to Rarity, Fluttershy, AJ, Pinkie, Rainbow and Twilight, who was on my other side to complete the round table seating. For a second, I wondered if Tia had conjured the damn thing since it fit us all so perfectly and she was so into this big ten most valuable ponies kick that she considered social equals that she didn’t want to put anyone at the head of the table.

“So…how’d it go last night with Celestia?” I asked the physically youngest girl at the table.

Sunset looked over to me with a nervous smile. “Well, we’re still working things out. But…it went…good.”

Then, Twilight looked past me and chimed in. “What went good with Celestia?”

“Um…Celestia…decided to…adopt me,” Sunset explained nervously.

All the ponies at the table stopped eating, and looked over to the human. The attention made Sunset sink down a little, but she gave them all a nervous smile.

“There will be no ceremony or major show of it of course,” Celestia chimed in with a voice that just ripped with royalty-ness. “This is a family matter, and I’ll not have my daughter brought out to be picked apart by the members of court. Most ponies don’t even know of her existence beyond Ponyville, and after what happened with that pegasus, I do not wish for her to be seen as a way to…coerce me into anything.”

The fact Tia was even thinking about something like that both impressed and worried me. Although she had talked about Equestrian politics plenty, the goddess usually just complained about how much the nobility whined and made everything go so slowly. Devious plots of the non-rear end kind were never even mentioned. I really hoped she was just reacting to Sunset’s species shyness when it came to new ponies.

I raised an eyebrow. “So wait, it’s like a secret or something?”

Sunset chuckled nervously. “Like I said, we’re still working things out.”

On the other side of the table, I detected a bit of worry from Fluttershy. “So, are you moving back to Canterlot?”

A laugh and a headshake came from the former unicorn as she held up her hands. “No, still going to be living around Ponyville until I can get turned back into a unicorn. Then…well…we’ll see how things go.”

“Well congratulations Sunset!” Twilight chimed in. “I’m glad you and the princess were able to make a real connection. I mean, after all those things you said when we were working together-”

Tia raised an eyebrow. “What things?”

To which Sunset spun around and held up her hands. “Nothing! Nothing important!” she assured the goddess before looking around. “So how’s everyone else doing? Um…still working out Fluttershy?”

I watched as Celestia rolled her eyes, but continued to let the conversation get off its original track and onto a new one as she put on a ‘girl will be girls’ kind of smile. The others also managed to pick up on the hint, and soon everyone is going on about what happened over the past week with the princesses. Rainbow went on for ten minutes about a new practice course she was planning, Fluttershy admitted to the others about how she was still in training for the Equestria Games, and still excited about it. Luna got into a conversation with Rarity about some new Equestrian fashion rave in Canterlot that she didn’t understand, which the fashionista was delighted to no end to explain and end up with three orders from the goddess for dresses in said style fitted to her personal tastes. Pinkie said she needed to throw a party for Sunset and Tia, but agreed to keep it on the down low by having it at the Everfree Castle. Applejack grumbled a bit about work and how Granny was insisting they keep up their apple stand in town despite the fact they made more off of cider thanks to how they didn’t need to stand around for half a day, five days a week, doing nothing and but shouting ‘buy some apples’.

“Ah mean, Ah know it’s traditional and all, but…Big Mac says this is the first year we’ve done more than keep the farm from going deeper into debt,” Applejack said.

Celestia frowned. "Applejack, if you required monetary assistance, the crown would have been happy to give you aid considering-"

A second before Tia could finish, the farmer held up her hooves to ward the goddess off. “Well, we don’t really need the help no more princess,” she explained. “Not that I ain’t um…grateful and all for the offer.”

“However did your family fall into such financial trouble in the first place?” Luna asked. “You are the holders to most of the land around Ponyville, are you not? Should your family not be the most wealthy in town then?”

The archaic reasoning had me needing to style a groan. Despite Equestria’s...modern traditionalism, with its kind of 80s to 90s tech and old world values...the idea that land went hand and hand with money died off in the 1700s. But then, it was Luna that was talking.

Applejack cleared her throat and looked down at the table as she blushed. “Well Ah don’t rightly remember how things came to be, yer High-”

“Luna,” the goddess of the night corrected before Applejack could finish.

“Ehem, Luna,” AJ managed.

I sighed and opened my big mouth. “Despite the fact you’ve got a geographical monopoly on Ponyville when it comes to apples, the market of the small town is only six hundred, with a transient population of maybe three hundred during events like Cider Season. So the amount of ponies you can see to personally is rather limited.

“On top of which your family’s refusal to produce any other crops in massive quantities means that everypony else that grows fruits and vegetables can charge larger amounts for less food that they’ve grown of parcels of lands your family has had to sell of in the hundred odd years that Ponyville has existed to save the larger parts of the farm. Because of the competition, you have to make the one product you have more appealing by selling it for less, thus cutting into your profits while increasing your workload since you need to produce more to make up for the lesser cost,” I explained in a dry tone as everyone looked at me. “On top of which, because your family is everywhere in Equestria, you can’t try exporting your business to another town since it would be competing with them. Then there’s the deals with Filthy Rich’s family to provide them with apples at an even lesser cost that they buy en mass to make up for the fact you can only sell so much to Ponyville thanks to its small size, which he then ships around to Equestria, which of course still puts the apples you grow in competition with your larger family, but at no real profit to you. Not to mention the whole zap apple jam thing that he’s kind of screwing you with, what with your particular farm being the only supplier and all.”

By the time I was done, everyone in the room was just staring at me, while a few of the girls had their mouths hanging open. Applejack among them.

“Wait,” she said after quickly shaking her head to wipe her expression off. “Yer sayin’ the reason mah farm was in trouble is because Ah was so good at buckin’ apples?”

The question got another sigh out of me. There was a reason I never really explained such things to Applejack before. After all, in the mind of most ponies hard work went hand in hand with success. That it could also be detrimental was kind of a hard idea to sell. Hell, human farmers had trouble recognizing the same problem throughout history, but on a much larger scale.

So rather than get into an argument about it, I decided to slide into another topic, or at least turn AJ’s argumentative question into an agreement by simply nodding my head and talking about something else before she could ask how everything worked. “Hence why I worked out a deal with the cider production. Since most of the big city businesses, the bars and restaurants, just buy apples and produce their own cider, which cuts into the quality thanks to the fact the apples have aged a bit by the time they get around to making it. You’re able to find markets for your over abundance of apples by specializing in one product that’s superior to the average cider sold in restaurants,” I explained before shrugging a little. “Hay, you’re not even really competing with your family in the cider department since your comparatively low production ability means you can only sell via special order at a much higher price.”

Applejack just nodded slowly. “Always wondered why you insisted we charged ponies so much more than what we did during cider season,” she mumbled after her head stopped moving. “Not to mention just how the hay we were selling so much we’ve still got a backlog of orders.”

Rarity let out a little laugh. “Well like I’ve said before, I’m glad somepony with a little business sense managed to get an idea through that thick head of yours darling,” Rarity comment before turning her attention back to me. “Honestly, I tried to get the Apples to expand into other areas, but...well, you’ve seen for yourself how they can be.”

Then, with everyone still looking at me, got a little embarrassed and cleared my throat. “So um…what’d you and Shiny do after the whole song thing Cadence?”

“Um…” the goddess of love said with a stunned expression while Shiny got a little flushed in a way that told me exactly what she did with him after taking the stallion to her room to ‘recover’ like I had.

A wall of purple blocked my view of the other guy in the room that knew firsthand what an alicorn’s libido was like after a fucking rock concert, and I looked back around me to Twilight. “Uh, yeah Twilight?”

“What do you mean Filthy Rich is screwing Applejack?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow chimed in. “He’s not twisting him around or anything. You know...like a screw?” she replied to my confused expression. "This is one of those human things, isn't it? You're not really talking about screws."

Celestia cleared her throat. “Actually, if going by the human euphemism, in our culture it would equate to…Mr Rich shoving an alicorn-sized horn up the Apple family’s collective plothole.”

All the ponies winced. Sunset just facepalmed. “Good one Mom.”

Twilight groaned. “Princess, I knew what she meant, it’s not the first time I’ve heard the saying.”

“Oh well…simply trying to convey the meaning in the most understandable way possible Twilight,” the giant pony replied before she TK’d her morning tea up to her mouth to take a sip.

Cadence cleared her throat. “And on that note, I think we should be off to begin our princess summit. It was lovely seeing you all again. Um…Auntie, are we going to be done by lunch? I’d love to spend some more time with the girls before they head home.”

The head goddess looked over to me for a second, and then back to her adopted niece. “I don’t believe it will take that long to review the information and make a decision.”

“Oh Sunset, do you want to come and see the Crystal Gardens with me? They’re lovely,” Fluttershy spoke up.

Although I didn’t know if the ponies could read her body language, Sunset obviously got a little put off by the question. “Um…well…I need to talk to the princesses about all the information I-”

“I had my changelings review all the documents Sunset, including what you and Twilight went over,” I cut in to help her out. Unless of course she was trying to avoid telling Fluttershy no, in which case I kind of just cut off her only escape route.

Twilight giggled. “You really did want to show me up in front of Celestia, huh?”

I sighed and lowered my head. “Rather not think about it Twilight.”

She just kissed me on the cheek, and then all the attention was back on the human in the room.

“Right…about that then…”

Celestia spoke, cutting Sunset off. “I don’t mean to trouble you, but I would like it for at least three of you to be near my daughter at all times while she’s in the Empire,” the goddess told them before looking down at the redhead that was still sitting on her floor cushion. “I know I’m probably just worrying over nothing but…there might still be some misunderstandings concerning Sunset and…humans are much more fragile than ponies. Even a pony not meaning to do her harm could…especially in her weakened condition…she…”

As Celestia faltered, Rainbow flew up into her face. “You can count on me Princess. I’ll make sure nopony lays a hoof on her!”

“Oh, a-and me,” Fluttershy chirped in. "She can have my help looking out too, I mean."

“AND MY PINKIE SENSE!” the pink party pony cried out with a raised hoof, making us all look at her for a moment and kind of just killing all the conversation.

After a minute, Rarity looked over to the dark alicorn. “Pardon me…Luna,” she said before clearing her throat. Apparently Ms Prim and Proper still had a problem with calling the giant ponies by their names in private. “But…what exactly is it that you are having this summit about?”

Luna looked over to Tia, who took up the conversation after taking a look around the room. “Well…since it is all of you, I don’t see a problem in explaining things,” she said. “After my sister returned, she noticed an…oddity among the older members of Equestrian society.”

“How you couldn’t see it I’ll never understand sister,” the dark goddess said.

Celestia cleared her throat. “Yes well…I had to live with our little ponies for so long…I just didn’t notice it thanks to the passing of years and the gradual change.”

“Yet the obviousness of it…” Luna paused and shook her head with a tiny smile. “And here I thought you were supposed to be the smart one, and let me have my impulsiveness.”

For a moment, Tia got a sad look on her face, and then swept her gaze across the room and all of us. “As of late Luna, I think I am finding you are the wiser by far,” she said in a soft voice.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah, yeah…Luna’s both cute and smart, we get it,” I deadpanned, getting a surprised look from the alicorn of the night.

Which she was, cute I mean, in a super sexy kind of way. Where before Cadence had been hot, Luna was…absolutely beautiful. Everything about her was perfect, yet somehow without being untouchable. Plus, everything I knew about pony society, coat colors, and all that said Luna was advertised pretty much the perfect fun-loving girlfriend that would make a guy hard just from being in the same room.

Hell, just seeing her blush make me imagine what it would be like to be with her.

No! Bad bug-pony! I told myself. You’re with Twilight! You picked Twilight, you stuck with Twilight, you LOVE Twilight. Not Rainbow, and not Luna either. Don’t be doing shit that’s going to hurt her anymore than she already is! DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!

“Right,” Twilight drawled. “So um…what were you saying Princess Celestia?”

The addition of her title got a raised eye from the largest of the goddesses, but she didn’t bring it up. “Tell me Twilight, what is the average lifespan for a pony? Assuming they have access to the usual medical amenities.”

Twilight thought about it for half a second it looked like. “Well there is some variation depending on the breed, and um…some speculation about an ascended alicorn’s lifespan,” she added hesitantly before looking at Celestia with a bit of unease. When the goddess didn’t say anything, Twilight just went on. “But…ponies usually live anywhere from seventy years for pegasi, to nearly one hundred when it comes to earth ponies, with unicorns falling in the in-between. Of course there are exceptions, but…those are the usual life spans.”

Rainbow let out a snort. “Yeah, because pegasi can barely fly after seventy. Let’s see how long a unicorn would last if their horns went out at forty.”

“In my day it was between forty and fifty for all of the tribes,” Luna said simply. “So imagine my surprise when I came back to find that eighty wasn’t just heard of, it was easily surpassed in several cases.”

Celestia took up the conversation again. “Now Twilight, how many major settlements does Equestria have?”

“Counting the Crystal Empire…eight,” she replied after whispering to herself a few names like Vanhoover, Fillydelphia, and Manehattan.

“I remember there being only six before I disappeared,” Luna said evenly as Tia looked over to her. “Not counting the Crystal Empire.”

The oddity couldn’t have been more standoutish to me if Luna had raised a giant sign saying ‘SOMETHING IS SERIOUSLY WRONG HERE’ in bold black letters. I mean, I knew Equestria was grossly under populated in comparison to America, despite them being basically the same size and what not. But even the U.S. could have boasted more than six major cities back in the 1900s. Hell, the country had had more than that when it became the U.S.

Okay, so there weren’t that many big cities in Equestria, I understood that. Ponies liked country living. Even with Rarity being in love with Manehattan and Canterlot as she was, still resided in Ponyville because she liked it in the one horse crazy town.

Twilight nodded with a pensive frown on her face. “Well, we do have several more small towns than when you were last in Equestria. I still don’t see what the problem is.”

For a minute, I wondered just how she had known that off the top of her head. Then remembered that the purple princess had gone through all the small towns before moving onto the major ones that…she said would have taken up a great deal more time than the smaller settlements despite there only being a few major settlements.

“Twilight, how many towns?” I asked.

The alicorn looked back at me. “Well, Equestria has about twenty small communities about the size of Ponyville…which is actually kind of under populated when you look at the others, to be honest. Although we’ve had…one hundred and five in all over the past millennium. Not counting the communities that never really got off the ground, or the ones that are waiting to start right now.”

I frowned. “How in the hay did we go from over one hundred to twenty? And what’s up with the small town stuff anyway? It’s like there’s either a big city or small town and nothing in-between, what’s with that?”

“No it’s not…well…” Twilight paused for a moment. “Okay, usually, a large group of ponies from one of the larger cities will get together and migrate to another location like with Appleloosa. That was started…what? Three years ago, Applejack?”

“Uh, two actually.”

Twilight nodded. “Right. Anyway, usually a group of earth ponies, or pegasi if it’s a town like Rainbow Falls, get together and move out to settle the land.Then other ponies move in once the infrastructure is in place and there’s a reliable food source. Mostly, it’s unattached mares and stallions since its as hard as hay for a pony to find an unwed stallion in the cities.”

All the girls had to nod in agreement to that, while Cadence piped in. “Well, unless you can pick one up while they’re still in school,” she said before nuzzling her husband.

“But even then it’s hard as hay,” Rarity grumbled.

Rainbow nodded and frowned. “Not to mention they’re so bucking immature as colts, or when they grow up for that matter. More trouble than its worth.”

I sucked in the side of my mouth and bit down hard. It kept me from laughing, rolling my eyes, or saying anything at all. I made a promise not to poke at Rainbow when I first got to Ponyville as long as she didn’t need it, and I intended to keep it. Everyone else just kind of…backed away from Rainbow Dash and found something else to look at.

Okay, that was...odd.

“…Anyway,” Twilight went on after the silence that statement caused. “Of course, there are also tax benefits and business opportunities in the small towns, but for the most part, they really are there to find a special somepony after the first generation of families have foals. By then, the infrastructure is made and everypony is ready to um…start looking for…well, a special somepony.”

I filled in the blanks. “Then they match up, move back to the big cities, and the process repeats. Leaving an even bigger gender inequality like there is in Ponyville, until the towns can’t sustain their own populations and ponies move back to the cities.”

“Or more unattached stallions move to the smaller town,” Pinkie chipped in.

“But with Ponyville being on the edge of the Everfree Forest…” Fluttershy let that little bit of information just lay where it was. Considering the town had its own personal disaster relief fund to tap into for reconstruction…I completely understood why no one wanted to be around the death trap that was Ponyville. Hell, the town probably deserved its own X many days without a disaster sign out front.

Pinkie could throw a party when we hit double digits.

I gulped, and asked the question that was just begging to be asked. Considering the timeframe that Tia had wanted Twilight and Sunset to look up... “Luna…about how many ponies lived in Equestria when you were last here?”

The goddess tapped her hoof with her chin. “Well, I wasn’t completely up to date on the full numbers, but…oh…maybe a million? No…maybe a million and…one hundred thousand, one hundred and fifty? That sounds about right,” she looked over to Tia. “Does that sound right to you sister?”

I didn’t bother to listen to Tia’s response. I just checked my mental files for a piece of MLP trivia that I had latched onto after completing the census. It was the fact that the total population of Equestria was about 3 million, not counting the tiny little settlements of less than one hundred ponies spread around here and there.

“Are you telling me that in one thousand years, your population has only grown by-” I stopped myself as the facts they had just talked about came to mind. With a doubled lifespan factored in, tripling the population wasn’t even that much of an increase. Ponies were just living longer.

Apparently everyone noticed my unease, and I glanced around the room before gulping.

Celestia looked over to me. “Is there a problem?”

I licked my lips like people like to do when they’re way too nervous. “Um…yeah…Celestia…we better get that meeting started now.”

It took an hour to get everything set up for the summit. Despite my good memory, I needed to check tons of facts back in the hive mind and write plenty of things down on paper to make sure I didn’t flub any statistics. By the time I was done, everything else had been set up, and the girls had long since departed to have fun while I went to the Equestrian equivalent of a hot seat business meeting.

After I got in the room, I looked around and noticed wasn’t anything special, at least not in the Crystal Empire. The room where the fate of Equestria would be decided was just someplace about the size of your average living room, made completely from crystal with a small rectangular table that all the princesses sat at. Honestly, I had been expecting some a little more formal, and larger.

Then, I presented my findings, and spelled out the obvious conclusions that they meant.

Twilight stared at me in shock, as if I told her the world was ending.

Mostly because I kind of just did.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE’RE DYING OUT?”

I winced at Twilight’s terrified shriek of a question as we stood in the meeting room that the princesses had chosen for the summit.

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Tia cut in right before I addressed Twilight’s…loudness.

“Look, Twilight, you said yourself that the gender ratio for ponies is…five to one?” I asked, waiting for her nod to continue. “And a lot of families shoot for a stallion, but normally stop after the first four foals if they don’t get one. If a couple manages a stallion right of the bat like with your mom and dad, then it’s…usually two, right?”

She gave me another nod.

“Well…how many ponies have the resources to care for four foals? There’s got to be plenty that just stop at one or two,” I theorized to the alicorn sitting on the far left of the table, next to Cadence.

The alicorn rubbed her forehead. “How could nopony have noticed this before? How come we haven’t been…well…there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of ponies!”

Celestia sighed and lowered her head. “Because ponies have been living longer lives. A few are having more foals, but for the most part…the amount of foals being born has remained constant with a few rises and dips every now and then, correct?”

I groaned and slumped a little. “Tia, did you already know everything before you even told Twilight and Sunset to look into it?”

“Not in such detail, but…I took at look at the Canterlot birth records and found nothing wrong,” she said. “Until I remembered that Canterlot ponies can usually choose which gender their first foal is going to be thanks to the easy access to alchemical experts. Then I looked at Ponyville birth records and…noticed what might have been a problem. So I had Twilight and Sunset double check everything using information from all across Equestria.”

Cadence sighed. “Alright…so we have a…lack of stallions problem,” the princess said. “It’s not exactly news Auntie. Everypony knows a good husband is hard to find.”

Tia looked over to Cadence for a few seconds, and then to me. “How many ponies were born last year?”

I looked a my notes before answering. “About four-hundred thousand,” I said. When Tia frowned, I rolled my eyes and glanced at my papers again. “Four hundred twelve thousand, two hundred thirty three.”

“And how many died?” Celestia went on. “The exact number.”

Once again, I looked at some of the papers on the desk in front of me. “Four hundred sixty eight thousand, five hundred sixty nine.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “So…more ponies died than we born. It was a bad year.Not-not anything to get panicked about.”

Celestia looked back at me. “What was the discrepancy for the year before that?”

“Um…thirty five thousand, twenty eight,” I said after some math. “In the negative.”

“Was the year before that also a loss?” she continued.

A few seconds later, I nodded. “Um…yes.”

“And over the last ten years?” Tia went on.

That one took some time to answer. “Um…there was a total loss of…one hundred and fifty eight thousand, nine hundred and twenty two,” I said before looking up to see faces of barely restrained horror in Twilight and Cadence’s faces and found myself needing to find some ray of light. “Well um…that’s just…um…there are some other, really small towns that aren’t big enough to warrant a full count so there might be a few…hundred more births.”

Of course it wasn’t much of a bright light.

Overall, Equestria had about an equal amount of population, and truly settled land as America did during the Colonial Period. Ponies just spread things out a lot more. Despite the increased technology, the gender leaning counteracted the number of healthy males born. The tribes had probably managed to increase their population through cross-breed marriages when Equestria had been founded,with pegasi doing it with unicorns and such, but…from the looks of things, the pony population looked to be…kind of stagnant.

If the average family had four kids, with the chances of getting a guy five to one, I could see how the population might drop a little bit if it was just cold numbers, but something still didn’t add up. There was always the group that could beat the odds, and Twilight had mentioned the magical potions in Canterlot to guarantee a boy being born, so…there had to have been something I was missing.

Obviously the longer lifespan meant for more time to breed, so it was possible that ponies had started making five foals instead of four… With a pony like Twilight not noticing? I asked myself.

Unless four foals was the new normal, and the old average was around three. But that wouldn’t have allowed for any kind of increase over the years.

Cadence broke me out of my considerations. “This…this can’t be a continuing trend,” she said. “We can’t have been having less ponies born than died for more than a decade.”

“We would have had to of had a population growth at some time, right?” Twilight asked the other princesses. “At least to get us to where we are now.”

Then the purple pony princess looked over to the giant pony goddess. “Wait Princess, are you saying…what? Get to work on my um…gender solution for Fae and use it on ponies?” she asked hesitantly. “It’s not…the transformation is still only skin deep, with a few extra nerve endings to add extra...tactile sensations. I don’t think it would create um…reproductive organs that…produced…reproductive fluids.”

For a second, Celestia looked up at Twilight, then shook her head with a little laugh. “I had forgotten about that to be honest,” she mumbled. “But no…what I wanted to check was my belief that the total number of ponies in Equestria hasn’t really…increased as much as it should over the years.

“I know the loss of Luna would mean more…problems would cause the loss of life, but I had hoped we were…making up the losses of increased violence caused,” she admitted. “But from the looks of things. It seems we have an issue I had not considered, and it needs to be dealt with.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Sister, you know I can’t stand it when you’re cryptic,” she said before sparing a glance at me. “Besides, from what our friend says, our ponies are getting along fine enough. A decade of loss is regrettable, but…as there is a low tide, so to there is a high. There must have been to triple our numbers during my absence, despite the increased danger.”

The words made my latch onto an explanation. “Actually, that may be why the pony population has gone up over the years. At least a little,” I said, drawing the attention of the princesses. “Um…well, I don’t know how it really is with ponies but…with humans…a brush with our own mortality, like during a long stint of serving in the army kind of triggers an almost instinctive need to breed. To…leave something behind, or create a living legacy for after we die.”

But then, ponies are pretty different psychologically than humans. I’ve been around them long enough to figure that out. Although, you can live among them for a week and think you learn everything, when you’re laying mostly dead in the snow from the beating your mother gave you, they can still manage to surprise you by pulling you out and carrying you home.

“Interesting theory,” Celestia mumbled. “But, I called us all here today to fix this…problem. Hopefully without having to make several wars and increase the number of foals born thanks to ponies being made too aware of their mortality.” There was a smile on her face and the voice said that Tia wasn’t mad at me or anything, but I still felt as if I should have kept my mouth shut.

Once again, Luna seemed to be at odds with her co-goddess. “I see no problem to fix sister. Now that I have returned, the number of ponies shall even itself out and-”

“I don’t want them to even out Luna,” Celestia told her sister before her tone became worried. “Look at our world sister. The buffalo have been reduced to a single tribe, and the elephants have become little more than legend in these days. The diamond dogs are but a shadow of what they once were, and need I speak of the creatures that once roamed these lands when we were but foals? A thousand years have passed, and we have not increased the number of ponies in our land once age has been factored in. How long until our stagnant population becomes one of never-ending decline?”

Luna sighed. “And what is your solution sister? An increase in alchemical concoctions? Is that not…costly? If I remember correctly-”

“Nothing so roundabout, what I propose is…” Celestia paused, then outlined her plan, the reasoning behind it, and her projected outcomes. Despite the insanity that went into the foundation of it, the other princesses didn’t declare her mad and tell Twilight to help them send Celestia into the sun.

In fact…

Twilight’s eyes widened. “That’s an…interesting idea.”

Luna frowned. “Surely you are not serious sister.”

Cadence just sat there silently in deep thought.

I felt like banging my head against a table and had to settle for groaning before I spoke. “Are you kidding me?”

Tia looked over to me with a confused expression. “You don’t agree with my assessment?” she asked. “I’ve run the numbers and looked at the data. Everything seems sound. It will take a few years to catch on, but…what?”

Apparently my twitching eye managed to get noticed by the goddess. “That’s…you…” I grit my teeth and let out a breath. “That’s going to cause more problems than it’s going to solve Tia!”

“Not likely,” she replied. “After all, we are ponies, not humans. And you don’t get a vote anyway. So hush up and let the princesses do our jobs.”

I…well, if it were anyone else, I would have called them a stupid idiot and probably thrown a few things at them, but…Tia was my…um…really annoying dream roommate that I had to deal with every night. So I wisely kept my mouth shut to avoid personal problems down the line.

With me sufficiently cowed, she looked back to the others. “So, would anypony like to discuss my idea, or shall we put it to a vote as is?”

Cadence spoke up. “Um, yes…what if the…opposite were to happen?” she asked. “I mean, two…and one…you know…” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one having trouble wrapping my head around the idea Tia...copied.

For a moment, Celestia just looked at her, then nodded. “Well I suppose we can’t allow one without the other. Although as the years pass by, we’ll probably be seeing seven or more mixed groups.”

“Do you honestly think such a thing will catch on?” Luna deadpanned.

Celestia shrugged. “I don’t see what not. Now…shall I call a vote? Twilight? Do you have any objections or last minute changes you want to make to my proposal?”

The little purple goddess actually looked at me for a few moments out of the corner of her eye, then looked back to Celestia. “No…I’m good, and ready to vote.”

Luna cleared her throat. “Very well then, I say neigh! Tis too strange and new. I do not like it.” With that, she managed to sit back on her haunches and crossed her forelegs in what almost looked like a pout.

“I vote yes,” Twilight said a second later without any stumbles, making me nearly swallow my tongue. Thankfully, I didn’t think she noticed.

Cadence looked down the table at her adopted aunt, and frowned. “You do realize that Twilight and I will have to take part in all this if we are to convince the ponies of its correctness, right?” she said with a frown. “Me especially.”

“I was well aware of that, yes.”

The smaller alicorn groaned. “As much as I may end up regretting this…I vote yes. On the following stipulation, all parties must agree, and any new unions must be made with all parties involved, and then that’s it. You don’t just get to keep…adding on.”

A few seconds later, even Luna was agreeing to the added stipulations. The measure passed two to one, with the dark goddess still going against it, even with Cadence’s reforms.

With the issue apparently taken care of, the super important meeting degenerated into ten minutes of predictable girl talk, and I found myself wanting to be anywhere else by the time it was over. As for me, I was sworn to secrecy regarding the events of the summit, as Equestria needed to be informed of everything at the same time to avoid any misunderstandings.

Then came the other issue that completely hit me out of the blue. Hell, I didn’t even think Tia meant to bring it up except for the fact that I was standing right in front of her.

“Oh, there is one more thing,” Celestia said as the meeting began to break up, having long since degenerated into something government meetings shouldn’t be. “I know this isn’t why I called the summit, but…after yesterdays events…I do have another proposal to make.”

The second was even more horrifying than the first…and passed three to zero.

I felt like crying after that.

The rest of the day passed kind of in a daze. We met up with the other girls, talked, and Twilight let slip the good news about the summit that she was allowed to talk about. Rarity was ecstatic, Rainbow didn’t seem to care, Fluttershy was her usual self about everything, Pinkie wanted to throw another party for reasons that made me cringe, Sunset pointed and laughed, and AJ found it just as funny despite the fact she was able to hold back better than the human.

After lunch, Cadence put us on her personal train for Canterlot and Ponyville with the Crystal Mirror and a private sleeping car for each of us. By the time the sun went down, I was finally able to come out of my…funk, and just looked up at the ceiling of the car while sharing Twilight’s bed.

Still, I was so out of it, I didn’t even feel like sex.

That was how disturbed I was.

“I still can’t believe she did something like that,” I mumbled.

The covers rustled as Twilight shrugged. “Well it does make sense and I’ve got…wait, you mean Celestia’s plan to increase the pony population, or your elevation to the higher royalty?”

I groaned. “Twilight, just call them what they are, herding, and princess-hood,” I replied.

Honestly I don’t know which of the two disturbed me more. The whole polygamy thing was…I had gone over it with Tia and why it was considered a bad idea on Earth. Religious connotations aside, which was a mixed bag no matter which team you rooted for, the whole idea of multiple partner relationships just… Jealousy, and inequality, and all that jazz. Of course there were all the arguments against the arguments that were against polygamy, but…when it came down to it…everything I knew about the subject was rendered null and void by the simple fact I was dealing with another species.

Ponies weren’t humans, it was a fact they had proven to me several times before.

On the other hand, ponies had to have a human actually think up polygamy so…I doubted they knew how to deal with the idea all that well. For ponies, everything was all one true love. The idea that you could have three girls and two guys in one relationship...I didn’t know how they’d take it.

“Twilight,” I finally spoke again. “Why did you…agree to Celestia’s proposal.”

The little goddess snickered. “Well, you already have wings and a horn. You already have subjects a kingdom of your own…sort of. Plus, you’ve stepped up to defend Equestria twice, and in areas outside your jurisdiction. So why not call you a-”

A moan from me stopped her from talking. “I meant the other one,” I said.

I got a whiff of confusion coming from her Scent. “What was wrong with it? To be honest, I think it’s an interesting idea. We already have four mares for every stallion out there, and I know from talks with Cadence that it leaves a lot of broken hearts. If a stallion can be with more than one mare, everypony is happy and Equestria’s breeding potential is significantly increased.”

“And you don’t think this is going to cause some huge problem when a guy decides he likes one girl more than another?”

Twilight looked over to me with an even expression. “I have five best friends and you, and I manage to love you all equally. How is a stallion having two mares any different?”

I wanted to shoot back that there is an instinctual need and possessiveness in the female of the sex, but…that was humans. For the most part, pony relationship psychology was still a mystery to me.

The fact Twilight put me on equal level with the girls though…I didn’t know whether to take that as a complement, or an insult, or just be fucking terrified of what it could mean. The girls were supposed to be as close as family. Super close do anything for each other family. That she considered me in that little group…it put a bit of pressure on my shoulders I didn’t need.

So I just looked back up at the ceiling of our car.

And waited for Twilight to change the topic or that alicorn libido to kick in and start demanding some attention.

…

“So, when do you want to ask Rainbow Dash if she’s…agreeable to dating us.”

A minute passed.

I blinked at the ceiling.

Then, looked over to the mare with wide eyes.

Since you know, there was no way I could have heard what I just heard come out of Twilight's mouth.

“I um…what?”

Twilight gave me that look of hers that said, “I’m not blind Fairy,” she actually said to back up the look before she became all hesitant. “I…I know you like Rainbow…a lot.”

My heartbeat increased, and I gulped. “W-Wait, Twilight! I…you…” I got out before taking in a deep breath. “Twilight…okay, yeah, I like Rainbow…a lot. But, I picked you. I love you.”

Rainbow was the girl you hung out with, and fantasized about, and wondered what could be while not really doing anything with. Twilight was the girl you married. She was smart, cute, stable...in a social kind of way, and a little crazy so things wouldn’t get too boring. And that was that. End of story.

Twilight was the logical choice, and Rainbow was...Rainbow.

Twilight swallowed, and turned all the way on her side. “I know,” she replied before taking another deep breath. “But Cadence is right. She and I are going to have to…participate in these new marriage laws. And…Rainbow…

“Well, ever since she taught me to fly and we’ve spent more and more time together, I um…well…I can see a future with her...and you. The three of us, together,” she finished before licking her lips nervously. Then her eyes widened. “Oh, y-you’d be the stallion, of course. I um…now that we’ve gotten done with Celestia’s project, we can get back to work on Sunset, and I can fit time in for you again, magically I mean. Plus…wait, I suppose we’ll have to add another mare to make a full herd though. Um…any ideas?”

I went back to looking up at the ceiling. The possibility of trying to get Rainbow into a triangle of a relationship, never mind what Twilight was planning with another pony on top of that…it was starting to make me a little worried. I mean, me Twi and Dash? I could…see it…maybe.

Me, TwiDash and pony X?

That may have been pushing it a little too much.

In fact, I’d rather deal with a naked, gloating Tia as she tried to cuddle me into a lust filled insanity. “I think we should get some sleep.”

Twilight yawned at the suggestion. “Okay…see you in the morning, give my best to the princess.”

“Night,” I replied before kissing my pretty purple pony princess filly friend forever on the lips. Then she had me roll around until she was the big spoon, and I was out a few seconds later.

Unfortunately, changelings didn’t dream, and Tia was in a playful mood.

Chapter 26: The Incredibly Late Second Thoughts of a Bug Pony Princess

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We got back to Ponyville pretty late in the day, and I was kind of anxious to talk to Twilight about the Rainbow Dash thing. We had beaten the news about the marriage laws back to Ponyville in plenty of time since Tia needed to make legal documents, brief some legal experts, put the law’s information down on several pamphlets, and apparently hire some ye olden criers to announce the whole thing. Apparently that was one of the steps when making a major change to Equestria that messed with its legal foundation, and since the last time Tia did it was four hundred years ago, she never bothered to throw the practice out.

All in all, it gave us some time to figure out what me and Twilight would do to approach Rainbow Dash and…see if she wanted to go for the whole semi-swinger thing. Not that we’d be trading off lovers since it would be the three of us. More like nightly threesomes.

Then we had to get out of bed, meet with the girls, and not talk about something that wouldn’t stop putting images of itself in my head. It was like telling someone not to think about zebras with Zecora in the room. When we finally got back after a whole day of doing nothing in a moving box, I just wanted to go to bed and eat while getting away from the wet dream fuel that was Rainbow Dash.

I sighed as Rainbow zoomed her way out of the car that held our luggage ahead of all of us while me and Twilight were left to help with Sunset’s bags thanks to the fact the pretty purple pony princess no longer had a porter following her around all the time and the girl was still kind of hurt. I didn’t want her exerting herself at all.

If we couldn’t find a quick fix, it would be bed rest and plenty of changeling slaves for Sunset until she felt better.

“Do any of yall need help with that stuff?” Applejack asked as Twilight lifted our five bags of luggage with her magic that were parked next to a giant shipping crate. I took a moment to stare at the thing with Sunset’s one real hope of turning back into a unicorn inside. The large box containing the Crystal Mirror, I had made arrangements for.

“I’ve got it,” the purple goddess assured her friend before she turned to look at Sunset. “Can we stop by the library before we head to the castle? I’d rather just make one trip if we can help it. But if you need to see Zecora right away, we’ll fly over right now. We can leave the bags here and I can carry you.”

The human held up a hand a smiled. “I’m okay Twilight. Still pretty sore, but…I can manage.”

I studied the girl for a few seconds. Since Sunset wasn’t constantly wincing, I had no way to gauge the truth of that. Having to constantly look up at the girl’s face made it hard to read her expression. “You’re positive? Absolutely sure?”

“Yes,” Sunset replied before I felt her hand touch the top of my head as she ran her fingers through my hair. It was apparently something she picked up during her day with the others because Fluttershy didn’t mind the contact, and Rainbow couldn’t resist her stupid ear thing that paralyzed ponies with a scratch. All in all, I was just happy Sunset hadn't also used the ultimate attack that was the belly rub.

Having someone pet me was a new experience but…it was apparently the closest thing Sunset could do to a nuzzle. She had managed to figure out to make up for her inability to have pony body language, so I just let her run her hands through my hair. Not that I nuzzled that much with any of the ponies anymore. But, Sunset needed some kind of semi-familiar contact.

Concerning her adaptation of pony-to-human body language. I didn’t know if was a good thing, or a bad one. I mean, if she was starting to compensate for being human in same way, had Sunset already given up on turning back on some level, or was it just to fit in better?

Twilight gave the girl a restrained smile. “You know we’re just worried about you Sunset. I’m sorry I didn’t visit you in the hospital. I should have-”

“You had plenty on your own plate,” she said before Twilight could finish as she tweaked the alicorn’s nose. Or...booped it. It was kind of hard to tell. “Now can you two stop being all…whatever and let us get going?”

Twilight led our group out the door and onto the train platform. Once we were all gathered, I gave instructions to the twenty identical black coated pegasi with blank flanks that were waiting for us to transport the crate inside the car to the castle. Twilight insisted on holding onto our stuff though. She still had room for carrying some things at her old house. Then we started making our way to the library to grab the rest of her junk.

As the three of walked through the town, the phrase ‘it’s good to be home’ never sounded more true. It was pretty late in the day and the shops were closing. Street traffic had swelled to that 5PM level of super congestion in Ponyville that meant there were more than ten ponies walking around us.

Lyra was meeting up with Bonny outside her shop. Colgate was heading home. Derpy-changeling was out delivering the evening mail while the real one was probably at home with her daughters. Time Turner was not messing with a big blue box out behind his shop that seemed a little too small to be a police call box from jolly old England. Cloud Kicker was checking out her sort-of girlfriend’s butt. Everything was perfectly normal.

With the three of us being the local oddities, everyone took notice of us. I think we had to smile and wave all the way from the train tracks to the treehouse. It was the one skill Sunset had that she could do better than any of the girls…with the possible exception of Pinkie Pie. That pony could hop along on one leg while greeting three others at once.

Even with my emotion detecting senses towards Sunset dulled thanks to me being in alicorn form and her being human, the misty eyes and huge smile that appeared by the time we got to the library told me something was going on. I looked up at what might as well have been a giant woman to me and nervously licked my lips upon seeing her tears. “Sunset, what’s wrong?”

“It’s um…nothing. Just…no angry mobs or frowning guards. Everyone’s just smiling at me,” Sunset paused for a moment, and took in a breath. “I’m home. I mean…it just hit me, you know. Everyone here, they know everything about me and they still...smile and wave. This is my home. Ponyville. When did that happen?”

I walked forward and put my shoulder up against her leg while wrapping my neck around to touch the back of her thigh with my horn. It was the closest thing to a hug I could manage without jumping up to put weight on places that shouldn’t be touched. Sunset apparently got it, because she was back to petting me a few seconds later.

“Probably a day after you met every pony’s foal and they ran home to tell their parents how cool you were,” I replied while I felt her fingers run through my hair. A second later, I stepped away and looked up at the girl. “I mean, you really didn’t think I wouldn’t have put you in the school without some secret, ulterior motive, right?”

Of course it being five in Ponyville, about half the town saw our little moment. Being ponies, no one said anything as they went about their business. Sunset just looked out over the town at the 5PM sun and how it was still in the center of the sky at its daylong noon, and smiled.

“Okay, let’s get my stuff and go home…well, to the castle anyway,” Twilight spoke after we had a good half a minute of…whatever we just had.

A few seconds later, the library door opened, we entered, and Twilight took a look around. The wonderful aroma of depressed pony filled the air, and I looked over to her in concern. “Um…you okay?” I asked my princess before strafing an inch from her side with a wing ready to throw across her back.

Twilight sighed. “Let’s just say Sunset isn’t the only one getting hit by realizations that are heavily laden with emotion.”

Wing around back. Side pressed up against. Lips on cheek. I completed the comforting trifecta, and moved with Twilight as she set her stuff down so we could head to her room in order to grab the rest of it. Upon seeing Spike’s little basket, Twilight froze.

I gulped. “Um…you know…if you really want…we could go to Canterlot tomorrow and drop off his stuff.”

Although considering how the whole household felt about me, it would probably end up being Crystal Empire II, Revenge of the Paranoid Ponies. Now that I put all the anti-changeling hysteria in one household, I knew it was a bomb just waiting to go off. Or maybe a landmine would be better, a landmine in the road that I’d have to step on one day. Either way, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

The suggestion got a shake of her head. “No. We talked about this. We’ll see Spike when we go to Canterlot like normal, and send a letter with his stuff tomorrow. He needs time apart from me.”

Despite her even tone, I could Smell her inner turmoil and went so far as to nuzzle her. “I’m sorry this happened.” The weird thing was that I actually meant it.

“Me too,” Twilight whispered.

Yeah, Spike had messed with me but…it killed me that Twilight was hurting from his loss, and we had plans to visit him in a few days.

Once Twilight had gathered up everything she needed, which wasn’t all that much aside from her clothes and some things from the desk beside her bed, we went back into the main room and found Sunset sitting on the table. For a human, it was actually the normal height of a chair. She looked up at the pair of dresses Twilight had snagged, along with her bedroom writhing supplies and frowned. “That’s it?”

Twilight’s face got a little confused. “What’s it?”

“You’re a princess, and the amount of stuff you take when moving is everything you can fit into a pair of saddle bags, along with a couple of dresses? That’s really all you own?”

The little goddess rolled her eyes. “No, this is just all I need bring to the castle. All my books are still here. For all of those, I’d need a wagon. My Winter clothes can wait. Everything else like my toothbrush, I packed in my bags when we went to the Empire.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Your books? Really? You own enough to barely fill a saddlebag, and some books? And you're a princess?”

All in all, I didn’t see the problem. I owned less than that. The dress Tia had sent me had ‘mysteriously’ vanished and...okay, I’d be holding onto the one Rarity was making. You didn’t throw gifts from friends away.

Which Celestia wasn’t.

At least not when she gave me the dress.

“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed as she looked back to her room. “My crown! I forgot my crown, thanks for reminding me Sunset!”

As the purple pony trotted back into her room with a little smile, Sunset looked down at me. “Okay, I live in in the fucking castle, so I know Twilight doesn’t keep anything there. But…she’s a princess, and only owns two dresses, some winter wear, and forgets her crown?”

“You do realize one of the reasons she got elevated was because Tia knew she wouldn’t let the position got to her head, right?” I asked. If anything, Twilight ran away from it more often than not. Since becoming a princess, the only princessly thing Twilight had done was…well, ruling Equestria for about a week during the time I was freaking out and Tia fucked up so hard in helping me was pretty big. But that had apparently convinced her she didn’t want to do anything beyond fighting world destroying evil, and maybe cut the ribbon on a few grand openings.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. But a princess could at least have the usual stuff. Gold jewels, all the things ponies expect her to-”

The door to Twilight’s bedroom opening cut Sunset off, and the purple pony walked out with all of her regalia in her magical grip. She had the horseshoes and everything. “Okay, now I’m ready,” she said before looking over to her princess horseshoes for a moment. “Well, let me clean these off real quick. They gather dust like you wouldn’t believe.”

As Twilight blew the dust bunnies of the more expensive parts of her royal attire, Sunset groaned. “That’s even worse!”

I managed not to laugh as we headed back through town on our way home.

The trip through the Everfree was slower than normal and we had to stop to let Sunset rest at one point. By the time we got back to the castle, it was almost dinner time, which meant Zecora was easy to find.

Usually, the zebra wasn’t around at all. She spent most of the day out gathering herbs with the changelings I lent her, and occasionally stopped in for lunch. We had tried just using the drones to pick the things for her, but they were a bit too rough when it came to gathering herbs she only needed pieces of and damaging the plants too much. On top of which, Zecora only used the castle to store her ingredients and potions in bulk and sleep. A small hut outside the castle was where Zecora made everything.

It was perfectly understandable ever since she kind of...blew a hole in the ceiling of her lab while mixing a rather volatile potion by dropping too many eye of newts in…or something I really didn’t really understand zebra hoodoo. I hated chemistry in high school, and rhyming-Snape’s potion making classes were even worse.

Sunset seemed to get along with her well enough. Although that was probably because she could decode stuff better than me. And she actually understood alchemy.

We found Zecora making dinner, since the zebra preferred to cook things herself rather than get things from town like the human, dinners at the castle when we all bothered to show up were a rather…potluck affair. As soon as Twilight opened the door, the zebra looked up from her non-potion pot that I had gotten her. After the CMC needed looking after in the castle and I found she cooked dinner in the same thing she made potions in, my common sense it would probably be a good idea before the day came when Applebloom showed up, took a sip of what was cooking and got turned into a llama.

“Ah hello my friends, so good to see you since making your amends,” Zecora said as we came in.

Twilight nodded in greeting. “Nice to see you too Zecora. Um…well, I would like to visit but right now, Sunset needs some help with something.”

The zebra looked up at the human for a moment. “Much to my regret, I have not found a cure for you Sunset.”

I frowned at the zebra. “Cure for…wait, you’ve been working on a way to turn Sunset back into a pony?”

Zecora’s eyes widened in surprise. “But of course, why would I not seek to return our friend to the form of a horse?”

“Sorry,” I apologized as I held up my hoof. “It’s just, you don’t talk about your work that much.”

She laughed. “Not to be curt, but speaking of potions makes your head hurt.”

I cleared my throat. “Right…but that’s not why we’re here. Sunset…show her.”

Sunset sat down, and then pulled off her shirt with a wince while I had to force myself not to look away. The cuts and scraped up skin on her back made wearing a bra pretty painful even on top of bandages, so she had gone without one ever since. But with the kid being physically seventeen and under my care, it was one sort of pony that I wouldn’t be falling for.

Zecora winced while I added to the damage. “And she’s also got three cracked ribs, and a bruise on her arm.”

“A mystery is what I see, could the princess not heal the injury?” the zebra rhymed.

Ever the explainer, Twilight shook her head and spoke before I could. “No. Healing magic requires a knowledge of what your healing on an instinctual level. For instance, a pony wouldn’t be able to heal a buffalo with magic. We were hoping you had something.”

After hearing the problem, Zecora trotted back over to her potion shelf and looked around. “To heal what was damaged and cut, I do have a remedy, but…” she mumbled as she stopped at a potion and grabbed it in her hooves. “This potion has a price to pay. Time heals all wounds, so they say.”

I looked over to Sunset. “Can you translate that, please?”

Sunset crossed her arms. “It’s an aging potion. I’ll get a little older, but the cuts and bruises will heal.”

I tensed as Sunset explained how the potion worked, I had to restrain myself from saying no deal. She…was an adult after all. As she looked at the thing and explained that it would age her a week per drop, I cleared my throat. “Okay, let’s just get this over with,” I mumbled before taking the potion in my magic and popping it open while fighting down my apprehension.

Even though Zecora obviously thought it was a safe quick fix, and Sunset had years to burn, I couldn’t help but get a little worried. She was human after all, there was a chance that the stuff might not work. Or worse, work too well.

If something did happen, I supposed that Tia could have done something to reverse it. Although, the only spell I knew about pertaining to age would put the girl back in diapers.

We measured out six drops, and put them on her tongue before she sat down on the floor as the magic took effect. What with her being seventeen, Sunset really didn’t change much. Her hair grew a bit. I was a bit more interested in the other visible effects. The marks on her back disappeared inside of three seconds, and six seconds took care of her ribs by the way Sunset kept touching the area around her breasts without wincing.

I studied the girl in the short skirt for a few more seconds with held breath, and sighed in relief when nothing unexpected happened.

“Okay so…let’s eat, and afterwards, um…Sunset, you can go…shave,” I mumbled before looking away from the teen’s legs that just had six weeks of hair growth.

Twilight trotted up and examined the teenager’s legs closely. “So…humans can grow coats too?” she asked before looking up at me. “Why does she get a coat? I didn’t get a coat of hair when I went through the portal. Wait! Does that mean Zecora’s potion did something to change her back? Or start some kind of pony transformation?”

I groaned and Sunset looked over to me. “Oh, you’re explaining this one. I just didn’t have anything to eat for six weeks, and need some food,” before her stomach rumbled and kept me from arguing.

After I finished cleaning off after my meal, I crawled my up from the foot of the bed to lay next to Twilight while I waited for her to come down off the feeding. A few seconds after she turned over and snuggled up next to me, I let out a sigh. “Uh…I know it’s probably a bad idea to talk about another mare when you’re in bed with your special somepony, but…we didn’t exactly have any other time to ourselves on the train, and um…”

“It’s okay,” Twilight said. “We do need to make a plan for asking Rainbow out.”

The way she said it made me hesitate. Some ideas flashed through my head, but…a few too many of them seemed a little too…wrong. “I don’t want to…pressure her into it or anything.”

Not to mention trick her. Talking Twilight into getting rid of Spike without really talking about it was one thing. In the end, it was her choice. I just helped her look at things a certain way.

But with Rainbow, I wanted...needed it to be her decision all the way.

Twilight was silent for a moment, and I could see some of the gears turning in her head. “How do humans do it?”

I did my best bed shrug. “Well…lots of ways. For me…it either involved being straight up with a friend,” I said while not mentioning how those methods usually ended, “or I’d try meeting some one at a…social gathering place we usually go to introduce ourselves to others and…drink, and maybe dance.” Alcohol tended to help with the whole nerves thing when it came to talking to strangers that happened to be hot.

Of course Equestria had kind of upped my abilities in that area. Earth had nothing on Tia in the hotness or strange categories.

As most of my ideas were struck down by the fact that they were either involved too much pressure, trickery…and in one case some mind control that I crammed back into my brain as deep as I could, I started to have seconds thoughts about the whole thing.

Hell, I didn’t even really manage to get Twilight on my own. That had been a combination of chemicals and Twilight’s overzealous dating methods that I couldn’t say no to. She had gotten me. Very little actual dating involved.

Of course I couldn’t forget that it was also thanks to the fact I had looked like pony-Brad at the time. It wasn’t the horsey hotness that helped me though, but the perceived sorta-romantic history between the two of them that I really hoped never happened because she was really a horse and he was a human like I used to be before I became a bug-horse and got mind fucked by Celestia with her freaky what’s hot and what’s not pony edition into thinking Twilight was...well...she had big wings, and those were nice.

I blinked at my own...trainwreck of thoughts.

“So…we just walk up and ask her?”

Twilight’s question made me pause for a minute before I spoke. “That’s um…it? Maybe do it after a dinner at the Garden or something? Or is that too formal for her? That’s too formal.” Dash wasn’t one for fancy restaurants.

At last I didn’t think she was.

But of course taking her to Sugarcube Corner was also out. Pinkie would be there, and she had a penchant for popping up at the most problematic times. “We could take her to the Hayburger...maybe?” It was probably the biggest insult possible to take a potential girlfriend. Trick her into a date...at McDonalds. Or maybe it was more akin to ambushing her into a date proposal at McDonalds. Either way, the fast food monster’s slightly less evil pony twin would be involved to taint the idea of triple us togetherness.

“That was like our first date...in a way,” Twilight said. “Would it be symbolic if we took her there?”

I grit my teeth and moaned. “Yeah…I doubt Rainbow would appreciate the symbolism, and just see the place for what it is.” Cheap and evil.

Twilight looked up at the ceiling. “What about here? Or we could go to her house...maybe?” she asked before looking back at me. “No, here its like we’re cornering her, and there...it’s like we’re chasing her too hard.”

The alicorn shifted around for a bit and she reached out to lock her fetlock with mine in a pony handhold. “There’s a few books on how to ask one pony out, but…multiple partners is…new. Doing it separately wouldn’t really work, but both of us together…you said you didn’t want to pressure her, and I don’t want to either. If we gang up on her...will she see it like that? Ganging up on her? I’m with you about not wanting to seem like we’re forcing her into something.”

That got a smile out of me, coming from the alicorn that zapped me onto her bed.

“...this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be,” I mumbled before Twilight snuggled up to me.

We couldn’t pressure Rainbow into a whole new kind of relationship that would probably confuse the hell out of all of all of Equestria for the first few days. Sure I was there when Tia laid out the ground rules and all, but all new things legal needed fine-tuning in the end.

Overall, the ida was…actually pretty sensible, thanks to some of the modifications Cadence provided. Sensible in theory for ponies at least.

There was no actual limit to herd size, and completely female or male groups were allowed for. Unaccounted inheritance would be treated as if all the elder ponies were the parents of the half-brothers and sisters even with no genetic relations. Although, ponies could still nitpick using wills and the like. And…well, the full length of all the new marriage law was enough to fill a book, but I had gotten the gist of it as Tia laid things out for us all.

The way things were set up seemed kind of slow. What it boiled down to was the whole group or pair or…whatever, needed to court a pony they wanted, or vice versa and sign off on everything when it came time to take the plunge. One member of the family couldn’t just try and bring new girlfriends in on a whim. That alone meant the family size would probably never grow beyond three or four. On top of which, while current marriages would be allowed inclusion…one of Cadence’s addendums made it so new…triples, quintuples, or whatever they were going to call multiple ponies in a relationship got locked in as what they were at the alter. I had to wonder how much that was going to push back the average age for marriage.

Divorce was tricky to say the least. Although the divorce rates in Equestria were so low Earth would have been overpopulated hundreds of years ago if human relationships had been as stable as ponies, they still happened. But if it were to happen, all the ponies had to agree to kick a mare or stallion out of a herd. Major infighting would mean a split of everything upon agreed upon lines. And ponies didn’t have a word for prenup.

Concentrating on the legal side of things helped me clear my head a bit, and looked back over to Twilight as she entwined her forelegs with my left one. “So how do you think the town will take it?” I asked. Not to mention Rainbow.

While Twilight mulled over that question, I realized one important little fact: I had no fucking clue how Rainbow would take this whole thing!

She could hate it! Be against it one-hundred-percent, a hundred-and-twenty even!

She was the Element of fucking Loyalty! How could you be in a multi-partner relationship, and still be loyal?

It was impossible!

Completely, impossible!

Then I remembered another little fact that had managed to creep up from the dark recesses of my mind while I had been so into the horsey three-way: Soarin.

Last I checked MLP, Rainbow had been kind of crazy for Soarin. At least I thought she was. It had been sometime since I last saw an episode. She danced with him at the royal wedding, I remembered that much. Had they done any more?

But, the slightly less worrisome part of my mind had to wonder about the fact she didn’t even bother visiting him once in the hospital at Rainbow Falls. The pegasus could have scored some major points if she had. But she left him high and dry until getting mad at Spitfire for the whole abandoning a teammate thing. So…what did that mean?

Had she given up on him or something? Giving up really didn’t seem...Rainbow.

What if Soarin had a girlfriend, and the whole family herding thing gave her another shot at him?

What if this whole thing went sideways, and Rainbow went chasing after Soarin and Spitfire in some massive Wonderbolt orgy with Fleetfoot and that other Fire-name pegasus? Sure it would make for a picture you could clop to...if ponies actually clopped, hooves kind of made that painful, but it sure as hell wasn’t what I wanted!

I wanted Rainbow and Twilight in bed, with me and doing all kinds of the freaky stuff.

Maybe the Twilight Sparkle/Cloud Kicker method of just kidnapping her in magic, pinning her down, and then double-teaming the pegasus was a better idea. We could talk to her about going steady the next morning after she got to sample the goods. It worked for Twilight when she was chasing me and lured me into her parlor.

Except...we didn’t want to pressure her.

Then there was the mind control option...not on Dash. But...if she really was into Soarin, I could mind fuck him into breaking her heart, then me and Twilight could come swooping in and pick up the broken pieces. She would...be incredibly pissed off at me and leave with Twilight once that little secret got found out.

Plus, the image of a crying Dashie that put in my head...it didn’t make me feel too good about myself.

“Well, I think any major alterations are going to take time,” Twilight finally said, thankfully drawing me out of my thoughts before they became too Lesson Zero. “Celestia is thousands of years old. She looks at things differently than most ponies. Plans for the future in century-long incriminates. Most of the ponies of today will probably shrug, maybe even try multiple dating with the odd couple of mares going through with marriage, but… I think by the time the Crusaders grow up…well…they might actually share a stallion. But any major changes will be done like that, with the next generation. Then one hundred years down the line, it could easily become common to see two mares for every stallion. Two hundred or more…probably more. On the other hoof, it is Celestia making changes, and ponies do tend to follow her. So it may happen sooner than that.”

“And the girls? How do you think they’ll react?” I asked hesitantly. And by girls, I meant Rainbow Dash.

“…honestly? I have no idea,” Twilight told me. Which...kind of scared the hell out of me.

And by kind of, I meant really.

Twilight and Dash and the others…I was all for free will…sure, but I had lived in Equestria long enough to know there was some kind of Destiny thing a work, with the capital D, and there was no way in hell I wanted to mess with something like that. A meteor would probably end up killing me if I did.

And I knew for damned sure, those six girls were Destined to be together. Even without the Elements, they still had that stupid box thing that Twilight spent a few hours a week puzzling over. They still had Something.

I wasn’t part of the equation.

But here I was, fucking with it, just by talking about this sort of thing with Twilight.

If one of the girls didn’t like the idea, just one, I was screwed. That pony would go ‘eww weird’ and it would mess with their friendship and lay waste to all of Equestria! But not before making me the first casualty.

Or worse, what if Rainbow was open to a relationship with Twilight, but not me?

I’d have to break up with Twilight and leave Ponyville...and probably all of Equestria!

After all, I was a manipulative vampire with delusions of playing with pretty little ponies for the rest of my life, or at least before I crossed some kind of line and got killed by Tia for being evil! Twilight deserved so much better than that!

Twilight grip on me tightened. “Look, I know how you feel about Rainbow, that’s why I brought it up. I knew you never would. I like her a lot too, and if she wants to see if there’s something more for the three of us...if she wants to join in what you and I have, I am all for it.” She smiled and kissed my cheek. “And the more I think about it, the more excited I get! This is...it’s like we’re breaking whole new ground and-and when I image how it’s going to feel wrapping her wings around me from the back while I’m laying here with you and have to put a spell up to keep her from snoring loud in my ear, and all the things the three of us can do together… And...together, together… I just...I just know it’ll be amazing.”

The words...helped. So did the kiss that followed before she yawned and told me goodnight.

I sighed.

“Great.”

And then I was asleep too.

“You want my advice for asking out Rainbow Dash?”

Like what had become the new norm for our dream dates, Tia sat across the chessboard as she looked down at our pieces and moved another. Our seating arrangement had changed from the first time too. Whereas before, I had chairs and a table worthy of a goddess, what we now sat upon where foldouts and your basic card table held the average chess board.

Thinking games, like remembering information on legalizing polygamy was also a good way to get ones mind off of stress. It helped a lot by not even being connected to Rainbow Dash at all. By the end of two spectacular losses, I wasn’t even considering half the insane things that had crossed my mind when I had been awake.

I felt a bit of amusement coming from her, and she looked up at me with a smile. “Going after her as soon as you can? I would have thought you wanted to get your crown first…Princess.”

It helped that Tia liked to poke fun at me too. And this third game meant I had to bet another favor. She apparently wanted to get to movie night, because the usual noble bitch session hadn’t lasted ten minutes while we were playing.

I let out a groan. “Can you at least not call me that when I’m all the way male?”

“Absolutely not,” the naked woman told me. “And…don’t you think you should wait to see if she’s even receptive to the idea?”

I shook my head. “No. Knowing Dash…”

Only, I didn’t know Dash when it came to stuff like this. I didn’t know how any of them would react. It was brand new, uncharted territory that there were only theories about.

But, after some consideration, I did know the reality of the situation. If Rainbow Dash was into the idea…she could very well make the first move towards another pony that was already attached. If not…then I would be putting what we had into the awkward zone for…no idea how long.

That was probably the biggest scary part. I didn’t want things to be awkward between me and Dash and Twilight, or any of the girls. So much so that I might have possibly been considering the minute chance of wiping her memory of the experience if she said no. It was messing with her head, but it was the smallest, teeny tiny bit messing with it.

Just a smidgen.

For her own good.

No knowledge meant no harm, no harm meant no foul feelings, and no foul feelings meant girls wouldn’t break into half a dozen shattered friendships. Everyone would walk away happy.

As long as it didn’t work out.

“Knowing Dash...me and Twilight need to ask her first, and as soon as possible,” I said before moving one of my rooks forward.

Celestia moved another piece into an opening I left. “And that’s checkmate,” she replied before sitting back in her chair. “But...the day of the announcement? Don’t you think that would be a bit too soon? Your coronation would be the better event. All three of you in your best dress, and the Empire is the newest romantic location in Equestria for couples. I take it Rarity is preparing something?”

The fact that my coronation was going to be in the Crystal Empire, and not Canterlot kind of chaffed. Of course Twilight had thought it would be Canterlot, but Celestia had said Empire not an hour ago, and so it was going to be Empire. She was obviously up to something, but...damned if I knew what it was.

“Yes,” I told her with a groan before touching on a topic I wanted to beat her to death about. “And…princess? Seriously? I don’t even have a sex as a changeling, the other thing is just…makeup. Fancy magical, alicorn-clone makeup.”

After she pushed away the game board, Celestia shook her head. “You can lay eggs and have babies in your real form. I know you’re technically asexual and favor a stallion in your appearance and voice and mind, but the reproduction capabilities and your public face means…princess,” she said before giving me a sympathetic look I could tell she meant. “I am sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Then her mouth curved upwards a bit. “Although if you want to go without your makeup on, I would understand, you’d make for quite the ugly princess though.”

I groaned. The last thing I needed was another reason to feel uncomfortable during the whole thing. “Don’t worry, I’ll be like everyone wants me to be,” I said while Tia moved the foldout table we had used aside and I got rid of the matching chairs. It was a lot easier than the rather elaborate crap that I used the first time. That had taken some real effort to move when we were done playing.

Of course since I had figured out how to mess with the rules of the mental construct early on, simply turning down the gravity or resizing everything while my roommate wasn’t around so Tia looked like a normal woman was an option. But...I could always feel that little bit of unease in the back of her head whenever she first came to my house. If being bigger and stronger than was humanly possible put her at ease, I wasn’t about to take that away.

She was literally putting herself in my hands every night and...I wasn’t about to betray that trust, no matter how much she teased me.

We took our usual seats on the couch, and I cleared my throat. “So…advice for Dash?”

Tia leaned back and I caught some more amusement in her mind, along with a touch of…sadness, I think. Although the why to it was beyond me, unless she was remembering old boyfriends.

That made me sad in turn and I couldn’t help but think about how bad that was for her. Considering her feelings towards the girls, I didn’t want to even imagine what it would be like when they died.

Or if she would let them die. Zecora wasn’t the only pony who knew how to play with ages after all. Tia had more than enough power to put the all girls back in cribs and raise them again when they got old.

Considering the fact that changelings kind of didn’t have an old age problem either...I was more than willing to help with all the diapers, feeding, and everything. If it came to that I mean.

Okay getting ahead of yourself again. That’s what got you in this mess, remember? I told and asked me before wiping the dual images of six foals and five foals with nanny Twilight trying to change them all at the same time from my head. I’d solve that problem when we came to it.

Right now, I needed to listen to Tia.

“For starters, go somewhere she feels comfortable…somewhere that’s hers,” the goddess told me before her hand reached out halfway across the sofa. “Don’t just come up to her and ask bluntly. Just…spend time with her.”

I frowned at my sleeping companion. “That’s what I’ve been doing.”

Tia let out a soft giggle and adjusted on her seat. “Right,” she agreed. “Well…if it was me…I’d take her flying. Just out and about. Maybe a little race. Rainbow likes contests, right?”

That little thought made me laugh. “You racing Rainbow Dash?” I asked while the goddess reached up to twirl her hair around one of her fingers for a few seconds. “That I’d like to see. I mean, how fast can you fly?” Most of Celestia’s moving about was done by magic when she really needed to get somewhere fast.

“I’ll admit, I’ve gotten a lot slower over the years,” Tia admitted before she let out a long sigh and dropped her hand from her impossibly multicolored hair. “Of course she’d be nervous around me, everyone is. Being a princess usually puts a gulf between an alicorn and…others. Then there’s the age difference. You’re older than her too, right?”

I nodded. “Well sort of. I mean, she’s just twenty.” Older than Twilight, but nowhere close enough to take Rarity’s title of oldest Mane Six member. But hell, I was…maybe three months old physically, Sunset was seventeen, Twilight was only just coming up on her own twentieth birthday party, and Celestia was…God only knew. “It’s complicated. Sure I’m…kind of mature and all but on the other hand…changeling.”

“I’d fly until she was tired, just enjoying the moment, taking as much time as I could with her before I put it all on the line,” she went on at a whisper and a far off look in her eye as the feelings coming got all wistful. “I’d conjure a cloud for us to land on, and pull her under my wing so she could feel my heartbeat and be as close as possible. And then I would tell her how I feel.”

Tia relaxed a bit and slid down on the couch until she and I were on eye level. “If I were to meet someone with whom I believe I could be with. I would tell her how amazing I think she is, how wonderful, how much I enjoy my time with her and…how much I want to see her happy,” Tia explained. “And if she would let me share in that happiness, share in her life, then it would make me the most happy person in all the world. And I would promise to do everything I could to match what she gave me in kind. To be there for her when she needed me, and for no matter what she needed me for.”

Tia’s smiled faltered a bit. “Of course I’d have to explain just because I have wings and a horn, and…several pounds on her, doesn’t change anything,” she went on before becoming a little hesitant. “But I would understand if she were…intimidated by it. Not to mention I haven’t pursued a relationship in some time so…I’d have to warn her that I was probably rusty at certain things. That I’d make mistakes, probably have to go incognito if we wanted to do anything together. But I think you know plenty about that.

“And then I would tell her that it was okay if she didn’t want to be with me in such a way. That what I truly cared about what her happiness, and if she were to say no, then there was no need to feel guilty. For everything would still be the same way as it was yesterday, and the day before that. I would love her all the same, and be there for her as I have been since we became friends.”

I gulped as I looked at the most beautiful woman in existence and felt a wave of warmth and compassion, caring and even a bit of longing wash over me. All the usual stuff as of late. “So um...yeah...that’s…”

It took me a bit longer than usual to get over the whole goddess thing that I did my best to forget every time I was with Tia. Of course her and her damn loving smile didn’t help, but...I managed it.

Her words though…

What could I say to that?

They were all nice and flowery, and perfect and…

There was no way in Hell I was going to remember it all. Not by the end of the night.

Plus, there was no way I could pull off the Jesus’s Big Sister aura Tia had. I was sexy, she was perfect.

“Oh, and I’m calling in that favor I just won,” the goddess told me before patting the couch cushion right beside her. “Now sit here and start the movie,” she said with a smile.

And just like that, the goddess was gone, and the Infinitely Kind and Loving Celestia was back to being everyone’s perverted older sister.

I grumbled and scooted down to park my covered ass next to her nude one while Tia sat up to her full height. The one that had me on eye level with her boobs.

She reached around with one arm and pulled me into a leaning hug until I had my head pressed up against the side of her chest, and the second one hand came around my legs to block any hope of having an escape. Still, it was nice...just sitting like we were.

And it had helped to talk about Dash with her, and...she had a point with the whole confession thing. If things didn’t work out, things could just go back to being like they had been before. It wasn’t like there would be that big a change if Dash turned Twi and I down.

“Hey Tia...thanks for the talk,” I told her.

Another bit of joy came from the amazon sitting next to me as she bent down to talk softly from above. “I will always be here for you, as I have been since we became friends.”

“Okay, okay I get it,” I mumbled before turning on the television. She didn’t need to repeat something she just said not five seconds ago. The forever friends thing, it was the perfect way not to pressure Dash when we asked her. I got the hint, I was going to use it.

For some reason, a bit of amused sadness crept into Tia’s emotions, and and she moved to touch her hand to mine before sighing. “If only…”

Chapter 27: The Incredibly Disasterous Day of Dating Declarations

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The day of the announcement started like any other day in my life since Twilight moved into the castle…the day before. Which…really wasn’t like any other day since it was the first day I woke up with Twilight after having to deal with Tia.

Not that dealing with Celestia was a bad thing. She usually got all the teasing out of her in the first hour of sitting together, and we just relaxed before it got time to go. Then she got a little playful again and usually left me with some jostled hair, a perfectly understandable reaction to being close to a naked woman, and desire for morning sex with Twilight.

It was one of those whole turning your weaknesses into strengths things.

Anyway…I got my hair mussed up by Tia before she left, woke up, kissed Twilight, did…stuff together, listened to her grumble about the lack of plumbing in our room before she had to go to Sunset’s room to take care of her morning business, listened to her gripe some more about the insanity of human bathrooms, dropped Sunset off at the school, put a mildly intelligent unicorn-disguised changeling in charge of the library, and then we went shopping with Twilight.

And by the end of that, I understood just why Spike ran all the damn errands.

Everything was going fine when we went to buy new pony bathroom fixtures, arrange for a cloud plumbing installation from the weather patrol, and do anything that involved choosing from a set of uniform things or items out of a catalog like refrigerators, showers, sinks and toilets, but when it came to the other necessities, Twilight was…well…insanely picky was an understatement…

I sighed as we stood in an isle of Barnyard Bargains while Twilight held a pair of cereal boxes in her magic. She levitated the left one up a little, then dropped it back down and raised the box of Cheery-Oats that was floating on her right. “This one,” she finally said after ten minutes of examination. “This one is definitely point zero three ounces heavier.”

As Twilight put the box of pony cereal next to the twelve other items we had managed to procure on our two hour shopping spree, my patience reached its end. “Twilight…I know you’re upset and everything about Spike, but your obsessive compulsive disorder is not a good coping mechanism.”

“My what?” she asked before looking up from our shopping cart and over to me.

The question made me have to fight to stop frowning, and I just sighed and shook my head. Like pheromones, certain psychological disorders were big unknowns to ponies. They had mental hospitals and all that, but they were only for the most impossible and dangerous of pony society. It was probably why Pinkie was still a free range pony. She was a kook, but a long way from dangerous.

I routinely checked the cupcakes to make sure of that too.

And I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Twilight she had mental problems. The possibility of it freaking her out and creating an eternal downward spiral of insanity as she tried to cure her craziness would most likely drive her mad.

“It’s um…never mind,” I told her before the alicorn went back to looking around the store.

All in all, Barnyard Bargains was a pretty reasonably-sized store for a town like Ponyville, about equal level with a normal human truckstop, with many of the same amenities in the ten rows of items. Although it was funny to see what was missing, especially when it was what would have been commonplace any human supermarket. I heard Rich built much larger ones all over Equestria, but with Ponyville apparently being a breeding town on its last legs, he hadn’t bothered to expand his personal Wal-Mart into a super center.

Of course there was no meat section, or any open ‘cooled’ area where such things usually were. Fresh produce was also non-existent, which made sense considering the farmers market in the middle of the town. What the store did sell was mostly jarred, pickled, and boxed food, as well as other items like cookware, a few gardening tools, barrels of various sizes, pots for plants, and there was a space out back where wagons and wheelbarrows could be bought.

I had found the whole place interesting when I first moved to Ponyville because I could chuckle at the odd similarities of brand names and such. But the novelty had worn off long since, and now it was just another store to be shopped at.

Although admittedly, most of my time during this particular shopping trip, I just spent time following Twilight around.

Literally.

Twenty minutes into the whole thing, and I took to staring at her ass to keep my mind occupied. When lunchtime rolled around, I had every intention of making it a full meal and letting my little goddess take a nap before Sunset got home and we could take a look at the Crystal Mirror.

It was only after I noticed Twilight’s tail hadn’t shaken with movement for two minutes that I figured something was wrong and looked up at her frowning face as it in turn stared at the checkout counter. “Something wrong?”

“I think there’s something going on outside,” the alicorn mumbled before she trotted up to the express checkout line.

Unfortunately, two of the ponies in line ahead of us were from Ponyville’s retirement home. By the time the attention-starved mares got done telling the cashier about the good old days when it was just Celestia on the throne instead of all them other alicorns that just seemed to be popping up everywhere so much you couldn’t even turn around without running into one and we got out of the place, thirty minutes had passed. By then, quite the crowd had gathered around the quickly constructed stage in front town hall. And by quickly constructed, I mean I hadn’t noticed it two hours ago when we went into the store.

I did have to hand it to Ponyville, they knew how to build quickly. It probably had something to do with all the times the town was practically destroyed. Plenty of practice.

Although the crowd was well over a few hundred ponies, it was still shy about one fifth of the town’s populace. Still, I spotted Rarity and AJ…and Rainbow Dash was peeking down from a cloud next to Raindrops and Cloud Kicker. Even the kids had been let out of school, and I caught sight of Sunset walking around in her jeans, being followed by the Crusaders.

A few seconds after I glanced back at the stage, the mayor made her way up to the podium. “Fillies and Gentlecolts, can I have your attention please?” the mare said before she cleared her throat. “Now, as you all know, a few days ago another princess summit was called in the Crystal Empire to discuss matters of importance pertaining to Equestria.”

I frowned at the horse woman’s words and leaned over to Twilight as she held the brown paper bags containing the groceries in the air with her magic. “They’re making the announcement now? I thought we’d have three days at least.” Although a week would have been more realistic with the way news moved in Equestria.

It hadn’t even been long enough to get word out about the upcoming coronation.

“I don’t understand!” Twilight exclaimed. “There’s no way Princess Celestia could have found enough legal experts to explain everything to everypony in a day. They would have had to memorize pages of legal documents, be transported all across Equestria, and get everything set up in less than twenty-four hours! Sure you can get word to the newspapers in that time…maybe…if you use pegasi, but the travel time alone makes it impossible for everything else. Nopony can do…” Twilight stopped talking for a moment, and her eyes widened. “She didn’t use ponies.”

I turned my full attention over to Twilight. “What?”

Twilight sighed, and looked over to me. “Fae, you told the changelings to follow Princess Celestia’s orders like she was your equal, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And she had the fourth-ranked changeling as one of her advisors, right?”

“Yeah.”

And then it didn’t take me long to see where the purple pony was going with this. I groaned. “And she could had him memorize the documents bit by bit, store the information in the hive mind, and then send it all over Equestria in an instant,” I finished for her. Hell, I had bragged to her about it the day before.

In fact, I wouldn’t be suppressed if it was a black-coated unicorn or pegasus without a cutie mark that made the announcement and helped with any question pertaining to the law. We probably all had it stored on the cloud after all.

“Great, now I have to start reading progress reports from my minions again,” I mumbled. It cut into my morning Twilight Time, but a second oversized quadruped sending orders behind my back without even being in the hive-mind needed to be checked on.

Not that I…

Actually, I did mind Tia giving my changelings orders without my consent. They were my fucking species damnit! She may have bossed around everything else with horns and wings and hooves, but I got the changelings!

“Now, let me just start by saying we don’t need to worry about our resident princesses leaving town,” the mayor announced, which turned a lot of pony attention towards the two of us. “Now um…Princess Twilight? Would you like to make the announcement instead? I looked for you at the library but your…stand-in said you were out.”

Twilight looked up to the mayor. “No that’s fine. You have all the note cards,” she said before her voice dropped and she looked over to me. “And we really have no idea just what this is about.”

On that, I had to agree with her just to hold onto a little hope. After all, this could very well be just about the coronation.

“Now, during the last princess summit, there was a minor change to Equestrian law-”

Damnit!

“Which needed to be done in order to address a matter of necessity in these changing times,” the mare said. “I now turn this over to the Princess’s representative from Canterlot, who will explain the issue, and take care of any concerns you might have.”

The representative wasn’t a metamorphosed changing.

In fact, she was about as far from a changeling disguised with reverse-engineered pony magic as you could get with her longer than average legs, slightly larger build, perfectly pink mane, and brilliant white coat with the image of a sun on her flank that was partially obstructed by a pair of white magical paint splotches that were supposed to be clouds.

“Sunny Skies?” Twilight mumbled. “She said she worked in the palace, but…wait…so does this mean Princess Celestia didn’t use changelings?”

I tensed as I had to think of an explanation to cover Tia’s slightly smaller, transformed ass. “Um, well…maybe Ponyville is close enough to Canterlot that it didn’t need super fast delivery services, and Sunny is pretty smart. She figured out how to read my native language after all,” with Discord’s help probably before he gave his entrance exam to Trixie in order to let the blue mare chafe Twilight from afar while not really doing enough to get me chasing after him, “while holding off the royal guard.”

Of course I was pretty sure incognito-Celestia was really here to either dick with me, or maybe help the girls understand…

No…she was definitely here to dick with me.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” the most disgruntled female voice in Ponyville. “She’s really using Sunny Skies?”

Both of us looked back and up towards Sunset, and I winced. Since everything that happened with me and Tia at night was in the hive mind, I remembered clear as day just about all of it with little effort. Including the explanation about how she had first came up with Sunny Skies to take Sunset to the Canterlot Fair and other places when she was just a kid.

Twilight looked up at the human. “You know her Sunset?”

“You know her?” Sunset asked the alicorn in reply.

I cleared my throat. “Yes she um…goes to a class we have together in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.” Which I wasn’t going to be able to get out of going to this week. It was going to be the new family visitation day with Spike and Sparkle’s parents. But I actually had a plan for this class and had special ordered a magical item from The Enchanted Metallic Golem’s Dungeon and Miniature Portrait Shop to provide a team activity because Celestia got a little horrified at my idea to just dump the class in the Everfree’s space bear cave to see how they did against Yogi and Booboo in a combat situation.

“I um…yeah…Celestia…I used to um…baby-sit as a way to learn responsibility and that was one of the kids I got stuck with,” the human managed to explain after a slow start. Considering Sunset had been lying for the last two and a half years of her life…it was a pretty bad show of her abilities.

Of course Twilight bought it hook line and sinker. It wasn’t full of stammers or contradictory facts, and ‘Sunny’ did look close enough to the alicorn in age for them to have been children at the same time. “Huh, guess that’s why Cadence was my foal sitter. I always wondered why an alicorn of all ponies looked after me when I was little.”

Personally, I had my own theories about that. It involved said unapproachable girl with divine status needing to meet cute boys, and what better way to get the real story on them than their little sisters? She hadn’t outright said it during our double date when they told me and Twilight how they got together, but…there was no way that the fucking Alicorn of Love didn’t have a few tricks up her sleeves for getting the inside scoop on a guy she wanted and…

I stared ahead dumbly as the most obvious move in the whole ‘try and get into a relationship with Rainbow Dash’ game struck me like a bolt of lightning out of blue. WHY THE HELL DIDN’T I ASK CADENCE FOR HELP?

Okay sure, that would have required me manning up and talking to Twilight about it about four minutes after…she voted for the damn thing, KNOWING she’d be expected to get into a relationship with another girl.

Or a stallion…

Yeah, bad thoughts, I told myself before looking back up and cutting that train of thought off before it could go any further. There was no point in trying to cry over spilled milk. I had other things to focus on.

Like how Rainbow Dash was going to receive Tia’s announcement.

“Citizens of Equestria,” ‘Sunny Skies’ spoke up. “When Luna returned from her banishment and the Nightmare was cleansed from her mind, a startling discovery was happened upon. While every mare knows how hard it is to find an unattached stallion…” She actually had to pause for a moment with the crowd of mostly female ponies nodded, grumbled, and cheered a little in agreement. “…nopony knew just how detrimental it was to ponies as a species. After a long study conducted by Ponyville’s Princess Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer, and the changeling inhabitants that are now part of Equestria thanks to a mutually agreed upon pact of annexation and friendship, we have made rather startling discoveries.

“Those discoveries being Equestria’s population growth, and our ability to maintain the current population. Thanks to the bad harvest of…ahem, certain alchemical ingredients in the past thanks to the expansion of New Horseleans that began several years back, we have been on a drastic population decline these past ten years and steps must be taken to ensure that Equestria’s infrastructure continues to be sustainable.”

I frowned as Celestia reshuffled her papers, and looked over to Twilight. “Okay, did I miss something? Because she never mentioned bayou town during the meeting,” I said to the purple princess. “Just the population crises.”

Sunset Shimmer leaned down, then just sat on the grass after thinking things through for a moment. “What population crises?”

Twilight looked back to her fellow former student. “That’s what the meeting in the Crystal Empire was about. We’ve been in a population decline for the past ten years.”

I clenched my teeth in an effort to keep my mouth shut. There was no need for Sparkle to know it was actually a bit longer than that…by a few decades. I had checked things during the train ride home out of boredom and was now trying to do my best not to think about it.

The live pony deficit wasn’t as much as in the last ten years but, the gap between births and deaths had been increasing in the overall line graphs for quite some time if the minor bumps from an odd year here and there weren’t obsessed over.

“Its what everything has to do with New Horseleans that confuses me,” I mumbled. “What the hay’s so important about that little nothing of a town?”

Being an ponified name of a city from earth I had looked it up back in my Flashy days. But aside from the name, they didn‘t really have much else in common. New Horseleans wasn’t the party town that New Orleans was. It was one of the older farming communities from way back before there was even an Equestria. Mostly an earth pony town, the place was famous for indigo plants, corn, rice and sugarcane farms, as well as some naturally occurring magical plant called Willie Weed that Twilight had once tried to mix into a potion to…solve my gender problem.

Oh God…they might as well of called it Penis Plant, I thought to myself before I looked over to Sunset. “Hey Sunset, you know about potion making, right?”

“Yeah,” the flame-haired alchemist replied. “Why?”

“The magical potion that mares drink when they want to get a one-hundred-percent chance of a colt…does it use Willie Weed?”

Sunset nodded, then groaned and covered her face with her palm. “Goddess, why do I have to know English?” she grumbled before glaring at me. “Why can’t you people still speak Latin or something? I mean hell, hey and hay sound nothing alike in Equestrian, but your stupid English language-”

Twilight shushed us as ‘Sunny’ continued to talk. “And I now give you the following statement, from Princess Celestia herself,” Princess Celestia said. “My little ponies, one of the most important things in Equestria is the love between two ponies. However, love is not bound by some kind of social contract that demands that a pony must choose between others that both offer companionship. In fact, to force such choices upon you all usually leads to conflict that could be avoided. While our current crisis has forced me to address this, know that the decision of my fellow princesses, and the solution that I presented them with in no way affected our feelings on such an important issue.

“However, because of the declining birthrate of Equestria, the following laws will be enacted in order to allow survival of us as a species,” Tia’s little fake-unicorn ass explained before she doled out the specifics I had heard before.

Half an hour later when she was finally done, I leaned over to whisper in Twilight’s ear. “Um…I think we should go get a table at Sugarcube Corner.”

“Why’s tha-oh,” Twilight said as I pointed out Rarity and AJ trotting our way.

Tia cleared her throat. “Now, I have been fully briefed on these new laws, and will be at town hall for today until sunset to answer any questions you might have relating to them.”

As the pony floodgates opened, me and Twilight snuck away. Sunset took a look at Tia, and followed us a few seconds later. The girls met us before we even got in the dessert building.

We took our usual group seat at Sugarcube Corner, or the new usual seat since the interdimensional alien that looked like an Equestrian native and the Equestrian native that looked like an interdimensional alien had joined the group. Before me and Sunset, the girls used to just sit at a table to the right of the door. Now they had a booth in the rear left of the sugary eatery. It was one of those long L booths that was built into the corner and still allowed for seating on the outside. Mostly it was mostly thanks to Sunset’s human anatomy not liking to sit on the floor than any need for a pony to lay down.

However at the moment, being in the booth seats had pretty much trapped the three of us in while the rest of the girls took their seats on the outside. While Twi and I could just teleport out, or just muscle our way past the lot of them if it came down to it…I was pretty sure things weren’t going to end up being that bad.

“So,” Rarity spoke up as she put on a little glare. “You’ve been sitting on this since we were in the Crystal Empire? Family herds? Stallions getting as many mares as they can handle?”

Applejack sighed and looked down at the table. “Ah think Mac’s gonna be staying out of town for a few…well…probably weeks.”

“Kicker drooled so much on our cloud it started raining,” Rainbow said as she picked up a menu and giggled.

Then I turned over to the last pony at our table. “So um…what do you think Pinkie?”

The pink party pony looked up at the ceiling for a moment, obviously thinking as she tapped her chin with a hoof, and then back to me. “I don’t get it.”

“…huh?” I asked after a moment’s hesitation.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “What’s not to get?”

“Three mares and one stallion? How would that work? I mean, a stallion’s only got one ding-dong-doodle, right?”

“Well it’s not just for sex,” Twilight said. “It’s a whole relationship. Like what Lyra and Bon-Bon have, only now if they wanted to bring a stallion or another mare into their lives, and that pony wants in on it, they could.

“But in response to your question, you can have more than one partner in bed too Pinkie,” the little goddess went on as I looked over to Twilight in fear. “I mean, let’s say Fae took a stallion’s form and I had another mare with me when we engaged in intercourse.”

“Uh, Twilight?” I spoke up.

And was totally ignored as Twilight went on. “Fae could rut me while the other mare gave my horn attention.”

“Twilight.”

“Or my wings. Or she could be under me and we could make out while-”

“TWILIGHT!” I shouted in the girl’s ear loud enough to make her wince.

She looked around as everyone else at the table refused to meet her eyes. “Ahem…sorry, I’ve been…theorizing.”

Rainbow Dash snickered from behind her menu. “So that’s what eggheads call it, huh?”

As Twilight blushed, I looked around the table and waited for the others to calm down a bit. “So…um…what do you all…think?”

“I like it!” Pinkie exclaimed while the rest of the group was probably trying to repress the memory of Twilight’s declaration of sexual fantasies involving two partners or more. “More special some ponies means more love to go around.”

Applejack shook her head. “And more complications,” she said before adding, “but Ah suppose if it’s what ponies’ll go fer, Ah ain’t one to judge. Shoot, might even mind me a stallion now. Have a chance of just being more than ol’ Aunt Applejack to Big Mac’s youngins.”

Twilight smirked. “You were listening to the part where Sunny Skies said the whole family is a married unit right? It’s the foals that are herd-sisters, not half-sisters. Wives are married to wives too.”

“Ah know, Ah know.”

I glanced over to Rarity and still caught her glaring at me…sort of. It was a social glare, a tiny scrunching of the eyes that nobody would notice unless they knew what they were looking for and could smell emotions. So I wisely gulped down the fears shooting up from the whole, SHIT SHIT SHIT! RARITY DOESN’T LIKE THE IDEA! EQUESTRIA IS DOOMED, thought that kept running through my head, and nervously looked over to Rainbow Dash.

After all, we could deal with Rarity. She kept ahead of the curve. She would get behind it if someone like Fancy Pants and his wife started…well…all things considered, I didn’t think Canterlot ponies were going to be going for it since they had access to the bulk supply of male chance-enhancement potions.

Unless my guess about pony New Orleans was right. Which in turn made me wonder why Tia wasn’t simply trying to cultivate the plant in massive quantities? Was it already gone? Too hard? Had some special property like Zap Apples?

It was...a mystery for another time.

At the moment, I needed to know something. One more pony’s opinion on the subject of three is company too.

It was Rainbow’s opinion. The only one I really cared about.

Rainbow’s opinion was the only one that really mattered.

It was great that Pinkie was excited about it, and Applejack had a…sensible outlook on things, but Rainbow…what Rainbow thought about it was EVERYTHING.

“So uh Rainbow,” I said with a gulp. “What’s um…your two bits on the subject?”

The pegasus put down her menu and looked at me with eyes that looked…well…other than their usual magenta color, I couldn’t really see anything else about them. As for her reaction… “Eh, it’s cool, I guess,” she said before I got a Whiff of a little sadness, “not really gonna make much of a difference for me.” Then, the Scent was gone and she looked around. “So um…we gonna order, or what?”

It wasn’t a no, and I would take it.

I would run with it.

And I would jump for fucking joy so hard it would make that guy who played Superman in the last remake look like a total putz.

But I sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to sit around a table without starting to grin like a total maniac and scare her away. I needed a way out. Something to do, some kind of excuse to get away and do the happy dance.

I needed…

“Sorry girls, but I’ve got to take these groceries back to the castle,” Twilight told them as she levitated our haul.

…something like that.

“Yes, and Princess Omnifarious needs to have her fitting done,” Rarity growled.

But that option kind of scared me.

Twilight smiled. “Okay. I wanted to see Fae’s new dress anyway,” said the alicorn that really made me wonder just how hard she was working on the whole male thing before she got going. The traitor.

“I think I’ll go…reintroduce myself to Sunny,” Sunset said before she slipped out and abandoned me as well.

Rainbow placed her order with Pinkie to go.

Applejack left.

Rarity…put on that evil grin on hers while she talked. “Come along dear, we need to fit you for your dress.”

The girls took the news…well, which I was definitely glad for. Of course Fluttershy was still a big unknown, but…I doubt she would raise a fuss. Hell, I doubted it would change that much in her life at all. There was no way that mare would ever have the balls to ask someone out, and if a herd came onto her…well…

Okay, I would have to look after Fluttershy for awhile to make sure that no one tried to pressure her into a relationship she didn’t want, tell Rainbow about it too maybe just to make sure. Get a few changelings to follow her around.

All the while trying not to scare and isolate the hell out of her.

In retrospect, stupid society-changing laws were hard to deal with.

But it would all be worth it when Rainbow said yes.

The worry. The freak outs. The planning. The dress I was currently wearing as Rarity jabbed needles in my ass while she messed with the damn thing.

All of it, worth it.

Even the ‘it’ that tended to enjoy poking me in the ass with needles as I got fitted for my God damned fucking dress while I had to concentrate on keeping my form and turning back into a full changeling that would turn the whole dress into a pile of ash. After Rarity had beaten me upside with the nearest ponyquin the last time it happened, I was making sure not to do it again.

Even if she was doing her best to try and make me want to kill her for the past ten minutes, and the five more since Twilight came in to sit down and watch. I didn’t know if she just had no clue about how much blood was supposed to leak out on a gown, or if she was just a sadist, but either way, my princess wasn’t rushing to my aid.

Then Rarity started talking, adding a verbal assault to the physical one. Honestly, I preferred her silent glare of death.

“I can’t believe the nerve of all you princesses, hiding this from me!” she cried out to me and Twilight while I was having the final touches to my…dress made. My torturer circled around with her glasses that helped the unicorn see the smallest detail while tape measure, thread, scissors and more all danced in her magical grip.

Thankfully, she was taking her job seriously and had figured I was just as plain and simple as Twilight. For different reasons, but...still simple. So Rarity was doing her best to make me as immaculate as she could with as little as possible. For that…hell, I probably would have married her if not for the pony’s temper and temperament when she looses said tempter.

Not to mention her penchant for whining. I loved the little marshmallow to death, but the second she started really complaining about something, I had to keep from putting my horn through her eye.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Rarity, we weren’t hiding anything from you,” she told the unicorn. “You got the announcement along with the rest of Equestria.”

“Exactly!” she exclaimed as the tape around my neck became so tight I could barely breathe as Rarity turned to look at Twilight with a frown. “I could have had a head start, a real chance, the inside track! Now…now I’m stuck here measuring Fae’s new dress, which I can’t even make worthy of a princess because of your…you-ness by the way!”

I winced at the glare she gave me. “Sorry.”

“Instead of being in the Crystal Empire where I should be!” Rarity finished little huff. If I couldn’t have Smelled her emotions, I would have thought she was extremely pissed, but…Rarity tended to act a lot madder than she actually was. Plus, all the physical abuse she gave me in the past several minutes helped calm her down.

Both me and Twilight had to shared a confused look at that one. When she looked at me for an explanation, I turned my hooves up in a clueless shrug, and got them slapped down by Rarity.

“I told you not to move too much Princess Fae.”

I grumbled. “Rarity, I swear, if you keep calling me that, I will use my new authority to banish you to the muddiest swamp I can find and force you to live there for the rest of your life.” The one with all the frogs sounded good, and that hydra. Or had my changelings taken care of that thing?

I couldn’t really recall.

Unfortunately, the unicorn just rolled her eyes before she went back to doing her dress thing like she had been for the past fifteen plus minutes. It was quite a bit longer than her usual work, but…then again, I was giving her an impossible job. Glamorous, yet simple. “That’s nice.”

It kind of pissed me off that she had managed to figure out that my threats towards the girls were more hollow than a snare drum. Not to mention I think Rarity was also catching onto the fact that I would pretty much do anything she asked for the pitiful pony pout face. If things kept up, that unicorn wouldn’t need to be a princess to hold a lot of clout in the social scene of Equestria, she’d just have me take her to parties.

Then Twilight asked the question that was on the back of my mind too, drawing me out of thoughts of just how much of a slave the little unicorn had turned me into of my own free will. “Rarity…why would you still need to be in the Crystal Empire?”

The question made Rarity look up, and take off her glasses. “To court your brother and Cadence of course,” she said as she checked out my neckline for a few seconds before looking back up to Twilight. “You did mention that you and she would have to participate in this new form of marriage after all, and I have to admit, the idea of being with the Alicorn of Love and a stallion like Shining Armor does…excitement me.”

Twilight. Just. Stared.

And…okay, I did too.

Cadence…Shining…and…Rarity?

That…I didn’t see that one coming.

As for Twilight, she actually froze for a good fifteen seconds. “You…you want to date my brother and sister-in-law?” she cried in almost comical horror. “What…you…WHY?”

Not that I didn’t think Twilight knew exactly what the three of them would eventually be up to. She had ‘theories’ about with me and TwiDash would be doing after all.

Rarity looked over to Twilight a little hesitantly, like the alicorn was having another of her moments, which I’m pretty sure she was seconds away from at the unicorn’s declaration to get together with her family.

Then she took a deep breath. “Well, aside from the fact that your brother is gorgeously handsome and well built with the most amazing physique I’ve seen on a unicorn, with a deliciously bright coat and flank that begs to be touched, along with a sheath that just shouts to the heavens about his virility. He’s one of the most gallant stallions I’ve ever met, if not the most gallant, not to mention kind and so attentive you actually burst out into a song you loved him so much and sung his praises despite being angry at his engagement with the princess,” she explained to a twitching Twilight. “Cadence adds to the package by being perfectly beautiful, kind and delightfully engaging in conversation. Not to mention we share several of the same hobbies. Plus, she has the ability to adapt and loves that foalish kind of fun being around Pinkie for several years has gotten me addicted to, which I’m afraid to say some stallions in Canterlot find…off-putting. On top of which, they are both royalty, which has been my dream to marry since I was a filly and that ghastly Blueblood almost ruined.”

From the looks of things, Twilight either got so super crazy she went into a catatonic state or…Rarity’s rather…logical explanation actually managed to shut down all of her arguments that didn’t go, ‘ewww you like my brother? That’s icky!’ which even Applebloom seemed to have outgrown.

“Okay,” Twilight finally said like her brain was only half on. “That’s very…um…I’ve got no real…argument against that.” The tension faded, and after a shake of her head, she looked back to the unicorn. “But…wait…wouldn’t you have to…move to the Crystal Empire, then?”

The unicorn raised an eyebrow at the response, then went back to messing with my dress. “Well, no need to be making plans just yet, I learned that lesson from the other prince I chased.”

Twilight shivered a little. “Shiny isn’t Blueblood, Rarity,” Twilight told her. “And…if you can well…ugh, my mom is going to be ecstatic over this. She’s been wanting Shiny to give her grand foals, but since Cadence is an alicorn and she doesn’t have any living relatives…”

I watched Rarity’s face become a little hesitant. “Oh right, you mentioned that,” she groaned. “Wait, this isn’t some elaborate plan to create a new kind of broodmare status, is it? I mean, Ms Skies assured us it wasn’t, but…”

“What’s a broodmare?” I asked. My own experience with horses back on Earth gave me some ideas and…none of them sounded too good in a world of talking ponies.

The other princess in the room looked over to me in surprise. “Did you listen to anything I taught you about pony society?” she asked before groaning while I gave her a no with my head movement. “Okay well…when there is a married couple that can’t have foals because the mare is barren. A cousin or sister can volunteer to bear a foal with the husband. It keeps everything in the family and connected.”

That little bit of information got an eyebrow raise out of me. “Does that work? I mean, wouldn’t the um…aunt or birth mother want a say in how the foal was raised?”

Rarity cleared her throat. “Sweetie Belle is actually my aunt’s daughter,” she said hesitantly. “Biologically, I mean. Mother raised her of course after…well…let’s just say there were some complications with my birth. Anyway…they…um…there’s no conflict. Usually. It’s a big decision after all. Everypony knows what they’re getting into ahead of time, and it isn’t as if the aunt is completely out of the foal’s life.”

I blinked and it took me a moment to find my voice. “I…honestly don’t know what to say to that. Um…thanks for the explanation?”

“Well you are an alien creature from an alternate dimension that has a completely different set of moral values and fashion sense, so I thought an example would do you good,” Rarity told me. “Now be a dear and hold still, or the next pin is going where Celestia’s sun never does.”

A sigh escaped my lips. “Was she this bad with your fitting?”

Twilight smiled. “Worse actually.”

“Well you kept moving,” Rarity complained. “And my dear Fairy has had much more practice. Now…” The unicorn paused, probably to give me a moment of silence as I remembered all the crap she had be try on for her clients, then looked back at Twilight. “Twilight, with this new matrimonial development and all…would you happen to be looking for a stallion for the two of you to share?”

I flinched.

Rarity poked me in the ass again.

I contemplated turning her into Opal’s new chew toy while repressing the urge to change back into a changeling.

Twilight rolled her eyes and pointed to me. “That’s my stallion…soon as I retool a spell or two so I can alter Fae’s gender. We’re looking into dating another mare.”

All of a sudden, the magic holding up everything the unicorn was using faltered, and Rarity looked back and forth between the two of us. I moaned at the reaction. “It’s not you.”

“Oh…well…” Rarity stopped and looked over to Twilight. “I doubt we would have it off anyway.”

Twilight’s expression turned to a frown. “Why not?”

I braced myself for the coming storm.

“Well darling, I love you like a sister and will always be your friend, because you’re so kind and loving and supportive and all that. But…” she took a deep breath and gave Twilight a once over. “You’re far too excitable about all the wrong things, the novels you read are atrocious, your romantic skills made me wonder how you ever got a coltfriend until we learned he was an assassin sent to kill you, your table manners are on par with Rainbow Dash’s, you have nooooooo sense of fashion or style. Not to mention you get far too wrapped up when explaining anything to notice when everypony is completely lost, we share almost no common interests whatsoever beyond enjoying the spa every now and then, and to be honest...you tend to frighten me when you have your…episodes. Especially since becoming a…um…magical powerhouse that can toss mountains around.”

Twilight blinked. “Oh…that’s…uh…”

Rarity blanched as the goddess just gave her a blank look that Smelled three seconds from some kind of depression.

“Not that I don’t think you’re an excellent friend that will always be there for me in my time of need and I will forever support in whatever endeavor you wish me to and know you will do the same with me!” she quickly backpedaled. “It’s just…if the two of us were to get together, we’d drive each other crazy. I know I must get on your nerves sometimes as well. Good friends that shall always be there for each other…yes. Lover that I want to be around every second of every day…not so much.”

“Really? That’s your save?” I commented in a dry tone.

Rarity cleared her throat and looked over to Twilight. “Yes well, just who is the lucky mare that has managed to catch the eyes of both of you, hmm?”

My coincidence alarm started going off as soon as the question passed from Rarity’s lips. With the way Equestria worked, it would probably be my luck that Rainbow would just slam through the roof, or be waiting outside the window and overhear.

“Well, we’re going to ask-”

Panic rose up in my mind as Twilight started talking. “OH NO YOU DON’T!” I shouted before teleporting over to Twilight. “No telling until we talk to her! In fact, that’s what we’re going to do now!” With Tia in town as well, I wasn’t going to wait around to see if she wanted to stick her nose in things.

Plus, the way my luck was working, Dash and Pinkie were just outside the window, waiting to prank me or something. Although, after looking out the window behind Twilight and finding nothing, logic dictated that they simply hadn’t arrived yet, and Rainbow was going to come crashing in the very second Twilight explained things and pick up just enough to figure it out.

Then she’d get scared off and everything would be ruined!

Forever!

Twilight blinked. “But I wanted to ask Rarity what she thought about us and-”

I shook my head fiercely. “Look, Twilight. I know you want to make this whole big plan to talk to Rainbow about-” An excited gasp from behind made me cringe. “Oops.”

“Ohmygosh! You’re going to ask Rainbow Dash if she wants to join in on your relationship!” Rarity exclaimed. “That’s… The three of you do spend all that time together, and then there’s your flying lessons Twilight! And that Daring Do thing that happened, not to mention all the time you and her spent reading and talking about those books Twilight, and what happened on the Galloping Ghost Islands, and you wanting to join the Equestria Games, and how you kept Rainbow Dash from wearing my outfits during the qualifying round, and put yourselves in those cheerleading outfits! Ooooooo, the two of you are smitten with her!”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “WHAT? I’m not…Fairy is the one who is…smitten,” she grumbled, which kind of made me a little worried to be honest. “I just…admit to the possibility that there may be a future in a triangle relationship between the three of us.”

A weird look overtook the unicorn, and she glanced over to me. “Get out of the dress. We have plans to make.”

“Um…don’t you need to finish your…whatever?” I asked.

Rarity rolled her eyes. “I was done two minutes after Twilight came in to check up on you darling,” she told me. “Honestly, we’ve done his enough times I was hoping something other than the names of the fabric would rub off on you.”

My eye twitched. “Are you telling me you’ve been poking me with needles for over fifteen minutes for nothing?”

“Of course not darling. I was thinking up the best way to ask Twilight’s permission to court her brother,” she said. “Yours was a necessary sacrifice.”

Then, before I could intact my revenge by changing back into my normal form and turning all of Rarity’s hard work to ash before telling her I’ll follow Tia’s example and just go naked, the unicorn saved her ass by opening her mouth. “Now, how exactly are the two of you going to ask her out?”

Twilight answered and gave me time to not smack Rarity on the horn. “Oh, we figured we’d ask her over for dinner and lay things out. I mean, this isn’t exactly the normal date kind of thing. We’ll be upfront and honest, and-”

“Oh, nonononono!” Rarity replied before she looked over to me. “Hmmm…no, that won’t do at all,” she said after taking a moment to look at us.

I frowned at the unicorn again. “Excuse me? Did you just down talk a completely straightforward and honest approach to asking Dash out?” I asked before another little fact popped up in my head. “And how many dates have you been on Rarity?”

In response to the question, the unicorn raised an eyebrow. “Darling, while the straightforward approach might be fine for a normal relationship…the whole of Equestria just learned about these new marriage laws, and while I do find the idea positively lovely, your everyday pony will probably need some time to mull it over.

“That’s if it doesn’t frighten them off straight away,” she went on. “No, what you need is…hmmm, put her in a familiar setting, something exciting maybe and…oh! I know, take her out on a date!”

Twilight tilted her head in confusion, and I felt the urge to do the same. “Rarity, that’s what we’re planning to do!”

“No, you two are planning to put a great deal of pressure on the dear by telling her you're going out on a date to see if you can have a day of fun together,” Rarity told us. “She’ll be so stressed to perform, if she even agrees to it in the first place that is, Rainbow won’t be able to concentrate on enjoying herself. No!” She slammed her hoof into the ground. “What you two need to do is just up and take her on a date without actually telling her it’s a date!”

The perpetual frown that had raced my face since Rarity started her insanity only deepened. “And just how many dates have you been on, again?”

Rarity snorted, or sniffed in indignation, but it sure as hell sounded like a snort. “Dozens…simulated,” she admitted after a moment of me giving her a disbelieving look. “What? I read romance novels! And it’s a lot better than the two of you!”

“Rarity, we’ve actually been on dates,” Twilight deadpanned.

A roll of the eyes was the response the little goddess got, and then the unicorn kept running her mouth. “Yes, and while I’m sure Rainbow would be thrilled for a trip to the Hayburger, I think a pair of princesses can do a bit better. Now, let’s see...where would she like to go?”

As was the usual after she ran the real Derpy through her morning mail delivery paces to practice handing things off, Rainbow was training on her homemade course of relay rings that had been constructed from clouds. From the looks of the thing, the Equestria Games were either going to have one hell of a run when it came to the event, or the pegasus was overdoing it again. Although, the fact that it was a single type of course obviously made a difference. I didn’t see her crash once all the way through it.

“Hey Rainbow!”

When the blur of speed just passed us by and I caught sight of her face, I let out a frustrated groan as my hair moved to cover my eyes thanks to the pegasus’s wake. “Do you want to grab her? I’m pretty sure she hates that but…I saw some goggles on her face and at the speed she’s going, I don’t know if she can hear us. Your magic is a lot more gentle than mine.”

Twilight sighed and moved in front of me some distance. “Okay,” she agreed before her horn lit up.

As Rainbow neared us in a second pass, Twilight’s horn let out a bright flash and a purple light expanded a good fifty feet to wrap Rainbow and everything else that got caught inside it up in the alicorn’s magic. It was a rather impressive display of magic that was easily beyond that of a unicorn, and served to remind me just how high Twilight stood above her friends when it came to power.

Sure, I had just as much…sometimes more, but usually less. Being a changeling meant I had to use my magic sparingly when it came to big stuff. Feeding off Twilight at the end of the day as much as I was gave me plenty of juice again but…what I wouldn’t give not to have to do it at all.

Ever again.

After Rainbow was caught like a fly in a web, me and Twilight trotted up to her.

“What the hay? What‘s going on? Come on, lemme go!”

Twilight turned the pegasus to face us and blushed. “Sorry Rainbow, but you weren’t listening and…sorry,” she said before setting Rainbow down. “But…we wanted to talk to you.”

As soon as Twilight released her magic, I picked up the conversation. “You know…um, with the Wonderbolts having to do their thing at my coronation… I-I know it’s just a flyby, and some meet and greet with Spitfire…” I had to pause and lick my lips. This was a lot more nerve wracking than I thought it was going to be

“Um, but you know, they’ll be at my coronation, in a few days,” I said while looking the panting pegasus up and down while keeping away from her…athletic musk. Still, even with the sheen of sweat, the Rainbow looked as perfect as ever. “I was kind of thinking I might as well go to a s-show. With Twilight! You know…cause, we’re um…together.”

So I don’t do well under pressure that I can’t cure by beating something to death. I mean sure, I had godlike magical powers and an unbreakable armor shell that let me face down demons one hundred times my size without fear, but against a blue pegasus with the chromatic mane, or even a purple pony princess that was sad, they meant nothing.

“Oh-kay?” Rainbow replied as she turned her face half away from me for a few moments and I could Smell her caution before the pegasus turned to Twilight. “So um…why are you guys telling me?”

Twilight cleared her throat and looked at me for a few seconds. When I kind of…froze, she picked up the slack, very quickly. “Oh…um…well…we want you to come with us because you know the most about the Wonderbolts and can tell us all the…um…important…stuff?” The way she just petered out at the end after her horse words were running at Pinkie speed made me wince.

At least my anxiety induced amnesia was explainable. Twilight had done all the work during our whirlwind romance. So my dating skills that were mostly focused on the non-nudist magical talking creatures types in the first place were a bit rusty. Not to mention I always got a bit nervous when trying to punch above my dating weight class, which a hot athlete star like Rainbow Dash was.

I mean, she wasn’t Tia. She wasn’t just screwing around. This was serious relationship stuff.

It didn’t help that Twilight had tried to step in with some improvisation. Even after she kept me for a few hours at Rarity’s going over a plan, complete with some basic lines to ask questions and answers for stuff we were sure Rainbow would ask. And of course it didn’t last ten minutes.

Not being a monumental moron, Rainbow obviously figured something was wrong by our innocently smiling faces. She gave us both a once-over, then let out a loud sigh. “Okay, what’s going on?” she asked evenly.

Twilight let out a nervous laugh. “Nothing! Absolutely nothing!”

I smiled.

I gulped.

I Smelled more caution coming from Rainbow, and when her expression turned into a frown, I slumped and sighed. “Look…you know that announcement that unicorn pony made this morning to the town?”

“Fairy!” Twilight exclaimed.

I looked over to Twilight, and winced when I saw her glaring at me. “Oh come on Twilight. That whole Wonderbolts thing…that’s not me or you. Let’s just ask her.” Not like it would make a difference.

And just like that, I decided to not go through with Rarity’s plan of getting Rainbow Dash to come with us to Cloudsdale tomorrow to take in a Wonderbolt’s show. I didn’t think my blood pressure could take the wait.

We just needed to be straight up and tell her what was going on.

Then we’d either take Rainbow on a date to a Wonderbolt’s show in the princess’s personal skybox…

…or my life would be over.

Rainbow cleared her throat and made us look back to her. “Would one of you tell me what’s going on?”

Thankfully, Twilight took the initiative. “Rainbow…we like you, and…with these new marriage laws…we would like to see if you want to…date, go on a date…with…us. Because, I think, well...there may be the possibility of a chance that we could maybe take what we have with our friendship and do...more...with...it."

"I-If you want to," I added.

“Oh,” she replied before looking over to me, then back to Twilight, and over to me again. In the ensuing silence, I took in Rainbow’s Scent. It was a mix of desire, fear, sadness, some more fear, and a little bit of happiness all put together in a tangled mess of confusion that showed on her face as she just glanced back and forth between the two of us.

What really got me though was what was coming from Twilight. She just reeked of fear. Not the super panicky kind, just…lots of apprehension, lots and lots of it. If Rainbow said no, then I was pretty sure she would go into full panic.

As for me…I was starting to think we should have gone with Rarity’s idea. After all, there was no proof that Rainbow was into Twilight, and especially me. The whole empathic thing would have totally let me see it easily if she had been. At the very least, we would have gotten one last day of fun out of the whole thing before Rainbow just decided to cut ties with us forever.

Which I couldn’t really allow of course. I mean…Twilight and Dash and the others…Destiny.

Me…Background Pony.

I glanced over to Twilight without looking away from Dash.

Twilight looked at me out of the corner of her eyes.

Rainbow Dash…was silent.

I took that as a good sign. Silence meant…well, thinking!

Silence meant thinking. It wasn’t really a Rainbow thing to do but…thinking was good. Twilight thought all the time.

But I couldn’t take the silence. Silence was bad. It meant suspense.

So I cheated. I had empathic abilities after all, and I didn’t even need to force them on. I just focused on Rainbow’s scent and there was…

Anger, a good amount of anger. Then there was some fear. Doubt. Maybe a bit of regret, which quickly bloomed into a lot, and more anger, and fear. The fear grew to trump the anger, but then the anger was back, followed by the fear and…

Shit. I already knew it was going to go bad, I had to wonder why I opened my damn mouth in the first place.

By the time Rainbow‘s anxiety trumped her…whatever the fuck she was getting angry about, I was getting pretty afraid myself. “R-Rainbow wait,” I said after putting one hoof forward. “Look…I um…t-this was a stupid way to ask you but…I um…even if…e-even if you don’t want to…try, I…we… we’ll still be friends. No matter what. I was just-”

Rainbow spoke. “Okay.”

I froze again.

I tried to talk, but all that would come out was, “he…he…” Not even real words, or laughs, just little bits of breath with some noises attached. I was just…too much in disbelief.

Twilight stepped up for me, Celestia bless her. “So that’s a yes?”

I smiled of course it was a-

“No!” Rainbow exclaimed as she spoke quickly with wide eyes, Reeking of surprise and fear while holding up her forelegs as she jumped into the air. “That’s a no. Like no way, no how, no definitely not.”

And as Rainbow just kind of took a hammer to my chest, my legs tried to give out underneath me.

“I was just...I-I was saying yes to the friends thing,” she told us quickly. “G-Going on a date with you guys…um…j-just…no. Just friends. Saying…yes to the friends thing. Bu date...other stuff...no. Not a good idea."

I blinked…a lot, really fast. It probably had something to do with all the dust in my eyes. “Oh…

…

…okay,” I finished.

Twilight let out a sigh, and then smiled up at that fucking bitch that…that…oh hell. I reigned in that train of thought before they made me do something I would have regretted. Rainbow was just out of my league, and that was all it was. “Well…we just…thought we’d ask. Thanks for being honest.”

In response, Rainbow Dash gulped and all that anger I had felt before exploded into panic. “Y-Yeah…sorry. I...um...sorry.” She looked back and for between us with a tense expression, and I made out some clenched teeth. Even her wing beats seemed kind of erratic.

And why shouldn’t she be angry? Or scared? Terrified even!

She just turned me down. The super violent…dick, or…something. “That’s…” I had to blinks some more dust out of my eye or something. “T-That’s okay,” I breathed. “You um…we’ll…uh…get out of your mane. I’m...s-sorry. We um...okay.”

I smelled some sadness coming from her, and relief, more anger, then more sadness and fear, and then anger started to build up again as she looked down at me. “I um...I-I just...I’m sorry. I should-I can’t...just...no.”

Twilight was just…sad…and concerned…for me. I could practically taste her love on my lips before she looked up at the pegasus. “It’s okay Rainbow. No need to feel sorry, it’s...just the way things are. Sorry for interrupting you.”

“N-No I…um…I need a shower anyway,” Rainbow said. “Bye.”

And then, she was gone. The rainbow trail she made faded. The world...turned gray.

I just kind of stood there, still a little wobbly.

"Fae…are you alright?”

Of course I wasn’t alright.

I was the farthest you could get from alright.

I was…was…

Twilight’s whole body pressed up against me, and I felt her touch my neck in a nuzzle. “We always knew there was a possibility she’d say no.”

No…I…didn’t. I really didn’t. Her saying no never crossed my mind. Not really. Not my ‘this is reality’ mind. I had my doubts, but I never really, really thought she would…say no.

I just…collapsed into Twilight.

The alicorn grunted, and the next thing I knew, I was floating in her magic.

Her gentle, kind…loving magic. That had always been there for me since…since…I came to Ponyville and…I just…kept looking at…Rainbow while Twilight just…she always supported me.

I...I had to wonder if...this is what she felt, for so long. Had I made her feel like I was feeling when I got all excited about trying to get together with Rainbow?

Good God I was an awful person.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, the purple blob that filled a good part of my blurry vision.

It was kind of hard to tell but…I think Twilight smiled at me. “That’s my line,” she said. “Now come on, let’s go home. Okay?”

I nodded dumbly. I couldn’t talk. I just… Why did she say no?

The thought came to me and...I wanted to laugh at myself.

Rainbow had just crushed my dreams, and Twilight had picked me up, but it was the pegasus I was wondering about instead of the alicorn.

It was more than awful, it was pathetic.

I didn’t feed again, Twilight insisted but...I didn’t want to. Feeding felt good, and I didn’t want to feel good. I just wanted...nothing.

For the rest of the day, after Twilight took me home and we got into bed…stuff happened…I…really wasn’t sure what. I think she left for awhile to work on the mirror with Sunset, look it over and do some magic junk.

Other than that…no idea.

I got to my dream house a bit earlier than Tia and just did what I did all day. I just laid around and wallowed in how miserable life was. Because it was, even in Equestria, life sucked. Couches were good for that. Good for moping They were so good for it, I didn’t know how long I was there by myself.

Then Tia showed up and looked around. “No game to-are you alright?” she asked in concern.

I laughed, I actually laughed. I laughed about a lot of things. About the answer being so obvious, about not bothering to alter the interior at all this time around, about…not caring that Tia was naked. None of it was really funny though.

It was weird to laugh when you weren’t happy. There was no strength behind it, no volume. But I did it. “He…Hehe…hehehe…” I went before answering. “She said no.”

Celestia was next to me in an instant. I felt her hands reach under and pick my front half up, then she sat down again before drawing me into her. I just laid my head against her. It felt nice, warm and comforting.

I hated it.

I opened my mouth. “I forgot to do anything for us tonight. Sorry.”

We could still talk about...stuff though, I supposed. There was that plant thing and...I kind of wanted to know Sunset telling all the girls she used to be Sunny's babysitter.

“That’s okay. I talked to the girls in town. Sunset introduced us. The way Rarity was acting...I had thought you and...well, it’s not important.”

Celestia held me a bit longer, but the silence apparently got to her. “It’s not that bad. It may seem like it at the moment, but... Tell me, is anything different from when it was yesterday?”

There was actually. “…yes.” There was a rather big thing difference than yesterday, and the day before that, for that matter.

That seemed to jostle the goddess a little, and she looked down at me. “What’s that?”

I sighed. “Yesterday, I had hope…now...nothing.”

Celestia bruised some of the hair from my forehead, then she leaned down and kissed me there. “Only because you do not wish to see it. Take some time. Mourn the loss of that possibility, and start to go forward when you’re ready. I’ll be here, like always.”

“I just…why did she say no?”

Chapter 28: The Incredibly Wondrous Day of Wonder

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I would never be happy again.

Ever.

I had put my heart out on the line and had it smashed to pieces.

Got my dreams crushed.

I would never move from where I was, and just spend the rest of my life in misery.

And…

Well…

It turned out to be a lot harder that I thought it was going to be.

Sure we humans like to get poetic about depression and all, but…after about six hours of nothing while being awake, and another one of doing nothing while asleep, I was pretty bored with doing nothing. Bored and tired of it.

I may have been a master of just lazing around, I spent four days in a room just talking to an alicorn and thinking I was crazy after all, but it didn’t mean I liked doing it. At least back then I didn’t have super depressing thoughts occupying my mind, like questions of why Rainbow didn’t want to at least try and see if Twilight and me were any good for her. That thought kind of shoved everything else to the side.

Then there was Tia. She didn’t actually do anything but…

Having her comforting was like having Twilight around, it was just as good.

I also had a rather disturbing revelation.

“I really am a girl now, aren’t I?” my masculine voice said while Tia just sat there with me.

The goddess shifted a looked down at me. “Pardon?”

I sighed. “I mean, six hours of just being…bleh, with Twilight around to comfort me, and Sunset needing me to help her, and I just sit around doing…nothing but bitching about how some chick doesn’t want to go out with me.” Good God, saying it out loud just made it sound worse.

“So now we’re entered the self-hatred phase of your depression,” Celestia said as she shifted around. “Well, that’s progress I suppose. And I don’t think you’re a girl…well, a human female at least. You’re a pony. We don’t take pride in ignoring our feelings like you seem to.” Then she looked down at me and frowned. “Why is that anyway?”

Honestly? I didn’t know what to tell her on that one.

Sure, there was the whole idea that a real man could get the job done no matter the pain, or the belief that women were extremely emotional and thus it wasn’t a manly thing to be. Maybe it was just the simple belief that since women were one way, men had to be the opposite.

Still, Celestia’s got a little chuckle out of me before I raised my hands and wiggled my fingers. “Yeah…that…um…no idea.” I mumbled before dropping my arms and sighing. “Can we talk about something else now?”

Celestia nodded. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

The temptation was too much to resist. It had been awhile since Tia let me sink my teeth into some Equestrian Lore. It wasn’t that she said the knowledge was forbidden, but…we always just found something else to talk about. There was only so much time, and we had to go over Twilight and Sunset’s activities, watch television, play a game of chess or two, listen to her bitch while giving her a massage or something. Despite just being the two of us alone for six hours, our schedule was pretty full.

But, despite the numerous things I wanted to ask about, the topic that needed to be discussed was obvious. “That…weed thing…is that the reason why Equestria’s population is in decline?” I asked. “Did you know about it before we even had the summit?”

I felt Celestia shift underneath me again, and she let out a sigh. “It’s…the most likely possibility, and no. It was only after I took a look at the birth records from Canterlot again while bothering to check the gender that I put two and two together. Then I took a look at the past agricultural, construction, and a few other records from New Horseleans.

“About one hundred years ago, the city started going through an expansion. A group of unicorns moved in with the intention of trying to turn the town into a major city with a usable port for heavy cargo ships since Equestria doesn’t have one in our southeastern territories. The only ports we have on our eastern coast are Baltimare and Manehattan, which makes shipping anything from what those cities receive in overseas trade with the Griffon Empire extremely costly to the southwestern cities like Appleloosa and Las Pegasus, not to mention inconvenient. A southern port on our eastern shore and new rail lines would have changed all that.”

“Would have?” I asked with a frown.

A sigh came from above me. “Swamps aren’t the best place for construction. It’s why the town never grew that much. Not enough land. Of course the ground could be made usable, ditches dug and water drained, rerouted, dammed up. They tried, but in the end, things just…didn’t work out. Costs, labor…some trouble with bog beasts. In the end, the plan to turn New Horseleans into a port town overnight was abandoned, and I…made other arrangements to move the project forward at a slower pace.

“It was still a good idea, I thought. So I mentioned the town in court a few times over the years as an oddity, like a small community just waiting for investment. More ponies with bits moved in and land was cleared away, but at a much slower pace. And now that I’ve seen what’s wrong…there’s nothing that can be done about it. The mystical weed was a precious commodity before we started messing with its spawning grounds. Now the gender ensuring process is so expensive that only the nobles and rich families can afford it, and it seems destined to only go up in value once this year’s crop fails to meet expectations.”

I mulled over the problem for about two seconds. “Can’t you just put it into a greenhouse or something? Try planting it somewhere else? I mean…there’s plenty of other swamps in Equestria. The Everfree alone has like…two of them, and then there’s the one…um…” I had to wrack my brain for a second for the name of that oversized muck hole near Dodge Junction. “The Hayseed Swamps. Even if the stuff doesn’t grow there naturally, you can just transport it there and plant some things, right?” Then of course there was the earth ponies. With the way they ran nature and grew everything en mass, I didn’t see how producing the plant on Equestria’s own terms wasn’t an option.

“Sometimes I forget just how little you know about our world and my ponies,” she mumbled.

Of course it wasn’t that I didn’t know about ponies, it was Equestria that confused the hell out of me. The sun and moon moved too fast, the stars were impossible, everything about weather from start to finish was do it yourself, the seasons needed to be changed manually, and the damn ‘wild’ animals required someone to take care of them. Fluttershy wasn’t the only animal provider in Equestria, just one of the rare pegasi that did it. Trying to figure out everything behind it all was enough to drive a man insane.

Then there was the really weird shit like Equestrian Coincidence, the musicals that happened on command, some sort of weird interdimensional bleedthrough that made humans make cartoons about ponies and ponies make their own version of human things. Oh, and magic. Magic was the never-ending paradox loop that made sense enough to use, but not enough to understand, but could still be developed by ponies that didn’t know what they were doing. It was the computer that people knew how to work, without knowing how it worked, and yet they still managed to write new code.

Considering how everything in the world ran on it in one form or another, it was a wonder everyone wasn’t more like Discord. Or maybe he did know how things worked, that that was why the way he was.

“I take it that it’s different in your world so…” Tia paused for a moment. “Well…you can’t force certain plants…particularly ones with magical properties to grow under any conditions, save for the ones they were born to grow in. Some things like grapes from the Griffon Empire and coffee beans from beyond the mirror are adaptable, but its not always possible.”

“So they’re like zap apples then?” I knew the damn things would only grow around the Everfree, and whatever magic they fed on, used, or incorporated wouldn’t let them spread beyond that one grove the Apple Family had set aside for them. Outside the area next to the Everfree the seeds wouldn’t even grow.

Celestia took a moment to think, then nodded. “Yes, those apples feed off the free magic of the forest. It’s not some exotic plant, like with coffee beans that requires extra care and attention from earth ponies.”

With the greenhouse option and relocation out, I crossed my arms and stood up to get away from the sexy goddess to think. “I don’t suppose just abandoning the town and letting everything grow back naturally is a solution then?” Kicking ponies out of their home didn’t really seem like something Tia would consider, and if pony magic was messing with stuff, then maybe it was time to just pack up and leave.

“I’ve already thought of that and five other solutions that just don’t pan out Omnifarious,” Tia told me. “The exotic magic of the swamp is what the plants need to survive and grow. The disruption the presence of ponies caused to the area, the infusion of our natural magic and development of the land as the town expanded over the years has caused the plant’s natural habitat to continually shrink. Even if I did order the ponies of New Horseleans to abandon their homes and tore everything down, the exotic magic of the swamp wouldn’t return. It’s not…grass and apple trees we’re talking about, but a mystical force of Equestria. Believe me, if I knew how to fix it, I would. If I understood everything there was to know about magic, I’d be growing Trees of Harmony all across the landscape.

“All I can do is attempt to stop the harm from spreading, and adapt so that my people can survive.”

Which made me wonder how much adaptation would be required. Birth records were one thing, but I had no idea if anyone bothered writing down just how much of that gender potion was produced. The families in Canterlot obviously used it, and it was a pretty good bet the lesser nobility around Equestria had access to the stuff. Other ponies had to as well, it wasn’t like the sale was restricted, but…I just didn’t know enough to make any guesses.

How much did it cost?

Was there an expiration date?

And why the hell was I even bothering to wonder about it right now?

Pony statistics said about one in five children born was a boy, they had obviously offset that in Canterlot through alchemical means, and probably elsewhere when it came to desperate families. But because those ponies were cheating, no one counted them among the natural statistics. That, combined with the extended an lifespan that increased over the years helped up the numbers, but they were now set for a massive decline thanks to a weed supply problem that began a generation ago and nobody noticed for the same reason everyone got gobsmacked by Nightmare Moon’s return, or why Rarity and the others didn’t know being turned into an alicorn was possible after meeting Cadence and seeing examples of other alicorns in Equestria’s past. Ponies just weren’t naturally inquisitive like humans were.

But that was all causes, we needed solutions.

With no other option, I went to the last ditch hail mary play. “I don’t suppose Discord could…do something?” Good God did that take effort to say.

Celestia shook her head. “No. His magic is too…unstable to affect any lasting changes, and if were to try and work together to solve this problem… The time when our magics conjoined…well…there’s a reason my little ponies aren’t allowed to go near where Discord, my sister and I fought our first battle. Chaos magic is fleeting unless constantly sustained, but there…it lingers still a thousand years after the fact.”

That just made me want to see the damn place even more. It was probably like some kind of real life acid trip.

But as far as the plant went, there was no use talking about it any more. Celestia knew more about magic than I ever would, or ever really want to know. If she said it couldn’t be done then…it couldn’t be done.

But with the night still young, we still needed to talk about something. I needed my distractions from real life. So I sat down on my side of the bed and sighed. “So um…how was Sunny’s visit with Sunset?”

Tia groaned and rubbed her head. “I think I finally know what it’s like to feel embarrassed about your childhood,” she lamented. “Especially when it’s your daughter just making shit up so others will laugh at you.”

Oh I so wanted to hear about that, but…business before pleasure. There was something else that had been nagging me about the other day too. “About how you got the word out to all of Equestria using changelings…” Well, I wasn’t all that mad about it anymore, but it still rubbed me the wrong way. Mostly because I hadn’t noticed it though.

“Thank you for your help with that. Your number four was most…well…helpful,” Celestia told me after a moment of embarrassment from her lack of diction.. “I’m thinking of trying to devise a warning system of some kind for Equestria using your race’s ability to instantly communicate. It might help save a lot of lives should something happen that requires my ponies to leave an area quickly.”

And thus, all my irritation about the whole hijacking went up in smoke while I felt a little less than perfect from Tia’s announcement. I see the first telegraph machine, and think how I can make money off of it. Tia sees it as an early warning system.

Once again without anything to do, and my need not to think about Dash turning me down, I desperately grabbed at something, anything else to talk about. “So um…you said you’ve had…former boyfriends, right? What was it like…you know…dating back in the day? What’d you do back then?”

For some reason, that question seemed to make Celestia happy.

Not that I didn’t know why. Despite her hot looks, she really was an old hag, and old people loved to go on about anything.

I opened my eyes and felt Twilight stir behind me.

A full night of having Celestia go on and on about her dating troubles had helped…well, mine weren’t put in perspective really. I never really even got that saying. I mean…just because someone else half a world away was having problems didn’t make mine any less relevant to me, and I sure as hell didn’t give a fuck about children half a world away any more than I did they day before.

So kids in Africa were starving, big deal. I was going to keep those five pennies a day and use them to buy a coke at the end of the week.

But hearing Tia talk helped. Maybe it was the fact she had faced so many relationships over the years that they all kind of just blurred together. Most of it boiled down to meeting a pony that didn’t think they could be intimate with the princess, and then having to end things when the guy figured out he wanted kids. I don’t think she had a real relationship since becoming a princess.

Not like I had with Twilight.

Another bit of movement behind me put a smile on my face. “Morning.”

“Morning,” she replied before pressing her body up against mine, removing the space between us that had come about since sleep. “Are you…feeling better?”

I smiled. After everything that had happened, she was still thinking about me. “Yeah. Celestia and me,” I said before Twilight got the teensy bit jealous, “we talked. It helped. Sorry for…being me again. For…going after Rainbow and-”

“I wanted to share us with her too,” Twilight reminded me with a kiss to the ear. “We tried, she said no…everypony was honest and…time to move on. Okay?”

After shifting around a bit, I rolled onto my back and turned my head to face Twilight as the memory of yesterday ran through my mind. I...didn’t really want to just forget about it just yet, but... “Okay,” I agreed.

Then we kissed, it was just a quick little morning kiss, but the next thing I knew, Twilight was rolling on top of me, and my vision was filled with the alicorn’s face. “Now…I’m pretty sure you’re hungry, and I didn’t drink anything after five yesterday, so it’s time for morning sex.”

A little under an hour of bedroom fun and a shouting human that yelled she could hear us from down the hall later, and we borrowed Sunset’s bathroom again to clean up before all four of the castle’s residences that had actual names were meeting up in one of the smaller rooms to eat. Using the big group dining hall just wasn’t personal when you didn’t have about twelve ponies over for dinner.

Of course the damn zebra was there, running her mouth like usual. “Good morning at last, come to break your fast?” she asked with that damn morning person cheer that just made the normals want to rip her head off. Hell, I didn’t even really sleep, and still kind of felt out of it after getting up.

“Morning,” Sunset grumbled like any sane person would.

“Good morning Zecora!” Twilight chirped chipperly, proving her craziness. I had just fed on her too, which…well, it meant she was probably faking it. Twilight was actually pretty good at just putting on a smile.

They all sat down to eat.

I sat down to watch, water myself a little, and talk. “So, how did the thing with the crystal mirror go?”

Twilight gave me a little smile. “Well…it’s magic.”

“And a mirror,” Sunset added before letting out a yawn. “That’s pretty much all we could get out of it.”

The disappointment coming from Twilight had me drop that topic faster than Rainbow Dash could fly. It took me a few minutes to think up something else. Admittedly, it was the usual fallback option to find a conversation point with Twilight but I didn’t want to step on any landmines. “So, what’s on the schedule for today?”

Twilight looked over to me and her smile slipped. “Oh…um…I thought we were going out with Rainbow…today, so I didn’t…plan for anything past breakfast,” she managed to say through all the sadness I picked up coming from her.

Fuck the landmines, I just ran into a nuke.

We sat there for a second, and I just felt like kicking myself. Good going genius, how about you go back to talking about how you and Tia just hang out every fucking night? That’ll cheer her up! Oh by the way, we don’t talk about you at all Twilight. Yeah, makes you feel good doesn’t it?

Okay, we did talk about Twilight, just not all the time…but she did come up in conversation at least once a night. Tia usually asked the usual things like how was she doing, what were she and Sunset up to, was there any trouble in paradise, and usually closed the conversation by asking if I’d tried giving Twi a horn-job, if Twilight still squealed when she got too excited, and the most heavenly way to mess with an alicorn’s wings was to bite down a few inches from where the joint to their main body was.

It was a lot different than with a pegasus, they liked…it…when…

I shook my head to clear it. Stop thinking about that crap!

Of course it was just my luck the stuff I ASKED Celestia to tell me about sex ended up being useless.

“And on that note,” Sunset spoke up after finishing her bowl of fruit. “I need a lift to Fluttershy’s, and then it’s off to work of me.”

Zecora agreed to clear away the plates, and the three of us made our way downstairs while I tried to think of something to do today. Regent work didn’t really appeal to me and…something occurred to me as we reached the bottom floor. “Hey Twilight, if I get made a princess, does that mean you have to do your job?”

“What job?”

I frowned. “Dealing with all this Ponyville stuff. You know, telling ponies what to do?”

“Um…I’m willing to share?” she asked with a nervous grin that made me realize I wasn’t getting out of the courtroom anytime soon.

Not that I blamed her. It was a lousy job, and even worse it was…unfulfilling. Most of the problems brought to me were childish and stupid, or in Filthy Rich’s case repetitive and stupid. Plus, Twilight didn’t really like ordering ponies around unless it was a community project or something.

Well, ponies that weren’t her friends and would forgive her for being kind of a bossy bitch that relied on guilt tripping confused…pegasi… Stupid brain, cut that out now, I told my head before looking over to Twilight. “Okay, okay.” If she didn’t want to deal with it, I’d take care of things. I owed her that much.

With that, Twilight took Sunset in her magic, and we took off at a leisurely pace through the air. It was a fast pace compared to land travel though, and we got to Fluttershy’s place easily enough before Sunset remembered to breathe.

As soon as we touched down, the girl looked back and took in a few breaths. “Do you two have to carry me through the air every time? I liked it better when we walked.”

“We also didn’t have to get you to Ponyville before seven-thirty when we walked,” I replied.

Twilight was a bit less snaky. “Well you’re too big to carry. I don’t have enough of an understanding of humans to adapt a transformation spell to reduce your size, and…sorry, but we were um, a little…active this morning, and teleportation so soon after…um…Fae’s breakfast... ”

Sunset facepalmed. “Yes, I heard you screaming. Back at the castle. Please stop talking.”

At that, Twilight managed to blush. And whatever she was going to say was stopped when the door to the nearby tree house opened and Fluttershy came out. “Oh, I thought I heard voices. Hello girls. Do you want to come in?”

I managed to hide my cringe while Sunset and Twilight agreed for me, and I followed them inside.

It wasn’t the oddity of Fluttershy’s house being a hollowed out tree that bothered me. I loved the library and found it to be kind of quaint. Visually, her house was also very nice.

However…the place had a bit of an odor. I didn’t know if the girls were too nice to mention it, or just got used to it over the time they had known the pegasus, but…dozens of different outside animals indoors at the same time didn’t mix.

“Sorry I’m a little late, but my ride was…”

Fluttershy didn’t let Sunset finish. “That’s okay, I’m just glad you take the time to help.”

“So you’re still training for the Games like…Rainbow?” Twilight said after a moment’s hesitation while hurt feelings surfaced on her Scent.

Fluttershy said…something. I didn’t care to listen. Had too much on my mind.

For a brief instant, I thought about pulling the duplicate Dash out of the weather patrol job so Rainbow would have to go back to work. It would serve her right for not even wanting to give me a fucking chance.

But…the thought was short lived. Rainbow didn’t want to…try. She didn’t see anything working out between us, like with Rarity and what she said to Twilight. I couldn’t really be mad at her for that.

Sad? Yes.

Angry?

… I don’t think I could ever be angry at Dash.

Okay, stop thinking about that stupid, I told myself.

It was over, she said no, end of story.

Unless of course she was just playing hard to get…

Which I seriously doubted. Plus, I hated girls that tried that shit. I was supposed to work my ass off to get some kind of approval just to try and see if I was compatible with a woman? It was the worst way possible of starting a relationship and put the woman in a mindset on par with douchebag Hollywood movie stars and teen pop sensations.

If Dash was like that, then fuck her.

Whatever the girls were talking about came to an end, and I looked around to try and figure out what was going on. Fluttershy was putting on her training gear, Sunset was glaring at Angel Bunny while the pegasus was distracted, and Twilight was just…looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

She Smelled…uneasy.

“Are you okay?” we both asked quietly at the same time.

I took in a breath and held up a hoof to forestall her and keep that from happening again. Or keep the alicorn from saying jinix. For all I knew, that shit actually worked in Equestria and pony language couldn’t pronounce my human name.

“I’m fine,” I assured her. “I was just thinking about-”

There was another knock at the door, and then the pony on the other side just went and opened it without getting permission to come in or anything. Her multi-chromatic hair was as mussed up as always, and was so overgrown in the back it managed to run down both sides of her neck while most ponies only kept their mains to one side. She looked a little bleary-eyed, but that could have just been my spiteful imagination since the damn things were naturally pink. “Hey Fluttershy, do you still have your spare goggles I…broke…mine.”

I blinked, and resisted the urge to frown. Well fuck you too Equestria. I may of not of had any plans for the day, but being around Rainbow Dash was something that could have waited a week…or three…months.

Rainbow trailed off, when she caught sight of me and Twilight sitting on Fluttershy’s couch. “Oh…um…hey girls.”

Oh…it’s you, I tried to say, all hostile like.

“Hey,” is what I got out, and pretty weakly at that.

“Hello Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said in a lot stronger tone than I did. Not really super friendly glad, but not anywhere near hostile. But then, she hadn’t been getting her hopes up. She had been all ‘this was a possibility’ and just kind of got a little disappointed.

Sunset took one look at the three of us, then she pointed at the door while grabbing food for the bear. “I think I’ll go feed the carnivorous animals with my bare hands now.”

And thus the traitorous human did what was natural for her species and fled out the door with some fish in a basket.

I had to wonder just how much she knew about what was going on.

From up above us in her little bird loft where she was taking care of the stuff our hairless monkey couldn’t reach, the other pegasus looked down. “You broke your Wonderbolt goggles?” She asked rhetorically before she disappeared from my sight into a back room. “Um, let me check for mine real quick.”

Alone with Rainbow, me and Twilight sat on Fluttershy’s couch. I just looked at Rainbow. It was impossible not to pick up her Scent. She was a little scared, pretty guilty, angry…sad.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on what I was getting from Twilight to help block that out but…that was just more sadness.

Once second ticked by.

Then two…

…three.

The pegasus gulped. “Um…so…”

“It’s okay Dash,” I told her softly as my body slumped. “I’m not…angry or anything. No need for the nervousness.” Now that the initial ‘shit its you’ was gone, I just felt…tired in front of her. Nervous and guilty too for what happened. I saw something that really wasn’t there and tried to push her into it.

Twilight smiled. “We said we’d still be friends. Just because you don’t want to become involved in a relationship doesn’t mean we’re upset with you or anything.”

It didn’t seem to cheer the pegasus up any. “Right…thanks girls.”

Another second ticked by.

And another.

“So are you still…going to the Wonderbolt’s show today? Rainbow asked.

That put my brain on pause for a few seconds.

I didn’t know whether to be pissed off at her for asking, guilty at myself for wanting to say ‘yes but YOU AREN’T’ or just…even more guilty over dangling the chance to go in front of her face and just taking it away from her.

Rainbow loved the Wonderbolts, even after the qualifying rounds, she didn’t throw out any of the memorabilia crap that was all over her house and from what I could tell, still wanted to be one of them. She was even excited about the information on the reserves that Twilight had gotten her.

“Rainbow, that was-”

“You still want to go?” I asked evenly.

The pegasus looked over to me, cleared her throat, and her nervousness went up as her eyes wandered up to the ceiling. “Well…you know…if you girls still need me…to um…do…whatever,” she said before trailing off into some mumbling I couldn’t pick up on.

It was classic Dash of course, wanting to go, but not wanting to say it.

Up came the anger for her still wanting…something I told her we’d give her before we dropped the dating bomb. Or Twilight told her. Either way, it was the same thing.

“N-Not a…date,” she added. “Just um…you know…if you guys need me…to…whatever.”

Twilight let out a tired sigh. “Rainbow…that…we were just-”

“Okay,” I agreed without any enthusiasm. “We’ll all go.” That’s what friends did, right? Not dangle stuff in front of others then take it away a moment later, right? I wasn’t some kind of...buffalo giver.

“-wait, what?” the alicorn finished as she looked over to me. “We will?”

Another awkward silence followed, and Fluttershy came out of the back. “Okay Rainbow, here’s the goggles.”

Rainbow didn’t brighten up at hearing the news, but….I did detect her calming down a bit. “Oh…cool?” she replied as Fluttershy handed her the eye protection and I took that as our cue to leave the house.

With Ponyville not being all that big, me and Twilight got to the library in short order. Still had time for a bit of a conversation though.

“Why did you say yes?” Twilight demanded softly as we crossed the bridge from Fluttershy’s house and into town. “I thought we were only going to the show to ask her if she wanted to pursue a romantic relationship instead of a platonic one!”

I cringed away from the alicorn a bit. “Well…um…it just…it didn’t seem right to go, hey Dash here’s some Wonderbolt tickets in a private princess box, and then take them away just because she doesn’t want to…you know.”

Twilight sighed and shook her head as we got to the library door. “It’s Manehattan all over again,” she mumbled before becoming thoughtful. “Well…sort of…”

With that, Twilight opened the door and looked at the mail on the floor before picking it up with her magic. “Let’s see…water bill, you might have already won, pre-approval for a princess platinum account, hmm letter from…home.”

My ears twitched at the tone of Twilight’s voice, and I had to fight to keep from frowning. Judging by the way she got all sad, I could guess who it was really from. It made me wonder what happened to the days when all the emotional shit just took a number and waited its turn in line instead of just trying to dog pile a poor pony.

But with me being a glutton for punishment, I just had to open my mouth. “What’s it say?”

“Dear Twilight,” the alicorn read. “It’s me, Spike. Thank you for sending me my stuff. It’s funny, when you’re going through all your old comics how hard it is not to just sit down and start reading. None of them were like the one in the castle though, I guess we won’t be doing something like that…a-again."

She paused for a moment, and gulped. “It was nice to be back with Mom and Dad, and they want me to say their sorry for missing you the last time you came to Canterlot, and were disappointed when you and your fillyfriend didn’t make it the last time, but I told them what happened and they understand. We’re looking forward to seeing you this Friday.

“I know it’s only been a day, but I-I miss you a lot, and…” Twilight closed her eyes and pushed the letter the kid had to have written yesterday away from her face to look at me while she took deep and controlled breaths.

I trotted my way up to her and…well…I couldn’t manage an even expression. Twilight’s mood had quickly gone from angry-sad to just plain depressed. “Um…are you okay?” I asked before wanting to smack myself. Of course she wasn’t okay, even if I had no empathic powers, I could tell she wasn’t okay.

Twilight looked up at me with a down turned expression. “I miss Spike,” she told me before glancing at the letter again, and then back to me. “I…I did the right thing, right? Send…sending him back home?”

That…I couldn’t really answer without putting my ass in the crosshairs. “If that’s what you think,” I said before wetting my dry lips. “Um…we’re going to see him in a few days, right?” Had to remember to downplay the time, make it seem like it was glass half-full rather than half-empty. “I’m sure everything will be better by then.”

“I hope so,” she said after a moment. “I…if I write him a letter, can you get one of your changelings to deliver it? A handwritten one, not a telepathic message.”

It kind of got to me that I wouldn’t be able to peek at the contents of Twilight’s personal correspondence, but I didn’t let it show. For all I knew, she could be telling Spike she had decided I was an evil monster after all and was just waiting for the right moment to get rid of me.

Well, that thought may have been a little paranoid, but then…there really had been a dragon out to get me by proxy.

Sort of.

I put my mind back on the conversation and forced myself to smile. “Sure thing. I’ll have one of the changelings go along with the weekly shipment.”

Twilight tilted her head. “Shipment?”

“Um, you do realize I have to feed the changelings that run the communication hubs, right?” I asked. It wasn’t much since that’s all they really did, but they still took magic to function. It was only about one clone pony a week per changeling, but that was enough to sit around on their ass and take messages all day.

“I would have thought they got love from ponies like your…um…pleasure changelings,” she replied.

I shook my head. “No, need bits to cover transportation costs, plus pay for the rent on the buildings, various minor materials, and actually make a little profit.” Although with Tia thinking my bugs could be a little emergency alert broadcast system, I could probably hand her the bill for that.

Which would kinda be like handing myself the bill in a little over a week’s time since the princess all drew from the same expense account that I sort of had access to already via Twilight since I was doing her job as regent. So…it kind of made me wonder just what the hell I was being made princess for anyway. I already did the work of one as is.

“Oh, well…I’d better get started on that letter,” she said before grabbing the parchment out of the air and heading further inside.

“I need to run to the Apple’s place and take care of some business. I’ll send the changeling by later,” I told her before getting the goodbye and heading out.

As soon as I closed the door behind me, I stopped working to keep a slightly happy face and just let it droop. What the hell happened to ponies dealing with this shit? I asked myself. Spike was gone, problem was solved. Twilight had a brief cry, had sex, she was supposed to have gotten over it.

Hell, it had been her idea to send Spike away in the first place!

Really, it was.

I had just sort of mentioned a few things, like Spike seemed to have an unhealthy need for Twilight’s complete attention…or at least her praise and that his whole life just seemed to revolve around doing what she wanted to the point where when he had gotten time off, he did a total of three things before deciding to dedicate his life to Applejack and do the most insanely stupid things for a pat on the head. Then I may have asked a few questions about what Spike wanted to do with his life, and how foals knew that answer by the time they were ten at the most when she just kind of went ‘Um…’.

After that, Twilight’s panicked mind had done the rest, and come to the decision that was best for Spike.

So, I had barely anything to do with it at all.

All those tears I saw him crying through Celestia’s eyes…not my fault.

Twilight decided to get rid of him, not me.

So that tiny sliver of guilt I might have been feeling over the whole thing was obviously because Twilight was depressed, and nothing more.

It took some time to get everything I needed done with the Apples. Not that there was that much to do, just pick up a pony, walk through the forest, have him walk into a pool five times along with his clones and then have my several hundred minions swarm the things before they knew what was going on.

Of course Big Mac was his usual chatterbox of hilarity and delight that all the fans loved. He kept the dark creepy forest of free magic all lively and fun all the way though.

“…” he said as we walked through the woods.

And then there was the singing. Oh God the singing. Like always, he had to sing his little song.

…

It went. At least I was spared from Pony Tones music. Jesus did that get old fast.

But then there was my 99.9% of the conversation. I talked about…well…what guys talk about when they’re alone and have no one to judge them…

“I mean, okay yeah it was a mistake to ask her on the first day right after we just told every pony that hey, you can have more than one girlfriend now,” I told Big Mac. “And I know I’m not the most friendliest of ponies, or even really a pony but…is it too much to ask for a chance? A trial run? A bucking explanation of just why the hay she’s leaving me high and dry after I ponyed up and asked her to go on a date?”

“Hmm,” Mac replied.

I nodded as we got off the beaten path. “And you know what? It wasn’t even my idea to go through with it, it was Twilight’s!” I exclaimed before getting into the air. “Okay, yeah…she probably did it because she knew I wanted it too and I just didn’t have the nerve to ask her because I hate it when her feelings get hurt, but come on! She could have at least given Twilight an explanation! She got hurt by the rejection too ya know. Not as much as me, but…I can tell it didn’t leave her with any pleasant thoughts.”

“Mmmmhmm.”

A few wing flaps and I was on the Clydesdale’s other side. “It was like with Rarity,” I went on. “I mean…she didn’t exactly turn Twilight down, but she gave her perfectly good and logical reasons why their relationship wouldn’t workout!

“Rainbow? Just no, and gotta go!” I went on.

“Huh,” Mac agreed.

I dropped to the ground and shook my head. “And then she just shows up the next day and she’s all hey guys can we go see the Wonderbolts?” I shook my head. “And I go and say yes! Because…cause…”

A sigh escaped from my lips and I dropped my head. “I don’t even know why. She just asks, and I say yes like there’s nothing wrong, and…okay yeah, it’s a jerk move. I mean…Twilight does something…Twilight, and I get mad at her, but now Dash is doing Dash stuff, and I’m all ‘oh yes ma’am, can I have another?’. Is that wrong?”

She shoots me down and comes back the very next day to go to a movie only I have tickets for and…it kind of made me wonder if I was something akin to Rainbow Dash’s little bitch.

Which I already kind of was with Rarity…and Twilight…and when I considered my recent actions with Fluttershy… Well, it was all kind of disturbing.

“…” Big Mac looked at me out of the corner of his eye, then pointed towards the glorified hole in the ground. “Cave.”

I sighed and parked my plot on the grass to let Big Mac have his privacy. For a species that went around naked, they had weird rules about nudity and water. Swimming was okay, but bathing was private. And apparently the pool counted at bathing.

As far as I could figure, it had something to do with permission, consent, and all that jazz. Twilight just looked at me funny whenever I asked her about it, but it beat the why ponies didn’t eat grass reaction I got from her.

I waited a good five minutes. Heard some buzzing from the pool, followed by screams of terror as creatures without enough intelligence to do basic math were assaulted by changelings, and then waited for the one Big Mac with the yolk around his neck to come out before several bugs hauled the naked clones out of the cave and towards Ponyville for loading onto the train.

“So um…” I managed before sighing.

The problem with bitching about something was that you stopped, it was kind of hard to start again.

“Twilight got a letter from Spike today.”

Well, at least on that one topic.

“Do you think it was a bad idea to send him away?” I asked as we began our trek back to the farm. “For Twilight to, I mean. He did you know, turn a whole Empire against me, and got all happy about Sunset getting hurt…I think, and not to mention trying to turn Ponyville against me.”

Big Mac stopped for a moment when we got to the forest path and tapped his chin with his hoof, and then nodded. “Eeyup.”

I also nodded. “Exactly! Got what he deserved! Not like it was even that bad!”

For some reason, Mac looked at me and frowned a little. “Enope.”

I patted the larger pony on the back with my hoof. “Thanks for agreeing with me Mac. Just needed some pony else to help with the thinking. You’re a good resounding board, you know that?”

“But Ah wasn’t-”

I put a hoof to his mouth to keep whatever nonsensical drivel from coming out. I didn’t really have time for useless jawing. “Uh look, we didn’t exactly make good time going in,” I said while he rolled his eyes for some reason. “So…I’ve got to get headed back as fast as I can. Take care, okay?”

Big Mac backed off and let out a little grumbling sigh, which I would too if someone had just stuck a hoof in my mouth. Not sanitary at all. “Eeyup.”

“Great!” I replied before getting into the air and heading back towards town.

The trip back to town took about a tenth of the time it took to get into the forest. Being able to fly did that. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to enjoy going through the air like I usually did when on my own, which involved a lot of gliding and not much concentrating on the direction I was going.

I landed in Ponyville in time to see the morning train let out a burst of steam and head out with the latest shipment of McDonalds on board, then made my way to the library. As expected, Twilight was inside, giving orders to her stand-in changeling that looked like every other adult bank-flanked unicorn that any of the ponies in town had seen.

“Now, Sunset said Ms Cheerilee is bringing the class over today, so make sure you have all the foals books where they’re supposed to be,” she said before pausing for a moment. “Um…you do know about all the stories, right? Sleeping Beauty? Robin Hoof? Snow White? Hairy Trotter?”

The…obviousness of it just… Ignore it, I told myself. Just ignore it, and start the memory repression.

As I rubbed my head to try and repress the memory that was made three seconds ago, my changeling just answered like normal. “This one was versed in the organizational system before being assigned.” #321 wasn’t the most conversational members of my race, but he didn’t need to be.

“Just keep them away from the romance section and literature for older ponies, like A Game of Stables.”

I cleared my throat to get the alicorn’s attention. “Twilight, you ready to go?”

She looked over and nodded back to me. “Yes,” she said before looking back to the changeling. “Just…do what Sunset says. She’ll be here to help you out.”

As she headed towards me and out the door. No strong emotions on the alicorn’s surface meant I needed to pry. “Are you…okay?”

And that little question got me some sad nervousness coming from Twilight. Still, she nodded and gave me a little smile. “I’m better. Writing back to Spike helped. Plus we’re going to go see him later this week, right?”

“Yeah,” I agreed while actually meaning the smile I gave her. It was good to see she had cheered up some while I’d been away. Then I thought of what was coming later and…well…I managed to keep from getting worked up about it. Twilight’s parents wouldn’t miss us this time with Spike probably anticipating it. “Um…what’d you write back?”

Twilight smiled. “That I loved him, and I missed him too. I asked him if he’d been to see Moon Dancer, or any of his other friends from Canterlot. Moved into the castle and all that,” she told me before her smile slipped down into a frown. “Are you sure the changelings will be able to oversee the plumbing installation?”

I licked my lips nervously. “Look, if you want to, we can cancel on Rainbow. I…” I sighed. “I’m sorry for just…you know. That wasn’t fair to you and-”

“No,” Twilight told me, silencing my attempt to give her an out. “We…you’re right. We said we were all going to the Wonderbolts show, and then you…we…confessed right then and there so…w-we shouldn’t make her having fun contingent on doing what we want.”

The Scent I picked up from Twilight had some guilt added onto it after that.

A heavy intake of breath helped me brace myself for what was probably going to be a very long flight to Cloudsdale. “Great. Now we just need to meet up with Rainbow and…” I paused and frowned at the ground, then looked up to Twilight. “Um…we didn’t exactly set up a meeting point with her, did we?”

Twilight sighed. “Come on. Let’s go find her.”

We found Rainbow at her house quick enough, and then it was time to start the hour and a half long flight to Cloudsdale. I was just glad I had fed off Twilight that morning. Rainbow flew next to Twilight, who was in the air next to me.

Conversation was…limited.

Being an idiot, I was the one that decided to start it.

“So Rainbow…what happened to break your goggles?” It was an innocent enough question. The kind used to make small talk and pass time since the flight to Cloudsdale was way too long and company filled not to talk about something.

When Rainbow faltered and her fear and anger became detectable, I started wishing that my crappy empathy powers would give me warning signs about this stuff before I set things off for about the millionth time, while she spoke to me a little curtly. “I just went out for a flight and crashed.”

Apparently concern trumped her need to nag about manners, because Twilight looked over to the pegasus. “You broke your goggles in a crash? Are you okay? You didn’t hurt your eyes, did you?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”

My own nerves calmed down at bit at that. Pegasus magic protected against blunt trauma, but glass to the eye was glass to the eye. Still, I knew she must have been upset about the things. Unlike the ones she had borrowed from Fluttershy, Rainbow’s goggles had been some super expensive things that didn’t look any different than the normal stuff except for the word WONDERBOLTS scribbled in bold letters on the side. And I think the straps were blue, although with all her hair, it was kind of hard to tell.

It also explained the depressed anger. Rainbow loved her Wonderbolt memorabilia, even with them being jackasses that would throw away a teammate and manipulate a fan for their own personal gain. She had to have a thing for one or two of them, no other explanation for how she still wanted to go to their show after the Falls.

“We’ll pick some new ones up for you then,” I told her with a smile. “My treat. Okay?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No thanks. It’s fine.”

I sighed, and looked over to Twilight for a moment to get a little permission signal for a change in formation, and then went up and over so we were flanking the pegasus. I really didn’t want to be confrontational with her. That was always just asking for trouble. “Rainbow…I know you’re upset about it.”

“No I’m not.”

I tried again. “Rainbow, there’s no use arguing me about this. I’m empathic.”

She rolled her eyes. “And? That doesn’t mean you know what I’m thinking.”

On the other side of the pegasus, Twilight’s expression became half lidded. “No, but it does mean she can read your emotions.”

Rainbow faltered as her fear…or maybe nervousness increased. It was some kind of panicky Scent anyway. “W-What?”

Hoping to calm her down a little, I let out a sigh. “Well, not exactly,” I said before beginning my explanation. “It’s not like there’s words over your head that says Twilight is feeling this and Rainbow is feeling that. It’s more like a…smell sensation to be honest. I have to figure out what it smells like what and it still takes a little bit of um…sniffing to work out stuff beyond the basics like if you’re just a little nervous, really afraid or-”

All of a sudden, Rainbow flew ahead of us at a speed that caused that my hair to become caught up in her wake, and then she turned around to jabber at me so fast and loud I could barely make out the words. “HEY GIRLS I THINK I’M GONNA FLY ON AHEAD. SEE YOU AT THE CLOUDISEM. OKAY NOW BYE!”

As Rainbow dashed off fast enough to leave that contrail of hers in her wake, I looked over to Twilight to share a confused expression with the purple pony princess.

“What’s wrong with her?” she asked.

“I just know she was worried about something,” I replied. “I just said I only sense emotions, not read minds.”

Twilight switched to a glide and took in a deep breath. “So um…how many times have you seen them? The Wonderbolts I mean.”

“In a show? Just that one time after we told every pony about me being human. She kind of dragged me to it. You?”

“Rainbow took me to one after I just got my wings,” Twilight said before her expression turned a little thoughtful and her mouth inched upwards a bit. “At first I thought she was just using me to get a free seat to a sold-out show and I was just going to humor her but…looking back on it, I think she was trying to get me excited about flying because I crashed after my coronation. Of course after the show, Rainbow told me not to try any of the tricks without a few months of normal practice flying first, I couldn’t stop snickering all the way home.”

Then came the awkward silence that couples got when they wanted to avoid an issue that was staring them in the face, or…had just left with a burst of speed that probably should have been impossible for anything alive.

Thankfully, Twilight managed to come up with something. “So, did you see anything else while you were in Cloudsdale?”

I shook my head. “No, just the one and done.”

for the rest of the trip I found myself listening to Twilight as she got into the familiar territory of explaining everything she knew about Cloudsdale without getting too technical on things like the weather. I only kind of half-listened. Then, after hearing about how it was founded and why only one place in Equestria produces the majority of its weather, just who ran the place, and some more junk involving some of the technical aspects of pegasus construction, which they supposedly got from the griffons while claiming it was the griffons that copied them. Although I knew they just copied the humans.

Once that was done, I looked over to her. “Twilight...is this a mistake? Taking Dash I mean.”

The alicorn sighed. “She probably just wants to...well, I know she wants to see the show, and you’re right, we promised to take her but...I think...Rainbow doesn’t just want to see the Wonderbolts this time around.”

“Then what does she want?”

“...not really sure, to be honest.”

After getting to the cloud coliseum, we found Rainbow waiting for us near one of the side entrances. Since we never set a rally point, we barely found the pegasus in time before the show began.

“What the hay took you two so long?” A Scent of worry still covered the pegasus, and I could tell from her expression that she wasn’t doing the cute and cocky kid of ‘took so long question’ that she liked to.

Twilight just sighed and shook her head. “Somepony forgot to say where we were meeting,” she said before moving past Dash. Then, she stopped and turned around. “Wait, should we go get something from the concession stand first?”

I let out a heavy giggle and kissed Twilight on the nose with a peck of my lips. “I’ve got all I need right here.”

The whiff of Rainbow’s emotions caught my attention before her words. Embarrassment, sadness, fear and anger hit me in one confusing jumble with some other little Smells that I couldn’t pick out through the mess. “Look, let’s just…hurry up and do this, okay?”

And for about the eighteenth time since the day began, I had to wonder if this was all going to be one hell of a bad idea.

We headed up, found our places and sat down just as everything started with some trumpets blaring in the background. While I was sure someone as aerobatic as Rainbow Dash found all the loops, spins, and whatever the hell else the Wonderbolts did cool as hell on multiple levels, all I saw was a bunch of ponies flying around while making clouds and electric fireworks. It was fast and flashy and…didn’t really have much of an appeal to me. It really just came down to the fact that I was the type of guy who liked to play football instead of watch it on the sidelines.

Twilight took a more…adorkable approach to the whole spectacle. As everything happened she was managing to name off various maneuvers and other things, like the personal history of some of the members insofar as when they got in and the names of some personal trick that managed to impress the group enough to get noticed.

Of course, Rainbow loved every second of it. Thankfully, the princess box was made for a pony with an ass as big as Celestia’s. So we had plenty of room to stay the hell away from Rainbow before she got caught up in the show enough to become her usual self and get into an excited conversation with Twilight.

They talked about flying and Wonderbolts stuff, and I saw Twilight apparently had more enthusiasm for the whole thing than I had thought she would, or she was just feeding off Rainbow’s enthusiasm as they discussed each individual member or some trick.

As for me, well…I enjoyed the fact that the girls enjoyed it. Other than that, it was kind of boring. The show was new, or at least put a new order on a bunch of old tricks since I doubted the Wonderbolts could churn out fresh material every month. But…they weren’t as fast as Rainbow Dash, and she had become more than graceful enough in her flying that the team maximum/minimum speed the bolts had to fly at so their formation wouldn’t break up didn’t seem all that impressive either. I had already tasted steak, the guys in the air were just hamburger.

“Something wrong?” Twilight asked between the explosions and little ponies going ‘Oooo’ and ‘Ahhh’ down below us.

I kissed the mare on the cheek. “I’m next to you. How could everything not be awesome?”

Twilight put her wing around me, and we watched the show for another ten minutes to end the half hour and reach an intermission. When it came, her stomach grumbled and I guessed it might not of been the best idea to just go straight to the show since the smell from everyone else’s food finally reached our open air skybox that didn’t think to provide snacks.

“I think I’m going to go get some food,” she said before looking to the pegasus. “Do you want anything Rainbow? My treat.”

After a whole three seconds of considering it, Rainbow placed an order that had me wondering if her racing days would be over at thirty, when she bloated up like a balloon from the calorie intake. “You need some help carrying it?”

Twilight smiled and tapped her horn. “I think I got it.”

Alone with the cyan pegasus, I cleared my throat and tried the basic small talk thing again. All things considered, there was no way it could go badly now. “So Dash, you um…having fun?” I asked as we dropped back onto all fours.

Thanks to the fact the space we were using was made for Tia, we had to stand on our hind legs in order to see over the edge. But on the other hand, it at least allowed us some privacy when we weren’t watching the action. The clouds were also good at keeping out the noise too.

Rainbow looked over to me and I gave her a little smile and…she visibly tensed. “”Oh yeah. Fun. Lots of fun. You, me and Twilight, just three friends having fun.”

I managed to ignore the three dollar bill level of fake Rainbow was spouting and just went back to looking at the cloud coliseum. Unfortunately, I had long since gotten used to cloud constructed buildings being real and just…sighed. Alone again with Dash, I just couldn’t stop thinking about when she just shot me and Twilight down. It still hurt, not soul crushing hurt but…I still had to steady myself.

But standing next to the pegasus, I came to realize what was even worse than the rejection was the fact that I didn’t know the reason behind it. Was it me? Was it Twilight? Was Dash just someone that only liked stallions due to biological reasons rather than as some status symbol like the ’snobs’ in Canterlot?

It was going to be some time before Twilight got back so…I decided to just put things out in the open. “Dash…I know what I said about being friends,” I said before my sense of Smell picked up her nervousness shoot up. “And I meant it. If you want, we will never do anything but buddy stuff for the rest of your life, and I promise to move on and never bring this up again…but I need to know something.”

The last remnants of Rainbow’s excitement about the air show faded, and I kinda felt like a douche for taking a few seconds to breathe and collect myself since it kept her waiting too. “I need to know…why did you turn me and Twilight down?”

Rainbow looked away from me and her voice dropped, but I could still make out the words thanks to being nowhere near the crowd. “W-Why? Why do you have to bring that up?”

“I just…I need to know,” I told her a gently as I could. “Was there something you didn’t like about me?”

“What?” Rainbow cried out in surprise and actually looked at me with a hurt expression for a second. “You… You and Twilight are great. You girls are perfect! It’s not…it’s not that.”

As she looked away again, I sighed. “So you like Soarin then.” That…I could deal with. There wasn’t anything Rainbow found…undesirable in me or Twilight. She just wanted someone else more. In fact, it actually made me feel a little better about the whole thing. At the end of the day, I did want Rainbow to be happy, and if she could find that happiness with someone else…I could deal with that.

It still hurt, but it was…manageable.

“Hey girls, I’m back,” Twilight said as she trotted into the oversized balcony seating with half a dozen items floating in her magical grasp. I snagged the water she passed to me before the alicorn turned her attention to Rainbow. What with the pegasus’s downcast expression, it didn’t take a genius to see there was something wrong.

She took one look at Rainbow, and Twilight was turning her attention back to me. “Okay, what’s going on?”

I sighed and shook my head. “Sorry Twilight, I opened my big mouth. But um…” I looked at the little deified ruler, and back to Rainbow. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Or guilty,” I said after taking a second to examine Rainbow’s Scent and get closer to her. “If you want, I can even try and…give you a hoof in getting guy-”

“IT’S NOT SOARIN, OKAY?” Rainbow shouted loud enough for me to back away from her.

“You talked to her about Soarin?” Twilight grumbled before she spared a glance at Dash and then looked back at me. “Don’t you know what happened at the wedding?”

While I usually found little frowns on ponies cute, the one Twilight was shooting me made her seem anything but. “Um…they danced?” I asked tentatively while Twilight continued to give me the look. The look that any guy would know. The one that was so harsh they invented the wedding veil to keep the wife-to-be from using it at a wedding. “Look, I missed some things, okay?”

Dash let out a sigh, and just…drooped. Her entire body and emotional state took a bit of a nosedive, and I was left wondering if a certain pie loving pegasus needed to be murdered for making Rainbow so upset even months afterwards. “Soarin…that’s…not gonna happen,” she told me before letting out a sigh. “I’m…over it. Like you and me, moved on.”

Twilight looked back and forth between us. “Would somepony please tell me what’s going on?”

I gave an uncomfortable grunt, and gulped. “Look I just…it was like with what Rarity said to you in her shop,” I said, making sure to state my defense first if Twilight was going to jump on me for putting the pressure on Rainbow. “I just asked her why she didn’t want to be in a deeper relationship with us, for closure.”

The alicorn opened her mouth…

“THAT’S NOT IT AT ALL!”

…and flinched at Rainbow’s pained shout.

As for me, the way she spoke made my insides turn. “Rainbow-”

“Don’t you think I want to?” she demanded with a frown and strained voice. “Buck…ever since… Ever since that stupid island, I’ve been having bucking dreams about me and Twilight! Together, like how I saw the two of you!”

Aforementioned alicorn’s eyes widened. “W-What?”

I just stood there mute, remembering our trip to the GG Islands and that little moment of pseudo-TwiDashness. I had just thought she heard Twilight’s…loud declarations of how good she was feeling. But if Dash had rushed back like I had told her to and saw us… Oh…crap. But…that was weeks ago, has she been feeling that way this whole time?

But aside from Rainbow Falls, we hadn’t really spent that much time together when we weren’t so busy we couldn’t really take the time to just be with each other.

Then she pointed her hoof over at me. “And you! You shake you bucking plot in my face like you’re presenting!” Dash exclaimed. “Don’t you know what you do to other ponies? We don’t like you because you smell good, we like you cause you’re bucking hot!”

I decided not to mention the reason so many ponies probably saw me as hot was because I smelled good, and just nodded. “Okay. But, you haven’t exactly answered my question.”

“To be honest Rainbow,” Twilight said as she worked through a blush. “Now I’m kind of curious why you didn’t agree either.”

“Well what’s wrong with what we have?” Rainbow demanded angrily as she rose into the air. “What we have is perfect! I told you, I’ve been waiting forever to have friends like you two, friends I can really fly with!”

Me and Twilight shared a look of confusion, and then the alicorn talked. “Um…now I’m getting confused because…I’m not really hearing anything as to why you wouldn’t want to be with us either,” she said before pausing for a moment. “Was it just too soon? Fae was afraid you would have gone after somepony else if we waited, but if you just need more time to think about things, I’ll…we’ll give you as much as you want!”

Rainbow landed and shook her head. “No…I…I don’t need any time I…said no because…” I could smell the fear and anger mount as Rainbow wrestled with herself, while I fought my own internal battle to tell her to just drop it and calm down, or find out what was going on inside her head.

But before I could even make a decision, the pegasus spoke again. “I’LL BUCK IT UP!”

“What?” Me, or maybe it was Twilight asked. My lips told me one thing, my ears another.

Rainbow frowned at me, then looked over to Twilight and took a few steps back. “Look…I know the kind of pony I am, okay?” she said. “I have more than I ever dreamed of having, and the fact you two want me to do something like this…it’s…it’s more than I ever wanted! But if I’m with you girls all day, I know what’ll happen! I’ll get Twilight mad at me, or say something stupid in front of Fae and make you both hate me, and I’ll lose everything!”

And with that, it all clicked in my head. The anger, the fear, the desire and love. We were offering her something she wanted, but it was also something she feared to take because of past experiences. Knowing Rainbow, there might have been some self-worth issues too at the core of things, but none of that mattered at the moment.

Apparently, Twilight lacked my introspection, because she was the first to get to Dash and wrap her in a hug. “Oh Rainbow, how could you think that?” she asked as I joined in on the supportive group embrace.

“Come on Twilight,” the pegasus moaned. “Remember Rainbow Falls? I almost-”

Twilight cut her off. “Got pressured into a position to help your friends, by me,” the alicorn went on before breaking the hug. “But when we were actually willing to let you go, you picked us over them. You are a pony that will always stand by her principles, even when it means giving up what she loves the most. It’s something I’ve seen you do time and time again, and…I stand in awe of you because of it. And if you think I could hate you for any reason just by getting closer to you, then you really are a featherbrain.”

The…unease I could detect coming from Rainbow faded at Twilight’s soft words and I decided to add my two cents. “Look Rainbow, if you don’t want to do this whole thing with me and Twilight, really don’t, then that’s fine. We’ll get over it. But if you’re just nervous, then let me just say that there is nothing to be afraid of.”

Rainbow gulped, and her eyes darted back between the two of us. “If um…I did say yes and all…um…what exactly would we…you know…do?”

I managed to refrain from making the half a dozen sex jokes that entered my head at that moment, and just walked up to Rainbow and put my wing around her before giving the girl a nuzzle. “Well I was thinking we could go to a few Wonderbolt shows and hang out a bit like we do now.”

A second later, Twilight had repositioned herself alongside Rainbow as well, with her wing joining mine. “Just with a lot more of these,” she added before giving Rainbow a light kiss on the cheek.

“That’s not…bad,” Rainbow admitted.

Then I had to add the downside to it all. “Of course you’ll probably have to go to Twilight’s stuff too, fillyfriend duties and all that.”

“And here I thought you wanted to go to the Starswirl exhibit that’s coming to Ponyville the day after tomorrow,” the princess said with a little smirk.

A feeling of unease crept up from the back of my mind, as if there was something wrong about what Twilight had said, but I quickly knocked it back down into the depths and looked to the girl we’d surrounded. “So what do you say Rainbow? Do you want to give the three of us a shot?”

“And if you don’t, we can just go back up to the edge and watch the show,” Twilight added gently. “And that’ll be it. No more talking about it or anything.”

Rainbow gulped, and nodded. “Okay.”

My body tensed. “Is that an okay for that’ll be it or a…” I couldn’t even finish.

“Okay, let’s try this out,” Rainbow finally said as she let me put some air back into my lungs.

Twilight smiled at the other mare. “In that case…I think I need to catch up with Fairy in the kissing department.” As Rainbow turned towards her, Twilight went in slow and brought her lips to the edge of the pegasus’s, where Rainbow moved just a bit to meet them.

I…felt a lot less ‘YES FINALLY’ than I thought I would have, and didn’t have an urge to get on my hind legs and dance in joy at the sight of Twilight and Rainbow making out right in front of me. I was happy, but not...super romance girly happy like you were supposed to be at the end of a love story.

And by the third kiss, I was feeling a little left out in the cold. “Hey uh…I’m here to you know.”

As they broke from their fourth tongue lock, Twilight looked over to me with a little smile. “Hey you stole Rainbow’s first kiss, I’m just paying it back with interest.”

“Plus,” Rainbow added. “You’re a lousy kisser. Your mouth tastes weird.”

Twilight snickered while I gave Rainbow a half-linden glare. “She’s not that bad since I taught her how to use her tongue,” the alicorn said with a little lusty smile. “Plus, her transformation does get rid of that changeling taste. Give it a shot.”

She did.

And we were about five minutes late for the start of the show.

But to be honest, I didn’t give much of a damn about the Wonderbutts. The only ponies I cared to watch were sitting next to me. And from the looks of things, and all the touchy feely crap we managed to get in during the performance, they were just fine.

“And then what happened?”

I groaned at Tia’s question as she moved her knight into an opening I left in my defenses. Bragging to the goddess about how well everything went today after she asked me why I was in such a good mood had started off innocently enough at first, but Tia was a damn gossip whore that squeezed every last drop of information out of me that she could.

“Well we um…got done with the show, bought some stuff as souvenirs, got Dash some new goggles, then went back to the castle and…went to bed,” I said before moving my pawn out of the way for her queen.

Celestia moved in with her queen. “That’s check. And Rainbow Dash? What happened with her?”

I cleared my throat and looked away. “Like I said. We went to the castle and went to…bed,” I told her with a blush. “Uh…apparently, me and Twilight have reputation, and Rainbow thought because we had kind of took her on a date, we were going to um…you know. You do know what we did on our first date, right?”

“You didn’t!” she said with an amused smile I could literally feel through our link.

A sigh escaped from my lips. “We…kind of started to but, Rainbow got nervous again, so we held off,” I told her. “So we just…cuddled.” In fact, I could still feel the girl underneath me when I concentrated on my body, I was on her left side, Twilight snuggled in on her right, and the three of us had our forelegs wrapped around each other with wings as well.

I moved a piece, and Celestia quickly won. “Well, I’m hardly one to judge others to not take things fast when it comes to relationships,” she replied. “With the whole endless longevity thing I possess, I get all the nervous playing around out of the way as soon as possible. Waste of time, really.”

“Please tell me your asking out another pony doesn’t equate to I think you’re hot, let’s go bang,” I begged.

Tia giggled. “Not quite,” she said before becoming a little more serious. But not by much. “So, did you learn anything today?”

At that moment, something occurred to me. While I didn’t really know Celestia enough to gauge her personality when we first met…what we had been doing since the whole dreamtime thing started, hanging out and…gossiping about everything, something about it finally clicked as to the why. So I nodded. “Yeah…those friendship reports, you really miss them, don’t you?” I asked. “They were your little vicarious living through Twilight and the others, weren’t they? And that’s why you’ve gotten all…personal with the girls, isn’t it? They stopped sending you gossip.”

“I will admit to taking a certain amount of joy from them,” she admitted. “But it was hardly the deciding factor. That was…someone else.”

Before I could ask more questions, Tia rubbed her hands together. “Now, since you lost, I want the feet and back this time. Oh, and don’t be squeamish about the lower back.”

As the goddess stood up to help clean things up, I rolled my eyes. “You know none of this is even real, right? It isn’t going to do anything for your muscles, even if you had the same body when you wake up.”

Tia let out a snort. “Relaxing is relaxing,” she said before laying down on the couch with her ass up in the air. “Now, chop chop. And what are we watching, anyway?”

I sighed and turned on the television. “Well um...since I’m feeling a little romantic, and I knew I’d sort of end up getting a little annoyed even though what I really want to say is I hate you but I can’t because lying is pretty impossible here...um...just watch the stupid love story,” I said over the first few opening lines.

“...but dying in the place of someone I love? Seems like a good way to go.”

A few hours later, Tia was just sitting in front of the television with a frown on her face as the last scene ended with the teenage girl being next to her sparkling boyfriend.

“That...was stupid,” she said before looking over to me. “Quick, remind me how you and Twilight got together again. I can’t wake up with that thing in my head being the last thing I saw in this place.”

I did.

She sighed in relief.

“A bit rushed but...it was still a better love story than that thing.”

Chapter 29: The Incredibly Annoying Announcement of Affections and Disturbing Dating Declarations Made by Pretty Pony Princesses

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I stared at the monster in front of me with a glare of unrestrained hatred and disgust. If my chest had been a cannon, I would have shot my heart at him and gladly given my life if just to end his. So vile was his existence.

But of course, I couldn’t do anything. That naively stupid butter-yellow pegasus whose special talent was bending over to let everything in the world fuck her up the ass got in the way. If I actually did give Discord what he fucking deserved, she would get all teary-eyed and some other bullshit, and then Rainbow would jump in on her side despite the fact his stupid little stunt of a ‘friendship test’ nearly got her EATEN BY A FUCKING GRABOID!

Hell, even my knowledge of Equestria’s acknowledgement of the movie Tremors...or the fact that the movie was based of a monster native to Equestria didn’t cheer me up. That fucking world building tried to eat my Sparkles and Dashie until Twilight zapped it and Dash kicked its head in at Mach 1. It didn’t deserve to exist.

“So, could I have just a little glass of water?” Discord asked from inside his little medical bubble, his face covered in spots that were probably just as fake as his stupid ‘blue flu’ crap.

Twilight frowned at the mismatched freak. “NO!”

The force of her shout made me happy inside. At the very least Twilight wasn’t falling for Discord’s bullshit again, and would back me up when I told Tia that he needed to be put down permanently. The process...or the process to learn exactly what I needed to do to get rid of Discord in a permanent manner wasn’t something I would have liked to even consider, but...he tried to kill Rainbow and Twilight.

For that, Discord needed to die.

As he grinned at her, I let out a snarl and spun around to leave. “Come on, let’s get the buck out of here before he tries to infect us with his new fake disease. We need to check around town and clean up his mess,” I grumbled.

“Hey! I’ll have you know this is a real disease!” Discord told me before pulling an oversized note out of his ear that was signed by Dr Real McCoy and waving it at me from behind his enclosure.

I didn’t even bother to question it and just turned to leave. Twilight followed suit and I could hear Rainbow giving Fluttershy a quick goodbye before coming after me. “So…um…you not have breakfast today or something?” the cyan pegasus asked as she landed on my other side once we were out of the house. “Because that tends to make me a little-”

“We woke up in the same bed Rainbow. You remember how I eat, right?” I asked in a deadpan tone while looking over to the pegasus. Then I remembered who I was talking to and let out a long sigh to help with the clearing of emotions. When your magic worked on anger and all things negative, keeping a pleasant disposition wasn’t easy when you had a damn good reason to be pissed off. “I’m sorry Dash, it’s just…first I had to ditch you girls for Fluttershy’s thing, and we’re gone for two days, and Discord shows up to make trouble.”

Rainbow waved a dismissive hoof. “Relax, it was nothing we couldn’t handle.”

Twilight sighed and hung her head. “But he did ruin our date,” she mumbled before looking up to the pegasus with an upset expression.

That comment put my anger on the rise again, and I must have showed, because whatever Rainbow was got to say stopped a few seconds after she opened her mouth. Then she must have gotten a little peeved at that information too, because a little scowl appeared on her face to before she looked over to the alicorn. “I’m sorry Twilight, I knew you were really looking forward to that Starswirl thing. Even had a costume and everything.”

I missed Twilight cosplaying. It made me want to cry.

“Well, I already knew all the information they had and seen all the artifacts in books before, so it’s okay,” she replied before we expression became a little softer. “The truth is, I wanted you to go to see if I could get you interested in some of the stuff me and Fae are. I know you’re not going to read a history book or anything, you’re a hooves-on kind of pony so, I thought I’d try showing you something you could put your hooves…on?”

If it wasn’t for the fact she was talking to Rainbow, I would have just gone ‘daaaw’ and wrapped my legs around the blushing mare before the sexiness of everything kicked in and I was making off with her to make-out. But as things were, I just had to hang back and let them talk it out.

“Like with the Wonderbolts and me,” Rainbow mumbled before her voice raised and took on a tone I could only call touched. “That’s um…thanks for the effort, Twilight.” Although I could tell from her Scent she was a little disturbed with the idea if getting excited about history. To Rainbow, that stuff was over and done with. There was no need to be concerned about stuff that was in the past. It was probably why she was so forgiving.

Before the whole issue could die, I stepped in. “Well it’s not like it’s the only time the stuff will be open to the public. We could just fly down to wherever the exhibit is going to be shown next.” I also wanted to know how the hell someone like Starswirl, if he really was some all-important unicorn, only got some lame traveling exhibit instead of a spot in a real museum.

But then, ponies weren’t all that interested in history…or the world around them in general. They just went on with their lives and trusted Celestia to take care of the big picture stuff. Of course she kind of fucked things up and they were due for a drastic decline in population for the next hundred years because of that, but…well that was what happens when people put their trust in the government back home so…why not Equestria too?

Some things had to be multi-universal.

Rainbow let out a little sigh. “Do we really have to go again? I already saw everything.”

“Rainbow, we were there for about five minutes,” Twilight deadpanned.

“Yeah, and I saw it all,” the pegasus replied with a little shrug. “Wasn’t that big a collection of stuff, really.”

Twilight let out an annoyed groan. “Rainbow, even I wasn’t able to take in everything-”

Apparently, Rainbow took the comment as a challenge, because before Twilight was even done talking, the pegasus was in the process of gobsmacking her. “They had the fourteenth bell of his hat, the candlestick he used to light the way when he was exploring the Caverns of Maretania, the alternate designs for this hats that he didn’t take because Princess Celestia supposedly put spells on them that showed off his most embarrassing thoughts, the comb of his beard that got cursed with an eternally crinkly spell, and-”

I kind of became lost in my astonishment as Rainbow managed to name twenty different objects and provide a brief history of each. By the time she was done, I was checking the pegasus over to make sure she wasn’t a changeling.

“H-How do you know all of that?” Twilight asked.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “They had a description sign in bold text next to each of the things Twilight. I just read them. Duh.” The fact that she thought so little of her accomplishment was...kind of creepy. But then, I don't think Rainbow card that much about the academic stuff.

“But…it…you… We were only there for five minutes!” the alicorn exclaimed. “Even if we did have time to go to each exhibit, how could you even remember all of them?”

In response, Rainbow gave Twilight a worried frown, as if the alicorn was the one acting abnormally instead of the apparently scholarly pegasus. “Uh…because it’s important to you?”

Twilight stood there and…I Smelled her emotions change in an instant. The confusion just washed away, and was replaced by shock, awe and…well…I wouldn’t call it the all encompassing love I felt for Twilight; not that I could Smell my own emotions, but…it was a lot more than the platonic affection stuff the girls usually felt towards one another.

Not quite what I was aiming for between them though. If anything, it was what I picked up from Tia when we had our nightly visits. Which was a little disturbing when I had a second to think about it.

But then, Celestia loved everyone. It was kind of her job being the pony messiah and all that.

Then the purple pony just went along silently, stealing glances at Rainbow at every chance she could and…well…I could tell she was wanting to get something going between her and the pegasus as soon as we had some time to ourselves.

“So Fae, how was your trip?” Twilight asked as we got into town and I started looking around. There weren’t any obvious signs of destruction, but…I knew Discord would need to keep things subtle if he didn’t want Tia to finally give him what he deserved.

However, Twilight’s question got me plenty distracted. “It…wasn’t what I expected.”

In fact, the breezies had just about killed my wish to know about all things Pony. They were small, annoying, and went against every basic natural law that I knew of. It went beyond how I was a little put off by Fluttershy due to her need to take care of anything and everything that shouldn’t need taking care of though. The breezies were the personification of the annoyance of a wild that needed taking care of, times a million.

They had magic, but couldn’t use it on their own. They were sapient, but couldn’t survive without help. They needed to gather pollen, but wouldn’t accept a handout. They were like that two-year-old child everyone sees outside a store or restaurant that tries the open the door on his own, won't let his mother help him, and holds up the twenty plus people behind and in front of him while mommy just smiles at his cuteness and everyone else gives the brat a death glare.

Hell, I knew when they came to Ponyville, it would be Rainbow and her best wind producing ponies that would need to carry the damn things onto the next town and make them someone else’s burden.

But on top of everything else, they just didn’t fit in Equestria!

Equestria was a land of Harmony, where everything had a place. Earth ponies took care of nature. Pegasi took care of the weather. Changelings killed stuff and would be used as my secret ninja army should anything be stupid enough to fuck with Equestria on a large scale. Alicorns took care of the heavens, and unicorns maintained pony society since Tia and Luna took their jobs out of necessity. Breezies didn’t do jack shit. They didn’t pollinate flowers, take care of animals, do something with the oceans, or leave money in exchange for teeth under the pillows of little children. They showed up, took something from Equestria, and left. With the ponies helping them along all the while.

So the parasitic existence of such creatures that were taking advantage of my little ponies pissed me off to no end.

“Really?” Rainbow asked. “What happened?”

I let out a sigh of a groan. “Well for starters, since it was a group of animal caretakers, every pony thought that Sunset was Fluttershy’s pet.” Which was yet another reason for me to hate the little helpless animal convention. The poor girl had probably never been so put down on or humiliated in her life.

Both the girls winced at that one, but Twilight was the one to speak. “Oooo, bet she didn’t like that.”

Livid would have been a good descriptor. “Then the hotel room we ended up being assigned by the ponies organizing the event was just a two-bed, so Fluttershy had to share.”

“You made Fluttershy share with Sunset?” Rainbow said with a frown. “Why didn’t you and her just use a bed? You’re both humans…sort of.”

A spark of comprehension dawned in Twilight’s eyes. “Yes but…um, you know how Sunset sleeps naked?”

“So?”

Twilight sighed and shook her head. “Humans only get naked when they need to bathe, or have sex. Seeing as how Sunset was Fae's former species…” Twilight left the rest unsaid.

Dash blanched. “Oh um…wait, we’re not…Sunset’s not going to be number four, right?” she asked Twilight before looking over to me. “No offense, but…humans kind of look…weird.”

I cringed as Rainbow’s words put that thought in my head. Seventeen-going-on-twenty-something was still seventeen as far as I was concerned. “Oh hay no! That would just be…Sunset’s like…my…ward, or something.” Like Robin was to Batman, she even had the hair for it. And I was naturally Batman colored so…yeah, that put a few images in my head that really didn’t belong in Equestria.

“Well you are pretty protective of her,” Twilight pointed out.

“I’m protective of all of you,” I told her with a frown before something Rainbow said made me stumble and look over to her. “Wait, did you two…do it while I was gone?”

Rainbow went bright red and looked away.

Twilight giggled and smiled at the pegasus. “No,” the alicorn told me. “In fact, she went back to her house the night you left but the second day…well, you got home in time.”

“I um…like feeling you girls next to me,” the pegasus mumbled before looking back at me with a frown. “But you totally need to switch to a cloud mattress. Way better than that thing you’ve got now.”

As a bit of an uncomfortable feeling rose in the back of my mind, I managed to hide it by quickly looking around for anything out of the ordinary. Considering Dash’s hesitation, I was afraid Twilight’s way of rushing a relationship would end up ruining everything. I mean hell, she dragged me into bed after our first date!

But Rainbow wasn’t like that! She was delicate, a nervous woman that needed careful coaxing to get into bed, or she would fly off. She needed to come to us, not get...Twilighted into sex.

We got to the other end of town, and I frowned when I noticed something was…off. There weren’t any pink clouds or mind-slaved beavers, and I didn’t detect any magic in the air but…something was wrong.

“Wait a minute…where’s Berry’s house?”

Twilight’s words made me look over and follow her gaze. Sure enough, the row of houses near the train station ended one too soon. “Dash, do me a favor and check the rest of Ponyville to make sure it’s still there,” I grumbled as I looked at the missing house.

Ten seconds later, she reported back that it was. Only one of my precious little pony domiciles was missing. Five minutes of spreading out and around in a classic one man search pattern, she found Berry’s house torn apart and spread across half a hillside. Half an hour after that, we found the owner of said house thankfully alive and staying at the Ponyville Traveler Inn with Ruby Pinch in a two bed room. After we found her and sent the kid off to get some ice cream, I sat down on the floor while Dash took the other bed and Twilight took a seat next to me after offering to get Berry something to drink. Surprisingly, she turned it down.

“So what happened?” I asked as evenly as I could while images raced through my mind of the mare screaming in terror while her home flew through the sky a good ten feet off the ground. The pony needed calm, not anger. “Were you in the house when Discord threw it out of town?”

Neither of the girls with me balked at the accusation. We all knew who was to blame.

Berry shook her head. “No I was taking Ruby to school,” she said after stopping and looking down at the floor. “When I came back, it was just…gone.” The depression in her voice made me grit my teeth.

Discord had taken her house, the one place in the world that was supposed to be safe, and destroyed it all for the purpose of a joke. Sure, his big evil plot of trying to get one of the girls eaten alive by a giant monster had failed, but he had still managed to ruin the security of Berry’s house. Even now, I could Smell the despair coming off the poor pony in waves, topped only by her fear.

“Why didn’t you just come and get us?” Rainbow asked. “”Twilight cloud have probably-”

“Because you were with that monster!” the earth pony shouted at Rainbow in a panic, which got a wince from the pegasus. “The last time he was here, he nearly destroyed our town!”

Twilight cleared her throat. “You mean when he was with the Cutie Mark Crusaders?” she asked. “That was an accident-”

“Do you honestly think that?” Berry demanded in a shout before her eyes went wide and she looked back down at the ground. “I…I’m sorry Princess Twilight, I shouldn’t have-”

“It’s okay,” Twilight told her as she raised a hoof to cut her off. “And we’ll get your house fixed and-”

Berry winced. “Do you have to?” she asked as tears appeared in her eyes. “I…” She paused, and looked over to me. “What happened to that fund thing Princess Celestia set up for the town after Twilight’s pet destroyed half of Ponyville? Can’t you just give me the value of my house and everything in it? With that, I could finally move to another town."

“Spike’s not my pet,” Twilight grumbled.

I managed to ignore Twilight’s anger for the moment and concentrated on the real problem. Being the regent of the town, I was aware of what she was talking about. With all the trouble that happened around Ponyville, Celestia had set up what amounted to a disaster relief fund. But I was pretty sure it was the mayor Berry needed to be talking to at the moment. “I can probably expedite the whole thing but…”

“You can’t be serious,” Rainbow Dash cut in. “You…you want to leave Ponyville? What about your filly?”

Berry scowled at the pegasus. “Who the hay do you think I’m considering the most?” she demanded. “This place…it was bad enough when the Everfree was right next door, I lost my husband in a rouge thunderstorm, and just in the past year and a half we have to deal with little bug things that eat ponies out of house and home, dragons that live in town-”

Twilight stomped her hoof on the ground. “Spike didn’t mean to do any of that!”

“Which makes it even worse!” the mother went on. “What happens when its time for his next birthday? Or Hearths Warming. Or LUNCH? You feed him jewels, and dragons horde jewels! We were all warned by the mayor not to ever give Spike anything or he could run amok again!”

The little announcement made Twilight wince. “He didn’t hurt anypony,” she mumbled weakly.

“Oh I guess seeing your home destroyed like mine doesn’t hurt?” Berry demanded while Twilight looked away and Rainbow became a mix of anger and sympathy. “Losing my house that I spent the best years of my life in, that I raised my daughter in, I stayed here even after I had my foal because I love this town but…now you-you just let monsters roam around, AND ONE OF THEM IS RUNNING THE PLACE!”

As Berry pointed a hoof in my direction, I had to repress the urge to smack it away and fire back some verbal ammunition. She’s just upset, and rightfully so. She’s just upset. She’s upset, and not thinking clearly. After taking a little breath, I reached out and lowered the earth pony’s hoof without breaking anything of hers for making Twilight remember Spike and putting her in a depressed mood. But with Rainbow looking like she wanted to clobber the earth pony, I actually decided violence wasn’t the option for once.

“I understand what it’s like to lose a home,” I told her in a heavy tone before taking another calming breath. “But Twilight has offered to fix your house and…your daughter is in school here. I know you’ve probably thought about what it’ll do to her if you move. So…here’s my offer, give it a week. You’re upset and that’s no time to be making major decisions about your life. If you still want to move out after that…I’ll personally provide you with the value of your home, plus however much extra you need to get settled in another city.”

I doubted she would though. Crazy theory or no, ponies really did seem to be herd animals. They didn’t do much on their own, and I knew Berry had plenty of friends in town that weren’t going anywhere. She’d calm down, and that pony need for others being around would force her to stay.

For a moment, Berry just looked at the two of us while the anger just drained out of her, and she slumped. “Okay,” she agreed softly before looking back up to me and Twilight. “Um…about what I said…about…um…everything. I…”

Twilight held up a hoof. “It’s okay,” she told the mare. “And we’ll reimburse you for the hotel room too.” A second later, and she was looking over to me. “Now let’s go fix a house.”

“Hey Rainbow, you wanna come with, or just…”

“Might as well,” she mumbled before she got into the air. “I can’t believe I’m taking time off from flying, but…flying in a circle day after day is getting kind of boring.”

I started to head out the door. “We could help change up the course for you,” I offered. “Don’t want to get too set in your flight plan in case the course at the Games is different or something.”

The flight back to Berry’s house was mostly done in silence. Probably because of what we could see just a minute into the trip, and a question that Twilight just had to ask.

“So um…you lost your house, once?”

I let out a loud sigh and shook my head. “It happened when I was a…young. To be honest, I didn’t really understand the major significance of it at the time, or how it affected the other members of my family. But…when I was a lot older, the house my brother was living in was also burned down.”

Rainbow let out a snort. “What is it with you and fire?”

If it had been anyone else asking that question, I probably would have lost it. As it was, I knew Rainbow was just finding the irony of the situation and laughing at it. Gallows humor, or something like it.

It took me a good minute to manage an answer that wouldn’t make her cry and didn’t involve grabbing her by the scruff of her neck to shout in her face. “The first one was just an electrical problem, no pony was to blame. My brother’s house…another human, just a foal…well, an older foal but not an adult, decided what it was like to burn down a house or two. So, from what I remember of the news report, it was some well off child, not really rich but…he sure as hay never had to work for anything. He faked an illness, waited till everyone was away at work, then threw bottles full of a flammable liquid onto a few of the houses in his neighborhood, onto the carpets inside, and set them on fire.” Not the exact story, but ponies didn’t really have a word for molotov cocktail.

I had to choke down the rising anger when we landed, and I started lifting some of the debris. “My brother lost everything he owned.”

Twilight came to stand beside me and started moving a few of the heavier objects with her magic. This that were broken got put back together, and we started clearing out the house so she could put it all back together. “Why would any…human do that.”

“Same reason Discord does what he does,” I growled. “Because to Discord, to that boy, doing things like that is fun.” I would have said ponies were different at the core and would never understand how something could think like that, but…Diamond Tiara was the same way. What connected them all was simple: the lack of needing others. Money or magic, it didn’t matter. Kindness was one thing, but unneeded kindness was just ego stroking. And Discord was getting that from Fluttershy in spades. Once he got tired of it, he’d turn on her.

In another sense, he already had with how he tried to murder Rainbow Dash. But of course that was all an ‘accident’ and he didn’t mean for something that doesn’t appear anywhere else in Equestria to show up and try and do his dirty work for him.

“Okay enough doom and gloom,” Rainbow Dash told me before he nabbed a picture out of the wreckage. “So um…are the princesses coming over tonight?”

I looked up at Dash as she continued to go through the top part of the house. “That’s tonight?”

“Yep, another one Rarity’s going to miss,” Twilight told me.

“But, it…wait, Rarity? What happened with Rarity?” I asked.

Twilight looked over to me with a confused expression. “Don’t you remember how she wants to…um…get together with my brother?”

A chuckle came from up from above us, and I looked up to see Dash as she came in for a landing to set a collection of pictures down on the ground. “Yeah…I don’t think the three of them are going to do things as fast as we do Egghead.”

Twilight laughed in agreement. “Although Rainbow…I guess I’m even faster than you since somepony is still-”

I sighed. “Twilight, please don’t start with the virgin jokes.” Pressuring me into sex was one thing, Dash… it wouldn’t end well. “No pressure,” I reminded her.

The alicorn kissed Rainbow on the cheek. “Sorry, but…” She reached up and tapped her horn. “I really do want to test out the idea that bigger is better, and somepony refuses to let me validate my that theory.”

When Twilight started getting scientific, I knew she was getting ready for a full verbal debate, or what most other couples would call a fight. We apparently didn’t have those. We had civilized debates with a lot fancy words and alliteration. “Look, doing it as a girl and having you um…you know, use your tongue,” I managed to say before my embarrassment over the whole thing made me collect myself. “I-I can handle. Horns and other, long and hard objects are a bit…um…no. Just no.”

Twilight stared at me for a few seconds, and then she rolled her eyes and broke into a little smile. “I know, I know. It’s just, I doubt we would have ever gotten anywhere if not for me dragging you into bed that night,” the alicorn told me before she looked over to Rainbow. “And I don’t mean to pressure you Rainbow. But I do want to share all of this with you too.”

For her part, the pegasus gulped. “I-I know Twilight. And um…well…” Rainbow cut herself off and looked away.

It was so damn cute, I couldn’t resist. “I’ll have to agree with you on that one Twilight,” I said as I walked up to Rainbow and nuzzled her. “But if you want to wait, it’s okay Rainbow. No pressure.” While I did have plenty of sexual fantasies involving myself and Twilight on top of a Rainbow Dash that we made sing a song of pleasure, all of them involved a willing pegasus. As much as I wanted her, she needed to say yes first.

Kissing and nuzzling was okay, she didn’t shy away from any of that, but…anything more than cuddling in bed and she had us back off. So far at least.

Twilight took her other side, and we both put our wings over the pegasus’s back before getting a little bit through the introductory phase of aforementioned fantasies.

A few minutes later, and Twilight carried the rubble of Berry’s house back into town along with the roof that had drifted pretty far away from town before whatever magic Discord had put on it wore off and it came crashing down. After the little goddess managed to put the place back together, she set everything inside more or less where it had been thanks to another spell that allowed her to put everything in its proper place. Apparently, all those re-shelving days had finally gotten to her, and Twilight found a much quicker solution.

As the last of the magic finished the repairs, Twilight turned back to us and let out a breath I wasn’t aware she was holding. “Wow, that was tough.”

“Tougher than a dam?” I asked. There was no way the house could have weighed more than all that rock.

Twilight frowned. “Big is easy, and dams aren’t as complex as the entire interior of a house. Control is a lot harder than just throwing power around. I think I feel a headache coming on,” she said before sighing and reaching up to touch her horn. “I need to go lay down.”

Rainbow was by the mare’s side in an instant. “You need a hoof getting back home? Flying with a headache is a pain.”

They shared a kiss that the alicorn began, and Twilight shook her head. “I’ll be fine. The library still has a bed, and it’s a short walk. Just give me time for a nap and I’ll be good as new. Fae, I’ll need some help getting to sleep though.”

“You sure that’s all you want to do in bed Twilight?” I asked with a smile before walking up behind the two of them to put a wing around them both when I made my way between the couple. Your bed’s a little small for three mares but, I’m sure we could figure out something, right Dashie?” A kiss to Twilight’s cheek, followed by some nuzzling to Dash got an annoyed groan from the alicorn, and another blush from Rainbow before I whispered into the pegasus’s ear. “Just give us the word, and we’ll do it Dash.”

I knew I shouldn’t have done the teasing bit, but…Dash was so damn cute when she got embarrassed, and Twilight was one affectionate pony when she got going. Despite that purple pony princess’s IQ, she had a rather simple view of relationships. If Twilight liked someone, she got real physical.

Dash continued to blush as she talked. “I…um…”

“What happened to not pressuring her?” Twilight asked with a little smirk.

I shrugged. “What can I say? You mention bed, and Rainbow’s cute flank’s waving around in front of me so…I couldn’t resist,” I told Twilight before I felt a tiny bit of a flinch beneath my wing coming from the pegasus and a spike in a mix of emotions that I could only call unease.

The response from Rainbow made me kill all thoughts of playfulness at once, and I looked over to her in concern. “Dash, are you okay?”

She gulped. “Yeah I’m fine.”

Thankfully, Twilight had been around me long enough to read my expressions, and could see that something was wrong. But I gave her a slight move of my head to tell her I’d try and handle it. No need to get the girl worried when her head was already hurting.

A late lunch for me had Twilight out by the time me and Dash left the room.

Then it came time to move the clouds around with my magic and…well, let’s just say that the annoyance of having to gently move something around with magic that was more geared towards crushing skulls than handling kittens helped me get enough anger keep my magic focused. And dealing with brats for an hour in a previous life before having to get a whole different group allowed me to feel one thing while sounding completely at ease. So our conversation wasn’t affected by my mood.

On top of which, the fact that I was alone with her meant I could hopefully get to the bottom of this whole mess.

“Hey Rainbow, is something wrong?”

Of course, it being more than ten seconds after I picked up on something, Rainbow had bounced back to her usual self of denial. “No.”

For moment, I had to weigh the options of reminding her about the empathy thing, or just start randomly making suggestions and see if anything stuck. Since I doubted she wanted to be reminded of the fact I was constantly butting into her head, on purpose or not, I decided to go with option two.

“Is it the affection stuff?” I asked. “The kissing, and wing-hugs, and nuzzling?” I held up my hooves. “I can totally tone it down if you want.”

Rainbow’s cheeks went red. “No that stuff’s cool,” she said before looking away. “Do you like it when I um…do that stuff to you?”

For some reason, I had the feeling she had this conversation before with Twilight. Considering how they had been on a date for at least a little bit of the day…it was very possible the purple pony had established some kind of guidelines from the get go as to what was off limits and what was allowed. Hell, I would have been disappointed if my Twi didn’t pull a stunt like that.

The fact that Rainbow was getting all cute and flustered over it sent a little flutter through my heart. “Of course I do,” I told her before adding, “but the last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable. Your happiness, and that of the girls, and even the ponies of this town…it means the world to me. So if you’re just doing it to try and make me happy-”

Rainbow’s eyes went wide and I got a spike of panic coming from her. “No! I like kissing you!” she said quickly, turning her head towards me for a second before she looked away again. “It’s just…why me?

“I asked Twilight when we were on our date, and she was all because I taught her how to fly, and always put everything into what I do, and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t really get. And I can kind of get her getting all…egghead about it, and she’s…well…she’s got big wings, so…um… But…you’re, well…you.”

It took me a good minute to decode Rainbow’s Dashese, and even then it seemed pretty incomplete. “Um…what about Twilight?” I asked while still trying to figure out just what the hell Rainbow was saying. All I could gather was it involved big wings which…may have had something to do with her looks.

But that was a definite maybe.

Once again, Rainbow’s nervousness went up, and she looked away. “Never mind, just forget about it.” I caught sight of her legs bending, and quickly wrapped her up in a magical field before she could take off. “H-Hey! No fair! Lemme go!”

I took a breath and concentrated on holding Dash as gently as I could while keeping the grip hard enough so she couldn’t move away. The annoyance I felt from her struggling made it easy enough, not to mention the anger I had at myself for damaging her fragile ego by just snatching her up like a helpless child.

“I’ll let you go when you listen to me for a second,” I told her, which made the pegasus stop struggling and focus her attention on me. Then I had to force myself to stop frowning, and gave her the best understanding look I could manage. “Rainbow, I promise that I will never be angry at you for being honest with me, or make fun of what you think and feel as long as you are. So please, open up to me. I don’t care how silly or uncool a little sentence or two is going to make you sound for a few seconds, because I know the big picture of Rainbow Dash is one that shows the coolest, and most amazing pegasus in Equestria. Okay?”

Rainbow didn’t take up struggling again, and I let her go before speaking again in a soft tone. “Now…what were you saying about Twilight?”

She gulped. “Okay look, I know Twilight’s got a nice pair and all, but…that’s pretty much all she’s got. Well, maybe the horn too, but…I’m not really into that length things, big wings are more my thing,” Dash got out before she cleared her throat. “So, I mean…I can totally understand her going for somepony like me but you…come on! You had your pick of stallions before this whole family herding thing…and now you’ve got your pick of anypony in Equestria. So…”

I held up a hoof and thought over what the pegasus had just said. “Wait, what do you mean? I know Twilight’s not…um…supermodel or anything, but…”

“You really don’t know?” Rainbow asked. “Okay, her wings are awesome and I love them, but…well, she’s got some more muscle up front and all but…Twilight’s kind of um...a lot of ponies think she’s…well…”

The word that first came to my mind made we want to kick myself in the crotch for even thinking of it. “Below average?” I suggested.

“Way below.”

Somehow, I managed to keep myself from killing Rainbow on the spot. Still, I tensed in anger and let out a growling snort though. Even Rainbow Dash wasn’t allowed to call Twilight Sparkle ugly.

But…I didn’t hurt her or anything.

Mostly because it was what she said next.

“I’m below average.”

That little bit of what Rainbow thought about herself, I just…snapped. My voice became a growl. “What the buck are you talking about?”

“Oh come on!” she exclaimed. “Twilight may not give a buck about stuff like this, but you’re practically the hottest thing on four legs with wings! How in the hay can you…just…be with a pony like me? Twilight’s a princess and all, so that really makes up some points for you…maybe…but…”

I…wasn’t sure what to do. Sure Celestia had given me a crash course in pony looks but…everything I knew said Rainbow was fucking hot. She didn’t have a big flank like Tia, or big wings like Twilight, or a perfectly styled mane like Rarity and Fluttershy, but she was still beautiful. Her body was athletic perfection.

So that was what I decided to tell her. “Rainbow, what’re you talking about? You’re perfect. I love you for your mind too but…every inch of your body is, it’s perfect.”

“Yeah right,” she grumbled before her wings extended to their maximum, and she looked back to where her wings met body.

I had to take in a calming breath, and then I sat down. “Okay Rainbow…I don’t really get what’s going on here, but…what’s so wrong with the way you look? I think you and Twilight are perfect.”

Rainbow sighed again and looked at the ground for a few seconds, then back up at me with a mix of hope and fear filling her eyes, and my nose. “You…really mean that…don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” I told her.

“Why?”

I frowned. “What?”

Rainbow cleared her throat and looked away. “What is it you like about me so much?”

That…caught me off guard. I was pretty sure she was talking physically so… “Everything,” I told her before I moved up to knock some of her hair out of her eyes. “Your mane is awesome, even if you never do more than comb it.” I went down to rub my hoof across her back as I moved to her rear. “Your wings are strong and your plot is…”

I stopped before I put my hooves on Rainbow’s butt, and she looked back at me with a frown. “What?”

“Sorry, human thing,” I told her before moving my feelers down to run across Rainbow’s ass. “And I love your plot. It’s tight, firm…just perfect.” Then I kissed her where tail met back. “But all of that’s nothing compared to what’s inside you Rainbow. You don’t give up, or accept anything but being the best you can be, but…not in a destructive way, or at least not anymore. And you try and do it with other ponies too. When it comes time for them to shine, you cheer louder than any pony else. That’s what I really love about you Dash. You may have gotten the loyalty element, but you are so much more than just some pony that stands next to her friends.”

Rainbow’s face became pure red, and I was let wondering just how the hell ponies did that through their coats for the hundredth time before beating it down back into the don’t ask about weird shit vault next to Luna’s night skies. “…thanks,” she mumbled.

There was also something else I needed to talk to her about. Considering her questions and the way she had been hesitating, it was definitely about her looks, and since there was no way Rainbow Dash would ever think of herself as anything less than amazing, that only meant that someone else had torn into her pride.

But…I sure as hell wasn’t going to be picking at what was obviously an open wound on Rainbow’s pride at the moment. What she needed was a nice little ego boost. So I circled back around to her face, and lifted it up with a hoof before giving her a kiss that would have let me know what she had for breakfast if my taste buds had been working. Feeling she still had all her teeth despite numerous crashes was good enough for me though.

By the time we broke contact, Rainbow was breathing hard, and I had half a dozen fantasies running through my head. “Now how about you get that hot plot of yours into the air so I can watch it shake around,” I whispered into her ear. “I love watching you fly way more than those wannabe fliers that call themselves the Wonderbolts.”

We spent about two and a half hours at the track. Although I will admit that seeing her fly around was more engaging than the Wonderbolts because of the danger of crashing, after she flew through the whole course a couple of times without trouble, I started to get bored again. I lasted an hour before getting so bored and got Rainbow to let me try a run.

That turned out to be a mistake since I ended up with clipped wings, rings in need of fixing, and an encouraging pegasus that wouldn’t let me stop until I ran through the track right, at a decent time. I used up about half the energy I took putting Twilight down for her nap by the time it was over, but getting my hooves on Rainbow after everything was said and done was worth it.

Oh, she was sweaty, kind of ripe, had a few bugs tangled in her mane and even her breath reeked a little, but she was happy. That was all that mattered to me.

The time for our weekly dinner came soon after we got Twilight up.

A little bird delivered a message that read Fluttershy wasn’t going to make it because she was taking care of Discord. As for the princesses, they showed up an hour early since it was their turn to bring the food. It was covered silver platter after covered silver platter that kept a little sparkle of Celestia’s magic around it even after she set it down.

“There’s a keeping on the food that will dispel when we open it. So everything will be nice and fresh,” Celestia explained when she noticed me looking at the spell closely. “Now, is Sunset here? I was hoping to visit with her a little before we got down to business.”

Rainbow raised a hoof. “Uh Princess, I thought we were here for a party.”

The goddess giggled, then suddenly stopped to glare at Luna before the other alicorn got within reaching distance of the tray marked ‘dessert’. When Luna rolled her eyes and backed off, Tia turned her attention back to us. “First off, it’s just Celestia when we’re together like this Rainbow, and I was wanting to know how it is going with your relationship.”

I groaned. “I told you Tia, I’m not gossiping about the three of us again.”

“What do you want to know Princess?” Twilight asked right on top of me, and happily at that.

Tia looked at me for a moment, then rolled her eyes. “Honestly Omnifarious, there is a bit more to my interest than simple gossip. You are the first three ponies to attempt such a union, and seeing as how the future of Equestria may rest on my little ponies to form cohesive family units, I am very interested in the progress of your relationship.”

The family units jab made me wince. Apparently, Tia was still a little put off by my idea of pony sperm donors that I had mentioned the night before. It was just more pony thinking that clashed with human ideas. While she did admit to its ‘breeding potential’ foals not getting to know their true fathers and the insemination process didn’t sit too well with her.

Twilight blushed. “We’re doing great,” she said before stepping over to the pegasus beside her and putting a wing across Rainbow’s back. “Rainbow and I went on our first date the other day, and…I realized today that…” Her blush deepened and I picked up a deep-rooted scent of affection coming off Twilight as she looked over to Rainbow. “It’s going to work out between us. Still working on the how and some of the mechanics but…definitely going to work out. I think so, at least.”

That caught my attention as Twilight looked over to Rainbow with an expression I couldn’t see.

But being in Equestria, I didn’t get a chance to follow my curiosity because Sunset decided to come in at that moment and looked around. “Oh…um…hey everybody.”

“I’m glad to hear it Twilight,” the big goddess told the smaller one before she looked over to the human and trotted over while just oozing an excited nervousness like she always got around the girl. “Sunset, we’ve got some time and…I’m ready to plan out our schedule for next week, if you want.”

And so, a bit of sadness crept into Twilight’s Scent.

Sunset glanced over to the three of us for a second, and gave us…or more likely, the real alicorn among us an apologetic look before she turned her full attention to Celestia. “Sure thing…Mom.”

As the two disappeared through the door Sunset had come from, I let out a sigh and looked over to Twilight. “You going to be okay? I know you’ve got some…issues with the whole relationship between Tia and Sunset-”

“I’m okay,” Twilight assured me. “Besides…what Sunset has with Celestia, it’s not for me.”

Dash just gave us a confused look, and I returned one that promised an explanation later.

“A wise decision Twilight Sparkle,” Luna’s voice cut into our little moment before I heard the sound of a lid being lifted off a try. “Oooo brownies. Most agreeable!”

The three of us turned around in time to see the elegant and graceful goddess of the moon pick up a large chunk of fudge and stuff so much of the still steaming hot food into her mouth that her cheeks puffed out. “Any of you wish to try some before dinner?”

As bits of crumbs flew out her mouth before Luna finished talking and gulped the whole thing down, I didn’t know weather to find Best Princess’s table manners cute, or just plain disturbing. She was supposed to be from the time of super uppity prim and proper after all.

“No thank you Princess-”

“Luna,” the goddess corrected before Twilight could finish. “We…as in Celly and I, told you all that our titles matter not this night every week.”

I frowned at the oddity. “Wait a second, called her…you mean Celestia really does have a nickname? And I guessed the wrong end? Buck!”

Luna giggled. “Oh yes, and I must say she was quite put off with the fact you chose the rear end of her name,” she replied before her smile became more subdued and the eyes of the goddess with from mirthful to soft. “At least until you enchanted her. Now I think she finds it delightful.”

The comment mad about putting a spell on Tiae me freeze and tense. Best Princess or not, saying something like that…it really got me in a pissed off kind of mood. I stomped my hoof on the ground and frowned at the alicorn. “Whoa, time out! I haven’t done anything like that to Tia! And I never will! Just because she gets into my head every night doesn’t mean I mess with hers!”

In response, Luna’s eyes widened. “No, you misunderstand! I didn’t mean um…oh dear… We should talk of this later.” she mumbled before looking over to Twilight. “Um…Twilight! What I was meaning to say earlier was that you are wise not to want my sister to consider you family. Honestly, that mare is such a worry wart when it comes to family…she wouldn’t leave me alone for a week after I returned from my banishment, and in the time before my mantle was restored, I had five visits from her a night. To be part of my family means Celestia worries over and babies you to no end. She kept me away from the kitchens for a week so I did not become curious about the non-flaming stoves, and you do not wish me to even begin the tale of how she attempted to hide the existence of electricity from me.”

“Yeah, Tia’s as bad at worrying as Twilight is half the time! I KNOW!” I shouted at the night goddess. “Big deal! More importantly, what the hay are you even talking about me using mental magic on Tia? I would NEVER do something like that to her, or any pony else!”

Although, what Luna said… I knew Equestrians didn’t have a harsh a view on mind fucking as humans did. Hell, they could not even care about it at all as long as the ponies involved her happy! But the way she brought it up just made me...become very disturbed. And that was after I managed to keep my emotions in check.

Luna had the audacity to groan. “You can not be serious.”

Twilight stepped between the two of us and cleared her throat. “Fairy, would you please stop shouting,” she said with…well, pony’s had a version of ‘the look’ that Twilight had kind of become adept at it since we started dating. Then she looked over to Luna. “And how in the hay can you insult her like that? Don’t you know how humans feel about mind control? I’m pretty sure I put it in my human report to Princess Celestia!”

“You misunderstand-”

“It’s the most heinous crime a human can commit! Sort of,” Twilight added hesitantly after a moment of angry exclamation.

Rainbow frowned. “Say what?”

Before I could say anything, Twilight went into lecture mode, and I didn’t even want to try stopping that. “The community of humans that Fae is from value freedom and choice at a level that borders on fanaticism!”

Feeling the need to defend my race, I let out a groan. “Well I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“Point is, my fillyfriend doesn’t mind control other ponies!” Twilight told the other alicorn. “No influence, no memory alteration, or even basic tweaking to put me in the mood! SHE WON’T DO IT FOR ANY REASON AT ALL! So don’t you DARE accuse her of it!”

Luna didn’t seem to take the aggressive response very well. She slammed her own hoof into the ground hard enough to crack the ground. “WE ARE NOT ACCUSING YOUR BELOVED OF MENTAL MANIPULATION!” the alicorn shouted in something that sounded a little less than the Canterlot Voice.

Twilight actually backed off a bit at that.

Then the pegasus stepped in. “But you said-”

Rainbow got cut off when Luna glared at her hard enough to drop the pegasus from the air. Then she faced me and Twilight again.

“Enchanted as in smitten you foals!”

…

Twilight went motionless.

…

Rainbow… “Wuja, budna, huh?”

…

My mind took a few seconds to process the words, and…I looked over to Twilight. “Um…Twilight…please tell me smitten is…um…”

“Overcome with a great attraction to somepony,” the replied in an almost robotic tone. And my hopes of another snob debacle, or Canterlot Snob to be precise, ended rather abruptly.

Then we all just went back to standing there until a new voice came into the room from above us, although not too high. It was just about six feet or so up. “Sister, thank you of informing them of my romantic desires far too soon into their relationship with Rainbow Dash.”

Luna looked up just a little bit at the larger alicorn, and I turned my head around to see Celestia’s deadpan expression. “Sister! Um…you are done visiting with our newest family member? It seems a bit early for-”

“I placed a cookie jar enchantment on the dessert tray to tell me if you attempted sneak any brownies beforehoof,” Celestia explained. “I had thought to catch you red-hoofed, although when I heard the yelling and quickened my pace-”

“HERD!” Twilight shouted right in my ear. The noise made me jump back along with Rainbow before the little goddess faced the larger. “Celestia. You…want…it…okay, breath not coming, and, yep…world spinning...now. Night everypony,” she said before her legs wobbled and Twilight took a tumble.

She barely fell at all before being wrapped up in the golden glow of the sun goddess. “And this is why I wanted to break it to them gently,” Celestia said before she looked over to the wide-eyed pegasus. “Not to mention you.”

I…couldn’t think of anything to say. Mostly because it kind of sounded like Celestia had some kind of intentions for the three of us. Intentions of the romantic kind. I mean, if you could belive what the alicorn said.

“Well come along you two, best to have Twilight to a bed before she comes to,” Celestia told us as if Twilight having a fucking panic attack was some kind of everyday occurrence.

Considering how well she was taking it, and Twilight’s personality…I was kind of afraid it might have been. “Luna, I’m taking the brownies with me.”

The other goddess sighed. “Very well. We still have some time, I believe I shall go get better acquainted with my new niece.”

“Are you coming Omnifarious?”

Celestia’s question managed to snap me out of my bystander mode, and I glared at her. “Wait a second, what the buck do you mean by romantic intentions?”

Despite what television and video games tell us, unwanted unconsciousness doesn’t really last that long. Certainly not long enough to finish a level if you choke someone out. For a panic-induced brain emergency shutdown, Twilight managed to stay out of it a good five minutes before coming to.

That, and the walk to our bedroom allowed me time to get my act together, come up with questions, and…rail against the insanity of this whole situation. Tia couldn’t have romantic intentions towards anyone! It was just so many levels of…wrong!

She was a princess. The fucking chief deity of Equestria. Well over a thousand years old, and had infallible knowledge!

A booty call, I could buy. Tia bragged about those in a disinterested way that told me they were just that: cheap thrills of a goddess waning some nookie through the millennia. That, I could understand, but… “Princess Celestia,” I spoke, getting an odd look from the alicorn standing at the foot of the bed, something between curiosity and annoyance for using her title. To be honest, I think it was the first time I actually did. “You want to…um…” I didn’t know how to finish my question.

Mostly because IT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE!

“Begin a romantic relationship with the three of you? Yes.” Celestia finished in her usual voice. “However, I had no intentions of doing such a thing while you were all cementing your bonds with Rainbow Dash.” She let out a sigh and shook her head. “I had hoped to approach the three of you in two months, after everything had settled down and the three of you had become accustomed to each other. By then, I had hoped to find other inroads to the three of you with my friendship and have us learn about each other on a more personal level.”

A rather sickening thought entered my mind. “Uh, Tia…did you just make this whole herding thing because you wanted to…um…get in on the action?”

For a moment, the goddess was silent. Then her body moved ever so slightly, and her mouth puffed out a second before she let out a laugh. “You…you think…you think I planned something like this?” she asked between giggles. “All for…getting the three of you?” Another round of laughter had me feeling kind of embarrassed, and I looked across the bed to Dash for support, but she still looked pretty damn lost. But then, it wasn’t every day your patron sun goddess said she wanted to get busy with you. “Not to mention the marriage idea was developed from something you told me,” Tia went on.

“Fine,” I agreed with a groan. Several nights with Tia revealed the extent of her master manipulations were: invite four ponies that didn’t know how to behave at an high class social gathering and one emotionally overdone fashionista and watch the fireworks. However, I was hardly done. “But…why Twilight?” Age difference aside, Tia had been Twilight’s teacher for years. To be honest, it was a little…okay, extremely creepy.

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “You can’t be serious,” she replied. “Twilight is a lovely mare. She’s intelligent, studious, hard working, and how many times have I heard you comment on her adorableness now?”

“She’s your student,” I pointed out.

Despite the obvious and logical moral dilemma I had just presented her with, Celestia gave me a confused expression. “And?” she asked.

While that little lack of response had me floored, the goddess went on. “To be accurate, she is no longer my student, and an adult in her own right. In fact, two of my former relationships had been with former students and I have found them some of the strongest bonds I ever forged.”

That…didn’t really help my personal opinion of the situation. Although, I could understand why Tia didn’t kick me out of her school after Twilight enrolled in the class I was offering. Equestrian culture…right, I reminded myself. Despite several…similarities, the ponies were an alien race, and some of their moral guidelines were just fucking out there.

“Uh…Princess?”

We both looked over to Rainbow Dash, who had apparently come out of her shock. To be honest, I had kind of forgotten she was there. Next to Pinkie, that girl was the loudest of the group and spoke her mind more than most.

Celestia sighed, most likely at the use of her title, and addressed the pegasus. “Yes Rainbow Dash?”

“Okay um…I get Twilight…with you both being…uh, good at magic, and friends since like, she was five or something,” Rainbow said. “And Fae’s hot, and kind of cool when she wants to be. But um…”

She stopped but…I could hear the ‘why me?’ at the end easily enough. And…I had to agree with the question. Despite the oddity of Twilight and Celestia as a couple, the two of them had more in common than not, and…hell, I had seen what Tia was really like underneath the crown. Deduct a little height and a few thousand years of experience, and she practically WAS Twilight Sparkle.

But Rainbow? Sure, I adored the pegasus for everything she was, but it did make me wonder if Tia was just doing it because the three of us were a package deal. The idea that Celestia was willing to do the ‘oh yeah, I’ll take you too out of necessity to get the ones I really want’ made me want to scream ‘THIS IS WHAT’S WRONG WITH POLYGAMY YOU IDIOT’ before I told her to fuck off.

As the goddess looked down at the little pony, Rainbow gulped a second before Tia’s gaze softened considerably. “You mean besides the fact you have always supported your friends, barely ever looked at my crown, constantly work to be the best you can be, and have a lovable sense of humor that I simply adore? Not to mention that wonderful accomplishment of yours as a filly. The second pony to ever do a Sonic Rainboom, and only pegasus to achieve such a feat. While I usually put more weight on a pony’s intentions than their actions, your achievement does leave me rather amazed. And I have to admit that I have always found athletes to be extremely pleasing to the eye.”

I…had to retract my previous mental statement.

“W-What?” Rainbow stuttered.

“She thinks you’re hot,” I supplied before Rainbow went back to being stunned, and as for me… I looked back to Tia. The last few moments were pretty overwhelming to say the least, and something told me that we were about to go through it all again when Twilight woke up in a few minutes, so I retreated back to familiar territory: good old human curiosity. I raised my hoof. “Uh question…if Rainbow was the second pony to ever do the Sonic Rainboom, then who was the first?”

What can I say? Finding shit out about ponies was comfortable ground, and I was still a fan. Living among them may have stopped my fandom squees, but I still wanted to know everything I could.

Celestia went back to looking down at me, and raised an eyebrow. “My mane is blowing around right in front of your face, and you can’t figure that one out?” the goddess asked.

Rainbow blinked. Like me, the return to somewhat familiar territory had apparently helped Dash out of the daze she had been from hearing a goddess declare her affections. “You did the first Sonic Rainboom?”

The question actually brought a blush to Tia’s cheeks, and she looked away. “Yes, well...the colors were a bit different with mine, and it was when I was much younger. Not to mention…more aerodynamic. I’m afraid I’ve gotten a little lazy in my old age,” she said before looking back. “A teleport here, a sky carriage ride there. To be honest, I’d much prefer to travel under my own power but…a princess doesn’t tarnish her image with such acts. Blech!”

As Tia stuck her tongue out in a fake retch, Rainbow giggled, and Twilight moaned before speaking. “Ugh, my head.”

All noise stopped, killing our conversation, and the three of us turned to look at Twilight. I spoke first. “Hey Twilight, you okay?”

“Fae?” she said before sitting up and looking over to me, proving to me once again that pony bone structures were much more flexible than that of your average horse. “I had the weirdest dream. Princess…um…” The words stopped, and I had to wonder through her rising embarrassment if Twilight was actually going to tell me she dreamed about Tia declaring her undying love for the little purple alicorn.

Which made me wonder if I could just keep Twilight thinking it really was a dream. Celestia was right in saying that it was way too soon to even attempt adding another pony to what was already a complicated mess. Even if we did decide to go for it months from now…which we wouldn't. I mean, the idea of Celestia being with anyone else was just…so foreign to my mind that I didn’t even know how to process it.

Not to mention Twilight’s reaction to the whole thing. She had kind of grown up with Celestia. I understood how some people could develop crushes on others in such positions, but…they usually died out pretty fast. The thought of Twilight wanting to pursue a relationship with Celestia was even more odd of an idea than Tia going after Twilight.

“Uh yeah,” Rainbow Dash spoke up. “That wasn’t a dream. Celestia really does want to join the herd.”

And thus, all my hopes of just putting all of this crap on the back burner till we got everything else settled when up in smoke. Sometimes, I really hated my little Dashie’s big mouth.

Twilight’s eyes went wide, and for some reason her face turned almost white. “Celestia wants to…” Slowly, she slowly turned her head towards the goddess standing at the foot of her bed, and I had to wonder if Twilight had even noticed her before Rainbow Dash spoke. “You want…to…” she got out before gulping.

From where she was standing, Tia…drew in on herself. It wasn’t anything major, just a decline of her head and pullback of her hooves, but for a creature that always stood to her full height proudly, the lack of her presence was very noticeable. “I did not mean for you to find out this way, Twilight. Please, forgive me.”

“F-For what?” Twilight asked tentatively.

Tia let out a little sigh, and her normally firm eyes became sorrowful. “As I told your friends, I wanted to give you time to adjust to Rainbow Dash’s presence in your lives, and yours in hers before attempting to offer myself to the three of you as a…potential companion.”

I got a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when Twilight froze, and her wings suddenly extended in a forceful flap to just lay spread out behind her.

“Really Twilight?” Rainbow asked as she smirked. “I thought you got those things under control after all our training.”

Twilight’s face turned red, and ever so slowly, her wings went back to a prone position. “That…um…” She gulped and looked up at the larger alicorn. “Princess Celestia, you mean you want to…to be…with…m-me?”

At the other side of the bed, Tia let out a sigh. “When you can stop calling me Princess, and simply Celestia.”

I opened my mouth to tell everyone to hold it, but Twilight started talking before I could.

“I can do that!” she insisted before falling forward on all fours and trotting up to the bigger pony to stare at her in the face thanks to the added height of the bed. “Celestia! T-Tia! See? I did it just then!”

I started to get a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach as I caught Twilight’s confusing Scent of fear, hope and restrained joy. It was...well, with that combined with the expression on her face, Twilight looked about like a girl who had just found out her favorite movie star wanted to bang her or something. In that light, the whole exchange when from just a bit creepy to downright disturbing.

The look on Rainbow’s face became a little pensive, and she got into the air. “Uh…Twilight?”

When she didn’t respond, I walked up to her and spoke a little louder. “Wait a minute. You’re actually okay with this?”

Twilight looked down at me in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I be? Princess Celestia is-I mean Celestia is-she’s just the most amazing pony in Equestria!” she said before beginning to list just why that was.

As Twilight continued to go on about how amazing Princess Celestia was and how she had a crush on her since…well, forever, I started to get a much bigger uneasy feeling in my gut that a few minutes ago, and it only got worse when I saw Celestia’s expression change to an uneasy one while Twilight continued to paint a picture of Princess Celestia that made her sound practically perfect in every way. When she was finally done, the little goddess had an almost manic gleam in her eye that just dared me to say Celestia wasn’t the personification of pony perfection. I didn’t of course. Mostly because I was pretty sure she would have killed me if I did.

Instead, I looked over to Tia while my eyes screamed ‘HELP ME’ and held my breath.

The goddess looked at the purple mare with what I could only call a thoughtful expression.

On the other side of the bed, Rainbow continued to study Twilight, and the looked over to Tia. “Uh…Celestia. Is that what I looked like when the Wonderbolts landed next to me in Cloudsdale?”

“Sort of,” Tia told her.

Personally, I didn’t think Rainbow went quite as nuts as the little alicorn was being at the moment.

Then, a little smile graced Celestia’s features, and I started to feel even worse. Much…much worse. Mainly because it was a smile I had seen on her face many times before, a smile I had dreamed of. And in those nightmares, Tia would usually put it on her much too human face got snatched up in a much too friendly hug that put me in danger of suffocation.

“Rainbow Dash,” the goddess spoke. “Would you allow me to call upon you tomorrow for lunch?”

Rainbow tilted her head in confusion. “Say what?”

Twilight became rigid.

“I want to take you out on a date tomorrow for lunch,” she explained before looking over to the other creatures in the room with horns. “As well as you Twilight, and you Omnifarious.”

Almost instantly, Twilight spun around. “Yes!”

Tia…didn’t look very pleased at the response as she backed away from Twilight to get some personal space, and moved her eyes over to Rainbow.

“Say yes Rainbow!” Twilight ordered as she scampered around to look the pegasus in her worried eyes.

Dash…gulped. “Um…okay?” she told Twilight in a tone that made her answer sound more like a question before she looked over to Celestia. “Sure thing, Celestia.”

Then, the goddess looked over at me, and I held up a hoof to stop her from asking, if just for a second. “Wait, what happened to uh…waiting?”

Celestia’s eyes flickered to Twilight for a second as the alicorn spun around to look at me. “Well, with the cat out of the bag, I think holding off on things won’t do anything for any of us. So Omnifarious, would you please allow me to treat you to lunch with your fillyfriends?”

I wanted to tell her no. Once again, it was that idea of Celestia getting close to anybody being so…wrong in my head that made me think of turning her down. Then there was the way Twilight was acting. Apparently, all the Twilestia shippers that I thought were out of their fucking minds might have been onto something and…now I was really wondering about that teacher fetish that Twilight had. Especially considering our mutual girlfriend was her flying teacher, and I… Oh God, I also doled out information on humanity, if on a extremely limited basis. It kind of put me into the whole instructor classification of person too. Not to mention the whole college professor thing I had going on.

It made me wonder if Twilight had a ‘just like Celestia’ thought or two whenever she looked at that on our respective resumes. Which was creepy in the extreme.

So I wanted to tell her no.

But, there were two little problems with that.

The first was Twilight. I didn’t want to know what she would do if I turned Tia down. The second was Tia herself. Despite the bad timing, the weird…wrongness of the situation, and everything else that was going on…I could Smell her desire for companionship was genuine. But it wasn’t just what I could detect from her at that very moment.

I looked back on things, the teasing was simply teasing but…somewhere along the line, the touches had become more affectionate without me noticing, and she had begun to hold me at night with much greater frequency, and when I had thought Rainbow had rejected me, the sun goddess of Equestria had comforted me exactly in the way I needed to be.

And…as much as I hated to admit it…

…despite the impossibility…

…or the improbability…

...not to mention the insanity of the idea…

…Princess Celestia was my best friend.

Since coming back from Tambelon, we had talked about things and laid out souls bare to each other. It may have been because I couldn’t lie to her, but…she never turned away in disgust, or did anything more than some light teasing. Even her sexual advances were more pony-human problems when it came to friendly touching than anything else…and some evil need to see me blush.

I didn’t share half of what I did with her when it came to Rainbow Dash. The two of us were just buddies that I hoped would become more. As for Twilight, even she didn’t experience some of the things me and Tia shared, and it wasn’t just the movies. I could ask of her anything, and she would be there for me. But…while I knew Twilight would always be there and do everything she could for me…there were some things she just couldn’t handle.

I blinked when I noticed Twilight looking at me out of the corner of my eye, then realized several seconds had passed since Celestia had asked her question of me. There was a bit of tension in the little goddess’s body, and I turned my full attention onto Tia before Twilight could try and ‘convince’ me to say yes like she had with Rainbow Dash.

I looked up at my best friend and smiled at the nervousness in her Scent. It was kind of fun to be on the other side of the equation for once. But I sure as hell wasn’t about to give the usual kind of response girls did when posed that question.

“It would be my honor to accept,” I replied in a low tone with a bow of my head.

Judging by her swirling emotions, Tia didn’t like the formal reply, but she didn’t let it show on her face.

“YES!” Twilight cheered as she jumped up into the air and flapped her wings a few times before they proved to be still too stiff for that stuff and she crashed back onto the ground.

Hidden from the little alicorn’s view, a slightly pensive look flashed across Celestia’s face. But it was gone a second later when she started speaking. “Come by the castle tomorrow at ten thirty, and we shall go from there.”

“Yes yes yes yes yes!”

“And Twilight?” Celestia spoke up, making the smaller princess freeze in mid excited jump and look over. “I have informed Sunset and Luna of my intentions, but I would prefer it if nopony else knew until we have passed the…preliminary stages of our courtship.”

Once again, I had to swallow down at just how BAD an idea everything I knew told me this was. They were ponies. They were…different. They could…handle…this sort of stuff.

I hoped.

“Of course!” Twilight exclaimed.

“Uh one thing,” I spoke up after Rainbow agreed to keep it quiet too. “Twilight, we have to meet your family for dinner tomorrow too…not to mention class.” I also looked over to Celestia out of the corner of my eye, but she gave me a little frown for some reason.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “We can do all three!” she assured me before her giddiness returned. “A date with Princess Celestia, visiting Spike, and class! This is going to be the best day EVER!”

This is going to be a disaster, I told myself.

The party, which was more like a weekly social gathering, went about as well as anyone could have expected. Twilight spent the whole time smiling and stealing glances at Tia while she sat between me and Rainbow. Sunset gave her recounting of our little trip to the breezie seminar, although she seemed to find sharing a bed with Fluttershy a blushable event for some reason. Luna was put off by Fluttershy’s absence thanks to Discord, and Celestia took special interest in Rarity’s absence when Twilight mentioned she had gone north on a booty call.

We played an odd version of Monopoly that was much quicker than the human version and Luna ended up winning. Then, after I watched her dance around Celestia in a gloating way that ended with the little sister shaking her ass in front of the amused big sister’s face, we all said our goodbyes and headed off to bed.

Of course Twilight seemed a little too excited to sleep…

“A date with Princess Celestia,” she said as the three of us got into our room. “We’re going on a date with Princess Celestia!”

Me and Rainbow shared a cautious look, and the pegasus put herself into the air. “Uh Twilight, you do remember Celly told us not to call her Princess anymore, right?”

Twilight looked back at Rainbow with a tiny frown. “And since when do you call her that?”

Rainbow shrugged. “Cause Celestia’s a mouthful, Twi.”

“Maybe Sparkles would be better,” I suggested with a little smile. "Or Sparky! Hey Twilight, can we call you Sparky?"

Twilight let out a little groan as she sighed. “Can we please just stick to Twilight and Celestia?”

“I will with you if you stop going on about this date,” I offered. Rainbow gave me a brief once over as if examining the offer, and nodded before she added her own stipulation.

“And you stop talking about another mare when you’ve got two of them coming into bed with you.”

Twilight’s eyes widened, and then she blushed and looked away. “You’re right. I…sorry,” she apologized before looking back to the two of us. “But you can’t say that the two of you aren’t excited about this either!”

“Not…really,” I told her truthfully. And...to be honest...I wasn't really nervous about it either. Which was weird. I mean, Tia was a hot pony that I had managed more than a few stray fantasies about since she informed me of pony looks, and I knew I should have been feeling something in the way of scared as hell. But…I wasn’t.

At least not in the way of it was a date with Tia. Now, Twilight’s mindset about the whole thing made me nervous as hell.

But spending a day with Tia?

We went on dates every night for crying out loud! Doing it during the day meant nothing.

Rainbow was a little more empathetic to Twilight’s situation. “Well…maybe,” she said. “And um…I kind of go have something else I want to talk to you girls about.”

When me and Twilight looked over to Rainbow and gave the slightly shorter girl our full attention, she took in a deep breath and steadied herself. It didn’t carry over to her Scent though. If anything, her little breathing exercise and our eyes on her just made the mare even more nervous. “I’m ready.”

“Ready for what?” Twilight asked as she raised an eyebrow.

Rainbow licked her lips nervously. “I…want to have sex with you girls tonight," she rushed out.

Oh…yeah…that would explain it, I told myself as a weight just settled on my chest thanks to Rainbow’s choice of time.

Some new nervousness of my own made me glance over at Twilight in worry. Was Rainbow just doing this because Celestia had taken Twilight’s attention, or was the desire 100% hers?

I hadn’t Smelled any hurt emotions when Tia had announced her intentions, but…having your new girlfriend get gaga over the new piece of ass in town was kind of annoying. If it wasn’t for Tia’s assurances that she was just as interested in Rainbow as the rest of us…and the pretty good reasons to back up that interest that I knew of first hand when it came to how she loved Dash’s toned body, I would have been more worried.

While Twilight simply stood there stunned for a moment, I inched close to the pegasus beside me and put a wing over her back to whisper in her ear. “Rainbow, are you sure about this?” I asked in concern. “If this is about Tia showing up and taking our attention… You don’t have anything to worry about. Please, don’t force yourself into anything you’re not ready for.”

“No, I decided we’d do it when you came back from your trip,” Rainbow told me, probably loud enough for Twilight to hear before she looked away. “Thanks for telling me though. I…thanks.”

I kissed her on the space behind her ear before whispering into it again. “I want to be with you because of the pony you are, not because of what you do for me.”

The Smell of Rainbow’s affection just skyrocketed at that as she nodded, and then a purple glow surrounded her body before Twilight carried her over to where she was standing by the bed. Thankfully, Rainbow didn’t make a fuss about it, and Twilight brought her in to give the pegasus a long kiss on the lips.

When it was over, she put her lover-to-be down on the floor, and looked into Rainbow’s eyes while I trotted over. “In that case, I need to tell you something I just decided on today too,” she said before smiling. “I love you Rainbow Dash. Really love you, more than just as a friend.”

Rainbow went red as certain parts of her mane and tail. “W-What? Why now?”

“Something you told me today,” Twilight replied before kissing her again, although much lighter this time. “It made me realize just how much you care and…I’m just sorry I didn’t see it sooner. Now hop up on the bed and lay on your back. When Fae feeds off you during sex, it makes her normal stuff feel like nothing.”

While Rainbow did as instructed, I looked over to Twilight with a raised eyebrow. “What happened today?”

“What do you mean what happened? You were there,” Twilight replied in an annoyed tone as if her vague response actually explained anything. “Now, you want left or right?”

“Left side,” I replied as Twilight left me where we were standing, still confused as hell. But all that ended fast enough when we turned our attentions to Dash after finding out how far she was willing to go with things. Twilight got very excited when she found out.

I kissed Rainbow’s right cheek, Twilight got the one on our right. She got to the lips, I kissed Dash’s neck. Twilight moved to kiss Dash’s neck, and I touched the pegasus’s tongue with mine. We worked our way down, kissing barrel, biting wings, and teasing teats before taking turns picking up to pony private parts a few times before Twilight’s horn lit up, and she repositioned herself for some oral attention on her horn while I worked on Rainbow’s lower lips.

By the time I had finished feeding off Rainbow, Twilight was more than in the mood and halfway done in the time it took for the pegasus to recover and join back in.

Then it was Rainbow again, followed by Twilight.

And by the end of the night, two extremely worn out mares passed out against me, while I was filled with more magic than I had been in…quite possibly ever.

So, full of enough magical energy to probably take down a pair of alicorns, conquer Equestria, enslave all of pony-kind.

Yet, surrounded by my unconscious lovers, I looked down at my own pony privates that were adding to our soaked sheets with their cries for attention, and sighed.

“Yeah…really should have planned this one better,” I told myself amidst the raging need for sexual desire…and forced myself to sleep.

When you’re a changeling, you don’t really sleep. Your body enters into a shutdown state to clean up a bunch of chemicals in your system that say your muscles need time to relax, and some other junk. Sleep does nothing to your conscious mind, and you’re only really half disconnected from your body.

So basically, I was still pretty horny, and inside a mental realm where it wasn’t too far away to compare me to God. And I was there for a good ten minutes loading various DVDs, or the mental representations of DVDs that were actually just memories I had of various movies I had watched during my previous life, into the player while thinking of the appearance of the other soon-to-be inhabitant of my mental landscape.

Oh good God how I did NOT want Tia to play her little sexy game with me tonight. Especially after learning about how she felt, which I was really kicking myself over now that I was alone.

I mean, I knew she felt affection towards me, but…fuck, all ponies were affectionate compared to humans! It was their thing! How the hell was I supposed to have known the difference between the romantic and the platonic?

I touched my head and moaned.

“Omnifarious? Is everything alright?”

The new presence in my mind made me look up to see the goddess standing there. As always, she was completely naked, with a body that was every inch the definition of desirable. I closed my eyes and gulped. “Tia…can you um…please put on…something?” Preferably something that was so oversized I couldn’t see anything too curvy, or nipple-like.

An immense wave of fear entered my mind from Celestia, and I looked up to see her wearing an extremely baggy pair of sweatpants and accompanying hoodie the same color as her natural coat. She looked down at herself for a few seconds, and then back up to me.

Soon, my fear mirrored hers for two very good reasons. I hadn’t actually created anything for her to wear before she appeared, and even if I had, the moment that I hadn’t been looking at her was in no way long enough for Tia to put it on.

I had willed her to be clothed, and she was.

“Did you…” She didn’t finish the question, but the fear was still there. I didn’t blame her for feeling the way she was.

I gulped, and told the outfit to go away.

It didn’t.

“Take it off,” I mumbled weakly.

She did.

I threw the stuff into the kitchen and out of sight, and did my best not to think about it.

“I wasn’t aware you were able to do that here,” Celestia said in a voice that was obviously the one she used while in court to hide her real emotions. In this case: fear. And lots of it.

I had forgotten how much coming here must have terrified a being that could only be called godlike. When we discovered that everything was fixed after Tia entered, I had guessed that fear only to the first few seconds of going to sleep, when she didn’t know if she would land here, or…somewhere else.

On top of which, she was the physically superior of us…if only because I let her be. In the time it took her to come into my dream house, I could have remade myself into something approaching the train man from the Matrix, or rearranged everything so that Tia landed in a world fifty times her size, where I could toss her in a hamster cage like she was a pet. But I let her keep that advantage. It let her feel safe.

And that safety just went out the window.

“I didn’t know I could either,” I mumbled.

That seemed to scare her even more.

“S-Sorry,” I told her while looking up into the goddess's eyes and…watching them turn compassionate again.

The fear began to flow out of her as well, and a few seconds later I could tell she was worrying about me. “It’s alright,” the goddess said before she walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. “I trust you my friend. Forgive me for a moment of foolishness.”

The fact I knew she was just saying that to make me feel more at ease really killed the mood. I looked away. “Sorry I’m not…just sorry.”

“Do you know what happened?” Tia asked me gently.

I sighed. “Not really,” I told her before reaching down to the pits of myself to pull enough courage up for the next few words. “But if you want, I can find out.”

“What do you mean?” the goddess went on, still in that calm tone that washed over me.

“Chrysalis,” I replied simply, and then took a breath. “It’s…changeling queens have certain abilities that other changelings don’t, like this mental construct thing. Things the majority of the hive can’t teach me how to use and…most of what I’ve got of stuff like this is what she told me…like you did with why ponies are attractive, and trial and error. It’s probably how you know English and can walk on two legs too. I did it, I just don’t know how.”

Celestia was silent for a moment, and a felt her unease as she moved one of her hands down to take mine, and lead me to the couch so we could both sit down. If she cared about the fact our chess game was absent, she didn’t say anything. “Why don’t you then?”

I tensed. “Because I’ll get everything else Chrysalis knew too,” I mumbled. “And all the previous changeling queens. Everything they knew, everything they plotted, everything they thought! It’s not something I want to think about. And the last time something like that happened, I started thinking ponies were sexy.” I didn’t want to start thinking ponies were food.

The last time that thought had tried to enter my head, it had been to teach what was supposed to be a blank slate drone. A changeling queen’s memoir was not the same as what got taught to babies. It was their attempt to leave their mark on the world, stamped firmly in their predecessors brain.

A pair of lips touched my forehead, and Tia pulled me in for a hug. “Then don’t. There was no harm done. And I trust you to take care of me while I sleep,” the goddess said. “Forgive an old woman for a second of foolishness.”

We sat together for a few more seconds, and then Tia released her embrace. I took my place on the far side of the couch, and she reached over to keep me from messing with the remote. “I need to talk to you about our date tomorrow.”

The remainder of that impending disaster made me have to hide a cringe. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“No, it can’t go fine,” Celestia said. “We can’t let it.”

That…made me just become completely lost. “Huh?”

“It’s Twilight,” Tia went on. “She still sees…” The goddess paused and sighed. “I adore that little girl. I adore all of you. But she still sees nothing but a crown, and a throne, and a perfect little picture she’s painted of me inside her head. Since you came up with this idea of expanded families, I had hoped to grow closer to her and Rainbow using my Sunny Skies persona. A few trips to Ponyville to meet the girls without my size, or title, or crown, and then reveal myself to all of you once you had gotten to know the real me. But that it no longer an option, and I will not be treated like some golden idol by a woman I am attempting to romance.”

“Um…okay?” I replied. It wasn’t that I disagreed with her but…the…mirth in the back of Tia’s mind was starting to worry me. “So…what then? Talk to Twilight before the date?”

Tia’s smile put a fear into me that really made me wish I hadn’t asked that question. “As if that would work," she said with a roll of her eyes. "No my friend, I intend to make tomorrow’s lunch the worst date of Twilight Sparkle’s life. And you’re going to help me.”

Another wave of panic ran through my mind, the source of it being me. “Um…but…I also um…need to talk to you about Discord.” Now that I knew there was no way in hell he could listen in to us, there were some events that I needed to make Celestia aware of in regards to the faking-reform draconequus.

And I was kind of hoping the change of topic would make her forget about this whole bad date idea.

“Again with Discord?” she asked before letting out a sigh. “Very well, we’ll do it when we’re done with coming up with a plan to salvage any hope I have of getting together with Twilight Sparkle.”

“By...ruining our first date?” I asked in confusion.

Tia nodded. “Exactly! Now, I was thinking when it came to location, something very high end and what she would expect...that we’ll be thrown out of pretty easily when our whole charade begins.”

And thus, the plot to ruin Twilight Sparkle’s ideal sun goddess into a woman even Rainbow Dash would have been put off by began.

Chapter 30: The Incredibly Worrisome Morning of Wondered Mistakes

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Chapter 30: The Incredibly Worrisome Morning of Wondered Mistakes

Maybe it was me being human, and thus capable of extremely dark thoughts that ponies just didn’t seem to be able to comprehend, but Tia’s plan to dissuade Twilight from the notion that the sun goddess was the personification of pony perfection didn’t seem all that bad when she got done explaining it to me. I did think it was a little on the drastic side, but...after Twilight’s reaction the night before, I don’t think Celestia wanted to be subtle. It wouldn’t leave her with a broken heart at least.

If it did, I would have had to dethrone the woman. Tia may have been my best friend, but Twilight was Twilight.

Not that it was that benign. In fact, it would probably would make Twilight a gibbering mess as Celestia took a sledgehammer to the Greek statue of perfection that Twilight saw her as and replaced it with…well…Tia, but I doubted it would cause any lasting damage. Except for the slight possibility of Twilight’s desire to actually be with Celestia once everything was said and done. There was the small chance the goddess might actually manage to kill that when Twilight got it through her head that Celestia wasn’t perfect.

Of course, I already knew Celestia was a wise and thoughtful leader with the intelligence of raisin when it came to dealing with all the dangerous shit that threatened Equestria. Case in point, when I told her that Discord had attempted to murder Twilight and Dash by proxy using a giant fucking worm…

“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

…she literally started rolling on the floor, and laughing out loud.

I let out a groan and waited for the goddess of the sun and obliviousness to danger finally calmed down and let out a long sigh. “Oh did I need that,” she said before another chuckle escaped her lips. “You think Discord plans things? And here I thought you knew something about us. Discord is like a dog chasing a car in one of your movies, he just does something that suits him at that moment. Consider what he is for a moment Omnifarious. Discord is incapable of planning. While what happened was…disturbing, it was not some convoluted plan to try and kill anyone. Heavens, I don’t even think he could actually do that either, kill another creature I mean. Death is…an end to the randomness of life. Such a thing is probably abhorrent to him.”

If anything, that only made me more unnerved. “You do realize that argument makes it impossible for him to have friends, right?” I asked. A good chunk of friendship was based off forethought, and the ability to think of how others would feel about one's actions, it was why people weren’t jackasses to each other, or only thought about themselves. If everyone was just concerned with instant gratification, we’d never even get around to wanting to hear the words ‘thank you’ from another.

But…I suppose Tia had a point, if somewhat indirectly.

Discord liked to make ponies suffer. He was a sadistic bastard that took joy out of ruining their lives and probably got hard out of messing with five of the six mares that kicked his ass the most. On top of which, he had a need to prove to himself that he was smarter or better, or…whatever than his opponents. He could have beaten all the girls easily when he first showed up instead of posing a riddle and a contest, if a rigged one. But doing so ‘proved’ his superiority.

In a way, it was just like with Fluttershy being his friend. He needed the acknowledgement of another to be proof that he was actually worth something. Probably because everything else was so easy for him. Just like destroying Berry’s house.

It was easy, but the fact that he got away with it, and was too ‘sick’ afterwards to clean it up? Well, that was another victory over the ponies. And he could still be Fluttershy’s friend after just going ‘I’m sorry’ with some fake tears added in. An all around win for the monster.

Hell, the bastard even made Fluttershy stay home to take care of him instead of letting her go be with her friends. Making Fluttershy choose between us and him, and playing the sympathy card to prove she liked him more. Another win for Discord’s twisted ego.

Of course, Tia just gave me a dismissive wave. “Very well, if you insist I do something,” she said before standing back up. “I will tell Discord he is no longer allowed to use his magic in Ponyville, or measures will be taken against him. On top of which, Fluttershy must accompany him at all times should he wish to return.”

I frowned at the second one. “What measures? Last I checked, the girls had to give up the Elements of Harmony, and I don’t think picking the Tree’s fruit is going to work a second time around.” Although…there was that box thing, and none of the jewels had turned back into their original shape after being inserted in their respective slots. Did that mean the girls were still connected with them somehow?

“Do you honestly think I would have let Discord out if I did not have more than one countermeasure to his presence in place?” Celestia asked with a raised eyebrow. “Have some faith. Equestria is far better defended than the first time he broke free. You have seen the power of the Crystal Heart for yourself, and four alicorn princesses are present now instead of just two. If need be, the four of us…even Luna and myself can deal with him if we are willing to make…sacrifices.”

Despite what Celestia was saying, the way she said it didn’t make me feel all better. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Celestia sighed. “Despite the type of magic one uses, energy is still energy, and a strong will can bring order to chaos,” she told me before sitting back down. “Now, we still have a bit of the night left, I want to watch a movie. I think I’ve actually come to enjoy those violent things you humans consider entertainment. At least better than your version of…love stories.”

“Says the sparkling white immortal being that has kept everyone away for centuries to become a tragically said-hey, hey! That’s my ear!” I cried out as she pinched in said place and tugged my head down and pulled me into a hug with one arm like we had usually sat since…

Well…probably since our nightly meetings had turned into nightly…pseudo-date…things.

“Just start the movie.”

I tried to get her to say more on the subject of her anti-Discord plan, but the goddess wouldn’t bring it up no matter how much I pestered her for details for the rest of the night.

Morning came, and I spent a bit of time in the hive mind before my body started feeling a light jostling. I opened my eyes to both Twilight and Dash moving around for a few seconds before the alicorn looked over and undid the magical spell keeping Rainbow from snoring her awake all night.

“Morning.”

“Morning.” Twilight replied in a slur that told me she was barely awake before she rolled away from us. Apparently, she still wanted a few seconds of shuteye.

“Sup.”

I giggled at the blue pony’s response, and kissed Rainbow on the cheek before interlocking our fetlocks. “So, you enjoy last night?”

Rainbow’s eyes widened for half a second, then she smiled. “Yeah…that was pretty cool. Way better than normal…uh, lunch with you.”

With Twilight still out of it, and Rainbow right next to me, I put up a noise dampening field around us and looked the pegasus in the eye. There was no way I was going to let Twilight hear what I was about to say. “Listen, Rainbow…this thing with Celestia. If you’re uncomfortable about it, just say the word and we’ll back off, or wait, or…whatever you want.”

It wasn’t exactly fair to Twilight, but...Cadence had laid down the law to these herd relationships from day one. If everyone didn’t sign off on them, then it was a no go. And I wasn’t about to force Rainbow Dash into anything.

Before I could try and come up with something to at least make it sound like I was not trying to ruin Twilight’s Tia dating dreams, Dash shook her head. “No it’s cool,” she said. “I mean, Twilight and me talked while you were gone with Fluttershy and…she told me she agreed to try this thing that the three of us got out because you liked me. If she wants to do this thing with Celestia, I can’t exactly say no, you know?”

I tensed at her words. Rainbow…it was one of the things that infuriated me about her. She just…did things for her friends at the expense of herself, like teaming up with Fluttershy for the Equestria Games. And…okay, she liked making her friends happy more than she liked doing things for herself, I got that. She kind of pounded it into me when we were at Rainbow Falls with her actions.

But walking into a relationship just because Twilight was having a Celestia fangasm was just a bit too much for me to chalk up to an altruistic streak. Yeah, I said yes too, but I had kind of already been with Tia…more or less. “Rainbow…that’s not the same.”

“Oh my gosh, you’re Rainbow Dash!” she said in imitation of my current voice rather than Flash Sentry’s. “You are like, the fastest flier ever! And you broke all those records at the Wonderbolt academy, I am so your biggest fan ever!”

I frowned at her as the pegasus got done repeating what I had said when we first met…and maybe I blushed a little. “I…um…”

Okay, I really had nothing to say to that. Plus…the fact Rainbow Dash had just beaten me in an argument might have helped with adding to my silence. “Point taken.”

“Plus, you know,” Rainbow Dash added with a blush. “It is Princess Celestia, she’s like the hottest thing on four legs. Huge wings, giant plot, and her mane and tail are just awesome. And uh…she’s pretty cool. I mean, now that we’ve actually talked to her a few times, her jokes are uh…kinda lame though. But if she thinks we can work all this out…why not? I’m up for giving it a try.”

The conversation died then and there as Rainbow tightened her leg around mine.

And I as much as I hated to admit it, she had a point. I may have not of been the one to suggest her addition to our relationship, but it was only because Twilight beat me to it. Hell, I doubted I would have ever of even had the balls to ask.

If Twilight wanted us to chase after Tia, and Rainbow was okay with it…I could give it a shot. We saw enough of each other anyway, and…yeah, that sunbutt of hers was pretty hot. If it wasn’t for her godlike power, me already being with Twilight, and fact she was twice as big as me, I probably would have gone after her to ‘seal’ the alliance between our two peoples in my more lust-filled fantasies.

Although, there was one other person I wanted to talk to about this whole thing. Without everyone involved agreeing with it, I didn’t care what plans Tia made, or how much Twilight wanted it, we were backing off.

And the four of us weren’t the only ones this relationship would affect on a personal level.

“Okay,” I said, still pretty hesitant. I looked over to Twilight as she snuggled deeper into the covers, and then back to Dash. “I think I need to go um…do something.”

Before Rainbow could ask what, I rolled out of bed and onto the floor, taking the sphere of silence with me so my hooves didn’t disturb Dash or Twilight on my way out.

“Hey Egghead, time to wake up,” I heard the pegasus’s voice from the room once I got out into the hallway and let my spell die.

“Ah! R-Rainbow! Not the wings!” the alicorn cried out in pleasured surprise before I closed the door.

“Oh no, I’m getting you back for calling me a squealer last night! You yell way louder.”

I dropped my disguise and unfolded my real wings to let them buzz around a bit before stretching a little to get the kinks of my body from the night before. Not that there really were any once I changed. Shapesifting tended to get rid of that kind of stuff, ruffles in my hair, any blemishes on a coat that no longer existed, and everything else that made me look imperfect. Then, once Twilight redid her spell, I’d be good as new and fully groomed.

Luckily, it kept me from needing to bend over backwards to comb hair that might as well have been proportionally long as Celestia’s. Tangled manes were no joke, and I did my best to refresh my body every day to avoid them. Even Rainbow kept hers up enough to keep them from appearing in too many numbers.

Unfortunately, that same magic made me look super hot and kept my pheromone production so high every pony in town wanted me. Enen the girls, apparently.

After I had got done limbering up, I jogged over to Sunset’s room a little ways down the hall, and knocked on the door.

“Who is-ugh,” the English-speaking human grumbled. “Just a second so you can fucking understand me.”

I cracked open the door to allow my voice to carry in. “It’s me Sunset, are you decent?”

There was some shuffling around for a few more seconds before I heard a reply. “I’m covered.”

After going into the room, I found out that she was being literal. Sunset had wrapped the bed covers around her body to hide her nudity. I…managed to think it was acceptable. “Hey girl.”

“Haven’t seen you like that in awhile,” Sunset told me before her expression became a little worried. “What’s going on?”

I made my way to her bed and took a second to eye the little black magic made Sunset Shimmer unicorn figurine on her nightstand. “Just didn’t want you scratching my ear and putting me out of commission that way,” I told her with a smile before becoming serious. “But um…you know what’s going on with Celestia and well…us? The whole...courting thing?”

She nodded. “We talked about it a few days ago, before I left with you and Flutters. And…last night after Luna...you know. Kinda soon if you ask me, but hell, you went after Rainbow from day one. So…why not?”

I had to wonder why everyone had to keep mentioning that. It was just...preemptive, not wasn’t some spur of the moment thing. I knew that someone else would have swooped in and snatched Rainbow up if I didn’t do anything first.

Either that, or she would have gone after someone, even with her confidence when it came to her looks…which I really needed to find the reason behind. If someone made Rainbow feel like she was ugly, I was going to fucking mutilate their faces, show them the damage in the mirror, smash the mirror with said face, and make them eat the shattered shards that I had broken with their own ugly mug.

Thanks to the distraction my mind provided for me, it took a second to realize Sunset hadn’t actually answered my question.

“And?”

“And what?”

I gulped. “Are you okay with it? Celestia with me and Twilight and Rainbow.”

She was Celestia’s kid after all. She had almost as much say as Tia getting into a relationship as her mom did in my opinion. That was one of the burdens that came with parenthood, and I didn't care if Sunset was seventeen, twenty, or two-thousand. She would be consulted on the matter.

Sunset gave me a frown, and I used my non-messed up changeling empathy to get a read on her emotions, which only made less sense when I just picked up confusion coming from her as she spoke. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because your mom is trying to date three different ponies at once?” I asked rhetorically. “One of them being me, and the other is Twilight. Not to mention Rainbow. Aren’t you a little…something?” Jealous? Regretful? Creeped out that your mom is dating girls that were younger than she was supposed to be.

She reached over to run her fingers through my hair and then moved to touch my ears. Thankfully, my chitin protected from her human ear scratch that could take down a pony in seconds. “Wow it even covers your ears,” Sunset mumbled before she moved her hand over and down to my neck. “That’s um…didn’t expect you to be this smooth.”

That line…oh God if had been anyone else but Sunset…

“Sunset,” I spoke up to get her attention. “Are you okay with this?”

The human let out a groan. “Yes, I’m fine with all of you getting it on with Celestia. Geeze!” she grumbled as curiosity turned to annoyance. “What’s your deal with that?”

“I’m just worried about you,” I told her in a soft voice. “I know the trip kind of put you off with that whole pet thing, and you’re upset I’m not getting unicorn transformation magic as fast as you want me too, but…” Well, I really didn’t have a follow-up to that.

And…I had been slacking on the job the past couple of days on that angle. It may have been a false hope, but Sunset didn’t know that. Just shoving it off to the side like I had been…running off to learn about the breezies, dealing with Discord, and now running off to date Celestia…

“Oh great, more pity,” Sunset replied as she pulled up her legs and hugged herself. “Look, it’s not…” she grumbled before stopping without even really beginning. “And Mom? Do you know what we talk about?”

I winced. “Not really. I ask Celestia about it when she comes over, but she just says you’re…getting by. What you and Tia have, that’s yours and hers. I don’t have any right to pry into that.”

Sunset let out a snort. “Getting by…that’s me,” she mumbled before I Smelled the depression kick in. In false pony form, I wouldn’t have been able to pick it up, but as a changeling, all things emotional were open to me when I bothered to sniff them out.

“Whoa, Sunset,” I said softly as I put a holey hoof up on her bed. “What’s wrong? I know this is hard for you, and I’m sorry I’ve been pulled in so many directions lately that I’ve been neglecting my responsibilities to you.”

The girl took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “No, that’s okay.”

How she said it told me something else. “No it’s not. And, I’m sorry for that. Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll spend the whole day working on magic, super study cram session!” With it being the weekend, we could get tons done. “Me and Twilight, and hell, I can maybe even drag Celestia down here. It might be a little awkward so soon after our...date…” Or very awkward if things went wrong...or…

Well...I had slept with Twilight after our first go around.

And Tia did say she hated to waste time...

Oh God, I thought to myself as yet another thought entered my head. Just how were we supposed to...satisfy her? Tia was fucking huge! Me, Twilight and Dash would have to team up just to perform the proper amount of stimulation.

And God only knew how much stamina she had.

Sunset’s fingers continued to play with my hair, and let the awkward silence continue for a few seconds. “Are you okay with it?”

I looked up at the human. “Say what?”

“Celestia, I mean…are you okay with it?” she asked. “Her and Twilight.”

The question made me actually stop and think for a moment.

Was I okay with it?

Really okay, I mean.

Me and the girls had been together less than a week, and truthfully…I didn’t even know if I was okay with that! When it first happened, I was just too caught up with Ponies! and Herding! and two girls for one guy! It was the dream of every man at one point in their life.

However, it wasn’t the threesome every guy dreamed of, with two females of the species being infatuated with him and him alone. Yeah, it was still two girls and one guy, but each of the girls also got one girl and one guy too. And with it being TwiDash…I could take the loss of attention from Twilight, especially since I got to see them make out.

The dynamic we had right now was still a little rough, what with me being left in the cold and unsatisfied the night before. But I was confident we could work out the kinks. However, if Celestia was added to the mix…I really had to think about it for a minute.

I loved Twilight Sparkle. It wasn’t a crazy gaga affection that I kind of had for Dash, but steady and solid. A plain and simple fact about the universe. The sky was blue, grass was green, and I would do anything for a purple pony princess.

I…really liked Rainbow Dash. I was absolutely crazy for her, but I also wasn’t some kid that decided crap like that inside of a few days. I adored her, I told myself I would always support her, and I would fucking murder anyone who put a tear in that pegasus’s eye, yes. But when I looked at my feelings for her, really looked, the half-infatuation, half-affection I had for her wasn’t the rock of steady and unyielding emotion I had for Twilight. I wanted it to be more, and with time I knew it probably would be more than a blazing passion I felt for her, but I was afraid it could also burn out as well.

And Celestia…I really didn’t know what to think. Last night I was just thankful we had fallen back into our regular routines instead of experimenting to see how real a dream could feel. She was my best friend, as weird as that sounded to the me of the past that pointed to all the times of crises that she royally fucked up. She was hot, desirable, smart, half-funny, kind and understanding, and the thought of sleeping with her did turn me on, but at the same time…it was Celestia. She was a goddess that counted her age in millennia, ruled a nation, controlled the fucking sun, and did it all without becoming some corrupted despot. Honestly, despite all her smiles, desire to be friends, and sense of humor…she was still as intimidating as fuck.

Hell, after considering that, I could actually understand a little about how Twilight was infatuated with her. She had been with the goddess for years, and familiarity bred some level of ease. Sure, Twilight freaked out when she thought she let the goddess down, but that just seemed to be even more proof of her infatuation.

And of course, that little thought brought me to another.

Twilight Sparkle was infatuated with Celestia.

I…didn’t really like the thought of that for some reason. It wasn’t because of the student to teacher bond either. That, I understood. What I didn’t like about it was…Twilight staring at another pony with sparkling eyes.

I didn’t like the loss of attention.

Maybe it was because I was a human-turned-changeling.

Ponies could share…pretty much everything, apparently. Even the whole herding thing hadn’t caused an uproar amongst Equestria in the past few days, and I’m pretty sure I saw the flower girls huddled around a table. They had either been on a date, or plotting which guy they were going to snag.

Human-turned-changeling? I was greedy. I wanted it all in excess, the sex and attention, and all that other stuff. It was okay for me to get all hot over Dash, sleep with Twilight, and have sex fantasies about doing both princesses at the same time. But Twilight turning wet at the thought of Celestia? It kind of made me uncomfortable.

Because it wasn’t me she was going gaga over.

The feeling was wrong, petty, pretty damn hypocritical on top of stupid, and I knew that…but it was there, that part of my primal human upbringing that just shouted GIMME MORE! and MINE! MINE! ALL MINE!

“You okay?”

Sunset’s question grew me out of my thoughts, and I looked up at her. “Um…yeah, I was just…lost in thought.”

“And?” She prompted. “You didn’t answer my question.”

I let out a dejected sigh and rested my head on Sunset’s bed. “Let’s just say…theory and application are two very different things.”

And the more I thought about it…the more I knew this herding thing was going to turn out to be a disaster.

“THIS IS A DISASTER!”

Back in my pseudo pony form, I winced at Twilight’s shouting as she fought with her old gala dress to try and make everything fit properly. Although, it appeared to be a losing battle since her alicornination had apparently made my little pony put on a bit of weight. All muscle of course.

Twilight stumbled around in the thing that bulged more than a bit at the front, came up a little too high around her legs, and strained somewhat at the back as she tried adjustment after adjustment that knocked something else off kilter once she got one thing set proper. It had stopped being funny after the first two minutes.

As the little goddess fought with her formalwear in front of the dresser in our bedroom and checked herself out in the nearby mirror before she groaned at the latest problem her newest fix had caused, I sat on our bed and sighed at the sight. “I thought you said Rarity made adjustments for something.”

In response, Twilight looked over to me and unfolded her wings and didn’t manage to crimp the back of her dress where the star saddle design was placed. Then she folded her wings back down…and I had to hold in a giggle when their slightly tilted positioning messed with the back of her gown. That problem was at least new.

“Okay, so I kept putting the major alterations off because I didn’t want to have to stand around in Rarity’s shop all day,” the goddess grumbled. “Especially after I saw what she did to you the last time we were there. I didn’t know that Princess Celestia was going to ask me out on a date!”

I decided not to point out that I could have just changed into her, and had Rarity do the work like that. The last thing I wanted was to add to her stress. Or put myself in her crosshairs.

So I offered solutions instead. Better to offer solutions than state problems after all. “What about your coronation dress?” I knew that had to fit her alicon-sized body.

“Too new!” Twilight declared before continued to fuss with her dress. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Rarity, its that you never wear the same thing twice for an important event without a set amount of time!”

I sighed. “And your gala dress is-”

“Retro!” Twilight exclaimed.

My time with Rarity said Twilight was misusing the term, but…I didn’t want to get into an argument with her over nothing. “What about that cute little thing you had at your birthday party?”

Twilight whirled on me, her face aghast. “I…I can’t wear something like that for a date with Princess Celestia!” she exclaimed. “It’s too simple, and plain, and-and common! I can’t go on a date with Celestia in a common dress!”

Which is what she wants Twilight, I thought to myself. But, could I tell Twilight that?

No, Tia wanted to show the little goddess what she wanted.

Plus, I…didn’t really want to mess with Twilight when she was like this. Had to remember that.

I sighed again. “What about that white thing Tia sent over awhile ago?”

“Not retro!” the little goddess reminded me while wiggling her butt at the mirror in front of her to work out some problem I couldn’t even tell existed.

I groaned. “Twilight-”

“Hey, where’s your dress anyway?” she suddenly asked me.

I tensed. “Um…Rarity hasn’t finished-”

“Not the coronation one she’s making, the one Princess Celestia sent you,” she corrected before going back to fuss over her ill-fitting garment. “I know we really shouldn’t have you wear it again so soon, but you really don’t have any others and-”

“I burned it,” I reminded her. Sure, I wasn’t supposed to get rid of gifts from a friend, but…Tia and me hadn’t really been friends at the time and…well she had been trolling me.

For a second, Twilight stopped moving. Then, ever so slowly, she turned back to face me. Her eye twitched ever so slightly. “You…what?”

I gulped down my fear. “Oh come on!” I said while trying to fake a little cheer. “You know those things were wedding dresses and-”

“YOU BURNED A DRESS GIVEN TO YOU BY PRINCESS CELESTIA?” Twilight shouted in my face.

I cringed.

She glared.

And kept talking. “I can’t believe you! How could you do something like that?!” Twilight demanded as she stomped up to me, her Scent a massive mix of confusion, anger, and panic. “Now what’re you supposed to wear, what’re you supposed to DO? You can’t show up…naked!”

Once again, I sighed. “Twilight-”

A hoof pressed against my mouth and nose cut me off. “Wait,” she said before frowning in thought for a moment as I listened to her mumble to herself. “Can’t let you go without clothes…can’t cancel…solution, need a solution…” Then, I could practically see the light bulb go off above her head. “You got sick!”

I blinked, and pushed the purple pony’s hoof away from my schnoz. “Say what?”

“We’ll tell Princess Celestia you got sick and couldn’t come!” Twilight exclaimed in a desperate hope. “You’ve been sick before and nopony knew what caused it! We can do it without arousing any suspicion, and order a dress from Rarity when she gets back from hitting on my brother so you’ll be ready for our next date! Everypony wins!”

As the alicorn looked at me with glee at ‘solving’ out little problem, I kept myself from frowning at being shoved to the side in order for her to let Twilight keep up her perfect date idea-thing with Celestia going. Because…she let me chase after Rainbow Dash.

If she wanted to fangasm over some other pony, I didn’t have the right to say no. And…it was Celestia, her idol since she had been…well… Okay, turnabout was fair play and all that, but I was still more than a little put off by my little pony’s actions.

But it was because of her that I roped Rainbow Dash. She deserved a shot at Tia. So I didn’t have any right to the little bit of anger I was feeling.

After reminding myself about that, I licked my lips nervously. “Twilight…how long have you been into Celestia?” I asked after careful choosing my words.

Twilight cleared her throat and looked away. I thought I saw the beginnings of a blush. “Well…it’s complicated,” she told me before pausing a moment more. Then, the little goddess let out a sigh, and looked back up to me. “It all started when I was just a filly and saw her raising the sun, I thought she was just so amazing and later, once I became her student and got close to her and saw what a wonderful pony she was, I just went from wanting to be just like her to wanting to be with her. I mean, she’s beautiful, and smart, and kind and…everything! But…I knew she didn’t look at me, or anypony that way. So as the years passed, I just…accepted it.” The way her voice and Scent were heavy with regret made me wince.

“Then, all of a sudden, she says she might have feelings for me and it’s all just come flooding back. I mean,” a bright smile lit up the alicorn’s face. “She’s interested in me Fae. Me! I…I’ve never dreamed about something like this ever being able to happen, and now that it has I’m just so…so…”

My anger over the whole situation over being kicked to the curb in favor of Twilight priming herself up for her perfect image of Celestia fell by the wayside as I looked at Twilight’s smile. Instead I just felt…hurt, and pretty sad about this whole thing.

But then, I was dealing with Twilight. She got over enthused, and put blinders on, and all that other shit sometimes. I needed to be patient and understanding, and wait till it all just blew over…or blew up in my face and Twilight picked up the pieces. That was just the way things worked with her.

“Twilight, you know I want this to work out for you too,” I told her while mulling over if I wanted to tell her about Tia’s plan to shatter the purple pony’s rather…rosy version of things.

As things stood, I wasn’t sure if she would even believe me.

“Great!” Twilight said. “So you’ll stay here and-”

A knock at the door cut her off, and Twilight turned to opening the thing with her magic, letting Rainbow Dash in. The young woman of a pony was dressed in some light-bluish-green outfit with a matching hat and her lightning bolt emblem on the chest. It looked kind of familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Hey girls, are you-uh Twilight? Are you sure you should be wearing that? It…looks a little…tight.”

The alicorn’s eye twitched, and she let out a groan. “Rainbow, I said wear you best new dress.”

“This is my best new dress,” Rainbow replied in confusion. “Rarity made it for your coronation, remember?”

Twilight became a little more panicked, and I tensed as she looked the pegasus up and down. “But it…you… What about your gala dress? It still fits, right? You didn’t become an alicorn and put on about twenty-three-point-five pounds of wings and muscle!”

A groan came from Rainbow as she looked away from Twilight. “Uh…you remember how my dress looked after the gala, right? No way I can wear that thing again,” she said before looking over to me. “And where the hay is your dress?”

“Fairy isn’t coming,” Twilight told her simply. “We’ll just tell Princess Celestia she’s sick.”

That got Rainbow in my face in an instant. Once second she was near the door, and the next she was in my face while her feathered cap was left to fall to the ground, knocked off by her rush through the air. “You’re sick?” she asked in a panic before looking back to Twilight. “Is it like last time? It’s not like last time, is it?”

I let out a tiny giggle at Rainbow’s worry. “I’m not really sick Rainbow, Twilight just wants me staying home because I don’t have a dress to wear,” I said in a calm tone.

And…maybe it really was better if I stayed home.

First off, there was the dress…which I might have gotten just a little…resigned to since I was going to be stuck in one for my coronation. I mean, it wasn’t like ponies wore real dresses, they were more like those uniforms from Fullmetal Alchemist that covered the ass and left the front open like certian European uniforms did back in the day. So…I could wear the military dress…things for short periods of time.

Then there was Tia’s plan, or the bare bones of it she had told me anyway. It was nothing too mean spirited, and kind of needed to be done for her own good, but…she was still kind of crushing one of Twilight’s dreams. That kind of put me at odds with the goddess of fat asses.

So…yeah, it was definitely better if I just stayed behind like Twilight wanted.

Hell, even if I did want to go, it wasn’t like I had anything to wear. Knowing Canterlot, there would probably even be a dress code for whoever the hell Tia planned on dining. She did want us to get thrown out of the place after all.

“Why don’t you just use your magic to make a dress like you did with all that other stuff you gave everypony?” Rainbow suggested.

And thus did the pony of the Rainbow mane manage to foil my plot to get out of the coming disaster.

Chapter 31: The Incredibly Awkward Journey to The Garden of Olives

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Chapter 31: The Incredibly Awkward Journey to The Garden of Olives

By the time I was done with my work, Twilight had on a redone version of her gala dress that fit her alicorn form perfectly, and worked in a purple star here and there to match her cutie mark. On top of which, the normal stars had a bit of reflective/holographic surface to them, making the things seem to sparkle when the light hit them just right. Then we braided her mane in a way that had her highlight stay to the outside all the way around. It took about five seconds. Good God, styling magic was awesome.

Rainbow got an ensemble that probably would have been impossible to make without magic. I put her in a multilayered gown of thin fabrics that were a little on the transparent side, with each of the four layers being a slightly different color than the first. Added to the fact her coat and tail also added color to the whole thing, and Dash ended up like she was wearing a real rainbow that changed colors depending on the angle someone saw it from. A pair of earrings served as her cutie mark reminder, and gave her a new golden laurel headpiece to go with her sandal-ish shoes that were also in the twenty-four-carat range. We also managed to comb out her hair to something Twilight considered presentable, but not anything Rainbow thought was too frilly.

I ended up going with a white dress since it was probably the only color that would work with my odd hair and coat combination, then added some emeralds around the lower part of the gown. After that, Twilight decided my hair was just too long, and put it up in some…head dress configuration thing that reminded me of the mess Rarity put Cadence’s into one time before. A few purple gems gave my hairball a bit of color as well that ended up making the whole thing look fabulous.

And I blame Rarity to no end for that.

Of course when we were done with our ensemble, I also needed to make a carriage to take us there so our clothes wouldn’t be destroyed on the way there, which had to be a sky carriage thanks to the fact I ended up making us run a little late after a few extra feats of prestidigitation. But, Tia did need flowers, and since conjured food really sucked, I ended up going with a one of a kind Princess Celestia collectable vinyl action figure, along with a plushie based on Sunbutt.

And then I remembered with Fall right around the corner, Sunset would need some warmer clothes and sheets. Not to mention silverware that was meant for her hands instead of the stuff she’d been getting by with. On top of which, I got her a few more skirts, three pairs of boots, as well as a guitar that she asked for before Twilight threw a fit over the fact Tia’s figure actually kind of looked like her while the others were too anatomically incorrect and got the whole creation binge thing out of my system.

Then it was off to Canterlot to meet Tia.

Twilight was the first out the door when the pair of pegasus-changelings parked our ride on one of the castles many balconies that were large enough to…well, land a flying coach on. And of course, only one pony would need a place that big to park her ass when she wanted to look out over Equestria…

“Princess Celestia, we’re here,” Twilight called out in a worried voice as she came through the balcony door and walked into the goddess private chambers while our ride took off. I thought it better they be gone before it could get a ticket for parking. “I’m sorry if we’re late, and that we had to come in this way, and that we didn’t bring you any chocolates. But if you want chocolates, we can go get you some. You want chocolates, don’t you? I knew I should have brought chocolates!”

Still outside the door, me and Rainbow looked around the semi-ornate room that was the main living space for Princess Celestia while Twilight ran around and talked to the doors that led to her main bedroom and other places one would need in any living quarters, probably hoping Tia was behind one of them.

As always, I was a little put off by how normal everything was. Oh, Celestia had finally crafted tables with too much cloth on top of them, and a really immaculate fireplace with a tingle of magic around it that apparently removed the smoke without the need for a chimney, and a lot of other high quality stuff. But, there were no ego trip paintings, gaudy decorations that were just around to show off the fact Tia had money to burn, or other things that you’d expect a ruler of a nation to have in their house just because they could.

Celestia’s personal living space was high-class without being gaudy. Impressive without being showy. Of good taste without being fattening. And books, lots of books. Just inside the living room she had five bookshelves that were filled to the brim, and a small pile on a coffee table that all had to deal with single parenting. Considering how ponies tended to...ignore single parent ponies, they were probably the only ten books in all of Equestria dealing with the subject.

However, the apartment did seem to be missing something important: the pony who lived there.

“Hey Twilight,” Rainbow spoke up as we came in, the bag of collectible vinyl figures making her speech just a little off. “Celestia’s not here.”

Twilight paled. “Oh no!” she wailed before whirling around to face us. Her face told me she was a few seconds away from a panic attack. “I told you we were going to be late! What if Princess Celestia decided that if we couldn’t arrive on time, then we weren’t worth her time? What if she thinks we stood her up? What if, in her heartbroken state, she decided to just run into the forelegs of whatever pony was closest, and now she’s in Las Pegasus, getting married to some bum she met on the street because she’s afraid of being left abandoned and alone for the rest of time!”

I was unable to stop myself from rolling my eyes, although Rainbow was starting to get a little worried. “Uh…Twilight?”

“THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!” Twilight shouted as she spun around to face me with an accusing hoof. “If you hadn’t burned your dress, or made less stuff, or…or…had faster changelings-”

The door behind Twilight opened, cutting her off before she could probably do something we’d both regret, and Tia walked in. “Oh, there the three of you are,” the goddess said before she walked inside. “I’m sorry if I kept you waiting, court ran a bit long today, and now I need to freshen up, and change, and get dressed.”

I fought to keep a straight face as Tia put part one of her plan into motion. She knew that Twilight was a punctual freak, so she had set things up to make sure that she arrived later than us. Considering the fact it was Twilight, and she was already wound a little too tightly, Celestia didn’t even need to be late enough to lose our reservation at whatever fancy shmancy eatery she planned on getting us ejected from before dragging Twilight to the most hellish bar in Canterlot.

You know, the kind that served their beer in a dirty glass.

Twilight waved a hoof. “Late? Princess, I didn’t even notice,” she replied in a giddy tone. Then, the alicorn seemed to remember the set of flowers floating next to her head. “Oh! Princess, these are for you!”

As the little goddess shoved the objects into the bigger one’s face, Celestia looked at the bouquet of yellow roses, and took a bite out of one of them. Almost immediately, her face turned a sickening green before she turned her head to the side and spit the flower out.

Me and Dash winced.

Twilight screamed. “Princess I’m sorry! I didn’t think-”

“Conjured flowers?” she asked with a raised eyebrow before looking over to me. “And I can feel the small tingle of dark magic in them as well. And your clothes.”

I let out a little sigh. “Yeah, I kind of held us up with a problem, and then needed to take a shortcut, it’s not Twilight’s fault.” I also knew there was no way in hell Tia gave a shit about us being late, but it would hopefully take some of the pressure off Twilight was putting on herself. We wanted to make Celestia look bad, not cause Chernobyl in Equestria. “Sorry about all that.”

“It’s alright,” Tia assured us. “Although, you might want to put a warning sign on them next time. Now, what do the rest of you have for me, hmm?” It was a little odd to see her asking for presents but…maybe that was the usual Canterlot elite thing to do when dating. Or it was just a douche move to make.

Judging by her Scent, Rainbow got a little put off by the question, and then reached into her bag to retrieve the figurine. “So uh, Fae remembered how you said some stuff about where was yours, and I kind of had her make this for you. Since you know, we couldn’t make food.”

Definitely a douche move then, I told myself before holding up the plushie Celestia as well for the goddess to take in her magic.

“Let me just go put these up, and then I’ll go get changed,” Tia told us before she opened the door to her bedroom and went inside.

As soon as the door shut, Rainbow’s expression turned down to match her emotions. “Well, that was kind of rude,” she mumbled.

Almost immediately, Twilight looked over to the pegasus. “Oh come on Rainbow. It’s Princess Celestia! She probably gets a dozen gifts life this a day from ponies trying to suck up to her. It’s just…negative association. Bringing up bad memories of ponies she doesn’t like, that sort of thing.” The hoofwave at the end really sold the blow off of her friend’s concerns.

“And the flowers?” Rainbow asked with a raised eyebrow.

“That was um…testing!” Twilight declared. “She was probably just testing to see if they had been conjured, or maybe that was the way things worked back when Princess Celestia was dating! Oh, I knew I should have bought some chocolates!”

It took me a second to get what they were talking about. Back when I kind of proved I knew nothing about pony social customs and all that, Twilight decided to give me some boring as hell lectures in order to teach me the information. However, she did manage to get a few things across. Like when you brought another pony flowers on a date, it was considered pretty bad manners to eat them. It wasn’t just rude, it also tended to spoil ones appetite.

A second later, Rainbow’s disbelieving glare disappeared as Tia was coming back into the room. But unlike before, she was wearing…absolutely nothing. Gone were her regal regalia, she simply stood there in her birthday suit. “Rainbow, would you stand still for a moment please? This should only take a second.”

Confusion probably had Rainbow obeying faster than anything else as Tia’s horn lit up to zap the pegasus. “W-What the hay?”

“It’s the species copy spell,” Twilight explained after a few seconds of pointing her horn at the magic.

There was a bright flash a second later, and we looked over to see Tia…was no longer Tia. Hell, she wasn’t even a pegasus version of Sunny Skies.

Either Tia had tweaked the spell to put a bit more Rainbow into her looks, or her Sunny Skies disguise was just a bit more than a simple transformation spell using another species as a template; or maybe it was the spell she had just cast that had some extra pizzazz on it to give her a few extra alterations. Either way, the pony standing in front of the three of us looked nothing like Celestia’s fake unicorn form.

While her face was mostly the same except for a shorter muzzle, Tia was a light pink pony on equal height with Rainbow, with a multicolored mane that matched her old hues as Celestia, but it was just normal hair instead of the magically infused mess the goddess usually sported. If anything, it was the same waterfall of greens, pinks and other bright colors I saw on her in dreamland. Although, her mane was still long enough to go down to her knees. There was also one other thing off about her as well…

“P-Princess Celestia!” Twilight cried out as she pointed to the changed pony. “Your horn!”

The pseudo-pegasus gave Twilight a confused look, then reached up to tap her hair. Hoof clacked against…something, and then Tia looked back at us. “Oh no, it’s still there,” she said before using her wings to hold her aloft, before she separated her hair enough to show us a tiny nub of a horn. “I know it’s not exactly perfect, but the unicorn who designed this spell would have looked pretty silly if he wasn’t able to change himself back afterwards.”

Rainbow cocked her head to the side. “Uh…why did you…”

Celestia gave the ‘other’ pegasus a smile. “Well, I can’t exactly go into a restaurant, even a high class one, looking like me, can I?” she said with a little smile. “It would cause too much of a fuss. Which reminds me, the two of you need to do something to hide your wings. I trust you still remember your misdirection spell Twilight?”

Twilight just stood there.

“Twilight?” Tia asked again. “Is something wrong?”

The now slightly larger alicorn gave a bit of a jump. “What? Oh! Princess…right, misdirection spell! Right…um…but, what about your dress?”

Tia looked down at herself. “Right, my dress. “I’ll go get it on. You two just put on your spells so nopony noticed your wings, and we’ll get going.”

As Tia disappeared back into her bedroom, I looked over to the purple alicorn with a smirk. I knew I really shouldn’t press Twilight’s buttons, seeing as how Tia hadn’t even really gotten started beyond some social faux pause involving flowers, but…I couldn’t resist. “What’s wrong Twilight? Tia not sexy enough for you anymore?”

“W-What?” she stuttered as she looked over to me in suprise.

Rainbow got up into the air and tapped her chin. “Gotta admit, those wings, and that plot…not really the same. Still pretty hot though.”

“RAINBOW!” Twilight exclaimed as she focused on the pegasus, surprise starting to give way to anger. Apparently, Twilight didn’t like someone calling her waifu anything but rod-stiffeningly perfect. “It’s still Princess Celestia! I can’t believe you’d just-just…say something like that!”

The pegasus shrugged in midair. “Hey, just calling it like I see it Twilight.”

I had to agree with Rainbow’s assessment of Tia’s ass. Bigger was better. Shallow, but true.

Thankfully, before some kind of argument could breakout, Tia opened her door, but only stuck her head out. “Did somepony call my name?”

Once again, Twilight froze, and even Rainbow landed back on the ground, a little tense. I…took advantage of the situation, and maybe help this whole stupid thing along. “Oh we were just talking about how your rear and wings look way better when you’re all tall and fat.”

And for a second, I actually thought I crossed the line with that comment. I mean, even Rainbow let out a gasp. But of course Tia just laughed, and looked over to the alicorn in the room. “And you Twilight?” she asked as she focused on the now-bigger alicorn. “Do you prefer me big and beautiful, or slim and trim?”

“I…um…it…you’re beautiful, whatever you look like!” Twilight told her before she broke into a nervous smile. I couldn’t really fault her all that much for the Saturday morning cartoon moral of a response. Even if it was forced.

But Tia apparently did. I caught a bit of disappointment from her, and then the alicorn with the hidden horn disappeared back into her room. Five minutes later, the door opened back up and…I cringed at the sight.

“So, what do you think?” Celestia asked as she walked out into the main room of her royal apartment where we were waiting.

“Uh…” Rainbow managed to say. I was pretty sure if she had been in the air, Tia’s new new appearance would have knocked her on her ass. Whatever she was going to say was quickly stopped, because Rainbow had to hold her mouth closed with her hooves to keep from laughing.

Even Twilight seemed to be at a loss for words. “That’s very…um…”

Annoyance filled her Scent, but Celestia just gave them both a confused look with a tiled head. Thanks to her dress and hairstyling, I had to join Rainbow in the snickering.

The multi-colored mane of the pony goddess had been done up in a mess of miniature braids that went this way and that. There were about fifteen of them in all. On top of which, her dress…well…it was a plain sheet of a thing that looked liked a rainbow had thrown up on it. Several days of working with Rarity gave me plenty enough experience to see that it was made from the lowest quality of fabrics.

The thing was crap. Pure D- crap.

It…it was even worse than the crap that the girls had Rarity make for them that one time, and I actually saw those things. Rarity kept them in her basement on a wall of shame. Although personally, I didn’t think Twilight’s garish gala was all that bad, had a bit of a wizard robe thing going for it once you got rid of the bows and headpieces.

“Where in the hay did you get that thing?” I asked in confusion. My best guess was either dumpster, or landfill.

Tia actually brightened at the question. The emotion was fake of course. “Do you like it?” she asked before spinning around to show it off. “After our first get together, I decided to try my hand at designing a new dress like I used to back in the day! Isn’t it lovely Twilight?” I could almost hear the BE HONEST command at the end.

As the question seemed to work her way through Twilight’s brain, I watched her entire body jerk. “Urk!” she got out before her mouth ever so slowly worked its way up into a smile. “You…made…that?”

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Tia asked as she spun around and showed it off again. “I was a bit worried that it wouldn’t go with my mane, but after a little bit of styling, it all just went perfectly together, don’t you agree Twilight?”

The alicorn gulped. “Right,” she said with a strained voice. Surprisingly, the strength of her asskissing lie didn’t strip Twilight of her alicornhood that she got from embodying all facets of friendship right then and there. “Um…so…we’re…eating…where now?”

The little pink Celestia let out a long breath through her nose. “I…might have abused my title a little to pull some strings to get reservations at the Garden for my current disguise.”

Twilight tensed.

Rainbow frowned. “The what?”

“It’s…” Twilight paused and took a breath. “The Olive Garden. It’s the most exclusive restaurant in Canterlot, maybe even in all of Equestria.”

Oh God, I thought to myself before hoof met face. I still did it a little too fast but…it was worth it. However, I had yet to find a Starbucks, so…Equestria was still a viable place to live.

At least until the CMC decided to open an Apple B’s to try and get their copyright infringement cutie marks.

“Omnifarious? Is something wrong?” Tia asked.

Before I could say a single word about anything, my vision was blocked by a purple wing, and the area around my mouth became tightly held by magic. “Nope! Absolutely nothing,” my captor told Celestia before she spun around and glared at me with a stare that was one step short of a capital S. “Tell her about the dress, and I…I’ll…I’ll…just don’t tell her about the dress!” she ended in a plea.

Twilight’s…mutated threat made it so I had to work not to laugh as her frown became a wide-eyed puppy dog look before the magic holding my mouth closed dissipated. “Okay,” I promised. “But um…some pony on the street might say something before we even get to…The Olive Garden.” That one took some effort to say with a straight face too. And I had just gotten used to The Hayburger.

She didn’t take that too well either. After blanching, the alicorn looked over to Princess Celestia, and let out a little whine.

Then, Twilight ran up to the mare that could quite possibly double for a moving piece of modern art. “Princess Celestia, stay right here! I’ll go have the guard get us a carriage! We wouldn’t want uh...somepony to… I’ll get a carriage!” A few seconds later, and Twilight was out the door as fast as her little alicorn legs could carry her.

With the three of us alone in Tia’s apartment, the disguised goddess turned to the pegasus. “So Rainbow, what do you think of my dress and manestyle?” Celestia asked.

Rainbow tensed. “Uh…listen…Celestia,” the pegasus said as she braced herself to be turned into a toad or something. “I know you’re proud of the way you look and everything, and that’s cool and all! But…that’s the lamest mane and dress I’ve ever seen, if anypony sees you like that…I’m going to have to beat them up, because they’re gonna laugh at you, and I’m gonna have to stop them.”

The goddess looked across the room at the nervous pegasus.

The nervous pegasus was suddenly engulfed in a bright light, and disappeared.

…

And landed in front of Tia a second later for the mini-horn alicorn to give her a hug. “Thank you for being honest with me Rainbow Dash,” Celestia said before she pushed the other pony to legs length. “But no bucking any of my other little ponies over me, okay? There’s a reason I decided to look like this.”

Then, we told Rainbow about the whole thing.

By the time she was done, the pegasus had her face scrunched up. “So uh…why not just talk to her?” my favorite pony asked, proving once again that despite her…Rainbow Dashness, she could still manage some common sense every now and then.

“Do you think I haven’t?” she asked with a roll of the eyes. “I’ve told her we’re equals about every time we’ve seen each other since she became an alicorn, but she still bows and calls me Princess,” she mimicked in a very childish voice on the last word. “So I throw away my crown and offer to be her friend, I even show her my fears, faults and tears, and…it works for a little bit. But an hour later, I’m back to being Princess Celestia the Perfect in Twilight’s eyes, and even I can have a moment of weakness without messing it up apparently.”

All of a sudden, I started to get a sinking feeling.

“So…what I’m getting is…”

Mostly because Rainbow’s expression had become this dark, gleeful smile.

“…you're pranking her…”

Oh dear Lord in Heaven no, I thought to myself.

“…into thinking you’re not super awesome.”

Celestia’s mouth curved upwards. “Well, it’d be more accurate to say I want to convince Twilight that I’m not perfect by showing her a few moments of me acting in a…slightly exaggerated way. But basically, yes.”

“You want some help?”

“Well I do have a plan, but it’s more of a basic framework than anything else so…” The smile on Tia’s face became an evil grin. “What did you have in mind?”

And then I could only groan and try very unsuccessfully to curb the evil plot of what were two of the top three pranksters in Equestria away from something that would cause the pony apocalypse.

You know those old people that think they know everything because they’ve been around for eighty years? The ones you can’t talk out of anything? The ones that think they’re always right? Even when you explain something and manage to change their minds, they’re right back to being the old them ten seconds later? Yeah, those people.

Imagine those people, then multiply their...old peopleness by one hundred, and you might come close to Celestia. She likes to teach instead of talk and make things happen when she wants them to instead of having everything go at its own pace. Just look at the cutie mark screw job she had Twilight pull on her friends, if Twilight was meant to become an alicorn, she wouldn’t have needed Tia to shove a book under her nose and it would have eventually happened thanks to Twilight living in Equestria.

But Tia wanted it right then and there, so she got it, and actually left RD emotionally scared in the process.

On the other hand, I kind of understood why she did it. She was immortal. While a lot of people probably figured that would make someone lethargic since there would always be a tomorrow, for Celestia it tended to do the exact opposite. After all, she was the immortal one, but everyone else wasn’t. They would pass on, and all she would have of them were memories. So, she would make as many memories as possible with the time that she was given.

Which was probably why the second we got into the private carriage that Twilight got for us after walking down a few hallways that were so suspiciously empty of guards I would have been fearing someone was getting ready to try and assassinate Princess Celestia, Tia reached over and copped a feel on Rainbow’s ass so hard the Dash’s eyes went wide.

Me and Twilight had pretty much the same reaction as the pegasus, and could only sit there silently in upright doggystyle position as the pseudo-pegasus with the aurora mane leaned over in our four pony carriage to practically pin her prey against the side of the little moving room.

“Oh my little Dashie, you really are an athlete, aren’t you?” the goddess in mortal form asked in a seductive tone before licking her lips. “That plot of yours…I could bounce a bit it you’ve made it so firm. That toned body, that dedication to your dream, you have no idea how sexy it is.”

A big purple wing blocked my view, and my ears were full of Twilight’s attempts to speak when Tia moved in for a kiss. “P-Princes, w-we’re in a carriage!”

With the absence of a loud smack of lips detaching, I guess Tia let Twilight get to her before she could get her mack on with Rainbow. As I managed to push the Twilight’s wing back down, I noticed Tia was giving Twilight a rather…lustful smile. “And what a lovely idea it was for you to fetch one for us Twilight. Now, even in the middle of the street we can have some private time for a little-”

“D-Discourse!” the pretty purple pony princess proclaimed in a panic.

Personally, I think Tia had a different prefix for the second half of that word in mind.

While Tia gave a little giggle as her Scent gave off a wave of mirth with only the hint of affectionate lust that she was displaying, I could Smell Twilight’s own desires rising up from the depths of her embarrassment, while Rainbow’s sadness…completely knocked me out of my teasing mood and made me look over to the pegasus in concern.

“Rainbow, are you okay?” I asked empathetically.

I hoped she wasn’t just sad over not getting to make out with Celestia, which I seriously doubted judging by what I was getting from her. She had even been expecting it after all. Still, I had seen Tia when Equestria went dark and...she was a pretty naughty princess. I wouldn’t put it past the goddess to get some enjoyment out of the deal.

The only consolation my conscience provided was that the two of them had quickly gone over the basic outline of everything the goddess was planning while Twilight had been away, and one of Tia’s controls on her actions was that any activity between the two of them would involve ninety percent of the effort on her part, and ten to Rainbow. If Dash didn’t want something to happen, she wouldn’t bridge the one inch gap that Celestia put between them. Celestia had even stressed that everything they were to do was Rainbow’s choice.

Otherwise, she just would have used me, and with Tia being a super adorkable pony at the moment I wouldn’t have been able to say no. So, I owed Rainbow big.

Really big.

Personal slave for life big.

…which I kind of already was, so…yeah.

With the attention of three sort-of alicorns on her, the pegasus closed in on herself and gave a nervous laugh. “Y-Yeah, just um…bad memories.”

I reviewed the conversation for a second, focusing on how Tia went just yakked on and on about Rainbow’s ass and sighed. “Is this about your looks again?”

“What?” both Twilight and Tia asked at the same time.

Judging by Rainbow’s flinch, it was.

Celestia’s playful mood died in an instant, and was replaced by one hundred percent genuine concern before she looked at me and Twilight. “Alright, I missed something. What’s going on?”

Rainbow tensed, but I wasn’t about to let her off. She had two of the people/ponies that cared about her most in the world in front of her, and I was pretty damn sure Celestia liked her a lot more than just as a piece of tail to chase. So I decided to fill them in. “Rainbow’s got some issues with her looks. Don’t ask me why.”

Celestia looked over to Rainbow.

Twilight looked over to me. “What do you mean issues?”

Rainbow looked around like she wanted to be anywhere else than where she was right now. I half expected to see her try dashing out the window but...it was pretty small and...two divine beings in the room kind of made any escape attempts pointless.

“Do you want us to drop it?” Celestia asked the pegasus before Rainbow looked over to her. “Because we will, after this. I know how important your image is to you Rainbow Dash, I know how a good deal of your self worth is derived from the eyes of others. So let me tell you now, I have lived for longer than Equestria has existed, and I have never seen a pegasus as beautiful as you.”

And then Tia extended her wing and drew the other pony into a hug before she kissed Rainbow on top of her head as she ran her hoof across the other pony’s back. It was a sign of pure affection, absent of the lust that been there a moment before.

We continued on in silence, as least insofar as the interior of the carriage was concerned. Outside was the usual Equestrian background noise you’d expect to find in a city like Canterlot. Horseshoes on streets, kids crying out ‘extra extra’ the occasional hawker at a fruit stand or something, and a few noises I couldn’t identify. The sound kept my mind busy until Dash spoke up.

“I never really had a coltfriend before,” Rainbow began. “Everypony always went after Fluttershy. I didn’t really mind it for awhile you know, it um…everypony I met would have only slowed me down.

“Then I um…met Soarin,” she said before I caught a whiff of sadness and Tia tightened her embrace. “First time, it was just that meet and everything at the Best Young Fliers. First time I saw the Wonderbolts up close when they weren’t signing autographs and I had to get out of the way for another pony wanting a hoof print or signature. I got to eat lunch with all of them, and…he was the youngest and kinda cute.

“So um…when I saw him at the wedding, I asked him to dance, and we did. It was awesome...sort of,” she said. “Probably thought he owed me for helping to save Equestria so many times, you know? Then I asked him to…” She took in a deep breath. When Rainbow started again, her voice lacked even the hint of emotion it had before. “I asked him if he wanted to go out on a date, nothing ya know, major. Just the two of us.”

When she paused to take another deep breath, Twilight spoke. “R-Rainbow, you don’t have to-”

But Rainbow kept talking before the little goddess was even done. “He said I was a fun dance, but there’s no way he’d ever b-be interested in a flat-flanked filly with stallion wings l-like m-me,” she said with tears in her eyes. “S-So I know you don’t really-I mean, I know you’re just being nice Princess. You don’t...you can...um…”

I had to take a deep breath to help me hold in my anger. My right pony-arm trembled at the sight of Rainbow fixing to cry, and I nearly jumped when I felt Twilight wrap her fetlock around mine in a pony handhold before she spoke.

“Princess Celestia not being nice Rainbow,” the purple pony princess spoke up. “In fact, she’s not lying to make you feel better at all.”

“I’m not Rainbow, truly,” Celestia added.

Rainbow gulped down like she was literally swallowing her emotion. “Oh come on, I-”

A glow of purple magic closed Rainbow’s mouth a second before Twilight began to speak in a controlled voice that I had come to know as her ‘lecture’ tone. It was kind of even and dull, but it was also something she could easily control and not allow emotion into. “Princess Celestia pre-dates Equestria by twenty some years. During this time, the pegasi were the main protectors of all three tribes. What they valued most of all was the ability to fly and fight, how much padding you had on your plot, or whether or not your mane reached your hooves didn’t matter at all to them. Not At All! Once Equestria was founded and the princesses could protect everypony, the pegasi started adapting earth and unicorn customs, and definitions of beauty.

“But Princess Celestia grew up before that,” Twilight went on. “Her formative years were when pegasi with fit flanks, strong legs, and super muscular wings were the epitome of pegasi physical perfection. So the princess saying you’re the prettiest pegasus pony she’s possibly ever puckered up to is not a platitude. It’s pure fact.”

I put a wing around Twilight and pulled her in to kiss my girl on the nose to help calm her down. I knew when Twilight went into alteration mode, it meant she was a pretty pissed purple pony princess. And judging by the amount of Ps being passed around, I would have put her at…sixty five percent of the way to purely pissed off.

Twilight leaned in to nuzzle me fiercely before whispering in my ear. “I can’t believe that…plothole Soarin said something like that to her!”

I could only nod. If not, I probably would have spoken my thoughts out loud. Note to self, KILL SOARIN, and then Tiger Woods his image with a changeling double just to add insult to injury.

Or maybe I could just toss him into Tartarus. If I knew where it was. I’d have to ask Twilight, or maybe Celestia. Of course I’d need to make sure it was a suitable hell for the monster that hurt my Dashie first...and not tip my hand before meting out punishment somehow. Hmm, that’s a thought, I wonder if I can talk Tia into a field trip for next week’s class.

“Oh and Princess Celestia,” Twilight spoke up with a much happier tone and Scent than she had a moment ago. Even her adoration seemed to have gone up from what it had been a moment before. “Fae and I have kissed Rainbow an average of ten times a day so far, not counting sexual situations. So if you’re going to make out with her on what’s left of our trip, you need to get at least five in before we get to the Garden.”

The announcement kind of threw me for a loop, but…well, Twilight had mentioned keeping score plenty of times in our relationship, so I didn’t get put out of action by my surprise for too long. On the other hand...did Twilight just tell Tia to make out with Rainbow?

The oddity of Twilight’s words seemed to confuse Dash out of her funk, and she suddenly sat up. “Um…what?”

Celestia’s mouth curved into a semi-Cheshire smile, and she licked her lips. There was a little bump in the road as Tia shifted her weight, and second later, Rainbow was laying underneath the goddess that reeked of lust. “Well now, shall we pick up where we left off, my lovely little Rainbow? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it.”

I had to hold in a laugh as Rainbow went red. “Um…well…”

“Oh come on Rainbow,” Twilight encouraged her. “I promise I won’t get flustered this time. Now kiss!”

When the pegasus went wide eyed, Celestia smiled down at her. “Rainbow, it’s okay if you-mmph!” was as far as the apparent pegasus got before the real one covered Celestia’s mouth with her mortal lips. It didn’t take the goddess long to recover, and a second later, Tia was feeling Dash’s flank up again.

Their lips smacked...

Twilight just melted into me, and put so much of her weight I had to scoot over to the side of the carriage to prop myself up. Then she shifted around, and put her head on my shoulders. “I love you Fae.”

...and their tongues danced, With Tia’s dragging Rainbow’s out of her mouth as she came up for air.

It was a pretty weird reaction to the goings on in front of us, but…I’d take the reminder. Still… “What happened to that little bit of jealously I was getting from you a second ago?” I whispered into her ear.

Then Tia went down on Rainbow again.

A tiny blush crept up onto Twilight’s cheeks, and she shook it off with a minor move of her head. “The two mares I love most in this world are finding happiness with each other. This…this is all going to work out. Why should that cause me any jealousy?”

Thankfully, or unfortunately, all depending on if you’re into clop or not, we only got about a two minute show from the randy couple of our quad before the carriage reached its destination. Twilight and Rainbow agreed to get the thing parked, and the pull team off to a slightly less ritzy eatery across the street...

“So how was she at kissing?” Twilight asked the other feathered pony.

Rainbow let out a little giggle. “Let’s just say, experience really counts for something.”

…while Tia and I waited by the building.

For some reason, every unicorn that passed us, which seemed to be the only foot traffic in the part of town we had come to, gave us either a dirty look, or a grimace. Considering the clown suit Tia was in, I couldn’t blame them.

“Well, that didn’t exactly go as planned,” I mumbled to the apparent pegasus.

Of course the original plan had been to embarrass the hell out of Twilight with some overly-friendly caressing by Tia that I had been on the receiving end more than once in my dreams, followed by a few small kisses that Dash had the option of backing out of and simply faking with a few angle tricks.

Instead, Twilight was treated to soft core pony porn, and apparently…she liked it. She liked it alot. Not just aroused liked it either. Real happiness inducing liked.

“Perhaps not but…I was glad we were able to help Rainbow,” Celestia said with a little smile. “How a mare like that can’t see her own beauty…” The goddess lowered her head and shook it. “I just don’t understand.”

I didn’t either but…Tia gave me the definition of pony sexiness I had, so it really wasn’t something I could judge. Plus, there were other things we needed to talk about away from the other girls. I didn’t want it hanging over the date.

And teenage human angst wouldn’t wait for anyone. “Is there something wrong with Sunset?” I asked before gritting my teeth and groaning at the stupid question. I knew she had some kind of problem going on, but didn’t want to tell me for some reason. “I mean, what’s wrong with Sunset?”

Tia tensed, and looked over to me out of the corner of her eye. “She asked me not to tell you.”

Since it was ’asked’ instead of told, I knew I had already won that little coming argument. “Tia. Please, I’m worried about her.” After the mess of emotions I had picked up in the morning...I knew something had to be up.

“She got reminded that she wasn’t a pony,” Celestia said. Then, at my questioning glance Tia let out a sigh. “The breezie briefing, remember? Sunset…first ponies thought she was some exotic pet, then everypony looking at her oddly and then…well, the result being, she’s been reminded about her lack of four legs again.”

I winced at that one. With the Crystal Empire incident shaking Sunset like it did, and what she said after coming home…maybe bringing her out of Ponyville, or to anyplace that didn’t include trained military men that knew to keep their damn mouths shut when it came to shit like talking to the human was a bad idea. “I’m sorry about that. She was giving me help with learning magic. If-if she had only told me-”

Tia put a hoof on my shoulder, and I was treated to one of her empathetic looks that just reminded me why I put up with all her teasing every few nights. Despite how annoying she could be, Celestia was the kindest creature I knew. And hot. One could never understate a hot chick’s ability to get away with anything.

“This is exactly why she doesn’t tell you,” the goddess with the god awful hair. “She thinks you worry about her too much already.”

That got a snort from me. “More like I don’t worry enough.” I mumbled to myself. Honestly, I should have figured something out along those lines even back at the breezie convention. I was the fucking human, I was supposed to be able to read her body language better than the ponies. The second she started feeling sad, I should have seen it.

But no, I got too fucking reliant on my sense of Smell. I knew what ponies were feeling as good as they did, so I stopped prodding and went with a wait and see scenario that seemed to work well enough when we got home the first time. I decided that Twilight’s little freak outs over nothing but the size of her alicorn ass were more important than really talking to a girl that had potentially been shattered in more ways than one.

I was such a fucking idiot.

Hell, I even bet she knew what was going on with that whole cure idea was me just blowing smoke out my ass to give her a false hope. She was a magical genius after all.

I looked back up to the fake pegasus. “Tia…” Nothing more would come out. I tried to tell her the truth about Sunset’s chances of me fixing things but…I couldn’t.

I just…needed to buy time. Just because I didn’t have a solution now didn’t mean I wasn’t going to find one...eventually.

…right?

“Hey girls, ready to go?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin and the coat on top of it at Dash’s words, and looked back to see her behind us, with Twilight still a little ways off. It really wasn’t fair that even though I was with a whole race of creatures that made clopping sounds everywhere they walked in a town of nothing but stone walkways, I probably had the one pony who could still sneak up on me.

Tia giggled at…something while she looked at me, and turned her head to Rainbow, her fifteen little pigtails just kind of shaking as she moved. “Well the castle and the ride here didn’t seem to work.”

“No kidding,” I grumbled. Judging how Twilight Smelled after Tia and Rainbow started making out in front of us…the deepness of her affection….

Yeah, I think it was safe to say Celestia might have turned her into a voyeur or something. Next time two of us to got frisky, I was a little afraid of Twilight literally sitting the whole thing out somewhere off to the side while she watched and took notes.

“So we will have to move ahead with the third phase of our plan,” the metamorphosed goddess with the pink coat and mess of multi-colored hair said.

Rainbow put a foreleg around Tia and smiled. “Just follow my lead Princess. No way she’s going to think you’re all…prissy by the time I’m done.”

More than likely though, Twilight wouldn’t want anything to do with Celestia ever again.

Chapter 32: The Incredibly Fairytale Dating Experience of Pegasi and Pretty Pony Princesses

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Chapter 32: The Incredibly Fairytale Dating Experience of Pegasi and Pretty Pony Princesses

The pony version of Olive Garden was a hell of a lot ritzier than the human one. Golden plates and several fancy paintings adorned the walls, while the ground had a carpet as well as the pillows with backs that ponies used as chairs for each of the tables. Celestia got us in with a reservation under the name Aurora Blast, and I found myself needing something to take my mind off some of the odd looks the other ponies were giving her as we made our way to a table that wasn’t quite in the center of the restaurant, but close enough so that everyone got a good look at Tia.

Usually I would have just confronted whoever gave one of the girls a dirty look, but I’ll admit that I had no idea if a few of the frowns Tia attracted was because of her less than magnifique dress, or because of some minor pony racism that was a leftover from the Pegasus Union taking unicorn jobs coming into play.

While Tia ignored it and Rainbow…well, I guess she didn’t notice, I Smelled Twilight start to become more and more nervous. But I only think the atmosphere was a little to blame for Twilight’s growing anxiety.

We had talked and partied with Celestia plenty of times before, but the carriage ride had really taken the relationship to a new level. I think it was starting to sink in just what that meant to me, and…Twilight too of course.

The pink pegasus in front of us was just an illusion, a disguise Tia had thrown on. In reality, Celestia was a giant of a pony that was twice our size, three times our weight, and God only knew our superior in age. She was a goddess in every sense of the word.

Just how in the hell were we supposed to…satisfy someone like that?

I could date her, that was a proven fact…kind of. I’d been doing it every night on my terms. But in Equestria, Celestia would be on her home turf, in her natural form, and in a far more dominating presence someone with a single foot height advantage. The only way dream Tia would have come close to real Celestia is if she suddenly added three feet, and was able to use her godlike powers.

All of a sudden, the sexual fantasies that may have accidentally popped into my head since Tia showed me what looked good on a pony seemed…rather impossible. But then those were quickly replaced by images of all three of us covering the goddess body and taking care of various tasks in a one VS threesome type orgy.

So instead of comforting anyone that was giving us an odd look, and to keep from trying to decide between me and Rainbow who would get Celestia’s mouth and lower lips while Twilight took care of her horn, I engaged in some small talk with Twilight to help take care of some growing curiosity for me, and the growing nervousness that the alicorn was carrying. I had to keep the date going as smooth as I could for her after all. “So, what’s up with us going to places called Garden on these four pony dates?”

Twilight looked over to me in confusion for a few seconds, and then realization dawned on her face. “Oh right, sometimes I forget you’re from…out of town,” she replied, using out little code for talking about my origins before she fell into the all too familiar tone involving explanations. “Gardens are names given to the best restaurant in the township or city. Usually after getting this title, they change their name to reflect their most popular dish.”

I frowned. “But…olives?”

Tia fell back a bit and flanked me. “They’re imported from the Griffon Empire. To be honest, I think the name was chosen because olive dishes cost the most, rather than taste the best.”

Images of me feeding Tia said black spheres with my magic while she lounged on an expensive couch and wore some Roman robes came to mind…with Rainbow and Twilight being the ones to give her sexual satisfaction.

“Is something wrong Omnifarious?” the goddess asked gently.

In my mind, I moved on to laying on top of the giant alicorn, passing the food from mouth to mouth, using our tongues as the means of conveyance. It took a shake of my head to banish the image. “N-Nothing! Everything’s great! Just great.”

As long as I could keep my mind on task, my dress would be left dry and everything would be fine.

For some reason, Tia’s Scent became all amused as she smiled at me, and I got the distinct impression she knew I was lying. There was also the weird feeling that she might have even known what I was thinking but…that was probably just me being hopeful.

And paranoid.

On second thought, it was just me being paranoid.

We took our seats a minute later, with Rainbow on my left, Twilight on my right, and Tia sat across from me wearing a little smile while she was gazed on in turn by Twilight with a look that said the little alicorn was already picking out their wedding venue.

Our waitress lowered a paper in the middle of the table while each of us were given menus. “We have a full selection of cider for you to chose from.”

Hearing that bit of good news Rainbow reached forward and snatched the cider list out of the air. “Yoink,” she said before taking a look and smiling. “Hey, they got Sweet Apple Acres cider, we’ve got to get some of this!”

Tia nodded rather enthusiastically, and once the order had been placed, the waitress headed off to fetch Rainbow’s booze while we were left to look through our menus and make some small talk.

“Well Omnifarious, it seems you're adjusting well to your situation,” the goddess sitting across from me said with a smile on her face that I would almost call lustful.

I put down my menu. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tia’s smile widened to a grin. “For all the complaints I hear at night, you do look rather lovely in your dress, and your mane is done up wonderfully,” she complimented. “Did Rarity help you?”

“Nah, Rarity’s over in the Crystal Empire,” Rainbow spoke up from behind cover as I saw her flipping through her menu and frowning at it. “Fae did that all herself with magic. Dress, hair, and gems.”

I gave a glower to Dash, but her menu probably blocked it. “Yeah well, this is important to…every pony so…” I left the rest unsaid. “Trust me, if I could be here as a guy, I would.”

“I see,” Celestia said with a ton of thoughtfulness in her tone.

“I’m sorry.” The odd apology got both my attention and Celestia’s, and we looked over to Twilight. “It’s just with Sunset and everything else, I haven’t had much time to work on a gender transformation spell that perfectly balances your magic with a normal pony’s.”

Some regret creeped into Tia’s Scent, and I felt just about as bad when I looked over to Twilight. “Hey um…it’s okay Twilight,” I told her.

Well, it wasn’t really alright, but I knew she hated to be reminded of that less than little failure. As for me, the situation was...manageable. Humans are nothing if not adaptable. If I could get used to four legs and using my mouth like a hand, I could...deal with a certain chromosome configuration.

Celestia also nodded. “Do not feel so badly Twilight, the species transformation spell I reworked was ready made, what you are attempting is unknown territory. You are wise to be cautious. Remember when I showed you the battlefield where Luna and Celestia fought Discord the first time. It shows you the dangers of mixing magic haphazardly.”

That got a frown from me and as I looked over to Twilight, some anger built up in my mind. “You’ve already seen it?” That place had been on some of my top places to see in Equestria! “Since when?” I asked.

“Since you moved to Ponyville,” Twilight replied. “I asked Princess Celestia for help, and she showed me the battlefield where her and Discord’s magic mixed, turning his unstable transformations into something more permanent.” A look of disgust crossed the alicorn’s features and revulsion filled her Scent. “Trust me Fae, it’s not a place you want to visit. The land is twisted, the air smells like a bathroom, and when the wind blows there’s a weird shrieking sound.”

With Twilight’s distress, I let the matter drop and looked down at the menu. “So um…what tastes good here?” I asked.

Tia’s Scent took on a bit of a gleeful Smell, and she looked over to Twilight with a smile. “Well, I would probably go with the name and try something with olives,” she said before her excitement increased. “But as for an appetizer, I do enjoy asparagus, don’t you Twilight?”

From her place beside me, Twilight blanched and I could Smell more than a bit of revulsion creep back past the excitement and nervousness being with Celestia was causing. “Um…asparagus?” she asked.

I had to hold in a bit of laughter while Twilight gulped down her digestive unease.

The alicorn in question hated the stuff. During our last trip to Canterlot, she had decided to try something new and experienced a…violent reversal of the digestive process upon eating some of the vegetable. And of course, I had told Tia about Twilight’s least favorite food. Didn’t really think Celestia enjoyed the thing that much either.

“I-I think we should select a main dish first,” Twilight stammered before her tone fell into the range she used when quoting something. “The appetizers should compliment the meal.” Then Twilight ducked behind her menu to hide from Tia’s gaze.

We talked about food for awhile, with Rainbow joining in to complain that everything she saw looked way too fancy, was too long to pronounce, included ingredients she had no idea about, or looked way too expensive even with Tia paying for everything. From the looks of things, she had just picked something a random and was looking at desserts in the back pages of the menu.

Tia…wasn’t as comical as I thought she would be without magic to move things around. She didn’t even look hampered as she opened the protected papers like a normal person and scanned the various dishes with her eyes like she had done it plenty of times before. She must have been practicing or something, because when I slipped into a disappointed frown, she just smiled back at me with a kind of ‘HA-HA!’ look.

Twilight decided not to ask Celestia what she should have for lunch during the whole time we read through everything.

I just looked through the foods for anything crunchy. Being a changeling meant that I couldn’t taste anything, or even had a need for food. Even the unicorn transformation magic that make me look like an alicorn hadn’t changed that. On the rare instances that I did eat, texture was the only thing I could really enjoy. Well, that and temperature.

When the waitress came back with a couple of waters and four empty wine glasses, the pegasus frowned as a large bottle filled with nearly transparent liquid dropped onto the table courtesy of some unicorn magic.

“What’s that?” Rainbow grumbled.

The unicorn frowned, and I detected some annoyance as she replied. “Sweet Apple Acres sparkling cider,” our waitress explained.

Disappointment showed on Rainbow’s face, and she slumped forward enough to nearly touch the table with her chin. “But that’s sissy cider,” she whined before looking at the label closely. “Shoulda known in a place like this. Least its not soft.”

The waitress frowned at the pegasus, then cleared her throat. “Your orders?”

Despite her mood, Rainbow was the first to order. “Oat burger and hay fries.”

Everyone at the table froze, and I could have sworn that half of the restaurant’s patrons turned to look at us. At first I thought Rainbow was just being herself, ordering something that any place that served food was bound to have despite it not being on the menu, but I looked into the back of the miniature book and there was a small section dedicated to ‘American foods’ and other non-delicate things that gave you a single bite of food with a thirty dollar price tag.

Twilight cleared her throat and leaned across the table. “Um Rainbow…you aren’t supposed to-”

“I’ll have the same,” Tia announced before she folded the menu up in her hooves and placed it in the center of the table.

The purple alicorn reared her head away from the table in obvious surprise. I picked up plenty confusion entering her scent to replace worry and a bit of anger, and then that was washed away by a calm, and…excitement? The last one threw me into a Twilight level of confusion.

“Me too!” she exclaimed before glancing over to Celestia for a few seconds and giving off a feeling of oddly placed pride.

I caved to peer pressure and did the same while taking a second to look around at the audience we had gained with our orders. Thanks to be being seated practically in the middle of the place, it almost felt like every eye in the room was looking at us thanks to the odd faux pas that had just been committed. Although, exactly what the hell it was…well, okay I might have had some idea.

What with the restaurants we were in being the top of the exclusive restaurants, in the most snobbish city in Equestria, it wasn’t hard for me to think they had to get some ‘commoners’ coming in every now and again to sample the high-class food. The fact that us commoners just came in and ordered the lowest brow of food possible, well that probably got the attention of all the ponies that were going out of their way to look down their noses at us.

And at that point, a little bit of my apprehension disappeared. While I was going along with Celestia’s plans rather than try and stir up trouble in the group, which would cause some tension between her and Twilight, I knew something of Tia’s plan was going to blow up in her face and probably burn a building or two down.

Until I got the ‘we’re better than you’ song and dance from the ponies around our table, all of whom looked to be unicorns, I was feeling a bit of pity for anyone caught up in the crossfire when Tia’s plans came crashing down. But still, after their visible response, I was more than a little apathetic at the Grand Galloping Gala guests.

“And would you like anything else?” the waitress asked.

Twilight practically jumped up as she responded with a little too much energy. “No we’re good! Perfectly fine! Got all of what we need right here!”

As the waitress left us in peace, Tia gave Twilight a measuring look, as if she was trying to judge something.

I decided to back Twilight by making some conversation. “So um…Twilight, how is the whole magic mirror thing going?” I asked.

Despite my rather extensive collection of magical artifacts that Tia and Luna had me keeping an eye on, I still didn’t know jack about anything pertaining to the workings of mystical doodads. Twilight and Sunset had a much better grasp of the things, even if Twilight could be the only one working on them.

“Good and bad,” she said with a little hesitation. “I…well…the transformation magic must be tied to the other end of the portal, so me being able to deconstruct it without access to the other end is…unlikely.”

A small smile appeared on her face, and Twilight let out a tiny laugh. “But at the same time…working with Sunset. I have to wonder what it would have been like if she had stayed and…been around when I was a student.”

Across from me, Celestia’s emotions fell into a bit of a melancholy. “If she…if I had managed to show Sunset the error of her ways. I imagine she would have been the one teaching you about friendship Twilight. Instead of…well, the other way around.”

Twilight’s mood dropped a little as well, and looked over to Rainbow Dash to silently plead for some help while the alicorn spoke. “I should have brought her back with me the first time.”

“Hey whoa!” Rainbow exclaimed before she reached over to rip off the cork on her bottle of cider with her mouth. “Enough of that. We’re on a date, so come on and let’s drink up, tell some funny stories, and all that. Sunset’s back home now, and Twilight’s already shown she’s got more brains than Starswirl- and hey Tia, how come we don’t have a traveling show of awesomeness like he does?”

As a glass of cider slid under the pink apparent pegasus’s nose, Celestia let out a little laugh and looked over to Rainbow. “A museum hmm? I would like to remind you of all those windows made in the honor of you and your friends Rainbow Dash. The only things that bears Starswirl’s name in Canterlot Castle are a few bookshelves nopony cares to look at, present company excluded.”

And then the goddess of the sun in mortal form, or maybe disguise, casually took a drink of her cider.

Horror, panic, surprise, and disbelief assaulted my psychic nose, all of it coming from Twilight as Celestia knocked back her drink before the purple alicorn spoke. “Pr-Prin…Tia! W-What’re you…but-wha?”

The goddess turned to look at Twilight with what I could Smell was genuine confusion before she passed a glass of the light golden liquid to Twilight. “Is something wrong?”

“Y-You drink hard cider?” Twilight stuttered in in some kind of shocked horror that leaned more towards the S than the H.

Tia rolled her eyes. “While I’m hardly an alcoholic, I don’t run away from the from it.”

Twilight looked down at the glass as if Celestia had offered her a cup with iocane powder in it. Nervousness built up in her Scent bordering on panic, and I could practically hear her going ‘what do I do?’ over and over again in her mind as she gazed at the thing.

Then she looked up at us. “I’ll be right back,” Twilight said before she stood off her pony seat and grabbed the wineglass to bring it up and knock the whole thing back. Then, she headed off towards the restroom in a rush.

I looked back at Celestia with a frown. “Did you plan this too?” I asked evenly. The comment about asparagus, Celestia and I had worked out and made it an appetizer so Twilight wouldn’t ruin her main course, and could simply turn it down after ordering it.

“No way!” Rainbow exclaimed. “I didn’t even know Twilight didn’t do hard cider! She was in line during Cider Season like everypony else.” Then Dash cleared her throat and looked away. “But uh…I don’t think she was around after five…when AJ and the others started working on the hard apple cider trees.”

My inner world builder demanded to know just how the hell they had alcoholic apples, but…with how Twilight had run off…

“I think I’m going to go check on her,” I told the other two before getting up.

“Hey Cele-uh, Tia, can I ask you something?” Rainbow said while I headed towards the bathroom. I didn’t stick around to hear the rest of the conversation.

A quick right before I hit the entrance and another turn to send me down the corridor got me into the little fillies room. What with Canterlot being a major city, the interior of the bathroom looked pretty much like a human one. There were sinks built into the wall, and plenty of stalls where the pony toilets were kept separate from each other, all of which would have left a human feeling very…nature-ish if they had to be used by her. Twilight had her forelegs up on the row of sinks. From the looks and sound of things…her rather obvious plan to grab the cider and run somewhere to spit it out had obvious hit a snag.

“I swallowed it! I can’t believe I swallowed it!” she exclaimed in a panic before clutching her head with her hooves. “Ahhh! I can already feel my brain cells dying!”

She was actually so distracted, I didn’t think Twilight noticed me until I put a wing across her back and spoke into her ear. “Okay, calm down beautiful,” I told her before giving the panicking purple pony princess a peck on the cheek. “You’re cuter when you’re stressed, but not by that much.”

Twilight reacted with a little jerk of her head that turned it in my direction. “Shh!” she, well shushed me. “I have to make sure everything’s intact. Okay, my name is Twilight Sparkle, I was born on-”

I stopped the impromptu systems scan with a kiss on her lips, and held on while she tried to talk for a few more seconds before I managed to wrestle Twilight’s tongue into submission. Which, unfortunately, forced the alicorn into a retreat that broke the kiss. “F-Fairy!”

“What?” I asked with a coy smile and more than a bit of lust. “I thought you liked it when we kissed.” I added another peck to her lips, then worked my way down the side of Twilight’s neck. “And I missed breakfast.”

“This isn’t helping me relax!” Twilight exclaimed.

I smiled. “But you’re not panicking anymore,” I told her with a smile.

Twilight whined. “No, now I’m just…oh buck, now I’m thinking of you and…yep, there’s Celestia.”

A frown crossed my face. “No Rainbow?” All our…whatever the hell we were deserved to have all of us in Twilight’s little sexual fantasy.

“She’s off to the side recovering. Thought she could handle Celestia on her own and got worn out too quickly,” Twilight explained evenly. My girlfriend’s sexual fantasies were quite…inclusive. To be honest, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the whole thing hadn’t been running in the back of her head since Tia kissed Rainbow back in the carriage.

I giggled and finished working my way down Twilight’s neck, something that took a lot longer than it would have on a human. Then I got face to face with her again. “But you’re not thinking about the alcohol anymore?”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “No.”

“And if you’re running all your simulations,” I said, using the name Twilight like to call her little clop fantasies. “Then that big, gorgeous brain of yours must be working just fine.”

Twilight let out a good-natured sigh and smirked. “Point taken.”

“And if you’re still going over just how we’re gonna get along in bed,” I went on, kind of curious about how Twilight’s assessment of the situation was. She was a lot more grounded than me in the fantasy department. “You still must think us getting together is more than just a little possible.”

A frown appeared on Twilight’s face. “I never said we weren’t!” she exclaimed before letting out a little grunt. “Okay, yes. I’m a little nervous, but…this is Ce-Tia! She’s…I’ve been dreaming of this since I was a filly! And yes, I may have given it up for a time, but-”

Another kiss on the nose stopped Twilight. “I know Twilight, you told me, remember?” I reminded her. “To be honest…you’re the reason I said yes to her.”

Twilight blinked. “What?”

“Listen,” I told her evenly. “I like Tia. She’s beautiful and kind, and a million other things. She’s a solid ten in every way I can think of, but…it’s like with you and Rainbow. I’m giving her a chance, for you. Do you know what that means?”

Twilight gulped. “You mean you don’t-”

I cut her off before she could finish. “It means I’m not nearly as nervous about this as you are.” Which was true, more or less. Sexually frustrated as pictures of giant pony princesses did the horizontal danced in my head, but I wasn’t as nervous as Twilight. “And I’m sitting right next to you. So if you need help, I’m here, and calm, and ready to do my part get the girl, okay?”

For a minute, I was afraid I said something wrong when I Smelled Twilight’s fear go up. “But…you don’t like…Celestia?”

“I love you, and I love Rainbow,” I told her while looking into the mare’s eyes. “But I just like Celestia. And maybe that will change. That’s what dating is for, right?”

Twilight took a few seconds, and then nodded. “Right. You’re right. Can’t believe I didn’t remember that. Well, the two of you do spend time asleep together, but I can’t imagine she’s done anything without proper human hormones. Just got to go on some dates, and then we can test all my pleasurable hypothesis!”

I had to force myself not to groan. Only Twilight could turn ‘sex fantasy’ into something completely unsexy.

“Now come on. Let’s go back before Rainbow drinks too much and…um, Fae? You’re the transformation expert, right?”

“More or less,” I replied, a little confused.

“Well, I know that the spell Tia is using is mostly…cosmetic, but…it has decreased her weight and…um…” Twilight paused longer than her usual ‘I’m trying to think of the right word here’ pause. Then she let out a little laugh, and shook her head. “Oh what am I thinking? She’d never let something like that happen.”

I head went a little off kilter as confusion started to weigh it down. “Twilight?”

The alicorn gave me a peck on the lips. “Thanks for coming after me. Now let’ get back to the others, okay?”

“-of course nopony actually called it the Sonic Rainboom back then. We went with the Aurora Blast,” the disguised goddess finished as Twi and I made it back to our table. “Done spitting out your cider Twilight?”

Twilight winced before she sat down. “Was I that obvious?”

I could tell by her Scent and smile that Tia wanted to laugh, but managed to hold off and just smiled. “Yes.”

“What was up with that anyway?” Rainbow asked.

“It was something my parents always told me,” she explained before continuing in a bad male imitation voice. “Twilight, alcohol kills brain cells, and you want to stay Celestia’s top student, right? If you drink hard cider, you’ll never be smart enough to keep up. Then she’ll have to expel you, and we’ll have to put you up for adoption, because who wants a former failed student of Celes-tia…” The alicorn stopped talking as the pink pony’s expression became grim. “W-Well um…besides you, I mean.”

As Tia took in a breath, I could Smell some of her anger slowly dissipate, and she put a smile back on her face. Although I could still Smell the anger coming from her, I sincerely doubted any of it was directed at Twilight. “Did your parents always use such…motivation?” she asked gently.

I’m guessing yes, I thought to myself. It would explain how the purple pony constantly catastrophized every problem she went into a panic over. And when I thought about it, her parents were a little on the worst case scenario side of things themselves when it came to predictions on how things would turn out. After all, changeling appears surrounded by family, and they think Shining and Twilight are being mind controlled.

“Pretty much, why?” she asked in confusion.

Before an answer came from the startled pink alicorn with the hidden horn, Rainbow let out a laugh. “Probably better than my mom and dad,” she piped in. “They were like, really super encouraging and all, but it was always… Rainbow, there’s first place, and the first place loser. Now what’re you gonna be?”

Although she said it with a snicker, my blood ran cold at that little bit of information. If Twilight’s parents really were ‘failure equals death’ and Rainbow’s had the ‘winning is the only thing that matters’ type, then it was no wonder they turned out the way they did.

But despite the rather terrifying beginning, those little comments opened up the flood of childhood stories that weren’t actually all that bad. Like any normal date, we went around the table, swapping silly stories about ourselves. Although the level of we had familiarity meant we weren’t all that concerned with embarrassment. Even Rainbow Dash...mostly.

Thankfully, Twilight managed to turn down the hard cider the second time around, and Celestia apologized for making her feel threatened as we started our round robin of storytelling.

Twilight told us all about her own little Cutie Mark Crusade, and her attempts to get a monster trapper cutie mark that ended with her and Shining Armor hightailing it out of a spooky cave before they even saw anything. Others had us laughing, but I just wanted to latch onto Twilight and hug the girl they sounded so adorable.

By the time she was done, I was looking over to the older goddess of our group. “Hey Tia, you sure the furthest in time we can go back is a couple of days? I kinda want to see how cute Twilight was as a filly.”

While my little alicorn blushed, Celestia rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Seven days is the limit,” she said. “Discord claimed he could go longer, but he just has this box that only creates an illusion to make ponies think they’ve gone back in time. And his view of the past is a rather twisted one I’m afraid.”

As the images that little statement brought to mind nearly killed my good mood, Celestia’s mouth curved upwards in a delightfully evil smile. “But I do know the recipe for a potion that will allow one who drinks it to view the past as if they were there, and even gives them a vision of what they want to see. I could make you one…with your permission of course Twilight.”

Twilight’s smile faded, and a nervous grin appeared. “You know how to make a potion of past visions too?” she asked before giving an uneasy laugh. “Can I just say that…well, remember that book that went mysteriously missing from the Canterlot Library when I was nine? Um...storm gremlins didn’t make a raincloud inside my house to ruin it.”

Rainbow’s stories were mostly about how she did back in flight camp, or in a Jr Speedsters race, with only a little information on her family. I wanted to ask her about Gilda, and how they met, but…it really wasn’t the best time for that kind of thing.

And then of course there was Tia’s stories about just what the hell a young goddess did when she was left unattended by her parents that were never around. Some of them were rehashes of stuff I had heard before, but others…

“Well of course I had to invade the Lunar Republic,” she said after another drink. “The economic conditions of the Solar Empire just wouldn’t do, so I gathered my army and attacked.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean economic conditions?”

Celestia giggled. “Well, when we were younger, Luna created a spell that allowed her to find gemstones with her magic, and we’d make crowns out of them with some twigs and such we found laying around the woods a few miles away. Of course hers were always bigger, and one day when we were playing princesses, I decided I wanted the bigger crown, and made my subjects into a army to attack her.” The smile slipped just a little as Celestia let out a sigh as she shook her head. “Stupid rabbits turned against me the second Luna gave them her pouty face,” she finished.

“You tried to take your little sister’s crown because it was bigger?” Rainbow asked with a smirk.

The goddess let out a defensive whine. “Well I was the older one. Besides, I was just going to take a few so they’d be equal,” she said while shifting her gaze around the table. “And I was ten! Foals are allowed to do stupid things when they just hit double digits.”

I snickered at Tia’s little story about how she and Luna used to play at being princesses, ruling over the animals they played with like they were subjects. Apparently, the younger sister had a bit of Fluttershy in her, because Tia said she was the one who always got the animals to do what they were told better than Celestia.

As we got done laughing at the currently pink sort-of pegasus, Rainbow looked over to me. “Okay Fae you’re turn. Tell us…um…what did you use to do when you were…you know, a monkey.”

Twilight’s breath caught, and she looked across the table and I had to reach over and grab her hoof to keep her from doing anything more while I wrestled with my own emotions about something I didn’t want to go into with her.

See, while I had family and everything that back on Earth, I didn’t really miss them all that much. I mean, there was a day or two way back when I was in the hive where that kind of mattered to me but…the need for survival, a bit of changeling influence, and some other more immediate problems needed my attention.

When everything was said and done with Chrysalis, the lies I had to tell to Twilight to keep her from thinking I was nuts allowed me to make it seem like I didn’t want to talk about my home out of missing it. The truth was…well…I didn’t really miss being human, or my family, or anything about Earth. I had moved on without even realizing it.

So I just gave Twilight a reassuring smile and looked over to Rainbow Dash. “Well I had a ton of little jobs over the years, but for the most part I either worked on my fathers ranch raising race horses, and later became a teacher,” I explained while an odd feeling of horror settled over me as a rather personal revelation hit. While my father had been a rancher, my mother had been a teacher.

Basically, I had become both my parents. It was…kind of disturbing really.

Of course, Dash’s ears perked up at the mention of racing horses, and she wasn’t about to let the currently little pony goddess of the sun get her turn at our round robin of questions and stories until she dragged every little detail out of me.

By the time she was done, Rainbow was…less than impressed.

“So wait a second,” she said, raising her hoofs. “Basically, you’ve got a bunch of little Sunset Shimmers riding around on Saddle Arabians and slapping them in the plot to make them go faster because they don’t want to, unless they do, but then they have to be held back? That sounds pretty stupid.”

“Until the final few yards,” Twilight added. “It’s like the Running of the Leaves when I placed fifth Rainbow. Everypony tired themselves out and I just overtook them with a steady pace, followed by a dash at the end.” She blinked and let out a little laugh. “Well, you know what I mean.”

Rainbow let out a little laugh. “Yeah, yeah. Just remember, this years gonna be different.”

Twilight snickered. “True, my new earth pony stamina and strength just may let me beat everypony,” she said before Rainbow’s expression turned to a frown, and Twilight winced a little. “Or maybe get third. You and Applejack are the odds on favorites, as long as you don’t try and fight each other again.”

I cleared my throat. “And what am I? Shredded wheat?”

“You’re barely three months old,” Twilight countered with a smile. “And there’s an age limit to the race.”

Celestia let out a little laugh. “Then perhaps I should join in the fun then.”

I froze, and so did the girls next to me.

Rainbow got her mouth working first. “Y-You?”

“Did you forget that Fall is my most favorite season? Or that I love…well, flying is more my thing, but a race on the ground sounds just as appealing,” Tia told her. “I’d have to go in disguise though.”

Worry coated Rainbow’s scent like a think coat. “Um…Tia. That’s um…oh ponyfeathers.”

Tia sighed. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about how I’ll take a loss,” she asked before a tiny smirk appeared on her face. “Or is it the possibility of defeat that makes you concerned?”

“…maybe both?”

The fake pegasus rolled her eyes, and then gave Rainbow a gentle smile. “Rainbow, my legs will be just as long as yours, and considering how much I sit around, I very much doubt you’ll be having any competition from me.”

Which I didn’t buy for a second. Disguised or not, Tia’s ‘Aurora Blast’ body was in peak physical condition, and she still had the power of a goddess fueling her magic. With pegasus reaction time and earth pony strength on top of stamina, she’d crush Rainbow Dash in a footrace.

Our food arrived at what had to be about three times as long as it should have taken to cook, and I was glad for the break in the conversation. Although the dread of what was to follow made me wonder if it was worse to have Rainbow start doubting herself over an upcoming race, or Twilight break down as Tia displayed the worst table manners possible…not that Twilight was a paragon of those either.

Still, I sat back and waited for Tia and Dash to start tossing fries back and forth, compete in how much food they could shove in their mouth a once, and maybe even start a drinking contest once we got our third bottle of cider.

And I waited.

And waited.

And…continued to wait as the girls…exercised a surprising amount of table manners insofar as the food. Even Twilight managed not to squirt ketchup everywhere when she bit into the smooshed together bunch of fried oats held aloft by her magic.

The conversations, with the laughter, smiles, and Rainbow’s penchant for talking loudly when she got excited before taking into the air and acting out some of her stories towards the end got us plenty of glares and a few mumbles. I caught a few ‘peasants’ and ‘sky farmer’ comments, which actually kind of made me wish Rainbow and Celestia had started a food fight or something so I could have nailed a few unicorns with fancy flaming side dishes that we being brought in to some tables.

Obviously, the Olive Garden catered to the one percent of the one percent, and I guessed they didn’t much like the fact Canterlot had been put back under pegasus weather jurisdiction.

Halfway done with her food, Tia looked up to me and smiled. It wasn’t her normal understanding smile of kindness, there was a bit of a…want to it, and I got the weird feeling that she was either checking me out, or fantasizing about having me for dessert. “Is there something wrong Omnifarious?”

I forced myself to un-tense, and looked down at my food while Twilight and Dash raided my fries, then back up to Tia. “N-No. It’s just um…your turn for a story Tia.”

And so our lunch continued as Celestia started going on about the time she raced Commander Hurricane (who I was surprised to find out was male) and ended up running into a griffon, literally. After the concussion wore off, she and Luna learned that with the founding of Equestria, the griffons considered the old pegasi borders null and void, so Luna and Tia had to renegotiate where the lines on the map were to be drawn, and bribed the griffon leader to keep the old pegasi borders intact.

“So who won the race?” Rainbow asked as she finished off the last of the fourth bottle of cider.

Celestia giggled a little. “Don’t remember. To be honest, it almost always depended on who managed to get in front first.”

I frowned. “What did that have to do with anything?”

The smile on Celestia’s face became a bit more lustful. “Well, the pegasi were more athletic back then, and Hurricane was the fastest one alive. He had such sweet flanks, and if I could get him excited during a race...well, the view from underneath wasn’t too bad either.”

I groaned at the response, and looked over to Celestia’s empty wineglass. I was pretty sure she wasn’t drunk but…the transformed goddess had to have been feeling a buzz. She drank about twice as much as Rainbow had, and although the sparkling cider was apparently of less alcoholic content than the brewsAJ made from the apples in the western orchard from being watered down and some other stuff, she could apparently still be affected by it.

“Okay, here’s a question,” I said. “Let’s say this all works out.” Which I was starting to have every confidence it might.

I mean, Twilight had already made her choice insofar as me. She had apparently had a little revelation about Rainbow sometime during the other day, no idea when or why though. Plus, she was even more into Tia than I had been into Rainbow when I showed up in Equestria. On top of which, she was a pony, they were big into the whole love and sharing thing.

Dash might not have been crazy about any of us but…I had seen her lean on Celestia during the ride over in the emotional sense, and she wasn’t the type of pony that shared a bed with others just for the hell of it. For a girl as sensitive as her, with that wall of brashness she put up to hide it, what she had might have been better than the base of fangasming her girlfriends had built our relationships on.

As for me, I was still a little crazy for Dashie, and my emotions for Twilight were rooted pretty deep. Tia…well, I could certainly sleep with the hottest pony in town, and I had…a certain affection towards the goddess. But I didn’t think I’d call it love, at least in the romantic sense.

But Twilight wanted to be with her, and Celestia…damn her, wanted to be with…us, then I was up for trying.

And Tia…

Lonely goddess looking for a cheap few decade fling?

Delusional pony that thought she saw something that wasn’t there?

Girl that fell for the new kid on the block because he was just new?

I really didn’t have a clue. But if she wanted it, I wasn’t going to say no to the goddess that was twice my size and God only knows how much stronger. Plus, I didn’t know how to say no to ponies. Especially ponies I liked.

“If we all do this family herding thing…I know we can’t all just move so…sleeping arrangements.”

Tia laughed and reached out to grab Twi and Dash’s hooves. “Well not that I’ve been thinking about it, but I suppose one on my left, another on my right for my wings to hold, with the third held safely in my forelegs,” she said before the hungry look returned. “Unless of course you mean the other kind of sleeping, in which case, I think there’s still enough of me to go around for the three of you.”

I gulped and looked over to the bottle of cider again. Oh please God don’t tell me she’s one of those types of drunks.

Twilight blushed. “A-Actually Tia, I’ve run some scenarios in my head, and the three of us w-would be able to satisfy you in all possible ways…at once.”

“Y-you’re kidding me, right?” Rainbow asked. “You’ve actually-”

“The math is sound!” Twilight exclaimed. “With…Tia’s natural size, there’s enough room for one of us to lay on top of her and engage in oral interaction while another pony is under her tail and-”

I hit my head on the table. “I meant sleeping arrangements as in where!” I corrected before I found my horn had impaled the table at an odd angle. “We can’t fly to Canterlot every night, and-”

“Oh that” Tia let out a snort. “I’ll just teleport over to your castle come time for Luna to take control of the court,” Celestia assured me. “I’m already planning to mark it as a personal destination. So there won’t be any trouble.” She let out a little giggle. “Any other little problems?”

I heard a click of a hoof against a glass, and saw Rainbow swipe the bottle from the table before she put the thing to her lips to apparently drain the thing of its last drop. There was a pop of lips disengaging from glass, and the empty cider bottle hit the table. “We’re out of cider and, just a second,” the pegasus replied before I heard her take a deep breath and… URRRP! Oh, there we go. Okay, stomach ache solved.”

“Well it’s about time,” Tia said.

“R-RAINBOW!” And if the belch from the pegasus wasn’t what caused pretty much every patron, waiter, and whatever else was left in the restaurant to turn their attention towards us, Twilight’s shouting did. “I-I can’t believe you just…this…you just…THAT in front of-”

The table raddled with the strike of a hoof before I heard Celestia’s voice. “Indeed! THIS is how to really compliment your food Rainbow Dash!”

“What? No wait! That was a real-”

What followed wasn’t something I could really classify as a sound.

Sounds were heard.

Loud sounds could even be felt.

The Royal Canterlot Voice was…experienced.

It was a deafening…something that put all the sound tests they used to have at movie theaters, giant alien spaceships that communicated through music, fog horns, sirens, and that guy at the office that always yelled crap to shame.

My eardrums exploded as the world shook and I was pelted with shards of shattered glass while my hair was undone from it’s magically made do before my body got thrown back into the wall.

But on the bright side, my horn was dislodged from the table.

Amidst the ringing in my ears and swirling in my brain that discombobulated me into a helpless bystander, I saw Tia giggling like a schoolgirl at her little joke while several waitresses and waiters yelled at her, or at least that’s what I thought from how their mouths were moving. I couldn’t actually hear anything. Then, while I was still recovering, some jackass grabbed my tail with magic, and I found myself being dragged out of the restaurant to cushion everyone else’s landing.

And so, after Rainbow landed on my back, Tia hit one of my wings, and Twilight’s butt pushed my nose into the ground, I let out a moan and waited for any sense of hearing to return.

When it did, Rainbow was the first to complain. “Tiiiiiia, I said we weren’t going to do any of that other stuff! Twilight said no to the appetizers. Remember the plan?”

The oblivious alicorn looked over to the pegasus. “What?”

Tia giggled some more at Twilight’s question and rolled over onto her back before looking over to the other alicorn. “Hehehe, oh that. Yeah, I may have had this little plan to stop you from kissing my plot anymore,” she said while having her front hooves in the air as of peddling a bike, or playing with an invisible ball of string. Then she stopped, and smiled.

“W-What?” Twilight asked as her expression dropped to a confused look of shock and maybe a bit of hurt.

“Well not really kissing my plot,” she said before rolling onto her stomach and adopting a sensual smirk. “I might like that.” Another giggle shattered her smile, and Tia laid back down on her side. “Buuuut, yeah. You always copying me and thinking I’m perfect, reeeeealy annoying! So I made a test!”

Then she looked back up at Twilight with a frown. “Honestly, do you think I’d wear something like this…thing?” Celestia asked before shaking her while head around to move her little braids. “Or put my mane up like this?”

Twilight froze, her mouth half hanging open.

As we waited for the recovery, Celestia let her head fall back onto the ground, and I frowned at her. “Tia, are you drunk?”

The disguised alicorn frowned at me for a moment. “Please, Anon...I mean, Onin...Omimifaricus! I’m just a little…woozy. Think my hard cider resistance charm is wearing off.”

“But…you…that was all for Rainbow Dash!” Twilight exclaimed, coming out of her stunned state.

Obviously growing even more out of it by the second, Tia looked over to the purple pony like she was even more crazy than we knew her to be. “Huh?”

“That-it…you… You did all of that for Rainbow Dash!” she repeated.

I looked over to Rainbow, who looked back over to Twilight with a frown. “Uh, not really Twilight, and we kinda stopped the whole thing when you went to the bathroom.”

“Cause you made me,” Celestia grumbled before letting out a drunk hiccup, and moaning. “And that’s what I want in a fillyfriend! Somepony to tell me no!”

“But you wore that awful dress to make Rainbow feel better about her looks!” Twilight went on. “And then you kissed her and complimented her flanks, and the burgers, you ordered an oat burger too to make her feel not so isolated, and the…um…stories…”

Celestia let out a rather pathetic moan, and started to stand up, only to stumble forward until I ran forward to catch and steady her, bracing myself against the side she was leaning on, and putting my wing around her back to keep her on me while her head stretched forward and went kind of wobbly. I didn’t know if the nuzzle that followed was her just being affectionate, or if it was the alcohol.

“Mmmm, coat’s so soft.”

“Let’s go home Tia, you’re drunk.”

The pony in question let out a breath of air through her closed lips. “Feh, I can fix that,” she said before her horn lit up.

The glow of magic apparently attracted Twilight’s attention. “Is that a purging-NO WAIT!” Twilight shouted before Tia proved she could cast spells even when slightly plastered, and…

Well, it was a purging spell, cast on an alicorn that had just eaten and drank several bottles of wine

A second later, the alicorn took one step back to brace herself I guess, and…I had little bits of oat burger in my wings, and the back of my dress was no longer white.

Never before was I so happy about the changeling’s transformation ability to just burn off anything I was wearing into non-existence. So, I wasn’t all that mad at Celestia when she sobered up real fast to see my body dripping with pretty pink pony princess puke.

Twilight on the other hand…

“Can’t believe you! That was the most insensitive, insane, inane, idiotic idea I’ve ever encountered!” she shouted wildly at the once again bright white giant alicorn as we sat in Celestia’s personal tea room.

While the ride back had been eerily silent, with me sitting next to Tia while Twi and Dash had the other bench. The whole time, the purple princess had been quiet, glaring at the one that still had the pink coat since the carriage was nowhere near big enough for a pony of Celestia’s real stature.

But once we had gotten out and gone to Celestia’s rooms for a chocolate cake that was just sitting there waiting for us, Twilight proved she had been doing more than just sitting still in the carriage with a twitching eye while Dash nuzzled her.

Now, she sat flanked by her girlfriend and currently insect pony that could have fit the girl or boy sexual definition, sort of, and glared at Celestia so hard I thought the sun goddess was going to burst into flames.

“I mean Dash, I understand,” Twilight said before she glanced over to the pegasus for a second, and then to me. “And Fairy…well…okay, she makes jokes about how…stupid your ideas are, but I know deep down she’d do anything for you the second you asked. But you…it…why didn’t you just talk to me?”

All in all, I didn’t really agree with Twilight’s assessment of my character, and the way she asked that last question, its restrained whine and hurt in her eyes…the fact I helped with it made me want to groan in distress.

Celestia wasn’t having any of it though. She frowned right back at Twilight. “I did, Several Times! I’ve called us equals, told you not to call me princess, tossed away my crown for our parties, and showed you myself at my most sensitive,” she replied with a bit of fire. “But you still just want to see Princess Celestia! You still trip over your own hooves, trying to please some picture perfect pony!”

“AND WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT?” Twilight shouted right back at her before she took a deep breath and let out a long sigh.

“I want to hear what you really think about things Twilight,” Celestia told her.

Twilight frowned back at Celestia. “You said you made that dress yourself! I was trying to spare your feelings!”

“At the cost of what everypony else thinks of me?” she asked.

A roll of the eyes preceded Twilight’s response. “Oh please, as if you’ve ever cared what somepony else thinks of you,” she replied before looking down at the table and frowning. “Well…outside of us, I mean. Or do you not even care what I think?”

“Of course I care what you think, when you tell me the truth! And yet you didn’t give me an honest opinion,” Celestia said evenly.

“And you knew I wasn’t being honest!” Twilight countered as she pointed a hoof at Celestia. “If you wanted honesty, you could have just said, be honest!”

Then both the alicorns glared at each other for a minute, sighed at the same time, and then lowered their heads. I took the opening.

“Fine, Tia was acting stupid and Twilight was sucking up to her in the worst way, we get it. Lessons learned and all that,” I said before I looked over to Twilight. “So, is that it?”

Twilight looked over to me with a frown. “I’m not finished with her yet, and don’t even think I’ve started on the two of you!” she said while her eyes darted back and forth between the two of us with a slight movement of her head.

Hey,” Rainbow said. “What happened to the whole understanding part?”

The alicorn looked back to the pegasus and let out a low groan. “Well…um…just because I understand, doesn’t mean I can’t be angry at you for a few more minutes!”

It took some effort, but I held my ground and kept my voice steady. “I mean, is that it when it comes to our dating Celestia?” I asked before cutting off my psychic sense of Smell not a moment too soon.

Tia looked up at us with wide eyes and a look caught somewhere between fear and hurt.

Rainbow tensed.

As for Twilight, she might as well have been a little purple clone of the giant pony. Their expressions were almost completely similar.

“What?” both of the alicorns said at the same time.

I sighed and slumped. “Oh come on Twilight, you spent the whole ride back just being silent and thinking to yourself. You’ve already made up your mind if you want to go out with her again,” I said. “All this is just…venting. It’s...well...if you want to give up on the whole thing...okay. But if you don’t…I don’t want the two of you to say something you can’t take back.”

Twilight looked at me for a few seconds, and then over to Celestia. “And what if I do want to give up the whole thing?” she asked with a frown.

On the other side of the table, Celestia…wilted. Her ears went down, and the goddesses wings drooped. “W-Wait, Twilight. I…that is to say…”

“Now what? Now you don’t want to hear what I really think?” she went on. Well guess what!”

Twilight took a deep breath, and her body trembled for a few seconds while Tia braced herself. Then, the pretty purple pony princess spoke.

“I HAD A WONDERFUL TIME!” she shouted in a voice that was full of anger before she deflated and looked down at the table.

“I mean…okay, I am a little angry at your…plan, and the part where you tried to make me eat asparagus, but…when we were just talking, and the dress, and the kissing Rainbow, and…well, you didn’t know I don’t drink hard cider…and you were kind of drunk towards the end, so…I’m more angry about the fact that there was a test than I am about anything else,” she said before looking back up at Celestia. “I’m pretty new to this whole relationship thing, but even I know you’re not supposed to do that to your potential special somepony.”

I let out a sigh before looking down at the table and shook my head. “If only.”

“Wait,” Rainbow spoke up. “This whole test thing is normal for humans?”

While I picked my head up to look at Rainbow, Twilight crossed her forearms and frowned at the table again. “Buck, now I really can’t be mad at you if this is some sort of human cultural thing. But you’re giving me a rundown of human courting rituals when we get home!”

I wisely kept my mouth shut. If a misconception got me off the hook,they more power to the thing.

Celestia cleared her throat. “So um…does this mean…” she left the rest unsaid.

We three ponies of what I guessed was Twilight’s dating herd shared a look.

Then our purple pony princess turned her attention back to Celestia. “I want to try again…in a few weeks at least. That way, I can get this bad taste out of my mouth,” she said. “So, I say yes. IF you treat it like a normal date!” Twilight told her. “No tests, no secret agenda, no surprises. Just. A. Date!”

Rainbow took to the air as she gave her answer “YES!”

And then the pegasus found us all looking at her before she slowly lowered herself back onto the ground, and blushed. “I mean uh…it’s cool. And like Twilight said, just the four of us hanging out doing stuff.”

I looked over at the girls as all eyes in the room turned on me. “Why am I always the last pony you ask about this stuff?” I grumbled. Being the last asked made all the weight just crush down on me…and what can I say? I caved. “Yeah fine, sure. We’ll have another date in two weeks or so.”

Celestia let out a long breath I didn’t even know she was holding, and bowed her head. “Thank you.”

“Well it’s not you never gave me a dozen second chances,” Twilight grumbled before her expression softened. “And like I said, I really did have a wonderful time.”

Rainbow cleared her throat. “Um, so now…goodbye kiss time?”

“Do lunch dates even get that?” I asked.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Well of course they do,” she said before smiling at me. There was a bit of...darkness to it though. “Now get up there Fae, and plant a nice long one on our potential fillyfriend’s lips.”

I looked over to the pony with the mouth big enough to envelop half my face with her lips. “Um…maybe I should let-”

“Oh no,” Twilight went on. “No shapeshifting! If Celestia’s going to date a changeling, then she can kiss the real you too.”

It took me about two seconds to see what Twilight was really planning, although I was afraid Dash’s evil grin might give something away to Celestia. See, changeling saliva kind of tasted like…well, Rainbow compared it rotten this and disgusting that once, but I didn’t know how right she was since I doubted she ever actually ate anything so bad as refried parasprite poop. Or if it really existed at all.

But my fears were unfounded. It seemed Celestia was actually looking kind of nervous about the whole thing. I could actually see the faint hints of a blush appearing on her cheeks. She was way too distracted by that to notice. “Well um…if you don’t really want to…”

“It’s a requirement for a successful date!” Twilight Sparkle declared as I was swept up in her back and brought nose to nose with Celestia. “Now kiss!”

“AHHHH! EVEN MOUTHWASH DOES NOTHING TO REMOVE THE TAINT!”

I frowned at Twilight’s giggling over Celestia’s horrified, if muffled cries from within her apartment as she tried to cover up the taste my tongue left in her mouth. “So how long does that stuff last?” I asked Tyrant Sparkle.

“About ten minutes,” Rainbow answered for her before she looked over my once again ponified back to Twilight. “So uh, what’re we doing for the rest of the day?”

The alicorn smiled, and then pulled out a checklist from underneath her wing. “Well, I was thinking we’d feed Fae, then a nap of course, and then you could take the train back to Ponyville when it pulls in from the Crystal Empire while Fae and I meet my brother. And maybe Rarity,” she said before slowing in her canter while looking up at the ceiling. “I really hope that went well for them and Cadence.”

Rainbow nodded. “Right, those class things you girls do. Yeah, count me out of those,” she said before looking back at us. “But what’s your brother doing in town?”

“Oh Fae and I are meeting with Spike and my…parents,” Twilight mumbled before she looked over to Rainbow in horror. “Oh Rainbow I’m so sorry! I just…I had this planned out before we started dating and-and then I got wrapped up with Spike, and Celestia saying…stuff. I…I…”

A hoof went in front of me and touched Twilight’s nose. “Chillax Twilight,” she said. “I remember all the grumbling from the first time you tried to introduce those three to each other. Celestia only knows what they’ll do if you bring home another fillyfriend home. I can wait until next time.”

Twilight’s apologetic look was replaced by a loving one. “Thank you Rainbow,” she said before looking down at the ground. “To be honest, I’m excited, and nervous and a million other things all at the same time.”

“Oh come on Twilight,” Rainbow said with a roll of her eyes. “After everything we’ve been through, what’s the worst that could happen?”

The apocalyptic words of doom brought me to a halt, and I glared at Rainbow’s sweet ass as she and Twilight passed me and kept the conversation going. You bitch! YOU’VE DOOMED US ALL!

Chapter 33: The Incredibly Emotional Relationships of Pretty Pony Princesses

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Unfortunately, Twilight had to redo her schedule because of a minor oversight which she hadn’t predicted occurring during our lunch date. After all, Tia got us kicked out before we actually finished the meal. Not exactly a problem for me, but the real ponies of the group need food. It was a minor inconvenience of course. Thanks to the twenty-four hour operation of the castle and its kitchens, the girls had plenty to eat. We didn’t even need to get anyone back into them since Luna got up around one and had a late lunch with Celestia, or breakfast according to her internal clock. After the date and the rather small blowup Twilight had, we ended up eating separately.

Then it was off to Twilight’s old tower for my lunch, which left the girls in the napping mood. But I learned from my mistakes, and the second time around I wasn’t stupid enough to put them on empty before being on the receiving end of their attentions in our little threeway.

It was…well, Twilight was as good as ever. The girl had really knew how to use her tongue on another mare. Dash was…

Okay, Rainbow wasn’t what I’d call the best lover. But I blamed my opinion on my Dash worship setting my expectations too high. On the up side, she knew how to excite my wings better than Twilight and we could get her moaning easily enough. But when it came to being on the receiving end of her attentions between my legs…her hesitation kicked in. Combined with her inexperience, it left me wanting more in the bad way. Which led to me faking it to preserve her ego.

I knew practice would solve both her problems, but until then, I was going to have to lie to my Dashie about how good she was in bed to spare her ego. It was a necessary evil.

Once the girls were out cold, I found myself pressed against the two mares as they snoozed away, unable to get up thanks to the fact Twilight had a death grip on my left pony-arm, and Dash had collapsed right on top of my chest to lightly snore in my face. Her not making a loud noise made me want to kick myself. It was a sign I might have been a bit too greedy when it came to feeding on her love.

Laying as I was with my girls, I found myself wishing I had fingers. Hooves were usable substitute as long as I didn’t need to tie a knot, but they were just lacking in the gentle touch department. All I could do with my free foreleg was reach up and put it around my Rainbow’s neck when I really wanted to run my hand through her mess of hair. Sure ponies were intelligent, but they were way too cute not to want to pet every now and then. Especially with Sunset around to run her fingers through a mane or two.

And of course, left alone with my thoughts and staring at relationship wheel number three, with Tia being four, doubts about more than just me and Twilight giving a go at it creeped up into my head again. All it would take was me siding with Dash when she and Twilight had an argument, or Twilight backing up Celestia against me the next time she planned without her brain and the battle lines would be drawn. We’d fight, pick sides, separate, and have someone to help feed the animosity.

“Am I doing the right thing here?” I asked the unconscious mare on top of me as she blew air from her nostrils into my face. “With us, I mean?”

“I try to shake it off but…something about this just feels wrong,” I told her before moving my fetlock across the back of her neck. “I’m not really…I don’t know. Twilight, and now you, and Celestia." I tried to put my random thoughts into words as best I could. "Twilight…well, we’ve been together and it works, and you…are we just forcing you into this? I know you wouldn’t be here with us if you didn’t feel something, and I know you feel something, trust me…I Smell it. But, is it gonna stay that way, or are we all heading for a disaster?”

“And Tia…”

My thoughts on her, I couldn’t even talk about. Celestia was just too…different for me to guess about when it came to her thoughts on anything. And when it came to her, mine were a mix of lust, admiration, pity, fear and disdain towards the goddess. Just because she was practically perfect in every way didn’t mean I was willing to suck her horn and call it ice cream. But at the same time, I wanted her. Good God did I I want the solar princess's posterior, and everything beneath that waving tail of hers.

So with nothing else to do, I watched Rainbow’s adorable face as she continued to just push air in and out for a few minutes. Then boredom finally hit and I went into my changeling sleep trance thingy that wasn’t really sleep. I needed to get some work done in the way of checking up on Sunset and play phone tag to have a quick conversation and make a request of her. Then I had to make sure she had a few changelings to get her to the castle, spied on Celestia a little bit as she made preparations for Summer Wrap-up across Equestria, delivered a changeling message to Celestia, read a few messages from all over the place, and had some other changelings do a quick flyby to make sure the rest of the girls were doing okay.

While having my minions act as guards from a distance was a little too much like stalking for Twilight to allow, I could at least have the hive do some checks every few hours. Equestria might have been a perfect land of ponies, but there was no use taking chances with the safety of my friends.

A few hours later, the girls woke up so I could play with their bodies some more. But a few ear tugs with my mouth and one too many flank rubs got me kicked out of bed by the two of them so Rainbow could properly preen Twilight’s wings and clean up. We talked a bit about nothing while she did all the feather pulling, showered off our afternoon sex mess, packed up our dresses, and then headed to the train station to ship Rainbow back to Ponyville with our stuff.

Of course by then, Twilight had remembered something important that she wanted to talk about, and the train was running late.

Yes, even in the magical land of Equestria couldn’t make trains run on time. Sure they could raise the sun, manipulate the weather, and run nature, but even the power of ponies had its limits. Usually it was due to cargo problems. Since ponies shipped everything over rails, a single engine pulled as much weight as it possibly could instead of just hauling ponies. This was especially true of stuff going to and fro from the Crystal Empire.

“So let me get this straight,” Twilight said while we stood waiting several feet apart from the crowd of ponies that had given what they thought were a pair of alicorns plenty of space. “Human females usually test their prospective mates with tests involving riddles, misdirection, encoded phrases and actions that usually mean the exact opposite of what they’re actually saying, and battles to the death?”

Twilight’s whole body was tense as I looked at her, and she shook her head. “The more I hear about your type of humans, the less I like them,” she mumbled before looking over to me. “Although, it would explain a hay of a lot about you that I just chalked up to being a changeling.” Then a frown crossed her face. “And raises some more questions.”

I cleared my throat to help with the unease. “Well, the last one really doesn’t happen that much anymore outside of the occasional knife fight between two stupid human stallions with more balls than brains.”

Rainbow let out a snort. “Your old species is stupid. I mean, what kind of pony would make somepony else jump through hoops and risk their lives just to give some kind of proof-and why are you two looking at me like that?” she asked as me and Twilight gave her a pair of knowing smirks.

“Well, Tank-”

“That was totally different!” Rainbow exclaimed. “Besides, I picked the last place finisher anyway!”

I kissed my pegasus on her cheek and drew her in close with my wing. “And I learned my lesson from you,” I told her before Rainbow looked over to me, and I got to plant another one on her lips. The light touch of her tongue on my lips had me part my teeth so we could go beyond some schoolyard interaction.

We got about three seconds worth of tongue before Twilight stepped up. “Okay you two. Enough of the show,” she said to break us up, then nodded ahead. “Besides, the train is almost here.”

Both me and Rainbow looked out across the bit of undeveloped landscape that Canterlot had, and I saw the smoke climbing into the sky a second before the train rounded its last turn towards Canterlot.

Despite its goofy title and oddity of the cars, the Friendship Express was a pretty nice ride. It wasn’t exactly up to the Harry Potter standards of private rooms and other junk like a platform with three-quarters, but the ponies spent their magic where it counted. They made sure the damn thing didn’t break down and provided an impossibly smooth trip. So smooth Rarity had managed to sleep on one, and I knew how picky she was about every little thing.

And speaking of the she-devil, whether by some Equestrian Coincidence, or Twilight managing to calculate where the car she was in based on Rarity and her brother’s habits, the rolling box that came to a stop right in front of us was a little bit fancier the ones around it, and had a tingle of magic about it that said it was a private car with protection magic. Then opened to let out a pair of white unicorns.

Rarity was as immaculate as ever. The unicorn didn’t just have a wonderful figure, but a face to match and her mane just made her look all the more sexy. What made it all even more horrible was that with Celestia starting to jump on the relationship we were trying out, Rarity was probably next on my list for pony to be best friends with. Just like Twilight, Rainbow, and Tia had been at one time or another.

If things didn’t work out for her with the Crystal Empire couple and she came running to me for comfort...I really didn’t want to have to add Rarity to the harem. Hell, I didn’t even want a harem in the first place. Stupid Celestia.

Then there was Rarity’s...companion.

As much as I hated to admit it, Shining Armor made me feel even worse. He was hot, the perfect female sexual fantasy hot that I really didn’t want to admit to anyone. Years in the royal guard had given the normally nerdy unicorn tribe member a perfect physique that just screamed sexy. Although thankfully, knowing someone was sexy and finding them attractive were two completely different things. I mean, a guy could acknowledge another guy’s good looks.

Right?

“Twily what’re you doing here?” he asked in happy surprise before they trotted up to each other and embraced.

“Going to school, same thing you’re doing here BBBFF,” she replied with a bright smile before it became a little embarrassed. “Plus some other stuff with my…fillyfriends.” She tripped over the word, and I was just the tiniest bit glad even Twilight couldn’t just run around shouting ‘I’m sleeping with two ponies at the same time’ to anyone that passed by. It made my unease just a bit more manageable.

Before the awkwardness could go up a few notches, another pony with a bright pink coat stepped out of the train and smiled at the smaller alicorn. “Oh please Twilight, you’re not the only pony here with a potential special somepony,” Cadence told her little sister-in-law before she walked up to stand next to a slightly embarrassed Rarity.

Cadence’s presence threw my train of thought for a loop. Shining, I had been expecting. Rarity had been a definite maybe. But Cadence being at the train station was both a little discombobulating, but reassuring at the same time.

If she was going to go with me and Twilight to the princess’s parents’ house I mean. For all I knew, the three of them had really it it off, and she was just in Canterlot to drop Shining off, then take her paramour to Ponyville for a pounding of the sexual kind before she swung back home in the direction of the Crystal Empire.

My thought’s along those lines also made my curiosity skyrocket. I gave the smallest unicorn there a greedy smile. “You do know this means we’re going to have to hear all about it,” I said to the Gossip Queen of Ponyville.

“Well darling, we’ve got an hour before the train finishes unloading and I know a wonderful little coffee shop that’s near here ,” she said before looking over to Cadence. “If that’s okay with you.”

The Alicorn of Love smiled and threw a wing around the smaller unicorn that drew Rarity in close as Cadence looked down on what I was pretty damn sure counted as her new girlfriend. “Let’s go brag about our feelings.”

Barely five minutes after we left the train station, I sat down in a nice little coffee house that also offered various cakes. More importantly though, it looked absolutely NOTHING like a Starbucks. Twilight got the left setting on our side, Dash took the middle, and I got the far right. While waiting, we played footsies with our tails and used them to slap each other or caress Dash’s ass out of sight from the other party. On the other side of our little rectangle of a table, Shiny got sandwiched between his girls.

“Well darlings, I won’t bore you with any of the details about my journey to the Crystal Palace, but…I will say that the Crystal Empire is becoming a bit of the tourist…” Rarity paused and looked over to Cadence.

“Trap?” I supplied.

Cadence gave me a good-natured frown. “Hey! Tourism is good for everypony! It increases business, lets ponies spread friendship, and...” she said before a smirk appeared on her face. “And don’t think I don’t know about your little tourist attraction in the Everfree Forest.”

I tensed a little at that one.

Technically speaking, the Red Light Grove wasn’t a Ponyville tourist attraction, especially since there was now a little train stop near where the rails split between Appleloosa and Dodge City. Still, it did bring plenty of business to my little town in the way of foot traffic since trains only stopped there once a day and anybody needing to stay overnight had to go to my little hamlet. It was also the only place the changeling escorts would let them exit the forest.

But that wasn’t what made me nervous about Cadence mentioning my sex business.

Cadence was the Alicorn of Love. My little enterprise had nothing to do with love. It was about lust, self-delusion, impossible desires, empty sex, and some other junk that made it about as far from the pure and giving emotion as you could get without any actual violence or hatred involved.

“So um…what exactly do you think of it?” I asked nervously.

After she made me sweat bullets for a few seconds, Cadence let out a little shrug. “I took a look at it. While I’m not too thrilled about the overall idea, I can see it serves a purpose,” she replied before a little smile crossed her face and she looked over to Rarity. “At least it did before we decided to expand the idea of marriage to include more than two ponies. But something tells me that as the number of herds increase, your…businesses that provides a little relief to mares in need of a stallion’s attention will start to go down. Still, everypony knows the pony their being with isn’t really the pony they want. Plus…it is helpful to talk to a pony about problems when you know they’re not going to go spreading it around.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You know, that actually sounded like you…” The total idea of Cadence visiting a whorehouse just...made me pause. My mouth stopped moving for a moment in shock. “You’ve actually um…been with a changeling?”

Shining Armor’s head jerked around to look at the pink pony. “C-Cadence?” he asked while his Scent gave off a definite horrified vibe.

For her part, Cadence rolled her eyes. “Oh please Shiny, I didn’t sleep with it. We just talked,” she said in an annoyed tone before becoming thoughtful. “To be honest, I could see some real benefits to having a changeling confessional. You might want to look into the idea."

That made it my turn to get all confused again. “A what?”

And Cadence’s weird words weren’t the only reason I got all mind boggled. I knew every single pony that was ever with my changelings, and Cadence sure as hell wasn’t one of them! Although, I had no intention of asking her for specifics, and I supposed it could have been really easy for her to just use a few spells to disguise herself, so…it really wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. It was just...weird.

I mean, the Alicorn of Love...going to a brothel.

Totally weird.

“Just a little idea I had while talking to a changeling,” she replied while her face got a bit whimsical. “Confessing one's feelings to another pony is one of the hardest things a pony can do. It could really help other ponies work to overcome their shyness by letting them practice, or maybe working out a plan to declare love!”

I blinked once. “Huh. And here I thought you’d be a proponent of the secret identity love letter confessional and meet-up strategy.” It was pretty anime, but...hell, it was better than speed dating.

Cadence tilted her head. “The what?”

“It’s just this stupid thing that some humans do in movies and junk,” I told her with a shrug of indifference. “When the guy doesn’t know if the girl is even interested in having a relationship, he writes her a romantic letter telling her why he likes her and asks her to meet him somewhere private if she would be interested in going out on a date.”

The ponies at the table were silent, and even their Scents became muted. As for me, I got the weird feeling that I had just said something very stupid.

And then Cadence spoke up. “That…that’s…brilliant!” she finished as she looked down at the table and bobbed her head back and forth, as if she was examining some huge, invisible blueprint. “You could tell a pony everything you wanted to say complete uninterrupted and without any bias tainting the mare’s view. Plus, if the answer is no, the letter can remain anonymous as not to put in of strain on a friendship!”

“Yes well,” Rarity spoke up in an annoyed tone. “Thank you so much for giving me this brilliant strategy after its not of any use.”

Shining Armor gave off a nervous laugh. “Well, I really doubt we would have responded well to a letter Rarity.”

My curiosity peaked, and I looked back to the female unicorn of the marshmallow coloration. “So, I take it from the wing hugs you three are a…uh…”

“Triple,” Cadence said before she cleared her throat. “Or...um...well, Auntie never did work out the multiple partner lingo. So...trio, triple...that sounds good, right? I’m still trying to come up with something more natural sounding, but that'll do for now I suppose."

Rainbow laughed a little. “So how’d you land your princess Rarity?”

“Well…” the unicorn looked to the other two ponies and blushed for a moment before she looked down at the table. “I must admit to a bit of…subterfuge. When it comes to how I gained royal attentions.”

Shining Armor rolled his eyes. “Oh please. I’ll take what you did over how all the crystal nobility was beating down our doors to try and sneak into our good graces,” he said before looking over to her. “And um...sorry again about what happened when you came for tea.”

“That little fit I threw didn’t help much,” Cadence added with a blush.

“Full story please,” I spoke up.

Rarity cleared her throat. “Well, I’ll spare you my arrival in the Crystal Empire, and it didn’t take long to get an audience with Shining Armor and Cadence once they knew who I was.”

“I was happy to have it,” Cadence said right on top of her, half to me and half to Rarity. “Ever since this whole herding thing came out, so many crystal ponies had been approaching me in the hopes of tying me and Shiny to the court by marriage.” Her face turned sour as her Scent, and I had a feeling she liked suitors about as much as Odysseus’s wife did. “Ugh! As if I of all ponies couldn’t see the love they had in their hearts only revolved around the Empire, and that was the best of them! Every time I think of those…social climbers, I just want to tear my mane out!”

Rarity drew in on herself, and Cadence jerked upward with a start before she looked over to her…whatever Rarity was to the alicorn. “Sorry,” the unicorn mumbled.

I looked back and forth between the two. “Let me guess…she said the same thing to you?” I asked Rarity.

“No,” Shining answered for her before putting a reassuring foreleg around Rarity and looking over to me. “It was worse, and longer, and louder, and involved Cadence throwing things.”

Cadence let out a snort. “Well you don’t throw aside love for…political gain!” she said before stamping her hoof into the carpeted ground. The earth pony in her must have been greedy, because the whole table shook at the punctuated pronouncement. As Rarity winced again, Cadence looked over to her with a frown. “And don’t give me that withdrawal! You’re nothing like them!” she snapped. “You want a prince because they exemplify everything that’s good about ponies!”

I couldn’t help it. Blueblood’s face clawed its way into my mind, and I had to fight the urge to retch. Out of all the male ponies in Equestria, I hated him the most.

“Well, most of them anyway,” Cadence went on before her face went from dark to disgusted. “My...cousin can go jump in a river. That pony wouldn’t know how to be a prince if they wrote a how to book about it made especially for dummies.”

“Good to see you haven’t changed,” I snarked, which made Cadence look up at me with a confused expression on her face. I had learned the first time I really met Cadence that belittling the thing called love around her was tantamount to suicide. Then I looked back at the non-raging members of the group. “So what happened after Cadence got done ragging on the crystal nobles?”

Rarity gulped, and Cadence blushed, which left Shining to take hold of the conversation. “Well when she was done going on and on about how they only wanted to start a herd because we were royalty,” Armor began before he glanced over to his less colorful girl, “Rarity was just about on the verge of tears.”

I narrowed my eyes at the ice cream colored princess pony as she shrunk in on herself, and wondered where I’d be hiding her body. Sure, Rarity was a drama queen that went into tears at the smallest thing, but if that pink bitch broke my potentially new best friend’s heart and sent her careening into the ticking time bomb that was the incredibly convoluted relationship between me, two alicorns and a pegasus…because, you know…it happened to the other three mares…I was going to murder her.

“I-I wouldn’t go that far darling, I was just a little…disappointed,” Rarity said. “”Of course it took Cadence two whole seconds to discern what was going on when she finally looked in my direction.” The unicorn sighed and shook her head. “I still don’t know to feel elated, a little embarrassed I was that easy to read.”

Cadence giggled and looked over to Rarity. “Alicorn of Love, remember?”

As the two girls shared a look, I saw had Twilight turned her attention to her brother. “So how did you feel about all this Shiny?”

“Well the whole idea was a little weird at first, I think,” he replied. “Not to mention scary.”

I frowned at the unicorn in confusion. “Scary?”

He cleared his throat and kept his eyes from meeting mine while Cadence put on a satisfied smile. “Look, I don’t know how it is between you and Twilight, and I really don’t want to know, but…um…”

“Go ahead and brag about your wife dear, you know how much I love it when you do that,” Cadence told him as her wing reached out to wrap around his back. Then, when Shining continued to be silent, Cadence looked over to us. “What my husband is afraid of saying is-”

Shining let out a little whine. “Cadence is…um…kind of insatiable,” he said before looking down at the table. “There, I said it. Please don’t go into details.”

“Yeah, Twilight’s just about the same way,” Rainbow replied. “Hay, if it wasn’t for that love feeding thing Fae does, I don’t think she’d ever go down when we’re in bed.”

“GAH! Please! I don’t want to know!” Shining exclaimed as he covered his ears. “She’s my sister!”

Cadence giggled. “You married an alicorn sweetie. Weren’t you listening when Auntie warned you we can be a bit…hungry in bed once we find our beloved?” she said with a smile that made her look like a wolf staring at a piece of meat.

An insane amount of fear passed through me at that moment, and I really considered the possibility of mind controlling Celestia to fall out of love with the idea of her, Rainbow, Twilight and me. After all, Twilight was already a handful in bed and even though she had gotten used to the her awakened sexual urges… Well…if I was reading between the lines correctly and all alicorns had some kind of triple libido that gave them the equivalent of a constant need for sex that might as well of been a constant heat without the babymaking to go with it, and Tia was coming off a thousand-year dry spell… I was suddenly feeling a need to introduce Celestia to Futurama. Specifically, that one episode with the Amazon planet that condemned all the men to death by snu-snu.

The spirit might be willing, and full of magic, but the flesh was still soft and squishy.

I cleared my throat and found a particularly interesting piece of wall to look at. “And so um…then what happened?” I asked before a horrid thought occurred to me.

According to the story Cadence and Shining Armor told me about how they met and started dating, the smoking hot pink princess had decided they were getting married and living in a crystal palace all of five seconds after deciding Shiny was ‘adorable’. Her words there, not mine. So I couldn’t see Rarity not coming back a member of Cadence’s little herd if they were on the train together. Herd as in family member...or at least engaged.

“Well, like we said, Cadence saw through to the root of my distress,” Rarity went on. “When she looked me up and down, and after a rather short interrogation, I found myself dragged off to dinner. We talked, we laughed, there were some tears, and, well…it was a nice evening all around. Not as glamorous as I imagined, but…it was nice.”

Twilight’s Scent was a confused mix of elation and depression as she apparently felt the same as me. I didn’t think either of us knew what to think. Rarity describing a date with royals as ’nice’ was like someone giving the best day of their life only an ‘okay’ rating. “So is that good, or bad?” the purple alicorn asked.

“I have to admit, it didn’t quite meet my expectations,” she said, drawing a glare from her significant others. Then Rarity broke out into a smile. “Oh! But then there was the ball that these two took me to the next night and, Sweet Celestia, Twilight, I was simply swept off my hooves! It was everything the Grand Galloping Gala should have been and more!”

As Rarity literally swooned over and onto Shining Armor’s shoulder, which got a huge blush out of him while Cadence giggled. “I have to admit, the way you handled those nobles and everything, if I was anypony else I’d be wanting to marry you on the spot. I’m terrible at all that social stuff.”

“And how was that?” I asked.

Shining sighed and shook his head. “Well, like we said, the crystal nobility has been trying to get in with us since this whole thing began. Mostly by throwing all these extravagant parties,” he said with a roll of his eyes to show what he thought of them. “So when she arrived at the party between me and Cadence-”

“Still a little uneasy coming between the two of you,” Rarity added.

“Oh would you stop going on about that?” Cadence told her before her smile became a very predatory grin and she leaned over to show Rarity her teeth. “And I didn’t hear any complaints last night when you were between us. Unless you count all those cute little cries we got from having my lips around your horn while Shiny was filling you up.”

The magic holding up Twilight’s teacup that was full of coffee vanished, letting the thing fall to the ground below as every mouth on my side of the table dropped. On the other side of the table, Rarity’s eyes went wide while Shining blushed, and Cadence returned to sitting straight up in her chair with a wiggle of her butt. Really didn’t need my nose to know what she was thinking at that moment.

All of a sudden, I think I understood just where Twilight got the idea to have sex so soon when we were sort of dating. “You mean you guys did it like…the very first night?”

It was odd to say the least by any species’ standards. While humans did it for fun, ponies that had sex just for the physical thrill on any long-lasting basis were a minority. After the wild teenage years passed, they typically reserved the whole thing for more emotional based attachments. Basically, adult ponies didn’t have sex, they made love.

Cadence rolled her eyes. “Oh please Fae, I may be the expert on love, but even I don’t work that fast,” she said before her smile became less hungry. “But by the time we were on our way home from the ball, I had more than enough time to take Rarity’s measure and decide I liked what I saw.”

And thus, she shut me up too.

“So um…Rarity,” Rainbow spoke up while me and Twilight just stared at Cadence’s smiling face. “Is it true you can feel it vibrate inside you when you do it on a train?”

“Gaaaaaaa,” the unicorn replied.

On the other side of their group, Cadence giggled while I gave her a glare for putting Rarity on the spot like that. “Well, first you have to disable the stabilization magic for the train car, but afterwards…Rainbow, you haven’t lived until you’ve joined the rails club.”

I saw Twilight’s hair untwinge a little bit at Cadence’s words. Shining Armor’s coat just went completely red, and Rarity looked like she wished we were somewhere that served coffee in a glass big enough to hide behind while the pink pony princess and Rainbow Dash continued a very technical conversation that had me realizing something about the ice cream pony that would probably have me coming to her for advice on certain subjects in the near future.

Cadence was the Alicorn of Love.

She was expert on the subject.

In every possible meaning of the word.

We left the coffeehouse with a furious amount of blushing and...maybe a few new things to try out when the three of us got back to Ponyville. However, I would never be able to look at another unicorn’s horn without thinking about things that were just too wrong to speak of ever again.

“So, does she try to be that embarrassing with every pony you meet, or is it just Cadence’s hidden talent?” I asked Shining Armor as we made our way back to the train at the rear of the group towards the end of the train’s stopover hour.

Shining blushed. “Cadence is very…vocal about relationships,” he told me with a little smile. “To her, love isn’t something to be hidden away. It needs to be shouted to the world. Doesn’t matter what you want to talk about, if it has anything to do with love, she’s super enthusiastic.”

I little bit of unease crept up in my gut, and for some reason I kept picturing Celestia instead of the other pony with the white coat I was supposed to be talking about. “And um…you know, you never really told us how you feel about this whole thing,” I said before clearing my throat a looking away for a minute. “Just between us guys.”

Shining Armor raised an eyebrow at me.

The look made me retaliate with a annoyed one. “You know what I mean,” I grumbled as I frowned back at him. Then, I looked over to Rarity. “I just…look, I don’t want to see Rarity get hurt because you’re all rushing into this. Me and Twilight did and…I nearly crushed her heart because of it.” Just thinking about how me and her almost never really got together made my chest hurt.

“Well, if you really want to know…” Shining began.

I narrowed my eyes. “Yes, I do. All the details too.”

The unicorn sighed. “To be honest, I didn’t think it was going to work at first. With Cadence, it took a whole five seconds for her to decide,” he said before I gave him an eyebrow raise to which he just nodded. “Yes, it happened that fast for her, she just talked with Rarity over dinner the night before the ball and looked her over. And by the time we had walked her back to her room in the castle, and I was giving her a pretty uneasy goodbye, Cadence kissed Rarity on the lips in a way that left my mouth hanging open and the smaller mare panting on the floor so much I had to carry her into the apartment we set up for her.”

As Shining face turned red, I Smelled his lust jump up at the memory and smiled. “It looked that good huh?”

Shining cleared his throat a looked down at the ground. “You said details so…um…” he took a deep breath and gulped it down. “Cadence picked Rarity up in her hooves, pressed her up against the wall with her winged folded out, and I swear she had her tongue down that mare’s throat. It was probably the hottest thing I had ever seen until she teased Rarity’s horn on the way to Canterlot.”

That…pissed me off actually. A lot. My unease vanished, to be replaced by a bit of slow boil rage. “You mean you’re only doing this because you like watching Cadence and Rarity go at it?” I demanded with a low tone inside my snarling mouth.

It went beyond the reservations I had about the whole polygamy thing. Mine was based off the inevitable jealousy that was bound to sprout up…among humans anyway; ponies were an unknown on that front at the moment. But Shining… if he was just in it for the view. My estimation of Armor would take a fatal nose dive. Followed quickly by the stallion himself.

“What?” he asked before his expression became a disgusted frown. “No! Ugh! I can’t believe you’d think something like that.”

As the unicorn stopped grumbling, I went to a three hood trot to point at him with a hoof. “But you just said-”

Shining rolled his eyes. “Yeah, the first night things were like that. But trust me, nopony works as fast as Cadence does,” he said before sighing. “I don’t really get it, but…she can somehow see where a relationship might lead right from the get go. The rest of us aren’t so lucky with how quickly our revelation comes.”

“Revelation?” I asked.

“You know, when a pony gets hit with that spark that tells them there’s something between the pony they’re looking at and themselves?” he asked while giving me an odd look, like not knowing about such a thing was completely foreign to him.

It was a pretty gay way to describe becoming enamored with someone, but...I’d heard worse.

From Twilight.

So I nodded. Yeah, it was a bit flowery for my taste, but even guy ponies were pretty into that stuff. Even Twilight had explained it in such a way. Hell, she even had two little revelation moments with me. Once, when I was parading around as Flash Sentry when she thought I died, and the second when she was captive in the Empire. Also, when she thought I was dead.

It was a rather disturbing pattern really.

“When it happened for me, we were at that stupid party in the Crystal Empire that Duke Swanky was throwing in the Crystal Princess’s honor, so of course Cadence had to show up. It was just a thinly veiled attempt to get under her tail, but after that little debacle last week, everypony had an excuse to throw a we were aren’t food for a demonic storm creature party.”

Shining chuckled a bit and shook his head. “If those ponies actually knew how much Cadence hated those parties, they never would have known making her come to one was pretty much a deal killer for any kind of romantic mood. But Rarity was as excited as a foal in a candy shop and…it was pretty infectious,” he said as a smile crossed his lips. “And she apparently packed for the fancy parties too. She had this pink gown that wasn’t quite the color of Cadence’s coat with some sapphires on it with little bits of white around the bottom.”

My mouth struggled to open because I needed to inform Shining of the proper name for the parts of a dress, but…I was talking to Shining as a guy and tailoring knowledge was more of a gray area when it came to gender, so I kept my trap shut.

“When I saw her, everything just lined up perfectly and the last bits of sunlight came through the Crystal Palace to make her whole thing sparkle. And I’ll admit, she was beautiful,” Shining said. “But I’m not some colt that just cases after tail because its attached to a nice flank.” He cleared his throat. “At least, not anymore.”

“Okay,” I said before giving him a slight nod to tell the unicorn to go on.

Shining took in a deep breath. “She was a home at the party. In a good way I mean,” he said before looking over to me. “Do you know how to talk to crystal nobles?”

“No.” The only higher-up I had talked to outside the royal circle was Blueblood, whose royal title didn’t count for nothing far as I was concerned. And my preferred way of speaking to him involved my hoof and his face.

“I don’t either,” he went on. “Did the whole guard routine for a couple of years and ended up at the Gala once, but that’s a whole different world. You talk normal to a crystal noble, and she’ll just stare at you like you’re an idiot, or think you mean the exact opposite thing you’re saying. It’s like there’s some rule that says when somepony’s being straight with you, it’s all a lie. I swear, it’s like they speak a completely different language with about a million innuendos and hidden meanings when they’re not trying to insult you. It’s like a stupid game to them or something. Like it proves their intellectual superiority.

“But Rarity does. It’s apparently the latest fad in Canterlot,” he said with a smile on his face. “By the time she was done introducing herself around the ballroom, every noble there was either blushing in embarrassment, was stammering apologies to Cadence, or just decided to leave early. It was the best party I went to in the Crystal Empire since we took over there.”

Once again, I found myself giving Shining a measuring look. “And that’s why you’re trying to get with her? Because she can talk to a buck of stuck-up snobs?”

Armor shook his head before his voice took on an uneasy tone. “Not really. What happened was…well…after the party…Rarity decided to call the whole thing off.”

I frowned at him. “What?”

“Surprised me too, and Cadence just about had a brain aneurism when we were taking our carriage back the palace,” Shining replied. “And well, that’s when it hit me. I never really gave the whole thing much thought about the three of us because ever since Celestia proposed her change, the crystal ponies had been beating down our door, and Cadence had been fighting them off. But no matter what she did, not a single one of them respected our wishes and walked away. Even the few decent ones...which were pretty few.

“Rarity did. It hurt her, but she did it, and…she didn’t cry or anything. She just got out of the carriage and went to her room without us. And then all of a sudden, I was feeling pretty lousy about the whole thing. She’s one of my little sister’s best friends, a hero, a mare who takes care of her own little sister for nearly half a week, and she lives in Ponyville instead of Canterlot because the ponies of that town are the ones she loves. And I just…blew her off because of so many other ponies wanting to be with me for personal gain.”

We reached the train platform, and Shining just kept talking.

“Of course I didn’t know about half of this until Cadence dragged me onto the Express and let Rarity ride in our car as an apology for everything not working out before we spent the day together, locked in a little box of a room just talking and, and…um…well, Cadence already bragged about how that ended,” Shining said with a blush. “I swear, she’s as bad as Celestia sometimes.”

I frowned as he knocked my newest waifu, but didn’t say anything about it. I was the only one allowed to call Tia manipulative.

“Maybe its because I’m a lot older than when I met Cadence, so I didn’t get any of that usual stuff that makes it impossible to talk around mares and that slowed everything down, but…well, Rarity’s pretty special too,” he admitted.

“Why thank you darling, it’s nice to know you care so much,” a Canterlot accented voice cut into the conversation.

Shining flinched, and then looked up at the three mares staring at him. “Uh…how long have you all been here?”

“Since you got here,” Cadence told him with a little smile before it turned into a frown of barely constrained fury. “And what do you mean you didn’t even give Rarity a chance at first? She came to us so frazzled I was afraid she was going to have a nervous breakdown when we brought her into our sitting room! Her admiration for both you and me so obvious she was practically carrying a sign! And you didn’t even try to give her a chance until after she thought it was hopeless?” The pink pony sniffed and turned her nose up at her husband. “I can’t believe a married such a close-hearted stallion.”

I stepped away from Armor and fluttered my way over to Twilight just to give her an ‘I’m not with him’ vibe, actually a little happy for once that I was a girl. That way, I could avoid any male seeking anger missiles that the rest of the girls were fixing to let loose.

Shining just sighed and walked up to Cadence. “Oh come on Cadence,” he whined. “That was…did you honestly expect me to be interested in another mare right off the bat? I’ve got you-I mean, we’ve got each other!” He laughed a little while the Alicorn of Love gave him a little frown. “Did you really want me to have a wandering eye for all the time we’ve been married?”

The lack of fireworks made me sigh as Cadence started to get all understanding and reluctantly began talking with her husband about, and then with the third member in their relationship.

But on the other hand, it was nice to know I wasn’t the only (sort of) male to be having hesitant thoughts about this whole one guy lots of girls thing. A little weirded out that the pony who agreed with me was also a dude since there was supposed to be this male caveman instinct to bang anything I saw, but…I would take what I could get.

After that, we said our goodbyes to Rainbow and Rarity, kisses were exchanged and the girlfriends headed back home.

It was nearly five thirty by the time me, Shiny, Twilight and Cadence got to the less than extravagant house two members of the royalty of Equestria had grown up in. Of course, my questions as to why they still had such a small house when their kids were running empires and saving continents just got me a weird look from Twilight.

Shining was a bit more vocal in his reasoning. “You think I want my mother to live in the Crystal Palace? Even Cadence doesn’t have enough love to have her mother-in-law live with her under the same roof.”

The pink alicorn sighed and lowered her head. “It’s sad, but true.”

“Well at least we can finally put an end to all that grandfoal talk,” Twilight said, obviously relieved.

Even though it was mean of me, I had to interject a little bit of doom and gloom into their utopian futures. “Well for you at least,” I said to her. “If your mom is anything like human parents, Shiny’s gonna have to start giving your mom due dates the second he tells every pony.”

Armor looked down at the street. “I’d like to argue, but you’re probably right,” he said with a shake of his head. “That’s why I’m going to gauge her reaction to the whole herding thing first before I even start to talk about Rarity.”

Twilight giggled. “Don’t worry BBBFF, we’ll act as the test subjects for that too if you want,” she assured him as the alicorn opened the door with her magic and led us in without even a knock. Once inside, she called out. “Hey Mom, Dad, it’s Twilight and Shiny.”

“Twilight!” I heard the male voice that was much too high in pitch to be Nightlight. A second later, a purple dragon came running out from the back and latched on to the alicorn with enough force to actually make her stumble back. “You came. You really came!”

After putting a foreleg around the smaller creature, Twilight let out a tiny laugh, which made Spike look up at her. “Well of course I came Spike. Why wouldn’t I?” she said before tightening the hug. “I’ve missed you so much. We’ve written back and forth every day, but it’s just not the same.”

I had to admit, even though the little shit had nearly gotten Sunset killed with his paranoid crap and tried to turn Ponyville against me, a little part, a very little miniscule half of an atom of me was just a little bit glad he was seeing Twilight again. For his sake anyway. The feeling that I got from seeing Twilight happy about it far surpassed my joy for Spike.

She had been able to push the dragon issue to the side for most of the week as long as she had something else to focus on. But whenever someone brought it up, I could Smell the hurt inside her bubble to the surface.

The little dragon looked up at her with a huge smile. “Are we going home tonight? Or are we going to stay here until tomorrow and leave on the morning train? Or fly back?”

Twilight froze and the atmosphere changed from one of joy to a tense one, and I followed suit. She looked down at the dragon, and her smile slipped into a concerned line. “Spike, you are home. I just came for a visit.”

After seeing the death of hope on the dragon’s face, I leaned over to Shining Armor. “Uh…maybe we should, um…take a tour of the house?” Twilight and Spike needed time to work out their thing. I was just a distraction…and needed to get the hell out of there.

“But you said you were coming for me in your letters!” Spike whined.

“Coming to see you Spike,” Twilight corrected him. “Coming for a visit. Not…not what you...what you want.” The last word caused a droop of her ears, and I winced at the purple princess’s pain that assaulted my nose.

On the outside of the little drama, Shining nodded. “Good idea. Come on Cadence, let’s go say hi to Mom and Dad.”

The pink alicorn shared a worried look with the purple then motioned us forward before looking back to Twilight again for a second. “You going to be okay?”

Twilight nodded and said, “Yes.” The building Scent of depression spoke otherwise, but…I really had no idea what I could do to help her in that particular situation. Best thing for me to do was avoid the emotional explosion, and pick up the pieces when it was over.

Of course that meant abandoning her while Spike was giving the alicorn puppy dog eyes, and I locked gazes with Twilight for a moment, unsure of what to do. Sure the best thing to do would be to get the hell out of dodge, but…that almost meant leaving Twilight to the mercy’s of an emotional dragon.

It was only when she smiled at me and nodded that I could unstick my hooves from the floor and go forward with the others.

“But Twilight-” Spike got out before we turned a corner into the dining room and I managed to tune the dragon out with the help of what I saw. On the other side of the area, across a little counter of a bar that was behind the dining table, Twilight’s parents were busy fixing dinner.

The father was tossing a salad with his magic while the mother was working on what looked like some kind of pasta with broccoli, cheese, and maybe a few other green things that made me glad I didn’t eat food. With the talking going on in the other room, and the wooden floor of the dining room beneath us, we didn’t even need to announce ourselves before Twilight Velvet looked over. “Shiny, Cadence, and…um, Fairy, isn’t it?”

If I hadn’t been a changeling, I wouldn’t of noticed anything. But since I was a bug pony that could read the emotions of other creatures with a kind of psychic sniffer, the sweet Scent of a lingering fear that I could only call nervousness filled my invisible nose. But since it wasn’t outright panic like last time, I couldn't feel all indigent. Take what you can get and all that. “That’s right,” I told her. “Well, my full name is Omnifarious, but…that’s such a mouthful one of my friends helped me shorten it. I prefer Fae though, if you don’t mind.”

A quick eye movement was shared between the two unicorns, and they smiled back at me with grins. I had to wonder just how real they were. “So um…where’s Spike?”

“Living room with Twilight,” Shining said as he inclined his head in that general direction.

Velvet and Nightlight shared a hesitant look, and then the stallion let out a little cough. “Yes well, um…Omnifarious, was it? Is it true that you’re…mentally a stallion?” he asked.

Whether by celestial intervention, memory of our first encounter, or just something Spike had told them, I didn’t care. Being thought of as a girl by the majority of Equestria might have been…manageable thanks to repeated exposure to the concept, the fact that the man had remembered to at least ask about calling me a guy put him a little closer to my good graces.

So I smiled and nodded. “That’s right, even if I don’t sound or look like it.”

“How about you and I have a word or two in my office, shall we?”

Not seeing any harm, and pretty certain if the fearful pony had set any traps to destroy the evil monster that was trying to steal his daughter from him, I could shrug off what a damn astronomer could cobble together up easily enough, I followed Nightlight through a back exit that led to a little sitting room behind the living room before I went into a hall containing a few bedrooms as well as a bathroom. Nightlight’s office was at the very back. Most likely, it was a former bedroom that had been converted into his personal workspace.

For once, I wasn’t put off by the wall to wall bookshelves. Which was more like a wall of bookshelves, although they weren’t filled to the brim with just books. There were a few other knickknacks, pictures of the family, a little decor that was more nerdish man cave than anything else. I saw an astrolabe on one shelf, a miniature telescope on another, a plaque here and there for some astrology things. It looked a lot like I would have expected Twilight to decorate the castle if she ever got around to it.

And like any office, there was a nice big desk made of what I guessed to be mahogany, polished up nicely with a very expensive-looking chair behind it, and a pair of less than comfortable chairs out in front. Real, made for humanoid creature chairs, not the ones that ponies usually employed. The one behind the desk had enough room for Nightlight to sit doggy-style, but I was left with uncomfortable thing that left me in the Lyra position.

It made me wonder what that crazy mare got into during her youth that she actually wanted to sit all slouched.

Of course the atmosphere did a little for the man’s mood. His office was his…happy place more than likely. At least as close to it he could get in the house anyway. But…it only helped a little, and the small room probably did more harm to Nightlight’s mind than good.

After all, I was a changeling in unicorn transformation magic form. One of the two big side effects of being a fake alicorn was that my pheromone production was constantly on at a level that just screamed ‘you want me’ when it came to males. Mares too apparently, but it either didn’t affect them as much, or girls were just better at hiding their feelings than boys when it came to stuff that made them horny.

But alone, in a little room with nothing but musty old books and junk with us…I was just hoping Nightlight really loved his wife. For some reason, ponies that fell in love were very resistant to my unintentional charms. I didn’t know if it was cultural, biological, or maybe even some kind of magical thing, I just knew I could stand in front of Mr Cake for a long time, and the only thing he would do is take a break afterwards to full his Cupcake’s oven up.

“Please, sit down,” the man told me before I did so and he opened a compartment on his side of the table. “Drink?”

I shook my head. “I only drink water.”

Nightlight nodded. “Oh come on now, it’s only cider,” he said before his horn lit up, and I was treated to the sound of a drawer closing after a small bottle of the stuff floated up with a pair of small glasses that landed on the table. “A least one drink. It’s the good stuff, with added salt.”

Since I had no idea the significance of cider manufacturing, the comment meant little to me. It looked like I would be needing to ask Applejack about it when we got back to Ponyville. “No thanks,” I repeated.

A bit of disappointment entered his Scent, and I sighed. “I’m sorry, I just don’t drink. It’s nothing against you,” I told him. “But thank you for the offer.” I also didn’t want to see if changelings got drunk of a single sip of the stuff to end up looking like a jackass for the rest of the night.

I was here to try and get along with Twilight’s family. Not scare them off.

Light sighed, but nodded and some of his nervousness whisked away. Then he spoke again when he should have just kept his damn mouth shut. “So…you’re dating my daughter.”

I tried to. I really, really tried to.

But…no I couldn’t do the whole cliché father with a shotgun polishing thing. I knew Equestria ran on the damn things alongside about a million tropes, but I drew the line at the whole daddy male dominance chest beating thing that demanded I kowtow to him. Plus, it was really hard to think of a guy as the alpha male when his power level ranked about three hundred to my nine thousand plus. Despite the fact that he was the father of Twilight Sparkle, Nightlight wasn’t anything special as far as unicorns went. And then of course there was his Scent. Scouter reading aside, it was pretty hard to be afraid of a guy that Smelled about ready to have a heart attack. Although the fact that it didn’t show it made me a little impressed by his composure.

So I grabbed onto that to keep a little bit of respect for him. That, and the fact he had agreed to let me come into his house for dinner and try to let us all get along. He was trying. So I could too. “I love your daughter with everything that I am,” I told him evenly. “I’ve loved her for months, and I’ve cared about her for even longer than that.”

The dark blue unicorn cleared his throat in an uneasy way. “I see.”

“And she loves me,” I went on before he could get to some prepared question like my job prospects or some stupid shit like that. “Even more than I love her.” Which was true. She had been fine with me wanting to try for Rainbow Dash and actually took the initiative on the whole thing. I was still a little apprehensive about Tia, and if any of them wanted to try for a guy…no, I wasn’t even going to go there.

The strength of Nightlight’s fear increased, and I frowned at the odd reaction as he spoke. “I see.” After the unicorn took a swig of his darker than usual cider and gulped it down, the glass wavered in the air for a few seconds before it hit the desk. “Phew, needed that for this,” Nightlight told me before he looked over to me and took a deep breath. “I would like to say I’m sorry for what happened when we first met.”

The sudden change in conversation threw me for a bit of a loop. Out of all the reasons I had been expecting to be called into Nightlight’s office to discuss things, that had not been one of them. A little male posturing and shotgun polishing, sure. Poisoned cider wasn’t out of the question either after the Empire debacle. An apology was…nowhere near the top ten scenarios of what I had been expecting.

It threw me off. Pretty bad. “I…um…thank you,” I said to him before that annoying little voice in the back of my head reminded me that if the other side was offering their hand, I needed to reach out a little too. Damn ponies were really making that crap stick. “And I am sorry that I frightened you. To be honest, I’ve lived in Ponyville for so long, I forgot that most ponies out there are still pretty afraid of changelings.”

It was a bit of a lie, but…one he needed to hear to help smooth things over.

I sighed and shook my head. “I don’t want to be something that comes between Twilight and her parents,” I told him. “That’s-”

“WHY DO YOU HAVE TO KEEP BRINGING THAT UP SPIKE?”

“BECAUSE YOU DON’T LOVE ME ANYMORE!”

I blinked at the muffled voice of Twilight Sparkle and Spike that even managed to pierce the walls in the back of the hall room me and the old man were in. The loud and pained shriek of a question made me feel like someone had stabbed a knife through my heart, and I looked back towards the door. “Um…how about we talk later at dinner?”

Not even waiting for the reply, I bounded up and out of the uncomfortable chair before I ran through the main hall in time to see a door to my left slam close. I found Twilight in the middle of the floor sitting down on her ass. The girl’s hind legs were spread out to either side, and her wings twitched when I reached her.

“Twilight, are you okay? I…what...what happened?”

Twilight sat there for a moment, and then her whole body shook. She slumped forward a second before attempting to draw in a deep breath, and another, and then another. I just barely made out the tears falling from her eyes on their way to the floor.

There was no decision of whether to comfort my purple pony or go after the monster that made her cry. I was just over to Twilight’s side as fast as I could reposition myself, although a bought of unfamiliarity had me unsure of what to do next. I didn’t comfort ponies just sitting in the middle of the floor all that often.

Twilight set the course of action for me. The girl just latched onto my body, and I stumbled back before we reached the edge of a couch. After I got us both up in it, she just went limp in my forelegs, deeply drawing in breaths as she fought down what was probably a massive panic attack. I pulled her up against my chest to rest right under my chin.

“He said…he said…I didn’t love him anymore,” the alicorn told me in a weak voice.

I kissed the mare on the forehead and held her closely while I whispered into the pony’s ear some basic anti-brat tantrum stuff. “You know that’s not true Twilight, he’s just a little upset.”

She didn’t respond, and I just held my girl and looked up as Nightlight caught up with me. Velvet, Shining and Cadence had already been in the room, more than close enough to get there before I did, but… The half a dozen different reasons why they didn’t do anything ran through my mind, which went from having to put down the food to one of them tripping on the wooden floor before I pushed it aside. I didn’t care why they had been late, just standing there stunned when I showed up, or whatever the hell had been going on while I had been too busy with Twilight’s distress to notice.

Time passed.

It felt like an hour, but it was probably a great deal less. I think Shining Armor went to try and talk to the dragon at one point, but I heard Spike shouting at him to go away in a muffled voice. The end result was the prince came back in the living room where the rest of us were sitting. We were joined by the rest of the family before then of course, but Twilight was unresponsive to them. Hell, she barely responded to me. But any attempt for me to get up was met by the mare latching onto me even tighter, so there I lay with my girlfriend grabbing me like a life preserver for several minutes.

For awhile, I thought about having someone go fetch Celestia. I was way out of my depth in the whole sibling thing, but…hell, Velvet and Nightlight didn’t even know about Dash and Rarity, dropping the bomb about just having a date with the national deity would only add more emotional problems to a bad situation.

“Why would he say something like that?” she finally asked in a whisper. “Does he really think that? Why would he think that?”

The pain in her voice stabbed at my heart, and I just held the little pony all the tighter before kissing her on the top of her head again. “He’s just a little upset Twilight,” I tried to reassure her again.

“No he…Spike, he…” Twilight trailed off between pants as her breath continued to go from quick and even to steady at an excruciatingly slow pace.

I found myself faced with a myriad of actions. But since just marching in and shoving the child’s face into what he had just done wasn’t really an option with the rest of the ponies around, and he had to survive the process of whatever I did do, I simply continued to hold onto Twilight.

Another bundle of minutes passed. Some of the family talked to Twilight, and Twilight responded a little half-heartedly. I got the basic rundown from Cadence though. She sat next to us on the couch and explained everything when I asked what happened and Twilight clammed up.

“Well you saw how they hugged before we…left them alone,” she began. I was never more grateful for an alicorn that was comfortable with her pegasus-level hearing. It was useful for so many more things than just talking to other fliers in gale force winds. “I think I heard Spike telling Twilight what he had been up to, and then he asked if they were taking the train home tonight, or waiting until tomorrow. Just went out and asked it again.”

Twilight sucked in a breath. “He thinks…he thinks I’m here to take him back to Ponyville,” she told me softly. “Why…why would he think that? Why would he-I never told him that in my letters.”

As I held my little pony, I wished my disregard for privacy had been strong enough to ignore Twilight’s back when it had mattered and that I had taken a peek at her correspondence before any of the messages were sent. I spied on everyone else’s mail after all. But no, I had to go and do the respectable thing like some kind of idiot. Now, Twilight was hurting and I was feeling like crap. That was what being the gentleman had gotten me.

My own problems aside, the question was, did Spike simply misinterpret what Twilight wrote, or did someone else offer him false hope? Of course the likely suspects were the two adults in his life. Which made me wonder if they just told the kid what he wanted to hear to try and cheer him up rather than trying to get him adjusted to Canterlot. And...as much as I hated to admit it...if that was the way things were going to work in Velvet’s house...Spike staying with them probably wasn’t the best of ideas. Little piece of shit or not...he was important to Twilight and needed to be taken care of properly.

So...I was pretty sure Celestia could do something with him to straighten things out. Quick hand off to her, problem solved.

Sure Sunset had been kind of...egomaniacal, and Twilight was a little on the crazy side, but...third time’s the charm, right?

But from the looks of things...the ponies wouldn’t be suggesting any solutions. Hell, the fucking soldier in the room let himself get run off by the child, and the alicorns were girls. Which meant it was up to me.

“Cadence?” I spoke up towards the pink pony. “Can you take Twilight?” I’m going to go talk to Spike.” And of course, the blood circulating in my body decreased as Twilight held on to me even tighter.

Shining Armor let out a nervous groan. “Uh look, let’s just give them a minute and-”

I spoke up right over him. “He’s had plenty,” I said with a frown on my face a sharp tone in my voice that stabbed his protest to death. “Now would some pony please help me with Twilight? Way I’m feeling right now, my magic isn’t going to be anywhere near gentle if I have to get her off with my horn.”

If anyone caught the very bad play on words, they didn’t say anything.

And I was too focused on telling a little lizard what for to be embarrassed.

Unfortunately, only a little help from Cadence came in the way of a supporting hoof on Twilight. So I was stuck in the living room couch for at least fifteen more minutes while the pink pony coaxed the princess of the purple mane off of me.

No support personnel came with me, of course. Being the responsible and involved parents they were, Velvet and Nightlight found something else to busy themselves with. Dinner and work, respectively. Thankfully, Shining and Cadence stayed in the living room but, they got a pass. Never would have been able to get Twilight off without them.

I gotta say, I hate children on my best of days. Not the ones that are actually capable of thought, the ones in their mid to late teens. No, I’m talking about the little brats that think Spongebob Squarepants has a level of intelligence they should aspire to match. And yeah, teenagers can be that stupid too, but…that’s a point for another time. The point I had on my mind was: I hated kids; and for the exact reason that I was going to have to be dealing with Spike. Their super emotional, completely illogical minds that just did stuff and asked questions never.

Sure, Spike was in his early teens but…either thanks to dragon genetics or the fact he was locked up in a tower for most of his life, I put the majority of his maturity and common sense levels around that of the CMC. As in the little girls that had tried to get lion taming cutie marks when the circus came to town. Sans adult supervision of course. What made it even worse with Spike was that he had followed Twilight Sparkle around for his entire life. This made him smart, smart enough to fool some people into thinking he was mature for his age, when the exact opposite was probably more true. And a high level of intelligence added to a low level of maturity was a bad combination. It gave a kid the knowledge to do something, but not the wisdom to know when to do it.

Case in point: insults. A smart kid like Spike knew exactly was to say in that situation he was just in talking to Twilight. There was no telling Twilight how much he hated her, or something else she could write off as heat of the moment. He nailed the very point she was questioning herself, and left her to just drowned in pity and self-doubt.

Considering his mental age, I doubted the little monster even gave a shit about what he did to her by not bothering to care. Kids had some pretty powerful mental blinders when consequences weren’t shoved in their faces after all. By just running off before Twilight could break down all the way, Spike had managed to avoid the guilt of his actions. And it pissed me off to no end. That little bastard needed to be crouched over and in tears because of what he had just done to Twilight.

Thankfully, there was no need for property damage because the door wasn’t locked, and yielded to my magic as I nudged it open softly enough not to damage the thing.

I poked my head into the kid’s room, and kind of immediately wished I didn’t. It looked like any other child’s room I’d ever seen, which wasn’t many. There was a bed that had plenty of room for him to grow into, more closet space than he’d need until adulthood, and a little nightstand by his bed with a pair of pictures on it. One of them was of all the girls standing together with him, and the other was of Twilight’s family. There was space enough between them for a third, which I located quickly enough.

The little lizard was looking at a third picture in his hands, or claws, with the saddest expression I had ever seen him wearing. It wasn’t the panicked sadness he had back in the Crystal Empire when Twilight was giving him the news of his determined relocation. That had passed, the reality had sunk in and what had come about was a true, hopeless depression.

The more emotionally logical part of my brain shouted ‘GOOD! FUCK HIM!’ he hurt Twilight, and deserved all the pain he got in return. But…

...if I listened to that logic, I probably would have been ruling the world alongside Chrysalis, or already have knocked her off the throne and crowned myself king while I magicked the mane six into my love slaves and stole ownership of the heavens from the sisters before I turned them into my personal maids.

So...as much as I really...REALLY hated to admit it, there was something else that kind of shouted even louder in my ear was the proverbial angel on my shoulder going ‘YOU DID THIS’. It was the same thing that made me feel like crap and panic when I kind of told Twilight Sparkle she couldn’t be friends with her friends after first coming to Ponyville. And without the raging fury of a hurt Sunset to make that little voice shut the hell up, all I saw was a little boy about to be crying over a photograph that was probably pretty Twilight-centric.

So I took in a breath and opened the door all the way.

The door creaked, and Spike looked up with a jerk. When he saw me standing on the other end of the door, the boy froze, and gulped. “Um…h-hello.” Still in pony-mode, I had no idea what he was feeling, and didn’t really want to. It would only help the sympathy case the little bastard was building.

One thing that was real useful about having a female voice was that I could just cut back on the volume a little bit and go from Nightmare Moon regal to Princess Luna gentle pretty easily. With that and a little decrease in volume, I hoped I came across as a little non-threatening. “Hello Spike,” I said while bowing my head just a little to try and assume as much of a ‘I’m not going to kill you’ stance as I could.

Then, thanks to his little tear-jerking routine that was fighting against my need to bash his head in, I remembered my manners. “Can I come in?”

“Um…O-Kay,” he said in a similarly quiet tone.

I had to fight not to sigh at the nervousness in his voice, or shout at him that I wasn’t evil. But I made it to his bedside and looked around for a bit at the rather spartan room. Nothing else stuck out at me besides a box in his closet with some comic books. Then I looked back at the boy. “Can we talk?”

“Sure,” Spike replied without much strength while he kept looking at the picture in his claws.

Which of course made even more of my anger towards him drain away.

“This um…” I said before putting my hoof on the covered mattress. “Nice bed. Bet it beats that little basket Twilight had you sleeping in, huh?”

Spike sighed and hung his head even more. “It’s Twilight’s. I always slept in the basket,” he said before his eyes became half-lidded. “I miss my basket.”

Ouch, I thought while I felt the little dragon try and jerk some of my tears from their proverbial sockets. After that little exchange, I decided not to go with the meaningless small talk. “So how you holding up?” I asked. “Can’t be that bad. Bet it was great to see all your friends again.”

“Not really,” he mumbled before he looked back at the picture in his claws.

Curiosity getting the best of me, I sat up a little straighter and looked to see what frozen moment in time had demanded his attention. In the picture, Twilight was standing next to Spike, dressed in a pointy hat with bells on it and matching robe while Spike was in a purple suit that kind of made it look like a dragon was eating him. “Nightmare Night, right?”

He nodded, but said nothing.

“You had a lot of fun that night, huh?”

He nodded again.

I sighed, and decided to throw out the small talk that had a little bit of a point to it as well. “Spike, can I talk to you for a second? Really talk to you,” I went on while meeting him eye to eye. That usually got kid’s attention, and sometimes even made them take the subject seriously. Considering just what subject I was about to go over, I doubted that I would have problems with the second reason of the phrase.

“Okay,” he said in that same half-squeak of a voice that just made him look as young as…well…Sweetie Belle.

I took a deep breath and braced myself for whatever the hell the stupid lizard was going to say in his defense while I talked. “Do you know why Twilight did what she did by sending you here, I mean?”

The little dragon’s hesitant look went back to the depressed one that he had been wearing when I first walked in. “Because Sunset got hurt, and-”

“Actually…not really,” I said with a inward frown as I listened to my own words. It kind of pissed me off that had just been the fuel of the emotions behind the reason Spike got exiled from Ponyville with, but not the real reason. And yeah, I may have sort of guided Twilight towards her decision by pointing out a little problem Spike had in half a dozen different ways, but it still didn’t have anything to do with all that trouble that happened in the Empire at its core.

“The reason Twilight sent you away is because you…” I stopped as what I was about to say entered my head. I couldn’t say, because you saw her going out with someone else that wasn’t you, and panicked. “You overreacted, like…remember when she cast that Want it Need it Spell? Or when she tried to stop time?”

Spike looked at me for a few seconds, and then nodded.

“Well, she was afraid you’d end up like that if you stayed with her for too long,” I told him. Which…wasn’t exactly true. He had already reached an irrational level of paranoia involving me. “If for different reasons. For Twilight, it was how she can’t keep thinking every little thing is going to go horribly wrong. For you…well…among other things, it’s not being around Twilight.”

Thankfully, the boy’s face was human enough for me to read some of his emotions with my eyes. Unfortunately, what I read said he was even sadder than he had been a few seconds ago, sad and hurt. “But…that’s…Twilight…I’ve always been with Twilight! Ever since she hatched me!”

I cringed a bit at that little reminder towards the momma-Twilight belief and looked out the bedroom window to the nice and peaceful sky above for a second or two. The nice calm sky that didn’t look at all like a crying child. But that didn’t last long, and I had to look back at the little lizard that kind of looked like a child on the verge of tears. It reminded me why I didn’t like dealing with kids below the age of sixteen. “Well…you weren’t for a week, and nothing really bad happened to you, did it? Besides the sadness thing, I mean.”

“But I…I…” Spike took in a breath through his nose that sounded like a sniffle. “Not…really.”

Spike flinched when I reached up to put my foreleg over his shoulder and around his back. A slight trembling in the boy’s body didn’t help me keep my composure any, but I managed not to start whispering an apology to shut that growing nagging in the back of my mind up. “So that means you can probably take another week, right?”

The trembling increased, and I was just glad I was a pony so I had zero chance of picking anything up when it came to what he was feeling. “I…well…um…yes, but… I don’t want to be here anymore! I want to go home!”

As Spike’s little whiney voice that was just spoken loud enough to be classified a squeak reached my ears, I cringed to as my body told me to just hug the damn lizard.

And...well…

…

I couldn’t take it.

Even after what Spike had done. Even after all the stupid bulllshit and crap that he had tried to pull...I actually felt sorry for the little bastard despite my best efforts.

He made Twilight cry, he tried to turn the girls against me, he nearly got Sunset killed, and tried to set Twilight up with Flashy Sentry, but… all that shit had happened a week ago, and while I could carry a grudge as well as most humans...without some sort of constant reminder to keep the flame of righteous fury stoked, they had kind of died down to embers.

So, My willpower took another kick in the balls, and…well…

I caved.

Yeah, I caved.

I wasn’t perfect.

There was only so much crying child even I could take.

I reached my limit, and I caved.

“Okay.”

“Wh-What?” Spike stuttered as he looked up at me.

I let out a grating sigh. “I said okay, we’ll...get you back to Ponyville.”

“But…but Twilight said…she said she wasn’t here to take me back.”

I gave him a little smile. “Maybe not when we first came here, but…” I took in a deep breath, and thought for a few seconds about what to say next. “Spike, can I talk to you like an adult for a second?”

Hesitation entered his expression, and I could almost see some little shiny light of hope enter his eyes as he looked over to me. “W-What’s that mean?”

“It means I’m not going to sugar-coat what I’m about to say,” I told him with a serious expression. “And it also means you’re not going to freak out about what I’m going to say, okay?”

Spike nodded.

“Okay, first off… Twilight was right when she said you have a problem,” I told him before waiting to see if he started to deny it or anything. When Spike didn’t…well, I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad sign. He was listening, but he was pretty…bla about everything too. No willpower to resist and all that. “Now, I’m not stupid. I know you think I’m taking Twilight away from you,” I said before pausing a second for dramatic effect. “And to some extent, you’re right.”

Spike tensed. His eyes widened, but…he still didn’t say anything.

I cleared my throat and licked my lips before removing my foreleg. “But not in the way that I’m mind controlling her, or stealing away all her love. Which I’m not by the way. Changeling feeding doesn’t really work like that. Twilight loves you just as much as she did the day you two moved to Ponyville. You can’t steal love. The pony who loves just makes more to fill demand.

“But I am taking up her time, just like Applejack and Rainbow, Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie do. There’s only so many hours in the day. It’s like…remember when Pinkie cloned herself? Same problem,” I went on as soon as he nodded. “And I’ll admit, some of the things we did, we could have included you if we had thought about it, others…not so much.” The sex thing being a big one. “Twilight’s growing up and branching out, and unlike with your friends, the way she’s branching out with me isn’t something she can share with…family.” Considering we were in a potentially fatal four-way relationship, I wasn’t about to go with others, we were sharing plenty with others in that way. “And that’s something you’re going to have to accept if you come back.”

The little dragon took in a tight breath. “But…”

When nothing else came I gave the child a little smile. “And you need to be branching out too Spike,” I told him as gently as I could. “Foals, or uh, hatchlings your age, you need to have a few of your own interests. That’s what Twilight was doing by sending you here, she was trying to give you reason to find some of those things without the distraction that her presence provides.”

“But I just want to be with her,” he whined. “Why can’t I just stay with Twilight? What’s so bad about that?”

I turned my body a bit to face him completely and moved my hooves around to grab his shoulder while I kept up the soft voice with a little effort. “Being with Twilight isn’t a problem in itself. But when you just want to be with her, then it becomes an issue,” I explained. “You become greedy for her attention and her praise, and you try and take something that can only be given freely. Then you get all afraid that not getting as much attention means pretty soon Twilight isn’t going to be giving you any at all. You try and get rid of the competition, you make enemies of creatures that aren’t out to get you. And when you try and do that, bad things happen. That’s what Twilight was trying to fix. Understand?”

Spike just nodded.

“So all we have to do is convince her your problem is really fixed,” I told him simply before becoming a bit more thoughtful. “Or at least that you're on the road to recovery.”

That actually got a bit more of a reaction out of him than everything else I said combined. The little spark of hope in the dragon’s eyes lit up a bit, and he took in a few quick breaths. Going by human reactions I had seen in my life, the boy was getting a…panicked hope. It was like his brain was telling him there was something too good to be true and he shouldn’t trust it, while at the same time saying salvation had arrived. “H-How do we-”

My hoof came up to stop Spike from talking. “Now hold on a second,” I told him. “Even if we can talk Twilight into doing this, and you come back to Ponyville, it’s not going to make everything just go back to normal. Twilight’s sleeping with me in Everfree Castle now, and you’ll have to move in there too.”

I saw the lump travel down Spike’s throat, but he didn’t say anything while I went on. “You’ll get your own room, right down the hall from the one me and Twilight share,” I said, not seeing the point of glossing over that little fact. The subject of herding, the four of us girls could address with the kid when we were together. “And while it’s completely up to Twilight if you’ll be helping her with her magic and all that, the cleaning, the library, the…well, I think the girls would like your cooking better than that of a species with no taste buds. But everything else, the changelings will take care of it so you can do whatever it is you want to do.”

Spike frowned a little, and tilted his head. “But I don’t want to do anything else.”

“That’s the point of having you do other things,” I told him while finding the need to restrain my voice and not clench my teeth. “You need to branch out. You need to…well…find what you’re good at. Every pony likes getting a pat on the head for a job well done, but that isn’t the only thing that should motivate you Spike.”

The dragon looked down at the ground for a second and clasped his hands together. “Twilight said something like that to me once…I think.”

Of course I knew that, having spied on Tia while the whole thing was going down. But I sure as hell wasn’t about to tell him that. Hell, I could even use it.

“See Spike?” I asked. “That proves it. Yeah, I’m plenty upset with you, but when it comes down to it, I only want to help you here. Even though you tried to turn a whole town against me and actually succeeded in doing it with the Crystal Empire.” A low blow, but the longer I was around the kid, the less his depression really affected me.

“…sorry,” he said with a flinch. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

Neither do drunk drivers when they plow into kids riding their bikes, but it still happens, my inner jackass said before I cleaned the thought up a bit. “You may have not have meant to start the proverbial fire Spike, but Sunset still got burned because of it,” I told him. “Being mindful of your actions and what could come of them, that’s part of what growing up is too. But don’t beat yourself up over it, just make sure not to do it again. That’s all you can really do…and an apology never hurts either.”

Spike just nodded, and then licked his lips. “Um…about talking Twilight into taking me back to Ponyville. How’re we going to-”

“Oh we’re not going to talk her into doing it,” I told Spike before letting my mouth curve upwards in a smirk. “Honestly, that mare is so stubborn I doubt she’d listen. Am I right?”

A tiny laugh came from the dragon’s mouth. “Sometimes.”

I messed with the top of the kid’s head for a second in a way that would have destroyed any hairdo if there had been hair up there, and gave him a little brighter smile. “We’re going to convince her you’re ready to come back. There’s a difference,” I explained before I put my serious face on again. “Of course, this means your going to have to trust me. Can you do that?”

Despite the inhuman nature of the boy’s face, I could tell he was mulling it over. The hesitation kind of pissed me off a little, but…I didn’t let it get to me that much. After all, for all Spike knew I could just be setting him up so he’d never get to be with Twilight again.

It was an impossibility, but not in his little mind I guess since he actually had to think about it for a few seconds.

“I can,” he said after a moment.

“Then here’s what we do.”

I was a little surprised to find the hallway empty of ponies when I came out of Spike’s room with the dragon on my back. On the way to the living room, he shifted around uncomfortably and I tried to ignore the second creature to ever ride me while the ghost of my humanity screamed in protest at the whole thing.

Apparently, the parents had once again decided to grace Twilight with their presence, because I heard Velvet’s voice and saw Nightlight the second I came into the hall. “Just saying Shiny-honey, a seamstress seems a little…below your new station,” the mare told her son hesitantly.

As the words registered with my brain and I worked out that they had to have been talking about Rarity.

I looked back to Spike while using my long mane to hide it. While I never had much problems with most of the…ideas about which pony would go well with the others, which could pretty much be any combination that ran between Apple-Pie to Twi-Dash thanks to the close bonds all the girls shared, the whole Sparity idea was just… a thirteen-year-old kid dating or doing it with a woman in her mid twenties.

It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t cute. It was criminal. Literally, put Rarity in jail as a sex offender criminal. Greedy dragon growth hormone or no. Big did not mean old.

But I sure as hell didn’t want the little kid knowing Rarity had decided to run off with Shining while he was in such a delicate state. So before Spike’s little dragon ears let reality crush his heart, I cleared my throat and announced my presence rather loudly. “Hey every pony, look who decided to join us for dinner!” I practically shouted over Velvet’s conversation.

Towards the back of the room, I saw Twilight pick her head up off Cadence, and look over to where the two of us were. “Spike?”

I heard the dragon gulp before he jumped off me, using my hair like some kind of vine that made me grunt and nearly vaporize him on principle. Then he slowly walked up to the pony that was sitting down, and looked up to her. “Twilight…I, um…I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said those…things. I know, I know you still love me. It’s just I…I…”

Thankfully the kid didn’t say anything more before Twilight started talking, and I found something else to concentrate on while things got too ‘I’m sorry for making it sound like I was saying something else in my letters’ to ‘I’m sorry I bla’ and ‘I’m sorry I bla bla’ and ‘sorry bla bla bla’ and so on.

By the time they were done, there were hugs between the two, and Velvet said dinner was getting cold.

So we sat down and started eating. By some act of God, none of the adults decided to bring up Rarity. Although because Velvet had been in the death throes of her protests, or because some of the assembled equines had a brain underneath their ears, I neither knew nor cared.

When the conversation about work, how the Crystal Empire was, and all the nothing happening in Ponyville hit a lull, I looked over to the dragon. “So Spike, how do you like it here in Canterlot?”

“It’s okay,” he said without much fire. “It’s just…you know…not as fun as Ponyville.”

I fake frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

He sighed. “There’s just nothing to do here, ya know. No adventures or anything. And all my Canterlot friends are busy doing…Canterlot stuff. Unicorn schools and apprenticeships in jobs their cutie marks are good for.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “You know Spike, Ponyville wasn’t all that adventurous either. How many times did you complain there wasn’t enough to do when we first moved there?”

“But that was before I knew everypony,” the dragon replied with a bit more emotion than he had been talking to me.

The brake in the script had me grit my teeth for a second. “But um…Canterlot isn't that bad, right? I mean…you survived the week. World didn’t end, right?”

Spike sighed and slumped in his chair a little. “Yeah.”

“And Twilight came to visit, right?” I went on.

“Yeah,” he agreed before looking over to the princess. “And, I-I’m sorry Twilight. I-I shouldn’t have said all those things.”

A soft smile preceded the alicorn’s words. “You already apologized Spike. And I shouldn’t have yelled at you either. I’m sorry for…panicking like I did.”

Spike shook his head furiously. “No I-I shouldn’t have thought you were going to take me…b-back with you.”

Damn it Spike, don’t you fucking lose it now, I mentally commanded the lizard that had no way to hear me. If he started blubbering again about how he wanted to go home, I was pretty sure that Twilight would just seize up and start going on and on about how he needed to stay in Canterlot, and away from her.

So, with my brilliant plan hinging on an emotionally unstable youth, I decided to try something else called playing it by ear. I looked over to the purple pony sitting next to me. “Twilight, can I talk to you alone for a second?” I asked quickly. “In the back yard?”

One hesitant agreement and a teleport later, and I stumbled around to get my bearings on the grass since I went from sitting on a cushion with my tail all sprawled out to...having blades of grass poking me in my privates. Once I had regained my composure, I looked to the purple pony and cut straight to heart of the matter. “Twilight, we need to take Spike back to Ponyville with us.”

“What?” Twilight exclaimed as her eyes went wide and the little moment of sibling-love hesitation she had been experiencing the tail end of was burnt away. “No, Fairy, don’t you remember? Spike, he…it’s bad for him to be around me. I…remember all those things you said he did, and I talked to the other girls, and…if Spike comes back and lives with me, he’ll-he’ll just-”

I put a hoof on her shoulder to get the princess’s attention. “Twilight. You know how humans don’t have magic, so we really get hung up on the how things work?”

Twilight nodded.

“Well, because of that, we…get hung up on also has to do with thought processes, why the mind does what it does,” I went on after I ordered my thoughts a bit. “You follow me?”

The alicorn’s expression slowly turned to a disbelieving frown. “Sort of, but…what does that have to do with Spike? He’s not a human, you don’t know anything about his brain chemistry.”

“Not the brain,” I told her, “the mind. There’s a difference. It’s like…the brain is how things work the way they do, but the mind is why you think the way you do. And while there are some differences, I don’t think Spike’s mind is all the different from a young human boy’s.” He was sure as hell a lot closer than that of a pony’s from what I could see. Equestrian culture had removed them from humanity when it came to a lot of the selfishness and shortsighted things human kids tended to do.

Twilight nodded slowly. “Okay, I think I follow you. But…what does this have to do with Spike?”

I took in a deep breath and did my best to order my thoughts. “I think one of the core problems Spike is facing is this thing we call separation anxiety,” I told her. “Now, there are some more things too, but…with this one, its an intense fear that Spike is going to be separated from the pony that he loves the most. That’s you.”

“We already knew that though,” she told me, and I realized I had made a bit of a mistake starting my explanation in such a way.

So I shook my head. “Yeah, but it goes beyond just a fear of separation,” I told her. “There’s also a…nameless fear that makes Spike think something bad is going to happen to him, or to you, if your apart for a long period of time.

“And like I said, it’s just one of several problems, a lot of which I’m in no way qualified to mess with.” I had only taught a high school class on psychology a lifetime ago for crying out loud, I was in no way a doctor. “But I do know that going from a world filling presence like he used to have with you to just one day a week isn’t a good idea when it comes to dealing with this.”

Twilight was silent as I finished. Her Scent was a confusing mix of fear, anger, happiness, and maybe half a dozen other Smells. But her lips weren’t as moving. She just…looked at me.

It was…pretty damn unnerving, really.

I broke eye contact and cleared my throat. “Look, um…I know it’s not my place to tell you how to raise your-”

“Y-You’re saying you think it’s okay to take Spike home?” Twilight asked softly. “That it won’t hurt him?”

I looked back at Twilight, and gulped at her hopeful face. “If we...do it right,” I said before sighing. “Look, sorry. Like I said, it’s your call but…I’m here to help you…if you want me too.”

As the dragon looked up at Twilight with tears in his eyes, I was hoping I wasn’t making a really big mistake and shooting myself in the foot thanks to a moment of pity for the kid. If something bad came from this…I wasn’t going to be living with myself very well.

“Now there are going to be some changes Spike,” Twilight told the hopeful dragon.

He quickly nodded. “I know Twilight! I know! We live in the castle now, and I need to apologize to Sunset, and…and um…”

“Not this weekend,” Twilight said, cutting him off. “But every weekend afterwards, you’ll be spending it here in Canterlot. So schedule things to do with your friends then, okay?” she asked.

Spike nodded. “Anything you want Twilight!”

I winced at his choice of words, and Twilight stomped her hoof into the carpeted ground of their living room. “No Spike!” she nearly shouted. “This isn’t about what I want, or even what you want. This is about what you need! Understand?”

It took him a few seconds, but Spike slowly nodded.

“I…I know you need me Spike,” Twilight went on. “At least, for now you do. But you also need to find your own way and…I’ll help you with that, like Celestia helped me, remember?”

As Spike did the smart thing and simply nodded again, I let out a tired sigh, and looked up at the clock. “Hey Twilight, we need to hurry over to the school if we want to make it in time for class.”

No tardy freak-out followed, but Twilight did visibly tense as she glanced up at the clock, and then turned her attention back to Spike. “Okay, um…Spike?”

“Yes?”

“We’re going to be staying here tonight, but leaving on the first train for Ponyville tomorrow morning,” Twilight told him. “So I want you packed and ready to go. There’s also some other things I need to tell you, but they can wait till tomorrow morning, okay?”

Spike nodded very enthusiastically. “Okay Twilight! And I’m sure it’ll be fine. I can, I can deal with anything you need me too.”

The boy’s final words before we said our goodbyes made me wince. There was no way him coming home like that was going to end well. But I had already set the avalanche in motion.

Chapter 34: The Incredible Decahedron of Destiny

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Chapter 34: The Incredible Decahedron of Destiny

Class started a bit worse than usual. The whole herding thing came back to bite me in the ass when Blueblood met me and Twilight at the door. The last time I managed to get him off my back by saying me and Twilight were a couple, but with the new rules in play… Well, he went on and on about how, as the most eligible bachelor in Canterlot, it would be our honor, not his, to be shown a good time by him. This was followed by a few comments that left Twilight fuming, and Blueblood twitching from a rather explosive teleport that sent him to the top row of the classroom after he fell down from the ceiling.

It took me a few minutes to put myself right after being offered to be shown a good time by a ‘real’ stallion like him. Since, you know, neither of us had been given such an honor in our life.

Or maybe it was the fact that he had also said it to Twilight that really got to me a put a bit of a knot in my stomach. Sure Twilight had zapped him away to the top of the room and let him drop to the desks on the far back, but hell, anyone in their right minds would have done the same. I had been Smelling ponies long enough to work out what Scent was what, and what I got off Blueblood wasn’t anything even approaching love, or even that much lust. As far as I could tell, he just wanted to get with an alicorn because Twilight was an alicorn, and I looked like one. We were a boost to his reputation, a notch in his belt, proof that he actually deserved be called the most desirable stallion in Equestria.

But, Blueblood and his ego and the stupid crap he said, that meant nothing to me at all. It wasn’t worth worrying over when I had bigger things to deal with. Shortly after I came in, Sunny Skies and Trixie showed up, right behind Shining and Cadence. The last of whom had royal permission (signed by one Princess Cadenza) to observe a class at CSGU. Sunset had been in the room from the start, her changeling escort waiting outside.

Then came the fifteen minute setup and explanations, followed by a lot of number crunching, dice rolling, and whispers between the royal siblings.

“All right, does every pony understand the basic rules?” I asked while sitting behind my large teacher’s desk with my short stack of core and expansion rule books next to me along with the adventuring scenario that the pony who ran the Golem’s Dungeon and Mini-Caricature Shop described as the Worst Adventure Ever had made. But, he had still made it according to my specifications, complete with house rules, so I was good.

I had my my cardboard shield placed across my desk for its mystical uses more than the mundane ones. The ponies had truly surpassed humanity in regards to cardboard GM shields. Whereas the pathetic humans could only fit fixed information on theirs, the advantage of magic had made the display in front of me equal to any computer display in regards to the data pertaining to the subjects it was connected to. On top of which, there was its special magic that would be activate later.

Positioned around the room, Twilight, Shining Armor, Blueblood, Trixie, and the unnaturally tall unicorn with a pink mane 'Sunny Skies' (AKA Celestia, the Alicorn of the Sun, sexiest pony alive, or just Tia to the ponies wanting to do her) sat filling out sheets of paper while Sunset Shimmer and Cadence just stared at the sight from their places beside me in confusion.

“You know,” the human spoke up as she crossed her arms and frowned at me. “When you said you needed my help with something, I didn’t think it was to run an Oubliettes and Ogres game!”

Next to the human, a pink alicorn looked over to her husband sitting on the first row. “Shining, this better not be what you’ve been doing every week you come to Canterlot,” Cadence said to him. “You make the crystal guard waste enough time doing this enough already.”

Shining Armor looked up from the book he was sharing with Twilight. “Those are mock battle simulations! Besides, it’s a proven fact that tabletop roleplaying games promote problem solving, cooperation with a group, resource management, and many other skills that help a pony be successful in life!”

“Ironically,” Trixie said as her attention was drawn away from the paper in front of her. “It appeals most to the type of pony never to be in a group, hasn’t much in the way of resources, or have much of a life to begin with.”

The roundabout insult caused the showmare to receive a glare from Twilight. “Hey!”

I cleared my throat. “Okay girls, settle down,” I told her before looking over to Cadence. “And I wanted to do something else, but Princess Celestia said it was far too dangerous and if I was actually serious about going through with it, then I needed to get professional help.”

Personally, I didn’t see what the big deal was. Twilight had handled the little space bear when she was just a unicorn. The mother and child couldn’t be that bad. And...I needed a new trophy for my throne room if Spike was coming back. Having a dragon head visible right when someone entered the castle, well...it might have helped to give him the wrong idea about me, I’ll admit.

From her place in the center of the seating, little Tia’s eyes narrowed. “Pardon teacher, but in my job as a royal secretary, I saw your proposal to have us all awaken the star bears in their cave and then have to deal with the repercussions,” the princes replied. “So, I believe Princess’s Celestia’s estimation of your idea was a prudent one.”

Ignoring the princess, I looked back to my guests. “Now, if you’re going to sit in on the class, you have to participate in the activity. Do you have your characters ready?”

“Yes,” both the girls said as they raised their sheets of paper. One using magic, the other her fingers.

A hoof in the back of the room went up, and I looked across the numerous desks to the stallion with the two black eyes. “Blueblood, I swear if you ask me and Twilight to join your royal herd again, that little trip Twilight gave you will be nothing compared to what I do to your male anatomy.”

The prince cleared his throat. “No, it’s in response to your question. I think I have the basic idea, though it still seems strange to me,” Blueblood mumbled as he dropped his pencil on the long row-desk he sat at, “a roleplaying game where you have to survive completely ordinary problems in an adult pony’s life? Doesn't that sound kind of boring?”

“I like the idea,” Tia spoke up. “Much better than how it’s usually done with how ponies pretend to be powerful warriors that fight skeletons, storm goblins and all kinds of monsters while they hunt for treasure. More realistic too.”

Twilight let out a snort. “You’ve obviously never been to Ponyville. Living there kind of ruined this game for me,” the alicorn said before scribbling on her character sheet, “we don't need to have pretend games for things you can easily do in real life.”

“Hence why I use them to simulate problems in the Crystal Empire,” Shining said.

“That's…” Cadence sighed as she gave up the point, “okay, yeah. I’ll give you a point there. It might have some uses if you can make it mirror real life.”

Sunset let out a groan. “Oh please. These things have nothing to do with real life!” she said before holding up her character sheet. “Normally, becoming a lawyer takes years of expensive schooling, not fifteen minutes with a source book like the one I just did. By the way, just what are everybody’s classes?”

“Trixie is a magician.”

I groaned and slumped. “No, Trixie, what is your character’s class?”

The Great and Powerful Trixie’s face scrunched up a bit and...it kind of made her look adorably hot. Adorable because, well...she was a pony after all. The hot probably came from all that time hauling her cart around. It had given her a much better figure than Twilight. Plus, the way her hair was fixed up was an obvious tactic to make her horn look a little longer, which was sexy on unicorns. If it wasn't for her past and kind of annoying voice, and some kind of rivalry she was still trying to start up with Twilight in the class despite how hopelessly outgunned she was, I might have had a problem resisting her charms.

And then she spoke, breaking me out of my mental examination of the sexy little magician. “Trixie told you, she made a magician.”

“I chose a teacher!” Tia said brightly before I could continue the argument. From the looks of things, the goddess was already enjoying herself greatly.

A glow of purple surrounded Twilight’s paper as she held it up. “I’m a librarian.”

“Civic legionare,” Shining said. “It was as close to a paladin that I could find.”

Blueblood let out a sniff. “Politician.”

“Councilor of Marriage,” Cadence told me.

As the last of the classes were called out, I looked around at the ponies that had basically chosen to create fantasy characters based on themselves, with the exception of Sunset Shimmer. “Seriously? Sunset was the only one who made a character that wasn’t a carbon copy of herself?”

“Hey!” Blueblood protested. “Elected officials are nothing like those of royal blood!”

Shining Armor let out a snort. “Yeah, they have to be competent to get their jobs, and stay that way to keep them,” he said before a little bit of hesitation entered his expression. “Well, in theory anyway.”

Twilight’s head tilted in the universal body language to show confusion. “I thought this simulation was to be connected to us in some way, and the sourcebook restrictions you gave us don’t include archmages, princesses, and the scientist class didn’t have very good starting equipment.”

“And I was planning on becoming a lawyer back when I lived with humans,” Sunset chimed in.

As I groaned and prepared to hit my head against my desk, a rather loud strike of hooves from farther back and up in the hall made us all look up to the rather angry pink-haired unicorn that was Celestia’s disguise. “YOU WHAT?” she shouted. “What kind of-that’s just… No daughter of Celestia’s should ever have such a disreputable profession!”

Trixie looked down at the human in confusion. “Say what?”

“Oh yeah,” Twilight told her with a bit of an edge to her voice. “Princess Celestia adopted Sunset Shimmer a few weeks ago.” Then, the princess turned her attention to Tia. “Although, I’m wondering how you knew about something like that.”

‘Sunny Skies’ rolled her eyes. “Pardon me Princess Twilight, but I am Princess Celestia’s personal secretary. Nothing goes out of her office without me knowing about it, especially paperwork.”

“And you're taking a class geared towards military applications?” the purple princess went on.

To which Tia replied, “Do you have any idea the amount of sensitive information I have in my head? Self-defense is practically a job requirement.”

Then, she turned back to look at Sunset with a frown. “And don’t think just talking to her makes me forget about you and that occupation!”

“Hey! Civil law is plenty respectable!" the former pony protested. “It’s essentially stealing from and humiliating people while explaining how you're completely justified in doing so! It’s hard work!”

Twilight gave Sunset a deadpan look. “What happened to that new leaf you were turning over?”

In response, Sunset rolled her eyes. “Just cause humans don’t get cutie marks doesn’t mean they don’t get railroaded on a certain path in life too you know,” she said before shrugging. “It’s what I know, so it’s what I’m picking.”

I cleared my throat to get everyone’s attention. “Okay, guys. What’re your alignments?”

“That’s another thing that confuses me,” Shining spoke up as he met me eye to eye. “These aren't the usual O&O alignments.”

“This version has a much more realistic system,” I explained to him. “While the whole chaotic to lawful may work on paper, real life is way more complex, and the supplement provided in this expansion accounts for that.”

“Trixie shall be neutral,” the unicorn announced.

Twilight nodded. “Same here.”

“I’ll be neutral was well,” Celestia told me.

“Me too,” Sunset said.

“Ditto,” Cadencespoke.

Blueblood let out a groan. “Well, as my class must select an alignment, I shall go with...ultra-conservative,” the unicorn said after studying the book in front of him. “The ethics and beliefs seem to be quite agreeable.”

“Radical liberal,” Shining Armor announced.

I frowned at him. “Did you chose that because Blueblood did the other?”

Shining Armor gave me an offended look. “Hey! I take my RPGs very seriously!”

Cadene sighed and shook her head. “It’s true, he really does.”

“And my character has an intelligence score of four!” Shining went on right on top of Cadence. “That alignment is the only one that makes sense for him.”

Not wanting to get into it with Shining Armor over semantics, I let out a sigh and pulled out the ten-sided die to start the game. “Okay then, is every pony ready to start?” I asked.

Once all the ponies had given their responses, which was a chorus of yeses, I tossed the ten-sided object into the air using my hoof. The die rose into the air and began to glow with a faint magical light that spoke of its enchanted nature.

I saw Twilight’s eyes widen out of the corner of my eye, and looked down at her as the terrified purple pony princess began to speak. “You got us a RPG with a LARPing enchantment on it?” she shouted in a panicked voice.

“Twilight?” I asked while the rest of the ponies in the room looked down at her in concern. “What’s wrong?”

The princess’s attention turned to the paper in front of her. “I need to make a quick change to my character!” she said before grabbing her quill in her magic and lifting it up.

But, the die’s magic activated a second after she did, and all the ponies in the room except for me disappeared in a bright flash of light. As it did, I looked down at the GM shield as its magic activated, giving me an...awareness of what was going on in the pocket dimension that had been created in which the game to run in. Everything looked as if it had gone smoothly, and...I frowned at the oddity of Twilight’s character.

Oh, so that’s what she meant, I thought to myself before beginning the game with the introductory narration.

On the bright and cheery morning of Saturday, the day you all share as a day off from your respective professions, the lot of you emerge from the rooms you rent at about the same time from the house you’re all currently staying in. As the sleepiness fades away and brings you all into a more wakeful state you-My Voice of Narration was quickly cut off as the players adjusted to the scene change and...

“AAAAAAAAAAHHH!” Trixie screamed as she looked at herself to see the slender young woman dressed in blue pajamas that she had become. Fingers wiggled on the young woman’s hands as she held them up before looking herself over, and falling on her ass as she stumbled back in horror. “Trixie’s hooves! What have you done to Trixie’s wonderful hooves?”

The slightly older human woman clad only in a white t-shirt with pink hair and pale skin turned her head back to look at her butt for a few seconds, then turned her attention to her chest before placing her hands over her boobs. “Definitely smaller.”

“My horn!” Blueblood shrieked while the blonde pretty boy felt the top of his head. “What happened to my beautiful horn! Do you have any idea how many extension potions went into making it what it was?”

Shining Armor moved his body around slowly as he examined the differences in what he had become. Like his pony form, the transformed unicorn was powerfully built, but not quite muscular. “So this is why you didn’t let us choose a race,” he said before looking to the woman in the pink shirt next to him. “Cadence?”

The former alicorn that had now sported a perfect hourglass figure of generous proportions picked her head up from her own examinations and looked over to the man with the blue hair in similar dress. “Well, this is interesting,” she mumbled before her expression scrunched up a little while she apparently studied Shining Armor as a human.

“Okay, now I understand why you wanted me to come over,” Sunset mumbled as she looked at the rest of the humans with a bit of apprehension in her stance, and on her face. Sunset sighed and slowly turned her gaze to the area across the hall. “Me and Twilight are probably the only ones that know anything about...T-TWILIGHT?”

Twilight grunted, and glowered back at the redhead with the golden highlights. “Not. One. Word. Sunset,” the former unicorn replied in a voice that was so much deeper than normal.

As all the newly humanized ponies looked over to Twilight Sparkle, the once again human looked away from the others.

“Princess Twilight? Where are your human teats?” Celestia asked.

“Uh...well...some humans just don’t have them,” Twilight replied in a very uncomfortable tone.

After taking a look at the others, Trixie let out a snort as she looked down at her own rack. “You mean these strange mounds on Trixie’s chest?” she grumbled before looking up at Cadence’s impressive rack, then to her own, and over to Twilight’s. “Why could Trixie not have Twilight’s...subspecies of unencumbered….whatever we are.”

Sunset snickered. “Because Twilight’s subspecies is male,” she got out before bursting into laughter.

Aforementioned male glared at Sunset. “Well the point of RPGs is to explore other options!” he shouted. “So...I...just...balanced out the idea of a simulation with that as well!”

Celestia crossed her arms and smirked. “Yes, and the fact you live with a creature that can alter his gender at will and is choosing to be pure female at the moment hasn’t made you a little curious?”

Judging by the blush on Twilight’s cheeks and he was he was tapping two of his fingers together, I was guessing that was indeed the case. “Okay well...maybe a little,” he admitted before looking over to Cadence with a frown. “But Fae has enough problems with her gender as it is! I’m not going to go asking her questions that make her feel too uncomfortable.”

Thank you for that. I mean it, seriously. I knew how much curiosity could make Twilight do some crazy things, and the fact that she hadn’t done anything emotionally scarring to me in order to sate that curiosity...it was one of those rare moments where I got a little flutter in my heart.

Twilight blushed and...well, if he hadn’t been a guy right then and there, it might have been cute. As it was, I was just slightly disturbed.

Okay so, moving on.

Trixie frowned. “Where does that voice keep coming from?”

Me. I’m the GM, and that means I’m the narrator.

“And why are we humans?” Twilight demanded.

Because this class is about dealing with challenges you might or might not face one day, one of which is being without access to magic, and the other is having to deal with the compete unknown. This simulation fulfills both those requirements. And don’t you dare say that you’ve never had to deal with anything like this before!

Cadence giggled as she wiggled her fingers in front of her face. “Oh lighten up Twilight! I think this is pretty interesting,” she said before turning her attention back to her falangies. "This things...Sunset, how do you do that snapping sound you showed me back at the Empire?"

Can we get started now?

“Actually, I do have one question,” Celestia spoke up. “Knowing you…”

What’s that supposed to mean?

“There’s probably some inherent danger,” she went on. “So, what happens if one of us...becomes deathly injured?”

Ugh. Players that have fatal wounds are knocked unconscious and removed from play until the event is over from either the task being completed, failed, or everyone dying. Can we get started now?

With a few sighs and a chorus of yeses, I began the game.

It's Saturday morning. Those of you that have professions with ordinary working hours have the day off. By coincidence, you all emerge from your rooms more-or-less simultaneously from the house you all rent rooms in.

"Wait, we all live together? Why does my lawyer have to be housemates with these people? Don't I make way more than the rest of them?" Sunset asked.

You're only level one, Sunset. That puts you in the same income bracket. The same goes for you too Blueblood, you have yet to establish the connections needed for off the books donations to increase your income level.

“But that's totally unrealistic!” the slightly more real human than the rest of the humans complained as she glared up at the ceiling where I supposedly was when in fact I was more like all around them, and still sitting outside on my desk. If not for the fact that I underwent the same thing with Tia every night, I might have found the experience to be very confusing.

Oh, get over it! Now hush, I've barely started. All of a sudden, the pangs of hunger assault you all.

All the not-ponies looked down at their stomachs. Cadence was the one who spoke. “Well, I do feel a bit of a tickle.”

For crying out loud, the game isn’t going to make you all feel actual pain! But you’ve got to feel something that’s a little debilitating.

“Fine, let’s go to the kitchen,” Shining said before, for some reason I couldn’t discern, got down on his hands and knees.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Wow, did I really look like that when I first went biped?”

More or less.

After looking up from the ground, Shing turned his attention to his sister-turned-brother. “Am I doing it wrong?” he asked. Then he looked at himself for a moment, and adjusted himself to stand on his feet and hands, if rather uncomfortably.

“Did his intelligence score actually affect his brain?” Sunset asked as she looked at Shining Armor. “Because he’s seen me walk around before. I know he has.”

Cadence giggled. “Plus, it kind of looks like you’re presenting,” she she said before moving forward...and quickly fell flat on her face with a cry of surprise.

“Now who looks stupid?” Shining asked with a smirk.

“...oh shut up,” the girl with the ice cream hair grumbled.

Twilight sighed and facepalmed. “Okay everypony, how about this…”

Sunset steadied Cadence as the slightly shorter girl held onto the princess with an escort grip on her arm. Despite the fact I could see a slightly uneasy look on Sunset’s face, Cadence was giving her a warm and thankful smile. The exchange told me there had to of been something going on between the two of them, and I really wished I had been doing more snooping on the matter the last time we had been in the Empire.

Sure Sunset had said she hadn’t involved herself with Cadence back in the day, but...they had to have had some kind of interaction when they both lived at the castle.

Twilight took care of his brother, and I was a little surprised to find that Twilight was the taller of the two, if just by a little.

Trixie ended up in the hands of ‘Sunny Skies’, which of course raised a few red flags.

“So how do you know how to walk as a human?” Twilight asked while he and Shiny shuffled down the hallway.

For an instant, Celestia force up and looked around nervously.

Trixie stepped forward and let out a little blow of air through her nose. “It is obvious that Trixie’s assistant a skilled a capable mare!” she exclaimed.

“Assistant?” Celestia mumbled to herself a second before Trixie continued.

“After all, is she not the personal secretary to Princess Celestia? She must be able to adapt to a multitude of things!”

After giving the tall woman with the pink hair a discerning look, Twilight shrugged. “Eh, suppose it’s not that hard to figure out,” she admitted.

“Well in that case leave your common-born of a brother and assist me!” Blueblood cried out back in the hall where all the others had left him.

A dark look crossed Twilight’s face for a moment, and then he looked up at the ceiling. “Hey Fae, can I ask you something?”

What?

“Is this exercise also some kind of contest in which only one of us can pass with a perfect score?” he asked with a little frown.

I didn’t know whether to be proud of my little pony, or disturbed she already thought so little of me that such a thing could be considered so quickly.

...what makes you ask that?

“Previous knowledge of you and your teaching methods that have already run off one student,” Twilight deadpanned. “Not counting all the others you got rid of on the first day.”

...then the answer is maybe.

Twilight nodded in obvious thought. “In that case, can we work in teams?”

I was a little surprised and thankful my sigh didn’t carry over to the game world and...well… Okay, as a human male, Twilight really didn’t have the power of cuteness to win me over with anything, and I would either need to block out the next two hours of my life out from my memory, or figure out a way to turn it into one hell of a funny story for our next group dinner as to laugh at the horror of a human Twilight Sparkle that was male. But what me and Twilight had went beyond the power of cute ponies and...she could still make me do whatever the hell she wanted, even as a guy.

Fine, teams are allowed. Hell, the end result of your scores will be based of your XP anyway. So it's not like it matters.

“Team Trixie and Assistant!” the magician called out. “You can only be on this time if you are Trixie, or her assistant!”

Twilight raised his hand, holding Shining’s wrist up as well. “Team Brother’s in Arms!” he called out. “You can only be on this team if your brothers, and have arms.”

“Team Royal...DAMNIT!” Sunset cursed before she punched the nearby wall.

And so after Sunset managed to teach Blueblood to walk on two legs...

As I was saying...as is normal first thing in the morning, you make your way to the shared kitchen for breakfast, where you find the first obstacle of the day: the fridge is completely barren!

I watched as everyone blinked at the scene change as the world around them shifted from the hallway to kitchen, and they turned to look at the empty fridge.

Sunset looked up at the ceiling, and I really started to wonder if I should tell them my view was more omnipresent than above them. “Breakfast? That’s our challenge? Really?”

From his place beside her, Blueblood let out a snort. “What a waste of time. You servant girls, go get me the food. I shall remain behind and await your return in my bed.”

Apparently, Blueblood was completely ignored as the man with the purple hair looked over to Sunset. “Hey!” Twilight exclaimed. “Finding food in the human world when they didn’t provide it at the cafeteria was hard!”

A quick mental image of Twilight giving dumpster diving for her dinner passed through my head, and I shuddered. Really don’t wanna know.

“If it wasn’t for Spike, I would have starved!” the former alicorn went on, giving me an even more disturbing image of the dog roasting on a spit.

Sunset smacked a fist into her palm. “Good idea Twilight, let’s eat Blueblood!”

The unicorn prince that had been born into royalty blanched. “W-What?”

“I knew you can eat meat but… Humans are cannibals?” Twilight asked with a frown.

Sunset shrugged. “Normally, no. But there have been instances in humanity’s past where they have devoured each other to survive in an emergency situation. They call it a Donner Party. Just um...don't tell Pinkie. She'll probably try and turn us into cupcakes or something if she learns about it.”

“This isn't an emergency, it's breakfast!” Celestia pointed out.

“Well, these things are all relative, and here, I’m a lawyer. I’m sure I can swing it in a human court,” Sunset replied with a shrug. “Plus, I’m kind of rooting on Sunny Skies, and getting him out of the way means less competition for her.”

The woman with the pink hair blinked. “Oh...that’s um...rather nice, I guess.”

“But you’re on my team!” the prince whined before looking over to the other human that was a biped thanks to the game. “Cadence help!”

After a moment of consideration, the princess stepped up and stood side by side with Sunset. “Well, me and my cousin aren’t really doing this for a grade so...I’m going to have to back Sunset up on this one. If for different reasons. I’m doing it for Twilight and Shiny.”

Sunset looked over to Cadence with surprise on her face. “Cousin?”

“You’re Celestia’s daughter and I’m her niece,” she replied with a little smile. “What else would you call us?”

Blueblood stomped his foot, nearly falling over in the process. “Oh please! You’re just some flash in the pan alicorn Celestia raised up because you had a moment of luck before she shoved you off to an arctic exile and some piece of trash unicorn that should have fell into the gutter when her parents died!” he shouted while pointing a finger at the two of them. “You’re not her real daughter, or her niece! The two of you are just a charity case and Celestia's new freakish pet! I’m the only pony here with a drop of royal blood in them! The only reason you have anything is because that nag gave it to you!”

While Sunset and Cadence looked at the blonde man with wide eyes, Celestia’s narrowed at her nephew. Then she spoke so low only I could hear. “Oh, you and I are going to have words tonight little boy.”

The entire room was silent for a moment, and then Shining Armor cleared his throat. “Well, being a civic guardsman, I think I need to protest this whole regicide plot,” he said before grumbling. "Even if he does deserve it."

Sunset looked over to the police character for a moment, and I watched as her look became thoughtful. “Oh right, you’re a cop,” she said before looking back to Blueblood for a second, and then to Shiny. Then, her face brightened. “I was just rehearsing for a play.”

“No you weren’t!” Blueblood accused her. “You were planning to murder me! I should have you arrested the second we leave this place!”

“It’s a game you idiot,” Sunset deadpanned before she smirked. “And I was just rehearsing for a play. Right Sunny?”

Blueblood glared at them. “Plays are not that violent!”

From the sidelines, Celestia piped in. “From what I understand, humans find violence quite entertaining. So such lines could have easily been in one of their plays or movies,” she said before coughing nervously. “You know, because um...Princess Celestia had to inform the guards what happens when she sleeps.”

Twilight groaned. “Can we just get on with this?”

“Yes!” Blueblood agreed. “Now do your duty and arrest them!”

After looking back and forth between Sunset and Blueblood, Shining settled his gaze on the male human. “Well, my character is pretty dumb, and lawyers are excellent negotiators while everypony knows not to trust a politician,” he said. “So, I’m going to have to believe Sunset’s side of things. But that means you can’t actually murder him in front of me.”

From the corner of the kitchen where she and Celestia were standing, Trixie looked around. “Besides, it does not look like we have the proper equipment to do away with the competition,” she said while looking at the pajamas she was in.

Shining frowned, and looked up at the ceiling. “Hey, just what is our starting equipment anyway?”

I let out a sigh.

With no food in sight, a trip to the local supermarket is needed, so after cleaning up and getting dressed, you all make it outside in full gear. Trixie, as a magician your equipment has several special properties which you are more than familiar with, but keep a small manual in your pocket with instructions. Sunny Skies is dressed in a cheap business suit with a purse containing a few pens, a ruler, rubber bands, and a calculator. Shining, you have full tactical gear including armor and a...uh...boom stick. Twilight, you’ve also got a cheap suit on, as well as a...um...well, the best way to describe it would be a...window to infinite information.

“Seriously?” Sunset demanded in her more expensive business suit. “She gets an iPad? What the hell do I get?”

Shining Armor looked at the weapon in his hands. “And can I get some different gear?” Shining asked. as he looked down at his SWAT vest. “I mean look at this. I’m wearing padded armor, and I’m carrying around a stupid stick as a weapon instead of a sword.”

The lawyer facepalmed at the policeman as he held up his shotgun by the barrel as if it was a grip. “Just what the hay kind of club is this anyway?”

Sunset, you get a car, quit complaining.

“But I don’t know how to drive!” she protested.

You’re a teenager. How could you not know how to drive?

Sunset crossed her arms and glared at the sky, which I guess meant me. “All that talk about horsepower they’re supposed to have inside of them, those things freak me out! I always took the bus when I needed to go somewhere.”

Well...great, but the car’s still yours. Now, as for the rest of you...

After I got done, naming off everyone else’s equipment, which only gave Cadence a nice sundress a purse and a notepad while Blueblood got a nice suit and a letter opener, Sunset led the group to the nearest bus stop, which just happened to be a block away from the house they were staying in. Before they got there, Shining decided to discard his ‘padded armor’ and much too tiny ‘police shield’ as it was much too small to block arrows, and the armor was too constraining.

As the bus turned the corner, conveniently right after Twilight and Sunset got done explaining to everyone what was expected of them, Sunset let out a startled gasp. “Oh my Celestia, what’s that?” she shouted while pointing at something on their left, the opposite direction the bus was coming from while I rolled some dice.

Twilight rolled his eyes. “Oh please Sunset, like we’re going to fall for-”

Actually I just rolled a skill check, and Sunset’s Bluff skill is high enough that you all turn to look at what’s going on.

“Buck,” Twilight grumbled before looking to his right.

As the group did like they were told, Sunset got an attack of opportunity, and silently pushed Blueblood down onto the street a few seconds before the bus came to a stop...on top of him. There was a brief spout of laughter from Blueblood, and then the player character vanished in a flash of bright light.

“Sunset!” Twilight exclaimed.

The redhead looked over to Shining Armor. “I was the only one that saw what happened. He tripped. It was a total tragedy.”

“My character is stupid enough to buy that,” Shining Armor replied while the door for the bus opened.

Then, as soon as Shining Armor got on the bus behind the others, one of the humans in the back seat let out a cry of terror. “Look out, he’s got a gun!”

You arrive at the street the supermarket is on FINALLY. As the bus shakes and sputters to the stop, one of its axles snaps in two and a tire promptly falls out of the wheel well and rolls off into the street.

Twilight waded over the unconscious and bloodless bodies of humans since the games rating was PG-13, and looked at the driver. “I am so so so so sorry for the inconvenience.”

And for my diplomacy roll, you get... Huh. Twenty. Okay so...he won't report you to the authorities or make you pay for the bus that was blasted full of holes from Shining Armor’s boomstick.

“I didn’t know that’s what this stupid thing did!” Shining protested as he waved around his now empty shotgun that had managed to knock out several windows and put a few holes in the thing before he had to resort to using it as a club, his spare shots still on his SWAT vest back at the house.

Further back on the bus, I saw Sunset let out a snort. “Us pay for it? I could have the entire company buried for having inadequate riot control mechanisms installed! These vehicles are CLEARLY a psychological threat to their occupants!”

Shining Armor looked down at the nearly ruined end of his shotgun that he had used to club everyone on the bus unconscious tanks to all his shot being wasted on windows and floors, and then put it in the holster across his back.

“Trixie wishes to search the bodies,” the magician spoke up. “Might Trixie search the bodies?”

Next to her partner, Celestia raised an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal,” she said before turning her attention to their group’s lawyer. “Right?”

“Depends on how much of a cut I get,” the girl admitted, “It’s a game so, I can probably make a lot of things legal for the right price and with a few lucky dice rolls.”

Twilight looked over to Sunset with a frown. “You know Sunset, I'm really starting to wonder about that reformed thing.”

The question got a hurt look from Sunset for a second, and then the girl rolled her eyes and groaned. “Oh come on! Twilight, it’s a game! Go crazy, have fun! Relieve some stress! Do stuff you’ve always wanted to!” she exclaimed before looking down at the mass of unconscious humans and snagging a wallet full of cash.

“Seems like he’s doing that cousin. Considering Twilight wanted to be a guy-”

“IT WAS JUST A LITTLE SCRIBBLE ON A PIECE OF PAPER CADENCE!” the male exclaimed. “I didn’t actually think I’d turn into a male! And another thing, this is NOTHING like what happened when I actually went to the human world. I slept in a library, had to use a weird bathroom, and stole food from some automated dispensers for dinner after Spike talked me into it! I didn’t do anything like this!”

Shining sighed, put his hand on Twilight’s shoulder. “Okay Twilight, okay. Just use that thing of yours to bring up a map and we can get going.”

As I watched the scene unfold, I felt kind of bad for Twilight’s reaction and started to just Deus Ex Machina his gender problem away, but...then the random encounter warning went off.

Oh hey, you guys have traveled so far, a group of enemies have waylaid your path.

Sunset frowned in the wrong direction my screen was showing me the action as I shook the numbered shaped in my magic. “Seriously? A random encounter in a human city. What is it? A hobo? Protestors? Gay pride parade?”

Umm, according to the dice roll… Wolves. Apparently, not everything was made to my specifications.

As the monsters appeared from out of nowhere with snarling teeth and thick fur, Sunset blanched. “This is so wrong.”

Shining Armor sighed and lifted his empty shotgun like a club. “Okay, everypony behind me,” he announced in a tired voice.

Either not hearing him, or just deciding to be suicidal, the magician of the group stepped in front of Shining Armor. “The Great and Powerful Trixie will handle this!”

“Trixie,” Twilight groaned. “We already explained on the bus when you tried to turn me into a frog, your magic is just a bunch of cheap parlor tricks here and-what’re you doing?”

At the front of the formation, Trixie reached into her hat and pulled out a rabbit. She held the creature aloft by its ears for a moment, waving it around in front of the wolves. “Look at the bunny! Look at the bunny! Now go get it!” she said before flinging the rabbit into the nearby street.

One dice roll, two minutes, three car wrecks, and four road kill wolves later, Trixie stood with a superior smirk on her face. “Trixie has had to cross through the woods many a time, and knows how to deal with such creatures.”

The disbelieving expression on Twilight’s face became a little ill. “Please tell me you don’t feed wild animals like that all the time.”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “Of course not! A simple come to life spell on a rabbit toy stuffed with sleeping powder works just as well, but after Sunset’s demonstration of the dangers of this black road, Trixie knew exactly how to take care of such a situation.”

“I can’t believe that worked,” Celestia mumbled.

Sunset snorted. “Why not? Makes about as much sense as everything else around here,” she said before looking over to her mother-in-disguise, her expression hesitant. “Um, look...about Blueblood.”

“I understand your anger over what he said, and I’ll have a talk with him later.”

The teenage girl sighed. “Somehow, that doesn’t fill me with confidence,” she said before grabbing Celestia’s arm. “Now come on, I’ve got an idea that’ll let you and Trixie come out on top in all of this.”

Celestia gave her daughter a confused look, and the followed the others down the street and towards the convenience store. “Well, I don’t really want to win this thing...if it is even a contest. I mean, we can all help to cook a meal.”

In the other group, the married couple looked on as Twilight scrolled through his display. “This thing really is amazing, it has everything we need to know including...oh, recipes!”

“Twilight, I’ve been cooking since before...well...before we met,” Cadence told the currently male alicorn-turned-human. “I already know what we should buy.”

Sunset turned to look at her mom for a moment, and then back to Shining Armor. “Okay fine. Hey Shining Armor, hold up a second!”

After discarding his shotgun into the trashcan outside, Shining Armor’s presence inside the convenience store does not cause a panic, allowing you all to find most of the ingredients Cadence and Twilight wrote down for you all to look for, using the knowledge he gained from his tablet and her cooking expertise.

“Most of?” Cadence asked.

“Human grocery stores don’t have hay Cadence,” Sunset told her before she looked to the cashier and her eyes drifted to something behind the bland human that served as the checkout cashier in the tobacco isle. “Oh, and I’d like a box of cigarettes too.”

Celestia looked over to Sunset with a frown. “Ciga-what?”

“It’s just something my foster parents told me not to do or they’d...kick me out of the house back in human land,” Sunset admitted with a wince as Celestia cleared her throat and looked away in embarrassment. “So, I might a well try them now.”

After getting the box of items, and then remembering to also purchase a lighter, Sunset led the others out of the store before she lit up and took a breath. After a few seconds, she breathed out some smoke and frowned. “Huh. Well that was disappointing.”

“What is that?” Celestia asked.

Sunset looked back to her currently pink-haired human mom. “Well, its supposed to be some sort of human drug to help calm the nerves and make you feel better...I think. But...I don’t feel any different.”

“Let me try,” she said before holding out her hand and taking the item in question when Sunset offered it to her. Then, Celestia took a puff and shrugged. “Nope, still slightly annoyed at my…uh, Blueblood.”

Okay um...Sunset, you saved against the poison. Sunny...you just contracted cancer.

There was a moment of stunned silence as Sunset’s eyes widened. WHAT?”

Celestia frowned and turned her attention to Sunset. “What’s cancer?”

Looking up from his tablet, Twilight gave Celestia a sympathetic look. “Um...you probably don’t want to know,” he mumbled.

“Cigarettes cause cancer?” Sunset shouted. “Since when do cigarettes cause cancer?”

What do you mean since when? Since forever! Didn’t you think there was a reason your sub parents warned you not to use them? There’s a Surgeon General’s warning on the bottom of every box.

On the sidelines, Trixie looked over to Twilight’s ipad. “Does your classes special item say what the cure is?”

“Cancer doesn’t have a cure!” Sunset shouted at the humans gathered around Twilight before she looked up into the sky. “And what the hell are you talking about? Surgeon General is just a made up character for marketing!”

No he’s not! The Surgeon General is a real position! He or she is the head of public health services, and...well...I know there’s a military part to it too but I don’t really remember it off the top of my head. Not having instant access to Wikipedia through a smart phone really sucked.

Then Twilight joined in the sky watching. “Uh Fae. Surgeon General is a cartoon caricature in health comics for foals, telling them to brush their teeth and go to bed on time.”

For a second, a smirk of amusement crossed Celestia’s face, and then she turned it into one of panic. “Would you stop arguing about that and help me already? I’m apparently dying over here!”

“Well actually, according to what this says, cancer takes-” Twilight got out before I Narrated.

Sunny Skies has lost five HP due to cancer.

Celestia collapsed in a fit of giggles while Sunset’s face turned to one of panic. “Somebody save her!”

“But-but,” Twilight said as h scanned his ipad. “I don’t know how, this stupid thing doesn’t tell me how to fight the infection!”

After a few moments of reading Twilight’s ipad, the magician stepped forward. “All right then, since it's come to this,” Trixie said grimly, “The Great and Powerful Trixie draws her saw for the cutting ponies in two trick.”

As Trixie’s body followed her decree, Sunset looked over to her in alarm. “How is that supposed to help?”

“Sunny Skies is Trixie’s assistant, and thus under her protection. If this foul thing would do her harm, then Trixie shall fight it!”

The stunned silence didn't last long.

You want to fight cancer? As in... physically?

“With a SAW?” Sunset asked, her mouth slightly agape.

“Trixie has a saw, a loop, a wand, and her hat. She is using the best weapon she has on hoof!”

Trixie you don't fight cancer like that. It’s impossible.

“Well, how DO you fight it?” Trixie asked, puzzled.

Twilight’s eyebrows raised as he continued to read the document in front of him.

“Well...uh...I've heard that sometimes humans fight it by having a bunch of healthy people walk long distances,” Sunset said, tapping her chin. “And selling T-shirts. Do we have enough money for T-shirts?”

Trixie raised an eyebrow at the redhead. “You can’t be serious.”

Sunny Skies has lost five more HP to cancer.

“We don’t have time for a marathon!” the goddess shrieked between giggles that made me wonder if she was just messing around, or under the 'pain is funny' laughing enchantment. “Somepony help me!”

All of a sudden, Twilight looked up from his research. “Well, Trixie’s idea...it's not STRICTLY impossible,” he said. “I’ve done some reading and...from what I can tell... Assuming that the tumor is isolated enough, that it resides in an organ that can survive a degree of trauma, and of course there are the more finicky matters of a magician being able to identify and remove the cancerous tissue with a non-surgical tool and keep the patient alive without any anesthetic or disinfectant.” Twilight shook his head. “Rather than impossible, it's just so outlandishly unlikely and pointlessly dangerous that somepony would have to be a complete idiot to even try.”

“Do not insult Trixie!” she said before looking over to Celestia. “Now where does it tickle?”

Silence reigned in the classroom as everyone waited for me to finish totaling the XP to see who came out on top. “Okay so um...for dying, Blueblood receives nothing and is flunked out of the class,” I said while the unicorn in question glared back at me.

“You can’t do that! I’ll have your teaching license for this!”

I silently prayed that he would actually manage to pull that off, and went down the list. “Next in comes Cadence, who...cooked the food.”

The alicorn shrugged. “Well it wasn’t as if there was anything else I could do.”

“Then we’ve got Sunny Skies, and...Shining Armor for defeating the mob of people and destroying a bus, you’re next in the rankings,” I told him before looking to the three remaining girls in the class. “For getting away with murder right in front of a civic guard and preventing another riot inside the store, Sunset got third.

“And...Trixie got the most XP for...defeating cancer...with a saw,” I reluctantly told them all.

My purple alicorn gave me a horrified look. “Wait, but...that means I came in second! I came in second? How could I come in second?” Twilight asked before glaring at me. “My research made Trixie’s plan possible!”

“Well, um...Trixie was the one who performed the action so...um...” I said, addressing Twilight with a nervous smile. “Um...better luck next time honey?”

Twilight glared at me. “But that doesn’t make any sense!”

Beside her, the only human in the room, Sunset Shimmer, let out a huff. “Tell me about it.”

“I was the one that came up with the conformation it could work! All she did was get seventeen natural twenties in a row!” Twilight went on.

The magician sat up straighter and smiled. “Now now Princess Twilight, one day you might just be as good at LARPing as Trixie, but it would seem you still have a ways to go.”

For once, I was actually a little grateful to feel Celestia’s human arms on me as we sat next to each other in our little dream house. “Ugh...glad that’s over.”

Celestia giggled, and I was drawn in closer by the amazon with the glistening hair. “So, you left before I could see. Did Twilight forgive you for the ninety-five you gave her?” she asked with a little smile.

I let out a little sigh and rolled my eyes. “Eventually yes,” I told Tia as I felt a tiny bit of apprehension enter her mind and her grip on my shoulder relaxed. Thanks to that, I looked over to her with a little frown. “Something wrong?”

The larger woman cleared her throat and shuffled around on the couch a bit. “I was thinking, since...we’re um....considering the possibility of the two of us and the other girls...it might be best to put a little distance between the two of us when we’re like this.”

A frown crossed my face, and I looked over at the goddess. “You’ve been teasing me with all this for weeks, and now that there’s a chance things could get serious, you want to stop? How in the hell does that make sense in that messed-up brain of yours?”

“I have been teasing you and playing with you because that was all it was,” Celestia told me evenly before she shuffled away to the edge of the couch and crossed her arms. “If you have a problem with it, then perhaps you shouldn’t have awoken my libido.”

The accusation caused my face to slowly shift into a look of hesitation. “Say what?” I asked while trying to figure out how the hell that happened. “Uh, my pony body may be hot, but-”

Celestia snorted at my words. “Oh please, I’ve seen plenty of mares just as physically desirable as you. Besides, I prefer what’s underneath. Although, I’ll admit the supreme athlete look...helps,” she said before pausing for a moment. The tiny bit of annoyance on her face faded, and she let out a sigh that released the tension in her body and slumped down on the couch a little. “And, I suppose it isn’t exactly all your fault. I did let you feed on me after all.”

I stared at the goddess for a few seconds. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Surely you’ve realized that Twilight’s...appetite is greater than Rainbow’s?” Tia asked me.

The memories of my usual lunches with Twilight ran through my mind, and I winced. “Okay sure, she eats more than-”

“Her sexual appetite,” Celestia cut in evenly, making me gulp.

“Wait, you’re saying she’s...Twilight turning into an alicorn really did make her horny as hell?” It kind of made sense...maybe. I really didn’t know much about alicorn sexual habits other than Twilight was kind of a nympho, and Cadence was apparently pretty loose, and Celestia...didn’t have any shame. Hell, Luna was the only prude among them, and she had been stuck on the moon for a millennium.

Oh good God, alicorns really are sex fiends, I thought to myself, my mind a little conflicted at that realization.

On one hand, I was a bit relieved that Twilight wasn’t so into me because I was feeding off of her. There had been a little worry in the back of my head that Twilight might have gotten addicted to sex with me and was only putting up with all the relationship drama to keep getting her fix, but if it was just alicorn anatomy doing it, I was off the hook.

Although, a quick comparison to how much I slept with Twilight beside Rainbow made me mentally tense up again. Ever since the cyan pegasus had joined in the threesomes, Rainbow had been getting as much as the alicorn despite her inexperience. Was she just that much more needy than the average pony, or did Rainbow just do it with us so much to get as much of the action as she could? Despite the short time we had been together, Rainbow did sleep over at the castle a lot. I think the few times she didn’t were the ones that...I wasn’t there.

Another theory began to take shape in my mind. There was always the possibility that Celestia was wrong and ponies only really wanted to be with me because I was feeding off them. What made that even worse was that if that was the case, I had fed off all the Mane Six at one time or another and...well…

Okay, the rest of them weren’t breaking down my door to jump my bones like Twilight kind of was, so...the princess probably had a point about why Twilight was so horny, what with Tia also being an...alicorn.

A very big alicorn.

Who probably had an appetite to match...

Celestia nodded before she let out a disgruntled sigh and shifted her body around so she was leaning her back up against the armrest and the goddess’s long legs pinned me on the couch. “Yes, alicorns are very sexually active. Several hundred years alone allowed me to repress such urges, and Luna didn’t have much of a choice with her imprisonment. But then, someone decided to arouse my desires by making me dinner.”

I gulped, and a rather disturbing thought entered my head. Well, two disturbing thoughts. The first was that I had inadvertently got Tia in the mood again. The second one, despite how it should have calmed me down and made everything right in the world, it hurt. And maybe made me a little afraid or the possibility that Tia was only doing what she was doing because of my feeding on her a few times. “Are you saying the only reason you want me is because I ate some of your magic?”

A wave of anger washed across my senses as Tia frowned at me. “Oh please. I already told you why I want to be with you.”

“Because I tell you no and call you an idiot when you’re being stupid?” I asked with a deadpan expression that I had to force instead of the mixture of anger and pain that was going through my mind at that moment. She may not have come out and said it, but after today’s whole dating thing with Twilight, it was my safest bet. “No offense Tia, but...that’s not exactly something that you build a healthy relationship on.”

The goddess blushed, and looked away. “Well...there’s more to it than that!” she exclaimed. “I just...you don’t...do you really need to hear it?”

I frowned back at her. “Yeah well...maybe I do need to hear just why the hell you’re trying to get with me.” Sure we joked around and had some fun, but a few nights in front of the television wasn’t enough to get someone like Celestia to start hungering for nookie from me.

Her attentions towards Twilight, I kind of got. They were both alicorns, both magical geniuses, both kind of freakout-able. The same went for Rainbow, she was fun loving, able to stand up to the goddess, and apparently the hottest thing Celestia had seen in centuries. Hell, if the two of them were combined into one pony, they would practically be Celestia!

If anything, I was the one that didn’t make sense for Tia to be attracted to. I had hated her guts for weeks even after meeting the goddess in person...pony...whatever. Didn’t really fit in with her whole kingdom, and I wasn’t even that good of a pony! Ponies were all sugar and spice, I was...something else.

The shock I picked up from Tia hit just before her mouth hung open just a little. “Are you honestly asking me that after what you have done for my daughter tonight?” she asked, which left me confused as hell.

That got a confused frown of me as I tried to figure out what the hell she was going on about. “What about Sunset?”

“You gave other ponies a few minutes from her perspective of how things are,” Tia said with a low voice. “When Trixie took us to dinner-”

I held up a hand. “Wait, what? What’s Trixie have to do with anything?”

Tia giggled. “Oh that. Well after you left with Twilight, Trixie wanted to celebrate her victory over the princess and decided to treat her ‘assistant’ and the human who helped get rid of the competition to a late dinner,” she said with a smile. “I figured if Celestia was going to be getting to know Twilight on a personal level, then Sunny Skies can make some friends on the side. I don’t know why Twilight seems so put off by her, that mare really is enjoyable company once you learn not to laugh at her speech. Sunset and her got along marvelously too.”

As much as I hated to admit it, Tia was right. Trixie was kind of nice to be around now that she wasn’t summoning lightning clouds to zap ponies in the butt. She had gone through the same thing as Sunset, if to a lesser degree. Some jealousy pushing her towards black magic, said magic that then turned her high-school level bitchness to evil overlord levels, topped off by the ‘what have I done’ moment afterwards that had her reexamine her life when she looked at the overboard actions said magic caused. Trixie just got a lesser dose that made her mean instead of psycho killer, and wasn’t as traumatized as heavily as Sunset because of it.

“Well as happy as I am to hear Sunny’s made a new friend,” I deadpanned, letting Celestia take that as she would. “I thought you were going to give an earful to Blueblood.”

Tia’s face darkened for a moment. “I’ll be calling him to the Sun Court tomorrow after lunch,” she said before letting out a sigh and shaking her head. “Now, as I was saying….”

She shifted around again, pulling in her legs that I was trapped under and making me scoot back over until I was looking up into her face that slowly took on a soft but smiling expression. “You gave everyone a look into what it was like to be Sunset, to understand her better...and I know you were hoping to see a red-maned unicorn come out of that pocket dimension when the spell ended instead of a biped,” she went on in a gentle voice. “Since the day Sunset was brought home, you have done nothing but try to help my daughter, and protect me. I place my life in your hands every night I go to sleep in more ways than one. I know what you could really do to me in here. But instead of just shuffling me off to some dank pit or indulging in some dark desire, you keep things the way they are to make me feel comfortable. I make you feel uncomfortable and you don’t force the clothing issues, I tease you and you put up with it, and you share your world with me in a way no other pony has seen. And perhaps the most alluring this about you is that you didn’t have to.

“The changelings could have taken Equestria, but they didn’t. Because of you,” Tia said before she reached up to run a finger through my hair as she turned her body to face forward and removed her legs from the couch. “Yes, you’re beautiful and funny and...everything else, but so are a multitude of ponies. But they don’t do anything with their talents beyond fulfill their desires to express them. Twilight and Rainbow and the others go above and beyond, and you...you don’t even have a talent, or a calling to join the royal guard or anything like that. If anything, everything I see about you should make you an enemy of Equestria.

“I know there is darkness in you, that you have thoughts no other pony would ever consider, and dark magic fills you, edging you towards violent tendencies. But you do not fall prey to any of it. You choose to be with us, even with everything else saying you shouldn’t. You choose friendship over domination, love over hatred, and pony over...well, everything else.

“And for that.” Celestia moved in to kiss me, and I didn’t stop her. It wasn’t anything more than some lips but...well dammit, it had been awhile since I got to enjoy non-pony lip contact, and I held onto it for as long as I could.

When we broke contact, she didn’t finish the comment, but I didn’t follow up on it and just leaned into her to resume our usual places with me right next to her and Celestia’s arm across my back in a hug. Sure she had gone on about distance just a few moments ago but...hell, after was we just did...

And who was she kidding? We had been dating for weeks behind Twilight’s back. We just hadn’t done anything except hang out and get me horny with all the hugs, caresses, and everything else.

“So um...”

“You’re a much better kisser as a human than a changeling,” she said.

“Oh...yeah...sorry about that,” I apologized.

Celestia snickered. “Well, I should have guessed Twilight was up to something when she wanted you to kiss me like that instead of her. So, what’re we watching tonight?”

The reminder got my braining working again. “Right! Movie Here, let me just…” I grabbed the remote and started it. “Okay uh, after Rainbow’s question, I thought it would be nice to see...um...just please don’t make any lewd comments about the title character and his flanks because...that’s just going to be weird.”

“They called it the car for everyman. Henry Ford himself called it a car for the great multitude…”

Chapter 35: The Incredibly Glorious Morning After in Canterlot

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Sometimes, it get really confusing living in Equestria.

I’m not talking about the kind of confusing that comes from being within a hundred mile radius of Pinkie Pie. I’m talking about the confusing stuff that all ponies just take for granted and leaves a former human turned genderless bug scratching its head.

Take the weather, nothing works the way weather is supposed to, even down to the basic science and hell...I’m not even sure the fucking plants would grow without earth ponies to tend to them. But then there’s places like the Everfree, and tons of open planes that don’t have anything tending to them, so...what’s up with that?

But my newest bit of confusion came not from the world of Equestria, but its populace. And upon getting confused about the whole thing, I kind of had to wonder why the hell didn’t I notice something wrong with all the ponies sooner.

The day began most like any other before me and Twilight started dating Rainbow Dash. Meaning that I woke up next to one pony instead of two. I also woke up a little worried. The changelings I had…looking out for my little ponies in a discreet way so they wouldn’t know about it reported that my little Dashie hadn’t slept well the night before. So of course I wanted to get back home as fast as possible to check on her and see what was wrong.

But since I was currently entangled with a purple pony princess, such worries came second to the morning attention Twilight would be needing. Like a few kisses and...probably a lot of tear drying.

Having already felt her stirring when I was still connected to the telepathic-internet, I knew Twilight was already awake. Or at least in that place between sleep and full awareness that happens before people really come to. So I rolled on top of her and gave the girl a quick kiss to the lips to bring her all the way out of la la land. Her eyes jerked open in surprise before a surge of motion sent us both rolling onto our sides, and I looked over Twilight’s shoulder to observe her morning wingboner. “Good to know I can still get a rise out of you beautiful.”

Twilight let out a little groan, and her wings slowly retracted with some obvious effort by the alicorn. “Why don’t yours do that anymore?”

“Five seconds of having muscle memory being sent into my brain to get them under control,” I told her with a superior smirk. Being a changeling had its usefulness.

The little reminder just got an eye roll from Twilight. “Almost makes me wish you could turn me into a changeling,” she said with a smile. “So what did you and Prin…Tia do last night?”

“The same thing we do every night Twily,” I told her while repressing the urge to say take over the world. Tia already kind of ruled it after all. I also let my humor hold down my guilt for as long as possible from the other little thing we kind of did. Kind of, because we didn’t really do it. I mean, you have to have bodie to kiss, right?

“We watched a movie, this one was about a racehorse.” I was strangely thankful for the fact that Celestia didn’t find earth horses attractive. Apparently, Saddle Arabians weren’t her cup of tea with their weird muzzles that were part of their heads rather than an extension of it like a mainland pony.

A bit of hesitation finally entered my mind, and Twilight probably picked up on it, because she frowned at me. It wasn’t an angry frown. I could Smell the concern on her. “What’s wrong?”

I gulped. “We um…we also talked some, and…kissed,” I admitted before bracing myself for the jealousy, hurt, pain, and all those other things that would come from letting that cat out of the bag. But after the whole relationship built on deceit thing, I wasn’t about to start keeping any big secrets of that type from Twilight again.

Instead of what I was expecting, I got a little smile from the alicorn. “You mean you’re finally moving past your intimacy issues with Princess Celestia?” Twilight asked in a happy tone and an ever growing smile on her face that just...didn’t belong.

My brain kind of stopped for a second. Then my mouth might have lost a little muscular action and flopped open, and the noise coming out of it went, “huh?” before I recovered and frowned back at her. “Wait, what?”

That wasn’t how people were supposed to react when you tell them you kissed another woman!

Yeah, we had set things up to try a real date with Tia, but that was about a week down the line! She was planning on swinging by for Summer Wrap-up and spend the day with the three of us. Apparently Luna stopped by the year before, and now Ponyville was considered the place to be for the End of Summer Festival. So, she could be with us as Celestia without raising a few eyebrows.

“Your intimacy problems with Celestia,” Twilight repeated before finally frowning at me like she should have been doing. “Don’t tell me you thought I didn’t notice. Your posture gets all hesitant whenever I talk about that the four of us are going to do together when the sun goes down.”

I tried not to think about how Twilight was already making plans for getting Celestia in bed, literal plans, with diagrams. So I focused on the conversation. She might have had me dead to rights, but I wasn’t going to just go out and admit it.

At least until she started getting a little fearful and gave me a kind of worried look. “What’s wrong Fae? Do you not…like Celestia…like that? I thought the date went okay. Well, before she threw up on you I mean,” Twilight said before she started trying to recover her fumble. “But that was an accident! We talked and laughed, and once Rainbow got her to stop with the test, I saw you had fun too. You did have fun, right?”

I took in a sharp breath at Twilight’s question, which didn’t do anything to help her mood. I mean, she was just about three steps away from hysterics. “Well um…it’s not that simple,” I said to buy myself some time to put my thoughts together. Panicky pony princesses tended to jumble them, and I needed to be sure I said everything correctly to avoid the potential Chernobyl that was in bed with me.

Not to mention that I really was confused on the matter of the bigger goddess. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy at least some of my time with Celestia, although the time spent with her and the other girls wasn’t really it. I had been too tense, waiting for the proverbial bomb to explode. The fact that Rainbow kept most of it under control by getting Tia to lay off while we were in the bathroom didn’t really help much because...they hadn’t filled me in on that little detail and...well okay, I might have gotten caught up in Tia’s recanting of Equestrian history a little too much and forgot to remember she had been wanting to ruin the date, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been in the back of my mind.

And that wasn’t even what was weighing on my mind at that moment. It wasn’t my feelings about Tia that I was wrestling with. Those had gotten put to the side when I noticed something odd when me and Celestia met up at the dream house.

After yesterday’s little talk with Shining Armor and how both Rainbow and Twilight got along so quickly, I understood there was a huge difference between how ponies and humans viewed romantic relationships. Which of course set me to try and figure it out.

Chrysalis herself said ponies were overflowing with love. So maybe it was just easy for them to form a committed relationship for some reason. Sapient or not, they still had some pretty animalistic traits. Twilight had done the whole scraping hoof, bull getting ready to charge thing more than once since I met her, and I had heard ponies whinny a few times too. So maybe there was some mating…thing that I just didn’t get.

And even if it was just normal human kind of attraction, it wasn’t like it would be hard for a pony to keep a relationship going. I already knew they were way more forgiving than any living being had a right to be. Which would allow for superficial attachments to become much more meaningful at an increased rate. So a pair of ponies working through their problems instead of calling the proverbial wedding off was probably more plausible than it was in human courtships.

But on the other hand, it wasn’t like there hadn’t been nothing at all to start with between Twilight and Rainbow. The two of them just didn’t wake up one day and decide to get together. They had been friends for awhile and the best relationships I knew of were friendships that got into a passionate relationship to the point of marriage.

But then there was the oddity of Cadence! The idea of someone just showing up and going ‘we’re getting married’ after five minutes of talking was a bit much for my mind to take. Which was apparently what happened with Shining Armor and Cadence’s new bed partner from her side of the relationship equation! At least Rarity had been on a whirlwind romance before sleeping with Shining, and gone to the Empire for the purpose of hooking up with them. From the way I heard things, the pink pony princess just took one look at a pony and decided if they were going to get hitched!

And then there was Celestia herself! The whole immortal that didn’t want to waste time thing was one idea, and still pretty viable but…maybe I was thinking about things a bit too human. In her perfect plan, Rainbow would have been with me and Twilight a month before anything serious came up with Celestia, after a few private moments snuck in between the four or three of us, if not just me and her to build that base of friendship everything else was supposed to be structured on.

Or maybe they just cheated and there was some sort of magical moment with actual magic where loved just bloomed in an instant. It wouldn’t be the first time ponies didn’t play by the rules, even if such a thing did make Equestria a lot creepier if it was true.

Which of course made me want to stop thinking about it all together. It was bad enough I was with a pony named Twilight and had another pony that literally sparkled in certain parts kind of being interested in me, if imprinting also turned out to be a thing in Equestrian relationships, I was packing my bags and going home to escape this weird sparkling vampire-ish universe that I had stumbled into.

“What is it then?” Twilight asked me, her Scent and voice full of worry.

“It’s not that I don’t like Tia, or um…you know…think she’s hot,” I admitted with a blush. Which also meant I didn’t have much of a problem picturing her in some pretty lewd scenarios.

Many of which were kind of impossible, I had to admit. It had nothing to do about half the time my fantasies of having sex with Celestia revolved around doing it as a stallion when that still wasn’t really an option for me. Even if Twilight did figure out to make a male alicorn me, Tia was still twice as big as I was. Seven foot dream goddess was just intimidating, six-foot-plus-horn pony Celestia made the part of my brain that had aneurysms whenever I walked on a cloud shout ‘NOT HAPPENING’ due to the sheer size difference.

Even Tia had gone on about how none of the stallions in Equestria were…satisfactory.

And that wasn’t even beginning to approach the other stuff that came with dating a creature as old as Celestia! Most of which made my head hurt just to try and think about.

So I did the manly thing, and decided NOT to talk about it. It was an emotional thing, and men didn’t talk about their emotions. It was a pathetic defense as I had just spent half the previous day in a dress, but any port in a storm and all that. “But isn’t this all a little…fast? With Rainbow and Celestia I mean.”

I hated to complain about getting Dash in bed, but…what else could I say? A quick two days away, one date with Twilight, and she was already jumping in bed with us. Now that I had some time to step back and examine the situation, Rainbow going from hesitant to all in so fast also made me pretty worried about her motivation for doing such a thing.

Just because I hadn’t picked up anything the night of our communal first didn’t mean she wasn’t feeling pressure to perform. Hell, pressure to perform defined Rainbow Dash half the time.

Twilight gave me a bit of a confused frown. “Not really. I mean, we are well within the minimum time spent with another pony before romantic thoughts usually develop, and after I started looking at Rainbow like that…well, we went on that date and she actually took a little interest to everything before Discord came around, so much she even remembered it! It was just so sweet of her,” she replied as a hint of a smile formed on her face. “And Celestia…I told you. I’ve had a thing for her since I started noticing other ponies that way. When I was learning about sexuality, it wasn’t the book’s diagrams I saw in my head.

“Now, the fact that she actually wants to return those feelings…I…it’s like I’m fifteen again and I actually have a chance of making my dreams come true!”

And so, Twilight Sparkle smacked me with the guilt of possibly crushing her hopes and dreams of being with Celestia. Not to mention the fear of what would happen if I said no to the whole thing, and she still wanted to go after the goddess.

Or what it would do to Rainbow. I didn’t even want to contemplate that little disaster.

“I just…it feels like we’re taking things awful fast is all,” I repeated. I didn’t voice the concern that if we did get the point where me, Twi and Dash did something with Tia, everything would blow up in our faces like I felt it would.

“But we’re not! Celestia said we can wait…until…oh!” Twilight frowned at me again for a few seconds, and then I could practically see the light bulb go off above her head. “That’s what this is about!”

I blinked as she rolled over on top of me with a bright smile. “Huh?”

“We decided to wait a little while before our next real date, but you can’t!” Twilight exclaimed before she sat up just a little straighter.

“Uh…”

She just continued on. “And now you’re feeling guilty about having the princess to yourself! Especially since what we’re experimenting with this a communal relationship, and the two of you are together in one of the most intimate ways possible while me and Rainbow can’t join in!”

I stared up at her in confusion. That was nowhere near what the problem was. In fact, me and Tia had agreed to hold off on everything except for what we usually did…at least until we kissed.

Which was my fault for just asking Tia why she was into me. Then she kissed me, which led to us just…kind of…well…cuddling for the night before we talked about our day, the date and all the crap she had to put up with since the alchemists found out their supply of embryo sex-changing plant was going to go way down real soon.

Yeah, I could have stood up to her but…well, you don’t stand up to a goddess. You give her what she wants, as long as its not too much. A kiss and some time in close contact was nothing compared to what Tia could probably really get me to do with her if she wanted to.

Then Twilight let out a little groan of a sigh. “Is this that human guilt thing again?” she asked. “I swear, even Sunset’s got it. I’d think it was biological, but you’re not a human anymore.”

“Twilight! It’s not…that,” I assured her, but it was a rather lame reassurance. I mean, Twilight kind of had a point with how she thought I felt a little guilty over the whole me and Tia spending our nights together thing. Even if locking lips with Tia didn’t phase her, I knew something else did. Twilight had wanted the goddess’s attention more than anything for years, and I had the undivided kind every night.

“Then what is it?” she asked in an almost accusing tone. “You like Celestia, she likes you and me and Rainbow! Right?”

I took in a deep breath more to buy myself time than anything else. “Twilight, it’s not that, it’s…” Another breath for more time. “Look, humans…we take more time to deal with this stuff than ponies.”

The expression on the alicorn’s face turned to one of annoyance, and she let out a disgruntled groan before falling over onto her side. “You know, I jumped on herding with Rainbow Dash from the start, and you didn’t seem to be so reluctant about it then!”

That caused me to wince. Twilight had a point there. “I know,” I replied in a pathetic tone.

“And you were right!” she went on before throwing her hooves up in the air. “I love Rainbow Dash! Really love her, and the three of us together are perfect! She’s spontaneous when we need to be spontaneous, I can work out all the little details and get things done. It’s like Daring Do. When we decided to go find her I mean, before you…well, we thought you…you know…died.”

An old wound got a knife twist, and I reached over to join fetlocks with the alicorn in the pony approximation of a handhold. “I’m sorry about that.”

Twilight sighed and shook her had for a second. “I know, and I’m sorry for bringing it up. It’s just…Rainbow and I…together like we were then…it was perfect. And when we went to Galloping Ghost Islands, and when she taught me to fly and…so many things just add up to be perfect Fae, before I even knew it.”

I frowned at Twilight’s words, and remembered something Tia had told me the night before, and Shining Armor, and even Rarity for that matter. All of them had…rationalized their emotions. It was something I hadn’t noticed at the time, and hadn’t until the tale end of last night but now that I did…the whole thing made me feel a bit odd. I may have not been some Romeo guy that fell in love with a chick and did everything on pure emotion until it killed me, but ponies of all things talking about love with such reasoning behind it…

The whole thing just made me feel…off.

Of course a deep love should have some rationalization. That was what forged the real bonds, and not simple superficial attractions that had to do with things like lust and looks and delusions of thinking a girl was perfect before you even spent some real time with her. But pure rationalization made everything seem like they were falling in love with an online dating profile, not a person, not a personality.

On the other hand, I was dealing with a species that decided what they wanted to dedicate their life to sometimes before even hitting double digits. Not to mention how ponies could just deal with all the emotional shit that came into their lives rather quickly.

Well, at least most of them could. It was pretty obvious after meeting Berry Punch and seeing Sunset’s emotional state upon her return to Equestria, a few things lingered. But Sunset was dealing with her transformation far better than any human probably would have been able to from what I could tell, and Berry was still functioning normally in public.

With a bit of a disturbed feeling in my gut, I made a mental note to check up on the earth pony mom and looked over to Twilight. “Look…it’s just…I do like Celestia, it’s just…humans are different than ponies when it comes to this stuff,” I told her.

“I knew Dash and I knew you. Or at least had some idea of what the two of you were like before we really met,” I said before the memory of what Dash told me at Rainbow Falls after agreeing to stick with the Ponyville team flashed through my head to contradict some of that statement. “But Tia is…she’s kind of a mystery. You’ve had your whole life to get to know her, get used to her, dream about her in a romantic way. I just started to think of the possibility of looking at Tia in that light and for the most part our time together just involves the two of us sitting next to each other watching a movie before she going on and on about problems at court, gets a backrub, or a foot massage. I tell her about my day, what you're up to, what Rainbow’s doing, that kind of stuff.

“And well um…” I gulped. “Celestia is…pretty intimidating.” I mean good God, she was the freaking goddess of the sun, another species, tens of hundreds of years old, physically superior to me in every way and...she liked me? How is that not supposed to make me feel...weird?

“Oh,” Twilight replied before she shifted around until she was on her back again. “I guess I can understand that. And you do have a human mind.”

I looked over to her and frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Remember? How long did it take you to tell me about your being a mare problem?” she deadpanned. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one learning about other species. “And I still worry about disappointing her too, and get kind of panicky, but I’m getting over it…sort of.”

But of course my big stupid mouth didn’t want to stop there. No, I just had to go on with our big sharing moment like a complete idiot. “And she’s over a thousand years old!” I exclaimed as I threw my hooves up in the air. “And…okay, I get that she used to have flings, but that was hundreds of years ago! She gave all that up, and now she’s wanting it again? What the hay happened to make her change?” Celestia was way too fucking stubborn for my logic to accept that she just fell for the new guy because he was new. She wanted me because I chose to be a good person?

Okay, I might have been able to see that if she was friendly with me afterwards, which I suppose she was, if a little too friendly those first nights before I…basically got used to it. Then there was the fact I didn’t spend all my time kowtowing to her, much was apparently a big plus in Tia’s mind.

But those things alone didn’t mean squat. There were plenty of guys better than me for the whole suitor thing.

“Well, she did break it off with Sombra not too long ago,” Twilight reminded me. “Celestia was kind of holding out for him since…I guess since Luna was banished, and…we told you about this, right?”

The reminder about everyone going to that alternate universe made me wince. “Oh…right,” I replied as the stories that I heard from Tia and Twilight intertwined inside my head to paint the picture about Celestia’s last boyfriend. The whole story kind of just left a bad taste in my mouth. Especially after I found out Tia had fixed the mirror before coming to her senses and not going after Good-turned-Evil Sombra on a mission to save her one true beloved, or something else just as stupid.

I gave a dejected moan over all the other stuff that went on before that. Pining for a guy for about a thousand years, and maybe taking up a lover or two to try and forget about him in the meantime just didn’t seem like…well, Celestia.

Or at least the picture of Celestia that I had painted for myself.

Which I had to admit, wasn’t exactly matching up to the reality in some ways. At least not all of the time.

In fact, the more I looked back on the time she and I spent together alone, the more ordinary she seemed.

Headstrong, sure of herself, kind and all that good stuff, but still kind of ordinary. I knew she was pretty lonely beforehand, I had seen that plain as day just a few nights into our chat sessions. But her ability to endure that loneliness, and even reach out to others knowing that they would fall to old age was one of the things that made her awesome.

The fact it wasn’t like that. The fact that she had actually just kept herself isolated to avoid those complications, or maybe had a cheap fling through the centuries…it made me sad in more ways than one.

So I let out a sigh and whined. “Can we stop talking about this now?” I was starting to get the feeling that I was something approaching a rebound boyfriend in Celestia’s eyes.

Twilight put on her thinking face for a moment, and nodded. “Okay, so what do you want to do?”

With an opening like that, I couldn’t resist. I rolled over on top of Twilight, and licked my lips. “You mean, besides you?” It had been awhile since I had Twilight all to myself, and hearing her squeal at climax was kind of hard with Rainbow’s tongue down her throat.

For some reason, Twilight got a little red-faced. “Um…I gotta pee.”

I sighed, and rolled off the talking blatter. That was one thing I didn’t miss about having no need for food. Or how Twilight would need to take a shower afterwards and…okay, maybe I missed showers a bit…and eating, if pony taste buds worked anything like a human’s…which I sincerely hoped they didn’t considering how they ate hay and flowers.

“I’m going to take a shower, and we’ll redo your magic disguise when I’m done to clean you up too, okay?” she called out from the bathroom down the hall.

I laid back down on the bed, and decided to see what else Tia was up to this morning.

I found Celestia trotting down the hallways of her castle, with the tingle of magic in her horn saying there was a little something in her magical grip. All in all, I was just glad I didn’t catch Tia in the shower.

And maybe a little disappointed at the same time.

Not that this whole spying on her everyday life was all that ethical, but…it wasn’t like I was really prying into her private life or anything. And it was her fault for not appearing in the show more. If bronies knew a little bit about Tia’s daily grind, my curiosity wouldn’t have forced me to be taking sneak peeks like I was. Not to mention all the times Tia told me about her day to wet my appetite, which were usually complaints.

If I wanted to get to know Celestia in her non-bitchy/slutty/funny glory, I needed to get a look at her in her natural habitat.

“And expect a visit from the Duke of Coltenhagen sometime today,” Luna’s dry voice rang in Celestia’s ears. “He’s very upset about the recent reports of Weed harvesting and was petitioning me to set its use aside for breeding purposes only to the noble families that have a history in the guard.”

Celestia nodded. “I expect we’ll see a downturn in a number of stallions protecting us as the years pass.”

“Why do we have so many of their number these days?” the other goddesses asked with a raised eyebrow. “I remember a time when it was mares that filled most of the uniforms. And how there were far fewer of those uniforms to fill.” The end came at a little grumble, which peeked Celestia's curiosity.

But it was the the question got a sigh from Celestia and her response. “It’s a horrid tradition of some of the lesser houses. They foal two or three stallions to fight for the right to inherit the right to either gain the best arrangement their family can provide. Usually, this is by gaining favor for their house through military service,” she replied before shaking her head. “While I’m not adverse to competition and being in the royal guard is an admirable thing, pitting siblings against one another in any way…”

“Say no more Sister,” Luna told her when it seemed that nothing else was forthcoming.

The silence continued for a few more moments before I caught a glimpse of Luna smirking through Tia’s eyes. “And here I would have thought you bemoaning the thought of losing our delectable scenery.”

Celestia stopped walking, and turned around to face her little sister all the way. “Sister please, I’m a one stallion mare now,” she said before a coffee mug floated into view before she took a sip. “With um…two mares on the side, of course.”

A sigh came from Luna’s mouth as she shook her head. “And I am supposed to be the crazy one.”

What felt like an actually ton or more of guilt crashed down on the bigger goddess, but was soon channeled into anger. Ground broke from Celestia striking her hoof into it. “You are not! You…it was my fault Luna. I should have… What was to be expected when nopony acknowledged your talent and hard work for so long? You…you just… I should have…”

Luna put on a concerned face and held up a hoof to touch Celestia’s cheek. “What is the cause of this new wave of guilt these past few days?” she asked. “I believed we were past such things.”

Celestia said nothing, and just looked down the hallway at a door further down. Luna looked up at her for a moment, then followed Tia’s eyes before turning back to frown at her. “The girl? I was led to believe she left of her own accord.”

“And whose fault was that?” Celestia demanded with a raised voice that made Luna take a step back before the larger alicorn’s eyes widened and she let out a dejected sigh. “I play the events over in my head again and again, and every time I do, I find some new fault to lay at my hooves. Was it my own rigidity that caused you to turn away from me in our final years together as well Luna?

“Always barking orders, always demanding everypony act exactly as I tell them and never giving example or listening to compromise!” she went on. “Make friends Twilight. Ignore your curiosity Sunset. Lower the moon Luna!”

The smaller alicorn shook her head as her sister continued to bark orders in a dark tone. “You downplay my role in the affair while overstating your control of the situation,” she replied. “Much I suspect is the case with Sunset as well.”

I felt Tia glare at her little sister. “I am not saying she made bad choices, but mine were the greater by far,” the alicorn grumbled as she broke eye contact.

Luna let out another long sigh as Celestia paused. “Did something happen last night during your not-dream?”

The name got an eye roll from Tia. “I wish you’d stop calling them that,” she said. “And for your information, last night was better than usual. We talked, partook of another human piece of visual entertainment-”

“I’m beginning to believe those things are rotting your brain sister,” Luna interjected.

“And shared our first kiss,” Celestia finished before I felt her lick her lips.

“YOU WHAT?”

Celestia looked down at her little sister and raised her eyebrow. “I do not see what the problem is,” she said. “Omnifarious asked me why I was so interested in him, and what could I do afterwards but kiss him? It was a bit different than I remember. But that is probably due to being human at the time.”

I picked up a groan with Celestia’s ears, and watched as Luna shook her head. “Sister…I am ecstatic that finding love again after all these years has made you happy, but you divulge too much information!” she exclaimed before becoming dreadfully serious again. “And I also begin to worry about the great deal of influence your hopeful beau has on you.”

It was Celestia that let out the groan when Luna was finished. “This again? I think we have removed your fears that I was under his sway in such a way some time ago Luna,” she said.

“I also believe that was before you had the…hots for your former student, Sister,” Luna replied evenly.

Celestia cleared her throat, and looked away from the shorter mare. “Yes well, Omnifarious simply let me see the number of desirable qualities that Twilight has,” the larger goddess replied before she looked back down at Luna. “And besides, if the two of us were to keep the first image that we saw of our little ponies in our heads, we’d be picturing all of Equestria with diapers covering their plots. Twilight was a delightful foal, but now she is a mare grown, and I will both treat and think of her as such.

“And you worry over nothing Sister,” Tia went on before a bit of distaste entered her mind. “If I were to follow all of Omnifarious’s suggestions, we would be…harvesting stallion ejaculations and placing it within heated mares to impregnate them using magic to provide the delivery. The idea of his artificial insemination makes me just… Blech!”

“Because sharing a stallion with mares is so much better,” Luna deadpanned.

Celestia let out an indignant sniff. “I told you, the larger household provides a much greater income to support the needs of a fuller family. You might have missed the modernization of Equestria little sister, but the fact that ponies in Manehatten no longer try to birth four foals for every couple did not go unnoticed by me. Without an easily accessible crop to feed mouths cheaply, parents simply stop having children at two or three. And we must at least maintain the current population if Equestria hopes to have a future.”

A roll of the eyes preceded Luna’s reply. “Ponies in Manehatten are one thing, you are another. I still can’t believe you are chasing the tails of three mares,” she said before pointing a hoof at Tia. “And don’t try and distract me with claims the darkest one is a stallion at heart. Until Omnifarious can penetrate you with a lower horn, a mare is what he is.”

In response, Celestia giggled. “Oh Luna, I think somepony doth protest too much. And three seems the perfect number of wives for me,” she said. “Twilight’s magical interests, Fae’s duality, and Rainbow’s adorable admirableness, all three fulfill my needs so completely I want to kick myself for not bringing about family herding sooner. And I know that the four of us shall be nothing but happy together.”

Luna opened her mouth again for a moment, and then snapped it shut with a frown before studying Celestia for a few more seconds. Then, she spoke. “Be careful with your foresight sister, letting tiny urges and feelings guide you is one thing, but actively looking is tunnel vision of the worst sort.”

“I am well aware of that Luna,” Tia said before I felt her lips become a smirk. “That’s why I asked the expert.”

As Luna gave Celestia a confused frown, the larger alicorn trotted away. “Now, I think it’s time I woke my daughter up and see if she wants to join us in the breaking of my nightly fast. I’ll be seeing you in a bit Luna. Unless she’s changed more than just in attitude, my little sun will be putting up more of a fight than the one I just raised.”

I listened to the sisters say a few quick goodbyes, and then checked back in my own bedroom to make sure Twilight was still in the shower, which she was. Although the purple princess pony hadn’t taken much care of her wings before Rainbow Dash started waking up with us, the pegasus had put Twilight on a strict preening schedule that the alicorn had adhered to ever since.

Judging by the amount of ouches and curses coming from the bathroom, Twilight wasn’t doing too well when it came to doing things herself. I would have gone and helped her but…no changeling knew anything about feathered wing maintenance. The feathers we had just lasted as long as they were a part of us, and a quick flare of magic fixed any cosmetic problems.

So I left Twilight to her own personal torture before diving back down to sate my curiosity, and made it just in time to see Sunset laying on her bed with her knees propping up a book from under the covers and the sheets thankfully obscuring the rest of the naked girl. She was apparently scribbling in some notebook I had seen her with from time to time.

Just the sight of Sunset on the bed looked a little wrong. While the thing was more than big enough to let her stretch out, it was so low to the ground, along with everything else in the room, that it just make the human look slightly out of place. She looked about as wrong as I felt whenever going into Sunset’s room at Everfree Castle. With my whole four feet and a few inches of height, everything inside Sunset’s living place looked like it was sized for a giant.

“Oh Sunset, I didn’t expect to find you awake,” Celestia spoke before walking into the room and shutting the door behind her. “Did you have trouble sleeping?”

A slight movement and change in Sunset’s posture told me Tia hit the nail on the head, but as the alicorn was still feeling confusion rather than concern, I was guessing she missed the warning sign. In fact, I had to wonder just how much human body language Tia knew at all.

As for me, I knew what it meant. I doubted Sunset had gotten a wink of sleep past 5AM, and it was a pretty good bet she had woken up at least once during the night before then too. I was pretty sure the girl wasn’t being assaulted by nightmares, I had checked her sheets for sweat plenty of times while in Ponyville. But it didn’t mean she still didn’t feel stressed, out of place, at odds with herself, and a million other things that could lead to a restless night.

And I still had no fucking clue what to do about it besides tell Tia her daughter was having trouble adjusting to her disability.

Luna was no help either. The goddess of dreams apparently couldn’t enter the mind of a human, no matter how pony she was on the inside.

The girl gave the goddess a little smile that screamed liar. “Just a little. This bed isn’t as good as the one back at my-the uh, other castle.”

Celestia did manage to pick up on that slip tough. “There is no need to try and spare my feelings Sunset. I know you consider Ponyville your home more than Canterlot ever was,” she said before radiating sadness and dropping her head. “There, you have received far more love than I have ever given.”

“Mom-”

Sunset’s words were cut off by a sharp glare from Celestia a half a second before she spoke. “Do not try and defend my inaction again! I nurtured your mind, but neglected your heart. And it is a mistake I wish to see fixed so…” Tia cleared her throat, and looked down at the floor while she lifted a hoof to scrape the tip against it. “I was wondering if you would…um…like to spend time with me this afternoon. I could give my duties to Luna when she wakes from her sleep, and we could go…do whatever you want!”

Sunset shifted in the bed as Celestia finished a little too strong in tone, and I groaned internally when the sheets might have dropped to show her bare chest. I really didn’t want to see the kid I was taking care of naked. Tia didn’t give a damn of course. Stupid ponies and their no nudity taboos.

But the show was a short one, as Sunset took out a pen from the blue book she had been writing in and closed the thing to set it on the nightstand beside her while Celestia moved around the room. At first I thought she was going to hug and kiss and do all that stuff overly affectionate mothers do to their little girls, but when Sunset drew the covers up to cover herself again, a spike of emotional pain ran through Celestia’s mind. She backed off into a corner, a ball of guilt and nervousness.

As for me, I just floated in the back of Tia’s mind, wrapped in my own blanket of shock. Of course I asked Tia how she and Sunset were getting along, but she had always told me ‘well enough’ without any details.

It was pretty obvious her definition of the term and mine were very different.

From the looks of things, she just didn’t know how to act around the other woman anymore. The guilt and erratic levels of panic that made a seismograph registering an earthquake seem tame in comparison made Tia seem almost Twilight-like. Never having to deal with things of the like, not having a solution just come to her thanks to the endless years of experience Celestia possessed, I was guessing new experiences was not something Tia didn’t deal with very well.

“Well, I was-”

Before Sunset could say more, the door banged open, and Celestia looked over in surprise while a blue mare with silver hair and her usual starred attire walked in. Trixie must have had the worst tunnel vision in Equestria, because she completely missed the horse goddess standing in the corner of the room.

“Well at least those guards managed to tell Trixie where one of her benefactors is,” the unicorn said as she trotted up to the foot of Sunset’s bed before taking a little look around and still missing Tia. “Grander than the room Trixie was given, but she must admit that the daughter of Princess Celestia deserves such. Still, Sunny Skies did provide Trixie with better than her usual accommodations. Where is she by the way? Trixie must be going soon and…well…” An uncomfortable silence followed for a minute.

Sunset looked up at Celestia as Trixie looked down at the ground, and Tia raised a hoof to her lips in a shushing motion with a little bit of amusement passed through the goddess’s mind.

“Trixie would simply like to thank her,” the unicorn finished quickly, clearly not used to being in such a position. “But whenever Trixie asks where Sunny is, the guards simply give her odd looks.”

A little bit of a laugh came from Sunset’s mouth, but it looked like Trixie didn’t notice as Sunset reached for her magical piece of clothing that let Equestrians without knowledge of the English language to understand her. “Well you know how it is sometimes. Ponies don’t pay attention to what goes on backstage. Who’s going to notice Sunny Skies if she follows Celestia around all day?”

Trixie nodded. “True. Well, you will pass on Trixie’s message?” she asked before clearing her throat. “It has been some time since Trixie been able to thank another pony for her kindness.”

Considering her usual attitude, I didn’t wonder why.

Another moment of uncomfortable silence passed, and both the girls just stood and sat there. “So um…” Trixie said before she looked over to Sunset’s nightstand. “What’s that?”

Sunset looked over to her book. “Oh it’s just um…something I jot stuff down in to…pass the time.”

“A journal? Oh, or a diary!” the unicorn exclaimed before the book in question was snatched up by her magic and Sunset let out an indignant cry. “Oh come now, friends shouldn’t share secrets from one another, right?”

The human didn’t seem to agree. “Hey! Give that back! That’s mine!”

As Trixie flipped open the book with her magic, and Sunset lunged forward to get tangled in her sheets to land on the bed face first, Celestia cleared her throat and stepped forward loud enough that her golden horseshoes rang through the room. “That’s quite enough of that my little-oh my,” the goddess mumbled as she came up behind Trixie and focused her attention on the book in Trixie’s magic that depicted on odd diagram involving some oval shape and a dozen other things.

Out of the corner of Celestia’s eye, I saw Trixie turn and just stand there for a second before Sunset’s book was taken in the alicorn’s magic when her own faltered. “Paaa, Pri, Pre-pa…”

Tia looked away from the odd drawings in Sunset’s book and over to the unicorn. “Princess.”

“Pre-Prin, Princess…”

“Celestia,” said, continuing her coaching of the stunned mare as I picked up a guilty bit of amusement from seeing Trixie have her IQ drop to single digits in shock.

“C-Celestia, Princess Celestia!” Trixie exclaimed before dropping into a bow. “Forgive Trixie your highness, she did not hear you come in!”

Tia giggled a little bit. “That’s because I was here before you came barging in,” she said before Trixie went rigid. “If you’re going to wear that cape of yours everywhere you go, I would suggest folding the collar a bit, I think it hurts your peripheral vision.”

Sunset let out a groan and rolled over, which of course made Tia turn her head back to the butt naked teen and got a mental scream of ’NO BAD PRINCESS’ from me. “Fine, now give me back my idea book,” she demanded before crossing her arms over her breasts to bring the rating back to something approaching PG and scowling at Celestia.

The book in Celestia’s magical grip floated up, but didn’t fly back to the teenager. “Sunset, what is this?” she asked before looking back to the picture of a crudely drawn oval and a pair of circle with the Equestria words for ‘crystal’ written above them along with a page full of mathematical calculations and mystical formulae that I could barely understand. About all I could tell from the diagram was that the enchantments would work in tandem with something else.

“Ugh! It’s just one of the stupid ideas I get from time to time,” she grumbled.

I saw Trixie hop up on her hind legs to get a better look at the diagram, and then she fell back down to all fours. “If this is one of your stupider ideas, Trixie would hate to see a complicated one,” she mumbled. “Her brain might explode trying to understand it, and Trixie is no slouch at enchantments either.”

There was a swelling of pride and love in Celestia’s heart as she looked over the diagram some more, and then back up to Sunset. “If I’m reading this correctly, this enhancement would allow ponies to communicate via their reflections and…the crystals, one would detect sound, and the other create it. With two mirrors linked…ponies could communicate across thousands of miles instantly!”

“Yeah, it’s a theory for magical face-time,” she said before frowning at Trixie, whose face scrunched up in confusion. “It’s something humans have.”

As Trixie nodded in understanding, Sunset frowned and looked away. “But it would only work with a pair of mirrors, like those linked books you liked to use. Setting up a whole network would require something like a switch-board operator using two other mirrors as intermediaries, and…you have no idea what I’m talking about,” she said before groaning.

Celestia flipped through the book of magical designs in a mess of confusion, joy, and a dozen other emotions that varied from page to page. “Sunset this is… Why are you doing this? Why haven’t you shared this with anypony?”

“Like who? Twilight?” she asked before rolling her eyes. “Yeah, let me just sidetrack my one real chance of turning back into a pony on an endless road to build a bunch of junk.”

A tiny groan escaped from Tia’s mouth. “Well, I doubt she would simply abandon her current project, but…I suppose such thing would provide a distraction to her thoughts.”

“So why do it at all?” Trixie asked, and then immediately flinched when Celestia looked down at her. “P-Pardon Trixie’s rudeness your highness.”

Celestia nodded. “Of course my little pony,” she said before looking back to Sunset. “Although I do wonder that myself.”

For a second, Sunset just stared at them before throwing her hands wide. “Oh come on!” she exclaimed. “Magic is what I’m supposed to do! Do you have any idea what its like to lose that? If I didn’t do…something, I’d go insane! I thought it would be a little better now that I’m back in Equestria instead of stuck in a magicless environment but…now I’m getting it waved in front of my face everyday and I just… in some ways, it’s even worse! If I don’t do this then…what else have I got?”

Guilt rushed over Celestia again. “Oh Sunset, I-”

“No!” she ordered before holding up a hand and looking away from Celestia. “Just…no, stop the stupid blaming. Please…I just… It doesn’t do anything but make me feel worse!”

Which of course made Celestia feel even worse, but judging by how she kept her face only slightly downcast, she wasn’t about to let it show. “From what I understood, you were getting better in Ponyville.”

Sunset sighed, and slumped. “I am…sort of,” she added after a moment. “Look, the bug tries, but Fairy doesn’t really get it, or all of it. Friends and all that stuff, it’s good, and the foals are a nice distraction, but…when it’s all over…I feel so worthless sometimes.”

“Oh Sunset,” Celestia said as I felt her heart nearly break. “I have lived for longer than Equestria has existed, and I have never found a creature in all the world that could be called worthless.”

“You’ve also never met a human before either,” the redhead countered without any of the usual fire in her voice.

Celestia took in a deep breath, and stomped her hoof as I felt her wrestle her emotions to the side while Trixie quickly backed away from the goddess and out of her view. “Now stop this at once!” she ordered in a firm voice. “You will be cured of your condition soon enough. But if you require proof of your value in physical form, then this is what you and I shall be doing today after court!”

The goddess held up her book and tapped the mirror diagram with her hoof before she looked over to the unicorn in the room. “Trixie, did you have any plans for the day?”

Once again the center of Celestia’s attention, the magician gulped. “Um…well, not really your highness,” Trixie replied. “Trixie was hoping to peruse Canterlot for things she could use to enhance her act.”

“Excellent,” Celestia replied before her horn lit up and a bright flash of light filled the room that…well, it didn’t affect Celestia’s vision all that much, really. But both of the other occupants looked away before one of those old fashioned stamps people used to mark letters with their personal seal floated in front of her. “This conjuration will last for the rest of the day. If you would be kind enough to accompany my daughter into town so she can purchase whatever she needs to complete her mirror, you can use it to buy whatever to like. Simply mark the bill of sale with this for the shopkeeper, and the funds will be withdrawn from the royal account when that pony brings the receipt to the castle. Just don’t go too overboard, and I will know what you buy of course.”

While Trixie just stared wide-eyed at the object in question, Celestia caught sight of Sunset becoming withdrawn again. “You want me to go outside, in Canterlot?”

Tia studied her daughter for a few more seconds, then sighed. “Very well, you can remain at the palace. I’ll send Sunny Skies to accompany Trixie, with a list of materials from you.”

“Doesn’t Sunny Skies have work to do?” Sunset deadpanned, her earlier hesitation quickly vanishing.

“The only meeting of note today is with Blueblood, and once that’s done…I’m sure the kingdom will not suffer too much with my secretary taking a few hours to do something that needs to be done,” Celestia replied before she looked back down at Trixie. “Now Trixie.”

The unicorn’s head shot up and away from the seal in her grip. “Y-Yes your highness?”

“Would you like to join my family for breakfast?” Tia asked. “I would love to get to know my daughter’s new friend.”

A second later, my real body detected something and I had to cut my connection with Tia before Trixie could do more than just look up with her mouth gaping open and senseless sound coming out of it again with an “Uhhhh.”

Sunset’s words had me kicking myself mentally at my own stupidity. Of course the girl wouldn’t have been happy just being stuck in a stupid schoolhouse and helping me learn magic between all the time she spent with Twilight trying to fix herself with the crystal mirror.

I might have guessed that ponies always had to do something, but the fact that I didn’t factor in Sunset’s fucking TALENT had me feeling pretty stupid. The majority of a pony’s life revolved around her talent! If a pony’s ability to perform it was taken away…it would probably be worse than a master piano player who got his fingers damaged in a war to the point where he couldn’t play.

Hell, Luna went nuts from no one even appreciating her skill in working the night shift. With that on my mind, the idea of Sunset turning into a bitch rather than just a brat back on Earthquestria before she put the crown on and went dark empress of the apocalypse fell a bit more into place. Even her damn lust for power tied back to her talent, she needed to be good at magic! It was part of who she was!

I just hoped that doing magic vicariously through Tia would be enough for her as I opened my eyes to see Twilight standing over me with a quizzical look on her face.

“Are you okay? I usually don’t have to poke you that hard to make you wake up,” the lavender alicorn said before becoming a little worried.

“Yeah I’m just…feeling a little stupid,” I admitted.

Unfortunately, it took a lot longer to get ready to leave that I was hoping it would. First off, the ponies had to eat breakfast. I didn’t get anything to munch on of course, Twilight was a little to worried about me not loving Celestia to concentrate on her love for me, and our little cheat that involved sex just wasn’t happening at her parents’ house.

Plus, I didn’t much feel like it after learning how much of a total failure I was with Sunset’s needs. I was supposed to be taking care of the girl and all I did was bury her problems with gifts.

Not to mention we had spent the night in Twilight’s old house. Her parents’ house. The parents that helped give her so many psychological problems I wondered for her sanity on some days. So...I wasn’t all that thrilled to be sitting across from them when it came time for breakfast.

Of course the night’s sleep and fact that Spike was going back to Ponyville did wonders for Velvet and Nightlight’s attitudes. Whereas dinner had been a pretty somber affair, the breakfast table actually managed a real conversation.

But of course, there was that underlying Smell of fear. It wasn’t as much as there was last night. The fact that I didn’t murder the ponies in their sleep apparently helped Twilight’s parents think better of me, or maybe Luna visited them in their dreams to calm their nerves. But whatever the reason, they were a little more…conversational than they had been the night before.

I also felt the lack of Shining Armor and Cadence almost immediately since they couldn’t just ignore me in lieu of talking about the fact Shiny was starting a herd.

“So I suppose you’ll be back tomorrow for some coronation business, what with it being yours and all,” Twilight’s dad commented.

I looked around at the oats and other things being levitated around the table. While I could at least pass the grains off as ‘cereal’ and not even care about the more human foods like muffins, fruits, toast, and eggs, seeing ponies eat hay made me feel just the tiniest bit awkward. Especially after hearing they didn’t eat grass.

I never did get a real explanation for that either. Which just made it all the more weird.

“Just what would you be the princess of if you don’t mind me asking?” Velvet asked right on top of the father.

The way the ponies were acting, like normal human parents of all things, threw me off long enough for Twilight to come to my defense. “Mom, Fae is just being crowned tomorrow! Even I don’t have an official title yet, and Cadence didn’t get hers until after that mess in the Crystal Empire.”

Twilight’s defense got my curiosity up and I looked over to her. “Wait, you don’t have a title? I thought you were the Princess of Magic or something.”

A little giggle came out of the alicorn. “That’s what some ponies thought too, but no. How could I even be the foremost authority on magic when Princess Celestia knows more than me?” she asked. “I finished an incomplete spell, I didn’t become an expert on a fundamental force of the universe.”

I would have said something to counteract Twilight’s modesty but even after living with her for awhile, I wasn’t sure about the rules when it came to alicorn ascension. But if Twilight said she wasn’t the Alicorn or Princess of Magic, then my guess was, she wasn’t.

After all, Cadence was the Alicorn of Love, and she sure as hell didn’t have any problem when someone called her that.

“So what’d I be a good princess of then?” I asked with a little smile, needing to get the conversation away from Twilight’s lack of an official title before she started freaking out about it or something.

Twilight got thoughtful for a few seconds. “Well you could just take over the Everfree.”

The suggestion got an eye roll from me. The Everfree was Twilight’s territory, not mine, and I didn’t have that much control of the area. Overall, the changelings held about a third of the place on the eastern side near Rambling Rock Ridge, and the northwest border that had the place linking up with Ponyville. There was also a few guards that patrolled the southwestern areas near the train tracks, but the animals of the Everfree had learned to stay clear of the trains a long time ago.

“Who says I have to be princess of anything?” I mumbled.

Twilight laughed again. “Well you already are the leader of the changelings, but you need a territory of your own, right?”

Nightlight cleared his throat. “What is it about these changelings anyway?” he asked in an even tone.

The sweet Smell of fear and unease coming from Velvet deepened. “Darling, let’s not…um…”

“What do you mean?” I asked, already knowing what he was going to get at. If I had to guess, it would probably be something along the lines of what he had been going to ask me about last night before Spike and Twilight’s eruption, followed by Shining and Cadence’s big distraction involving Rarity.

Real family drama took precedence over the new guy finally getting his introduction. Considering how Nightlight had been pouring himself a drink when we were going to have our talk and I might have been the least bit leery about him poisoning it when I was offered a swig, I was more glad than hurt my time in the spotlight got shoved to the side.

“It’s…nothing,” he finally said, which got a frown from me.

“No let’s hear it,” I said evenly.

Of course that just made the tension go up, and Twilight looked over to me. “Fairy-”

I held up a hoof. “No. This is what you wanted to talk to me about last night, right? So let’s hear it.”

Twilight leaned in close. “Do you have to do this now? Again?”

Nightlight averted his eyes, and I looked over to Twilight. “What?”

“It’s just like the Crystal Empire,” she whispered back. “Ponies get nervous, and you get offended. Can’t you just…not do this, this time?”

While Nightlight and Velvet getting antsy around me didn’t bother me like it did with the crystal ponies, Twilight’s attitude did. “Hey!” I replied at a slightly higher volume. “That is not this! This is…” I took in another breath, which of course gave me time to focus on the growing unease coming from Twilight’s parents.

That made me look back to them out of the corner of my eye, and then I glanced at Spike as he sat on the other side of Twilight. I let out a sigh, and my shoulders slumped before I turned my head back to face Velvet and Nightlight. “Sorry for getting…like that. I just…”

I took in another breath, and Twilight thankfully didn’t butt in. “Look, I um…scared you the first time we met, and I’m not angry about that or anything. I caught you off guard with the whole changeling thing, but now that that’s out in the open, I promise I won’t…get offended,” I said while doing my best to keep my words as far away from violent examples of my raged responses as I could.

Silence blanketed the room for a moment as the two non-winged ponies shared a nervous look.

Then Spike spoke up. “What makes you so different than um…whatshername. Old changeling queen?”

That got a roll of the eyes from Twilight. “Seriously? You mean besides Fairy’s actions and her not trying to take over Equestria? Actually loving another pony instead of stealing it, and everything else she’s done?”

Once again, Nightlight cleared his throat. “I think what Spike means to ask is, what is the cause of these actions?” he asked Twilight before looking over to me, a little calmer than he had been a moment ago.

And Twilight rushed to my defense, again. “The changeling’s have changed Dad.”

“Well, not really,” I said evenly, drawing a little bit of a frown from the alicorn, which made me wonder if I was getting into something that I shouldn’t be. “All the instincts are still there, the parts of our brain that make causing pain and suffering enjoyable. Every changeling is raised on it, and I’m just at the top of the monster hierarchy.”

While Twilight’s friends knew about my past, the vast majority of ponies didn’t have any clue that humans existed, and a good amount of Ponyville citizens were clueless to the fact that I had been one. So I got the distinct impression telling Twilight’s parents that wasn’t the best of ideas.

“Not helping Fairy,” Twilight grumbled. “And you can’t seriously be saying you’re the same as Chrysalis!”

I sighed and looked over to Twilight. “Hey I’m just one changeling, and yeah, I’m different from the overwhelming majority of them are still the same creatures that attacked Canterlot, and I’m not going to be telling any pony, much less your parents, otherwise. They want to truth, so I’ll give it to them.”

Velvet spoke up. “So what makes you so different then?”

“Fae is kind, and loving and-” Twilight went on as I tuned her out to try and think to myself about that question.

When she finished, I let out a sigh and slumped my head a little bit before I went on right on top of her. “Honestly? I’m not really all that different from my mother,” I told Twilight’s parents, which of course made them nervous as hell and got Twilight to glaring at me again. “We’re both pretty deceitful, violent, greedy, and very conceited. But there was one key difference.

“I love Equestria. I love it just the way it is, with you ponies running around being happy and everything. It’s bright and fun, and…perfect. If we had taken over, all of that would have gone way.

“I mean, sure I could have mind controlled ponies to do what I wanted, made them dance and sing songs for me. I could have made Twilight love me along with any other pony I wanted,” I went on while the image of the Mane Six laying at the feet of some thrown with a bunch of slave collars on passed through my mind to make me a little sick. “But it wouldn’t have been the same, it wouldn’t have been real.”

I cleared my throat and looked away. “An um, about what Twilight said…yeah, I do love her,” I told them before looking back at the parents. “And I want to be worthy of that love, and everything else my friends give me, and the faith they put in me.

“And that’s the difference between me and my mother, and the rest of the changelings,” I added after a few seconds. “They…feed on emotions that we can induce by putting a pony in a sack of goo. They take it. I want the stuff that’s freely given, and I want them to know who they’re giving it to. They want to eat, I want to be loved. That’s it, really. It’s selfish as my mother, but in a different way.”

The parents shared a look at that, and then put their attention back on me. Velvet licked her lips. “I wouldn’t say that,” the unicorn replied in the warmest tone I had heard her use in front of me. “In fact I think we’re not all that different. Some ponies say that our greatest fear is being alone and unloved by others. So I can understand why creatures such as yourself would take the easy road with such an option open to them. And…I am happy that you didn’t.”

Twilight gave her mother a half-lidded expression. “Yes Mother, you and all of Equestria.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said before hanging her head low.

Nightlight was quick to pick up the conversation as the other Twilight in the room was cowed by her daughter’s expression. “I think what Twilight meant to say is,” he began before stealing a glance at Twilight Sparkle. “We are glad that you got to know our little Twily, and the happiness you two share with each other. And if you would like to come back and visit sometime…I think we would like to get to know you too.”

To be honest, the offer just…rubbed part of me the wrong way. We humans are big into the whole first impression thing after all, and…both the first and second, as well as a good amount of the third hadn’t been all that good. They had left me with more than a bit of a distaste for Twi’s parents that just…made them feel like the sort-of friends you saw at work. If you ran into them, you were cordial, but you sure as hell didn’t want to be coming over to their house anytime soon.

Not to mention the crap Twilight had let slip about them while we were on our date. That little bit alone made me want to shout at them about how they had scarred their daughter for life and needed to be paying for her therapy…if Equestria even had such a thing.

But they were ponies, and Twilight’s parents, and knowing the alicorn, she just wanted us all to get along. So I did the very changeling thing of swallowing my desires to see them with a few missing teeth, and smiled as nicely as I could. “I think I’d like that.”

As long I didn’t have to be in the same room with them more than once a week, I could deal with it.

Of course Twilight looked happy about the whole thing. Smelled it too. So…it let me swallow the bitterness of the pill that was getting along with her parents. But hell, they were Twilight’s parents and…as much as it made me nervous just to consider them in such a light…nobody was actually supposed to get along with their in-laws. Even ponies couldn’t fix that fact of life.

It was about ten thirty by the time we made it to the train station and found the other royal couple waiting for us like a letter Spike burped up saying they would be. Of course, it also mentioned that Sunset was staying in Canterlot for the weekend, which actually brought Twilight a little down. She was the only person the alicorn could talk shop with after all.

“I can’t believe we had to wait for the cargo train so we could ride back to Ponyville,” Twilight mumbled as we watched the last of Spike’s stuff get loaded. “Just how many comics do you own anyway?”

The dragon looked away from the alicorn and played with his claws. “Well uh, I might have ate light for a few days and used the gems to get a few…dozen…boxes of comics,” Spike said as Twilight’s frown became a glare. “Oh come on Twilight! It’s not like we don’t have room now! We live in a castle!”

I quickly backed away from the incoming lecture on nutrition, proper use of allowances, and about a dozen other things, and looked over to Cadence and Shining Armor. “So you are staying in Canterlot for the day, or…is a certain mare in Ponyville going to be getting a visit from the Crystal Royalty?”

Shining Armor gave a nervous laugh. “No, But Rarity said to stay out of Ponyville until she could-”

“SHINING ARMOR HELP! LITTLE BROTHER IN DANGER!” Spike cried as he ran past us with Twilight on his heels.

As I found myself alone with Cadence a few seconds later, and wondering why Twilight just didn’t magic Spike immobile if she was really teed off with him, I looked over to the pink pony and cleared my throat. “Um…hey,” I said in the most…kind of awkward way possible.

Cadence smiled back at me. “Hello Omnifarious. I’m glad to hear that you and Twilight’s parents are getting along now…more or less.”

Since one such thing deserves another, I handed out my own praise. “And um…thanks for last night, with Sunset. That was…um…you and her.”

The pink alicorn stopped me with a sigh. “I have a lot of time that I need to make up for with my new cousin,” she said before shaking her head.

Completely lost, I decided to switch topics. I had Cadence in front of me at the moment, and really didn’t know when I was going to get another chance. “Hey Cadence, how does love work with ponies?”

“What?” she asked with a confused frown.

“Well it’s just…” I tried to voice my question as best I could, explaining my confusion about how ponies could practically explain in every little detail why they were in love with another pony, and how it sounded like love literally just hit them in similar matter to how their cutie marks worked.

Cadence just giggled and shook her head. “It’s not that simple,” she said before looking down at me. “But you can’t honestly tell me that you haven’t had a moment when you look at a mare and just know the two of you are perfect for one another? That everything about her is perfect? That you would do anything for her?”

I looked back at Twilight for a second as she pinned Spike to the ground and began tickling him with her wings. “Well…okay, I’ll give you that,” I said before looking back to Cadence. “But from the sound of things, you did it in about ten seconds when you saw Rarity.”

“Oh that,” she replied with an all too guilty grin. “Well...I cheated.”

A very dark and angry thought stirred in my gut as I imagined Cadence putting some kind of love spell over Rarity and Shining Armor because of those words. The fact that my best friend by default had just been…heart raped by the pony in front of me just… Something very bad stirred in the back of my mind as I began thinking of way to kill Cadence and get away with it. “You. What?”

Cadence apparently didn’t pick up on my killing intent, because she just gave me a little smile and a shrug. “I know, I shouldn’t have used my foresight like that but…I’m the Alicorn of Love and…look, every single pony that approached me and Shining about herding just want to…they weren’t a good idea. But when I looked at the possibilities that sprang from Rarity…”

The legs of the alicorn wobbled a bit, and she turned a loving gaze over to Shining Armor. “I saw babies,” she whispered before clearing her throat and blinking some tears out of her eyes. “I mean…I saw other ponies that were smitten with Shining giving him foals too, but…our love became…twisted because of it. Whenever another mare gave him babies, our love line became dark and usually vanished all together when the second mare became jealous, and tried to use his children to take Shining away from me. And…I would never make Shining pick me over his own foals.

“But Rarity… No matter the gender, or the number of foals she bore him,” the love goddess continued while the tears threatened to overwhelm her ability to blink them away. “Every possibility I saw had the three of us standing over their cribs together, and Rarity teaching them to call me Mommy as easily as they did her.”

She looked back at me and smiled. “After that, how could I not fall in love with her?”

And just like that, the Goddess of Love pretty much killed the last little bit of that voice that said I needed to end her life. Although the fuel she gave to fuel my curiosity meant I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “Wait, you can see the future?”

After thinking about it for a second, Cadence shook her head. “No. It’s more like a form of…super subliminal math. But sometimes, it does paint a little picture for me too. Of course I’m no Celestia, so it only works with questions of love but-”

“Wait,” I interrupted with a raised hoof. “You mean Tia can see the future too?”

Once again, Cadence shook her head. “You’re making it sound a lot more…definite than it really is. She told me once it’s like…odd feelings when a moment of destiny is at hoof, or something needs to be put in place like…well…Spike.”

That non-answer completely destroyed the little bit of comprehension I thought I had on the whole thing. “Spike? What does he got to do with anything?”

Cadence smiled. “Oh, well…back when Twilight was just a filly and I learned about her entrance exam. Auntie said when it came time to chose the test for that year, she got an odd feeling while looking through her vault and decided to roll out the dragon egg test, despite nopony ever being able to pass it before.”

“And then Twilight did thanks to the Rainboom, which got Celestia’s attention, and she made Twilight her student, putting everything in motion,” I finished for her.

Although, from Cadence’s explanation…Tia’s ability sounded a disturbing amount like a Pinkie Sense, if in a more mature version. To be honest, I didn’t like it.

I mean, what was next? Luna being able to talk to animals like Fluttershy?

As my dissatisfaction with my latest bit of Equestrian lore apparently killed our conversation, Twilight and her brother trotted up to us with the lizard following close behind. “Well, that’s the last of the loading. Everypony ready to go?”

And of course, before I could voice my yes while my brain reminded me Rainbow Dash had apparently had a rough night with the two of us gone and made me want to get back to Ponyville all the faster, a tug on my tail made me look back to find Spike standing there. “Something you need?”

“Um Fae, can I ask you something real quick?” he asked, which kind of annoyed me due to the fact it was a question on if he could ask a question and…okay, maybe I was harboring some lingering hatred for the dragon now that he was back to not crying at me.

Still, I managed not to frown as he added, “In private.”

Me and Twilight shared a confused look, and then I stepped off to the side to talk to him.

Five minutes later, I came back with the kid on my back and a slightly annoyed frown on my face. “Hey Twilight, you go on back to Ponyville and meet up with Dash for…uh…you know, that thing,” I said, barely remembering the fact that Spike didn’t know about Rainbow sleeping with us in time not to blurt it out.

Twilight gave me a confused frown. “Uh…okay. But…what’s going on?”

I repressed the urge to groan and looked at my purple pony in the eyes. “Oh it’s just some errand Spike forgot about that we need to take care of for Princess Celestia,” I lied. “We’ll catch the one o’clock train and everything will be fine.”

“Well if there’s something Spike needs to do for the princess, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to go with him and you go back to Ponyville? Your changelings are going to be doing the unloading after all,” Twilight pointed out.

However, I was ready for Twilight. “But you’ve got that thing with Dash,” I pointed out, which got a questioning eyebrow-raise from Twilight. “That think you need to get her ready for.” I inclined my head towards Spike just a bit.

“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed as her eyes went wide. “Right! That thing, with Dash! I’ll umm…okay, better go take care of that. Yes. Going right now.”

Twilight quickly ran into the train car a few seconds before it closed, and Shining Armor looked over to the two of us. “So what’s really going on?”

“Nothing!” Spike said right in my ear, reminding me why I didn’t like critters sitting on my back. “Now come on, we need to go see Princess Celestia.” A tug on my hair also reminded me why I didn’t like things that could think for themselves on my back.

As I walked away from the confused couple, I glanced back at the dragon. “Are you really wanting to talk to Tia about this?”

“Well, she does know the best shops in the city,” the dragon pointed out.

I just sighed and trotted on towards the castle while hoping this stupid shopping trip wouldn’t take all that long.

Chapter 36: The Incredibly Rocking Adventure of Spike the Dragon

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Okay, I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but…

I can’t stand kids.

The little ones I mean.

I don’t outright hate them, I just can’t stand them.

Although such an opinion usually led to me hating particular children. Like Diamond Tiara for instance. Yeah, she was a cute pink little pony with a princess tiara that you just wanted to pick up and hug on sight, but good God was she annoying! Annoying leads to aggravating, and aggravating leads to hatred.

Unless of course some child does something stupid. Then I skip straight to the hatred like I did with Spike, because he…well, okay, I guess he didn’t really try to kill Sunset but…he kicked the rock that started the avalanche. It was close enough for me. But he was just a kid, and if he wasn’t going to try sicking a mob on me again, I could get past what happened. Not forgive or forget mind you. Humans are vindictive creatures that barely ever forgot a slight to us, and I’m pretty sure my memory had only improved since becoming a changeling.

So, forgive and forget?

No.

Move past it if the perpetrator is young and stupid, and is willing to fall into line?

That, I could do.

So rather than go home and see what had been bothering Rainbow Dash the night before, I left that job to Twilight and went with Spike to get his ‘I’m sorry’ gift that just happened to coincide with Twilight’s upcoming birthday in a few weeks. Although the object Spike planned on getting, with money apparently provided from the sale of gems that Tia sent his way for food by the way, was a little confusing to me. “You want to get Twilight a telescope?”

It seemed a little mundane for a pony goddess. Plus, there was the fact that she already had about three of the damn things. Although, two of them were monstrous contraptions that looked like they belonged in a small observatory Twilight had to leave at the library since they were the property of the town. I tried to tell her as a princess she could have just had them sent over to the castle, but Twilight preferred to leave them where they were.

She also left me wondering just how the hell a podunk town like Ponyville ended up with so much scientific equipment. Her lab I could understand, that was just a crazy unicorn with access to a large budget and no social life to help suck away the funds. But two telescopes big enough you’d need a big rig to haul around were pushing it.

“Mind if I ask why?” I, well…asked.

Spike leaned over to my side and forward, which kind of threw off my balance since he had just decided to ride on my back and made me readjust. “Oh come on! You’ve seen how old and beat up Twilight’s telescope is getting!” he said in a kind of fussy tone that kind of made me wonder if I needed to make preparations for Spike’s sudden but inevitable betrayal when he decided to act stupid and try to separate me and Twilight. “Getting a new one for her birthday would be the perfect gift!”

I had to assume Spike was talking about Twilight’s third telescope that she actually brought with her to the castle. The telescope I didn’t know that much about other than the fact that it was more along the size of what a normal person would use. Oh, and it was blue.

Other than that, I had nothing. Astronomy was one of the things I stuck clear of to stay sane. My brain could only deal with one thing that didn’t make sense, and because I couldn’t run away from Pinkie Pie without making her cry, she was it. Specifics about the how of weather, the stars, questions relating to Tia and Luna’s parents as well as Discord’s origins, and why ponies crafted things that were obviously made for a species with fingers were ignored for the most part.

“So why’re we going to the princess to recommend a store instead of…um…Twilight’s parents?” I finally asked. Twilight had said they were also into astronomy after all. Going to them made sense. At least more than bothering a pony goddess about some mundane thing. Tia might have been my friend, but there was no way in hell I was going to bug Celestia at her proverbial office.

Spike rolled his eyes. “Those two couldn’t keep a secret if their life depended on it. If I tell them, Twilight will know by next week.”

And so, instead of going to the logical couple that probably had nothing better to do than give advice to their adopted son on what to buy his sister, we headed towards the pony goddess that probably had a line of petitioners a mile long that needed to be addressed. Sure most of them were just coming to complain, but Tia did let the common mare bring her troubles to the attention of the court. I doubted everyone that waited hours to see her just wanted to bitch about stuff, five or six ponies probably had some real concerns that needed to be taken care of.

I had certainly sat over about…well…one or two real problems in the weeks and weeks of work as Ponyville’s local federal government authority. Canterlot probably got a few cases like that a day.

But of course, Equestria just laughed at my ideas when I got up to the castle, through the guards and down the halls depicting recent Equestrian history that…made me stop and stare at one of the windows. Depicted upon it was a dark blue cloud hanging over a rather simplistic representation of the Crystal Empire with what looked like hands grasping out towards the nation while several different colors of glass depicted a multicolored light imitating form a central figure that was flying at the center with something that made me frown when I flew up to examine it closer. “I didn’t play the guitar, I played the drums.”

“Eh, artistic license,” the dragon replied before looking over to his own window, which was a much bigger example of ‘artistic license' than mine ever was. I’m pretty sure he only held that damn heart for about two seconds, and he sure as hell didn’t hand it off to anyone like the window practically showed him doing.

I grumbled while heading back to the ground. “And where the hay was Shining Armor in that picture?” I asked. “He played main…” Well, I could understand the ponies not wanting to show off the other hero of the hour not playing a keytar, but he should have at least been in the damn picture! “Instrument,” I finished before landing and heading through the hallway and into the throne room.

The place of was as immaculate as ever with its high columns, even more colorful windows, and the long stretch of red carpet that led to the goddess’s throne that Celestia was currently parking her perfect pony posterior on. Having lived in the Castle of the Pony Sisters before rechristening it Everfree Castle, I had to look up at the single throne that Tia was currently occupying and wonder if Luna was a little resentful of not getting a seat of her own. She had one back then after all.

The other thing I noticed was a distinct lack of ponies.

Oh, there were guards and a unicorn servant that stood next to Celestia with a notepad in her magical grip. But other than them, there was only a single other unicorn in attendance. It was a single douche of a unicorn with larger than average size and blonde hair that made me want to just puke. Apparently, Celestia hadn’t been kidding about telling all her petitioners to come back another day when I was spying from inside her skull. But that didn’t apply to alicorns come to see Tia on royal business.

Hell, considering how our last few meetings went inside the palace, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Celestia gave her goons standing orders to just let me and the girls through no matter what was going on.

“Prince Blueblood, it has come to my attention that you have found some of my recent actions in bad taste,” Celestia said in a loud tone to the stallion in the center of the room as he approached. “Particularly in regards to the additions to the royal line, and my personal one.”

The unicorn pointed his nose up in the air like a snob, or maybe he was just looking up at the goddess on her throne, and spoke. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Auntie.”

“The previous night, I’ve heard tell that you referred to my daughter, my emotionally burdened and fragile daughter, as a piece of trash unicorn, as well as a freakish pet!” the goddess went on in a growl. And it could have been my imagination, but the air around Celestia might have shimmered just a little bit like when there was a major source of heat disrupting it.

“And did they also mention how that monster attempted to do me harm and sabotaged my attempt to hold up a noble tradition that the royal family of Canterlot has taken part in since Equestria was made?” Blueblood actually managed to demand, surprising the hell out of me.

I would have thought the girlyman would have been cowering in front of Tia. Instead, he stood with his head held high. He was apparently a lot more stupid than I gave him credit for.

On the other side of the conversation, Tia continued with the firm and loud with no nonsense tone. “We both know the real reason you joined that particular class instead of your usual tactical theory courses was because of how the teacher looked rather than any honor it would bring to your forefathers. As for Sunset’s actions, the entire point of that exercise was to pit the lot of you against one another. Considering your insults to the girl, I can hardly blame her for picking you off first.”

Blueblood stood firm, although whether it was out of bravery, stupidity or some kind of suicidal need to be an ass, I didn’t know. “And what of it?” he demanded with a humph. “She is the only one of her kind, transformed by magic into an unnatural form and only has what she has because you gave it to her! By every definition, she is a freak, and little more than your pet! And if memory serves, a monster that once assaulted you before fleeing in disgrace!”

As Celestia’s eyes narrowed, I became sure that the air around her was indeed hotter than it was in the rest of the room. “Yes, everything she has is because of my actions, including her current predicament,” Celestia agreed in a neutral tone. “Just as everything you have, everything your sire had, and everything his sire had was due to the actions of those that came before you.”

Apparently taking offense to that, Blueblood stomped his hoof onto the ground. “Exactly, I have what I have because of who I am! I was born as the Prince of Canterlot!”

“Birth?” Celestia asked evenly, or maybe she was just repeating what the idiot said. “You think do you think the fact that you were born entitles you to anything? A dog, a flea, a worm all these things are born! So apparently they too are entitled to be called Prince, and given everything you have!

“Meanwhile, Princess Twilight Sparkle has defended this land on several separate occasions and come to understand a truth about ponies that goes beyond the tribes, just as Princess Cadence has! Since the day she came back, Sunset Shimmer has worked at designing new enchanted items that will make the lives of ponies better and bring us closer together. Even without being a pony, she has once again started down the same path as the two of them! The path that I set her upon years ago!” the goddess said in a voice approaching a shout that was full of anger and pride as she half-looked up away from the unicorn. “Both Twilight and Sunset earned their a place under my tutelage and proved themselves worthy of my teaching with every lesson. Cadence was born with nothing, and earned her crown without a single lesson from me.”

But then she gave Blueblood her full attention again, and that pride was swallowed by her anger. “And then there is you,” she went on with a frown. “The direct descendant of Princess Platinum and overseer of the Canterlot district of Equestria. And like your father before you, and his before him, you sit on your plot, squander your fortunes, neglect your duties, and shirk any responsibility that doesn’t revolve around planning parties or counting your money! The only reason you are even called prince is from a clerical error that was made ten generations ago that your several times great-grandfather and I decided to keep around as a laugh! I should have you renamed Duke like every other member of the regional nobility. Your actions do nothing but dirty the name of Prince, and I am far too fond of my new nephew to see his title be shared with somepony like you.”

With that threat, Blueblood’s steadiness shattered. “W-What?” he stuttered. “Y-You can not do such a thing! That would…that would put me on equal level w-with that farmer and business mare you put in charge of hick towns like Appleloosa and Dodge City!”

Celestia scoffed. “I assure you nephew, Silver Saddle and Cherry Jubilee are both far above you in worth as managers of their territories, and company,” she told the unicorn before descending from her throne, making Blueblood back away from the goddess. “And if you want to keep your meaningless title, then you will make apologies to my daughter.”

The demand got a cringe from Blueblood. “Very well,” he grumbled. “I will have one of my servants draw up a letter for the monk-”

“I AM NOT FINISHED YET!” Celestia roared as she struck a hoof to the ground. “You will give this apology to my daughter in pony, in front of the Sun Court for all to see, and you will also present a basic plan in which you can improve the lives of Equestria’s citizenry by the day after tomorrow when I return from the new princess’s coronation. If you do not do this, then I shall declare you unfit for your position and have you stripped of land and title!”

Blueblood sputtered. “You-but, that…you can not do such a thing! I protest! I resist! I-”

The horn on top of Celestia’s head lit up, and the goddess glared at the unicorn. “Allow me to assist you in your duty by sending you to the archives so you can better research a way to complete your task,” Tia told him. “Don’t come back until you are summoned!”

There was a bright flash, and I found myself alone in the throne room with Celestia. And her secretary, as well as the guards, on top of the dragon on my back. But for a few brief seconds I felt like I was alone with Celestia because…well…seeing her be all take charge, putting some moron in his place and kind of being...you know, a Princess with a capital P…

It was hot.

It was the Tia I thought I knew.

It was the Celestia I admired.

And…unfortunately, it was also the goddess that was pretty untouchable by some mere mortal man like me.

Then she looked up at me and smiled. But her emotions were much more mixed. There was that lusty friendship that came from the goddess and other ponies when they were close to someone they liked in a way that ended with two ponies in bed. But there was also something else. A slight whiff of anger that I caught below the surface of the first emotion, like an aftertaste. “Omnifarious, Spike, what are the two of you doing here?”

“Well you see Princess,” Spike began before repeating the same story he told me about Twilight needing a new telescope that wasn’t meant for an observatory, and how he had eaten light for a couple of nights to get the bits for it. Which probably led to him realizing he could eat a little lighter when it came to the gems and buy a ton of comic books.

When Spike was done, Tia looked at the gray unicorn mare that had remained up by her throne. “Raven, have a messenger sent to Starry Eyed’s workshop and tell him I’ve requested his presence at the castle.”

“At once your majesty,” the mare replied in a nasally voice that sounded way too much like the generic secretary from some old 80s movie. Then her existence became even more of a bad pun when I watched her walk by and noticed the writing desk cutie mark.

After the mare had left, Spike jumped down off my back and grunted uncomfortably a little bit to get Celestia’s attention. Then he nervously played with his claws. “Uh…a-about what you were talking about, you know...Sunset?” the dragon mumbled before gulping. “I should um…I should probably apologize too.”

Celestia looked down at the little dragon and raised an eyebrow while the rest of her face stayed firm. “Probably?”

“Definitely! Definitely apologize, I mean. If she’ll even speak to me, that is,” Spike said in a tone not much higher than before.

Tia’s rather stern expression went soft, and she knelt just a little bit. “Well then, let’s find out.”

A few seconds of trotting down the halls with Spike not riding on my back for once, probably because he wanted to keep a nice slow pace and keep the option of running away open, and I was having a hard time keeping down two very big questions. The first was of course, Sunset’s designs for magical versions of human technology. I might have seen and heard Tia and Sunny talk about her video phone, but from the way Tia had just spoken, Sunset had to have more than just one little gizmo.

But I couldn’t ask her about that because…

Okay well I could, but seeing as how we were about to go see Sunset, I doubted her designs were going to be under wraps for much longer.

So instead, I asked about something else that had been on my mind for a much longer time. “So Tia, with how you go on about all these nobles all the time, I didn’t want to bring it up but,” I paused for breath and dramatic effect. “But what’s up with this lesser and higher nobility stuff?”

I could have asked Twilight about it, but…the Princess of Verbose Explanations usually had me wanting to take a nap midway through her lectures that always came with chalkboards, reading assignments, and a pop quiz. A few months of living in Equestria, and the magic that made even the boring stuff interesting had kind of disappeared.

“Regional and lesser,” Celestia corrected. “And what’re you talking about? You said Twilight explained the ins and outs of Equestrian society.”

“No, she told me about pony dating stuff societal norms,” I clarified. “Like…tail manners, what flowers to eat and what not, why all of Ponyville has to share a single source of hot water that Spike routinely uses up with baths that last six hours long and require a constant influx of hot water-”

“Hey! Scales are hard to clean and I need the water boiling hot just to feel it!”

While I rolled my eyes at that one, Tia did her usual giggle. “Well it’s not that big a secret. Everypony knows, Twilight probably just forgot to mention it because the knowledge is so common,” the alicorn replied before taking a little breath. “Basically, when a new town is founded, the pony responsible for its organization and funding is given the title of Duke and tasked with keeping the whole thing running smoothly. It’s more of a holdover from the old days more than anything else, as the titles are usually dropped and a democratic system replaces the old one when the Duke passes on. Although there are some ponies that hold onto it for a generation or two.

“For instance, Applejack’s great-grandfather was the Duke of Ponyville, but her grandmother didn’t want to inherit the title, so they held an election after her father passed on. Meanwhile, Dodge City continued their traditional form of management and Cherry Jubilee is the current Duchess,” she concluded.

I nodded in understanding, thankful for just two examples. Twilight would have had one for every region of Equestria. “And the lesser houses?” I prompted with a raised eyebrow.

Celestia’s face darkened just a tad, and I Smelled her mood turn a little sour. “During the earlier years of Equestria’s existence, when breeding towns would…end, the nobles in charge of the region would return to Canterlot with their titles intact. Luna and I decided to humor them as they really meant nothing beyond sounding fancy. It was little more than a joke,” she said before becoming even more disgruntled. “But fancy titles did help to inflate egos, and doing business with Duke Sassafras of House Smoky Mountain sounded a lot better than doing business with Sassafras from down the street. So fortunes persisted, and with wealth came influence without the responsibility to improve the local community.”

Now Equestrian geography, I knew. So the name of the house drew my attention. “Wait, the houses are named after landmarks?”

That got a confused glance from Celestia. “What else would they be named after?”

“Um…the ponies who founded them, or…something?” I replied in a lame fashion as we made a turn down another hall. “Like um…if Twilight did make a town, she wouldn’t get something like House Sparkle?”

There was also the question of what happened when one town was settled right where an old one had been, or there were two towns in view of the same landmark. Was there a Smoky Mountain House B? House 2.0? House Smoky Mountain Redux? Or did unicorns just kind of stay clear of places where other unicorns planted their flags?

Celestia giggled at the question. “Ponies aren’t humans Omnifarious. We don’t inherit names. Those come from-” The door in front of us opened thanks to the glow from Tia’s horn, and the goddess cut herself off when we all caught sight of Trixie and Sunset lounging around the foyer of a larger than usual apartment. There was a balcony to my left and another door that I knew led to Sunset’s bedroom from my ride along with Tia. Despite the plain furnishing of a pair of couches, a magical fireplace that removed the need for a chimney, and just a single rug in the center that covered most of the floor, it provided more than enough room for Tia’s massive frame alongside everything else.

Trixie was with her, which was a little surprising to me. I would have thought she would have hightailed it out of Canterlot after meeting Tia for fear of accidentally slighting the goddess’s daughter, or Celestia herself. Instead, she was fidgeting in her seat Lyra style as she leaned over Sunset’s shoulder while the human girl jotted stuff down in her idea book.

“Trixie! You let her in here?” Spike said just a few decibels beneath a yell as he pointed a claw at aforementioned unicorn. “What’s she doing here? She’s just as bad as Sunset!”

The human visibly winced, and Trixie glared at the dragon after getting a look at Sunset’s reaction. “What is that thing doing here? Trixie thought Princess Twilight Sparkle returned to Ponyville.”

Celestia’s came in dry and reserved as she responded. “Be civil my little pony. Spike wanted to offer an apology to Sunset for his actions in the Crystal Empire. Now, Spike?”

As all the eyes in the room focused on him, the dragon looked around nervously before he turned his attention over to Sunset and bowed his head. “I’m sorry about what happened in the Crystal Empire.”

I wanted to smack myself for not going changeling before he spoke. My empathic nose didn’t work on non-ponies while I was magicked up to look like an alicorn, and after the Trixie comment, I was starting to doubt the little dragon’s motives for saying what he did.

When I found him crying about Twilight, I had only focused on that. The damn crying child image had filled my head, and I had managed to work Spike back into Ponyville. I hadn’t thought of what would happen when he got back and was living in the same house as the girl he almost killed. I had forgotten about the child currently under my care, and focused on the one attached to my girlfriend. If I had been Sunset’s real parent, I would have kicked myself in the balls. But as it was, I just felt like a pathetic idiot.

“I accept your apology ,” Sunset replied in an even tone with a tiny frown on her face that told me she was probably just going to the motions.

Tia nodded her head and a smile that didn’t match her emotional Scent appeared on the goddess’s face. “Well now that we’ve gotten that out of the way. Spike,” she said looking over at the dragon. “How about you go back to the throne room and wait for Raven to return with your telescope maker?”

“Oh um…okay,” the dragon agreed with a hesitant look that went back and forth between Trixie and Sunset.

As soon as Spike was gone, I looked back over to Tia. “Is he going to be trouble?” Kid or not, if Spike’s actions put Sunset in the hospital again, there would be no getting past it for me. I didn’t quite know what I’d do at that moment, but I knew he wouldn’t be liking it much.

Celestia gave frowned at the door Spike had left from. “It is a possibility, but…perhaps not,” she said before looking back to me with a smile. “Now, as to why I brought you here, you simply must see some of the things that Sunset has designed!”

From her spot on the couch, Sunset let out a groan. “M-Mom!”

And so for the better part of an hour, I was subjected to something Tia had probably never done before out of fear of making Sunset into an egomaniac: listening to a proud mother brag as she showed off her daughter’s accomplishments. Celestia was almost giddy as she went on and on about how ingenious some of the combinations to make the items were, or how Sunset had learned to use the effects of magic in new and interesting ways because of her human education.

Sunset looked a confused mess of sad, prideful, and embarrassed throughout the whole thing as Celestia went from device to device. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed a safe bet that Celestia didn’t hand out many compliments during their final years together.

As for what was in the book…

Sunset had designed half a dozen little things that Tia took an almost Twilight-level of time explaining. Aside from the mirror that she was already making plans for in the way of communicating with Cadence, there was a showerhead that could flash heat the water pumped through it using a combination of enchanted crystals that would allow for hot running water in Everfree Castle, the beginnings of what had to be a radio transmission system, what I surmised to be an electric railway that was energized by thunderclouds, and half a dozen other things that were X’d out and several more that were little more than the most basic of ideas.

Celestia took a ‘I actually know magic’ approach to the whole thing as she reeked of pride in her daughter’s ingenuity while she looked over each design and explained it to me after Sunset gave me the basic gist. Although halfway through most of the explanations, Tia would usually start talking with Sunset again. “Have you really solved the double harmonious imbalance that Clover the Clever said was the reason for-Sunset, how did you manage to even think of this?”

The human looked away for a second, and I could have sworn she actually looked embarrassed. “Humans have some academic disciplines that I skimmed through in my spare time. Quantum mechanics, analytical chemistry, theoretical physics…they were a hell of a lot more interesting than what the teachers at school were going on about,” she said before looking back towards me and Tia with a shrug. “The stuff I picked up gave me some ideas.”

I tilted my head as my brain started to hurt. “But…you were a high school student. How in the hay did you even-”

“It wasn’t that hard to get outdated textbooks,” she deadpanned, cutting off my question to just how the hell she even knew those subjects existed. I mean…okay, Sunset taking interest in something like a wormhole I could understand, but actually being able to comprehend it was a whole different matter considering the ‘human’ kind of science in Equestria was pretty messed up. Archaic in some places, and somewhat caught up in others, while still other areas of scientific advancement were just a middle finger to the laws of thermodynamics with the way magic worked in conjunction with everything.

Twilight might have had her lab, but it was more alchemy than chemistry; more magic than science. The ponies had a bit in the way of wet chemistry, but when you could put magic into the mix, the science that made sense kind of just went out the window. Not that I knew just how much of the old science I knew still held true. I was in a different universe that operated on different laws after all.

Still with her nose in Sunset’s book, Celestia shook her head in wonder. “I always knew you were technically brilliant Sunset. It was always your greatest strength that you understood the workings of magic, but this is beyond all of my-”

The door banged open, and Celestia cut herself off as all of us looked over to see Spike standing in the doorway with a worried expression on his face and an oddly dressed tan unicorn stallion wearing robes and a poofy hat that showed off various constellations standing behind him. “Princess Celestia, I need somepony to help me!”

“Is something wrong Spike?” Celestia asked before her head lifted a little. “Starry Eyed, if the dragon is a little short on bits, you can bill me for the difference.”

The stallion cleared his throat. “Oh, it’s not a matter of payment Princess,” he assured the goddess. “But it’s just when Sir Spike brought his request to me and explained how the telescope would be made for Princess Twilight, I had to inform him that the crystals needed to craft lenses for a telescope befitting royalty were…out of stock.”

“So put it on backorder and ship it to Ponyville when you get more in to make one,” I deadpanned, solving the Great Equestrian Telescope Crises in record time with my genius. At the rate I was going, I would be able to open Twilight’s crystal puzzle box and get back to find out what was wrong with Dashie before lunch, then get this whole Celestia romance thing solved before dinner.

Of course the little lizard had to ruin my plans to bring eternal harmony to all of Equestria by opening his big fat mouth. “But there is a place where we can get some! Starry Eyed told me the best crystal for lenses are on the top of Crystal Mountain, and its not that far a flight from here!”

Which probably meant that it was where all the other crystals in Equestria came from before the Empire reappeared. Hell, the shiny things underneath Canterlot seemed pretty crystally too. A twenty minute walk would solve everything.

I frowned and looked at the unicorn craftsman. “What’s wrong with just having some shipped in from the Crystal Empire?”

Starry Eyed looked at me as if I just told him I enjoyed the taste of dog crap. “Imported crystal lenses?” he demanded in a disgusted tone. “Don’t insult me with such suggestions! I only craft lenses from domestic crystals grown right here in Equestria!”

The fact that I thought the Crystal Empire still counted as Equestria aside, there was still one other issue that came to mind that wouldn’t involve a lot of running around and digging for stupid rocks we could probably get tomorrow anyway. “Well Twilight’s birthday isn’t for some time, you can get some more crystals before then, right?”

“Sorry but no,” Starry Eyed the jackass unicorn said with a shake of his head as he continued to interrupt Celesta and Sunset’s family bonding time. “With Fall coming, the passes leading up the mountain will be covered by snow. The magic around Crystal Mountain makes its own weather. It snows for three seasons out of the year, and resists interference by pegasi. I’m afraid the next few days will be the only time anypony can retrieve the items.”

I groaned in annoyance.

“So we just gotta go up there today,” Spike cried in desperation while he looked around at us.

A turn of my head brought the three females in the room to my attention, and I realized that none of them would be able to get me out of this thing besides Celestia, who needed a day with her daughter full of a real bonding experience about as much as Sunset needed to be shown her magical skills could still be put to use vicariously. Which meant they wouldn’t be doing it, and I doubted Trixie was going to do anything for the dragon or Twilight, reformed or not.

So with a resigned sigh, I looked back to Spike and drooped my head. “Fine let’s go.” Stupid little kids and their damn jobs that sound easy in the beginning but just keep getting more tasks tacked on as soon as you thought you were finished. I mean, first all we had to do was get Twilight a birthday present. Then we had to ask Celestia here to get it. Then she had to send for Starry Eyed. Then he had to send us to some…exotic…location…

Oh God, I thought to myself as I was hit with an odd realization that was so strong I actually felt something…which just turned out to be Spike jumping on my back.

The realization?

I was stuck in a fucking quest chain.

And let the half assed fetch quest adventure continue, I told myself.

I had learned something interesting during my time in Equestria. Something that I was being reminded of as I had cut through the sky with a little kid screaming in my ear and digging his claws into my skin while I had to fight the instinctual changeling urge to turn back into my badass armored self and fry him in the process.

Adventuring SUCKED.

Not to burst anyone’s bubble, but yeah, going on adventures sucked.

Okay, there were good moments during an adventure. But those good moments weren’t thanks to the adventure. Those moments all came from the company the adventurers kept. Good company meant that others were there to share your joys, and the saying of misery loves company is quite true. Even the suckiest of times was better with friends. Especially when they didn't wear clothes.

But I wasn’t with my friends for the latest adventure I had set out on, I was with my purple pony princess lover’s pseudo-brother/servant-slave-pet-thing.

The whole of the adventure would have one good, enjoyable moment for me. It was when we reached the badly named Crystal Mountain, as only the top seemed to have anything crystal about it, and I had to walk up the thing thanks to all the bad weather around the peak. I turned to Spike to ask, “So Spike, something I’ve been wondering, I know you can speak Equestrian, you know, growing up with Twilight and all, but how did all those other dragons you met during the migration know it?” I mean seriously, Spike’s pony-speak was understandable, and I could buy things like Gilda and Iron Will knowing it too, but dragons didn’t seem the type to care if they could talk to something like ponies.

“Uh,” he said as we walked up the mountain path and gave me a look that just shouted ‘I THINK YOU’RE A FUCKING MORON, STUPID’ before he really spoke. “You do know Equestrian is the common language of everything around here, right?”

I frowned back at him, if just a little. “No, I’m an alien from an alternate universe, and changelings have their own language.”

And that was the end of our meaningful conversations. Spike went on about other things though. He talked about Equestrian comics, his rather small group of friends in Canterlot, the chores that Twilight’s parents had him do at his house. It was like listening to a preteen trying to brag about himself and sound impressive, which I suppose Spike was in a way. Growing up as Twilight’s lapdog hadn’t helped his maturity level.

I just listened, nodded, and told him humans did have comic books where I came from. Either he didn’t care about the disinterested tone, or didn’t pick up on it despite the fact Twilight tended to do the same thing when she was reading. Then there was the possibility he had just gotten so used to it, he didn’t know what it meant, or had never been able to figure it out.

That kind of made me pity him a little bit, actually. I had to wonder how many conversations the dragon had with Twilight that the alicorn just gave some autopilot responses to without actually paying attention.

We were almost to the summit of the mountain that had apparently been traveled so much there were trails that looked like they went all the way to the top when my imitation-pegasus hearing picked up on something.

Now, I’m not claiming to have some kind of super pony hearing, but horses can hear a lot more than a human could. The difference was something I had adjusted to by the time I took Flash’s place, so I wasn’t jumping at every little thing when I got to Ponyville, but…well, it’s nearly impossible to sneak up on me a pony unless you're on a carpet, in the air, or have magical shoes muffling your approach. I just noticed stuff better than most ponies, when I bothered to at least.

So when I heard scuttling coming from behind me underneath Spike telling me about something I really wasn’t paying attention to, I spun around with a glare to stare at what were probably the most out of place…things in all of Equestria.

Since I had been away from Pinkie long enough for the rational part of my mind to recover some amount of dominance over my brain instead of how it usually just cowered in some deep corner of my subconscious rather than face the pink party pony, I had to wonder what were three out of place statues just appeared on the path behind me were doing there. Statues that didn’t even look all that good either. It was as if they had been made, and then left out in some very harsh rain over several years to become as rough as the rocks found on the ground.

As for what form the out of place and badly worn statues took. They were…lobsters. Three of them to be precise. Giant lobsters that probably could have met Celestia eye to eye, so they towered over me by more than two feet. But that wasn’t the end of it of course. The three lobsters, one of a black coloration while another was kind of tan, and the third being an orange-hue, didn’t have the same kind of complexion of the type of things I was used to seeing crawling around in a fish tank, waiting to be selected as someone’s overpriced main course. No, as I said earlier, the creatures in front of me looked to be made of stone.

So…yeah…

They were…rock…lobsters.

Rock. Lobsters.

The sheer absurdity of the things and the fact that Spike was still on my back kept me from simply collapsing into a fit of laughter. So I just kind of stood there, holding my disbelief in my mouth. Which was why it was open.

“Hold it right there ya mooks!” the black lobster ordered. Which was weird. Really weird because…it didn’t really surprise me all that much. Apparently, I had lived in Equestria for so long that a creature whose entire species was apparently little more than a pun. It was just their initial appearance that threw me off.

Rock lobsters were weird.

Talking rock lobsters were just...meh.

While I continued to stand there, Spike shook on my back. “W-Who’re you?” the dragon’s voice stuttered out and…okay, I decided to give him a pass on being afraid of something about five times his size.

“What do we got here Iggy?” the tan one asked.

To which the black lobster replied, “Looks like a pair of dopes poking around where they shouldn’t be.”

And I just couldn’t stop myself at that. I mean, talking rock lobsters were a…manageable thing. A rock lobster villain named Iggy was just… “No,” I told them while holding up a hoof. “Just…no. I am not in the mood for this, just…go home, right now, and try something stupid with some other pony. Because I really don’t have time for you idiots.” I had an upset Dashie at home, a Sunset that didn’t see her own self-worth, some extremely tangled relationship issue with Celestia that threatened to blow up in my face, and here I was carrying a dragon on my back so he could get his big sister a birthday present that could easily be obtained through other means.

I did not need to add kooky animal/creature problems to the list. Even if I would just check them off five minutes later.

The lead monster, Iggy, clambered his way over to me to glare down at my little alicorn self and…I found myself glad I had to deal with towering giants like Sunset and Celestia on a daily and nightly basis. Next to an emotionally fragile teenager and a goddess, evil monsters that didn’t make my horn tingle in the slightest were nothing impressive. “You say something, little pony?”

As the dragon nervously shifted around on my back, I let out a sigh and spread my wings to show that I was supposed to be an alicorn. “Okay listen up,” I told them evenly. I didn’t put any anger into it. Maybe it was because I had Spike on my back and didn’t want to frighten him anymore than I already had, or maybe I did want these idiots to pick a fight with me so I had an excuse when someone found their corpses come Spring. Either way, I didn’t put much threat into my tone. “I have a distressed girl back at home that needs my love and attention, so get out of my way, or I will hurt you. Permanently.”

But of course, the stupid creature in front of me also had rocks for brains. “Oh yeah, well take this!” Iggy said before he swung his rather big and probably heavy claw around to try and smack me upside the head.

I never really found out if it really was heavy or not though. Thanks to the amount of anger, annoyance, and all those other bad thoughts that were telling me to hurt the three creatures in front of me very badly, I didn’t need the extra few seconds to dredge up enough dark emotions to use my magic. I simply wrapped the three lobsters in a very restrictive telekinetic field that may have caused their shells to crack from the pressure I was exerting because I didn’t need to worry about not hurting the douche bags, and threw them out my way.

Which also happened to be off the mountain, and by a good long ways at that. In fact, their fall wouldn’t be stopping until they hit an altitude approaching sea level.

“Um…did you just…throw them to their deaths?” Spike asked me in concern.

I hid most of my wince, mostly because that was in fact not what I had just did. “No,” I assured the dragon. “Didn’t you see my magic was still around them? The fall will hardly be fatal.” The amount of magic crushing down on them would turn the three lobsters to dust long before they hit the ground. “They could have landed on a pony or something after all, had to keep some poor pony passing by from being squashed, right?”

Spike apparently didn’t like that last part for some reason, and gulped. “Oh.”

We resumed our journey, and about five minutes later, I looked back to the dragon as he still seemed pretty uncomfortable in my presence. “So what’s wrong?” I asked in a sort of annoyed tone. After the lobsters, I was in no mood to play super nice with anything. “I thought you always wanted to go on adventures and stuff.” Which we kind of weren't. Sure, a guy who hadn't been in Equestria for a few months would call meeting magical monsters on a mountain with a crystal peak an adventure. But for someone who'd been in Equestria as long as me, it was a glorified milk run. I wasn't about to tell the kid that though. For him, it was an adventure.

“Well…sort of,” Spike replied hesitantly. “I mean…it is kind of a drag when Twilight leaves be behind, but then when I do go on adventures with her, I’m just the humdrum sidekick that she and the other girls leave behind or stick in a corner.”

At that moment I was reminded of something very important: I was alone, with the stupid dragon. I was the adult. The authority figure. The wise sage that was supposed to dispense wisdom life-altering advice.

Oh God how I wished Celestia had come with me. And not just so I could check out her ass for hours on end. Goddess or not, Tia had cursed me with liking pony booty, so I would watch her rump shake with every step whenever I got the chance. It was a fine balance of vengeance on Tia, and respect for Celestia. Look, but don't touch.

“Well Spike you’re…what? Thirteen?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

I sighed and shook my head as I remembered just all the dangerous shit Spike had done on the show, not to mention all the things I heard about from the others that didn’t make it to television; the real violent stuff. “Okay Spike, let me tell you a secret that all that all adventurers learn the day they become the a-word.”

The dragon perked up, and I prepared to crush his spirit with an even tone. “There’s no such thing as an adventure.”

For a second I was afraid the dragon was going to fall off me, but he recovered quickly enough, and then shouted into my ear. “WHAT?”

I winced, and then looked back to glare the kid into silence while the ringing died down. “At least not in the way you think. Whenever someone thinks of an adventure, they think its this big, exciting experience,” I went on. “But that’s the outsiders perspective. That what foals think when Rainbow Dash tells them about all the stuff she’s done. But when you’re on the adventure, you’re scared out of your mind, want nothing more than to go home, and you’re constantly worrying about if you’ll ever see your family again. It’s a terrifyingly miserable experience that just plain bucks, and the only reason any pony bothers to do it is because they have to, or they’re delusional.” Which I had to admit, Dash kind of was.

“Oh,” Spike replied in a solemn tone. “Well…those lobsters were kind of scary.”

The kid was thankfully silent for a few more minutes as we went on. But of course, it didn’t last. “So why does Twilight do it?”

That one was at least easy to answer. “So other ponies don’t have to,” I told him before adding, “and to protect Equestria. Although if you want a more specific answer, I’d have to say she does it for her friends, family, and you. She does it to keep you safe.” Which kind of conflicted with the time he nearly fell to his death in the Crystal Empire, but… “I mean, when you were sent to the Crystal Empire, Twilight didn’t know she was going to be in danger, she was there to do research and cast a spell, and she followed you when you went on the dragon migration, and left you at home nearly every other time there was something dangerous to do. You may think Twilight's leaving you out of the action Spike, but the fact is, she’s trying to be the responsible adult and keep you safe because you're still just a...youngling. I can guarantee you she wasn’t running around fighting monsters when she was your age.I mean, can you imagine how worried she'd be if you have to go fight monsters all the time?”

Spike winced. “So uh…we probably shouldn’t mention the lobsters and stick to telling her how nice the scenery was when she asks us about what happens?”

“Good idea,” I agreed before a glint appeared in the corner of my eye, and I found that we had reached the snow covered summit of Crystal Mountain, the one place in the entire mountain where the name actually fit. Everything else had been your basic rocky, little bit of grass, boring dirt. But the top of the mountain had crystals. And snow. Crystals growing out of the snow.

Magical crystals that were making my horn hum just a little bit and my wings twitch. It was a very familiar feeling, as I had felt it before in the Crystal Empire. The top of the mountain was awash in weather magic, Crystal Spire weather magic. It wasn’t as strong as the stuff that worked in conjunction with the Crystal Heart, but…it was definitely the same kind of stuff that kept the CE in Spring all year round.

Which made me stop and wonder just what the hell was powering the damn thing.

Apparently Spike took my stopping in confusion as his cue to get off of me, and he ran forward while giggling, melting snow with his fire and examining the crystals before moving on out of my sight.

I just stood there, actually a little glad that the dragon had melted some of the snow so I could take a close look at the crystals. Not that I really understood half of what I was looking at. Which made me want to start ordering changelings to go to magical theory classes at Tia’s school and just sit in the corner, memorizing the lectures for later perusal and learning.

What I was able to guess was that the crystals on top of the mountain weren’t natural. I suppose the Crystal Empire could have gotten their idea for weather management from Crystal Mountain, but it just didn’t seem to fit with everything else I knew. The CE was the place to go for magic crystals. They mined so much of the stuff there they built a society around it. A gigantic deposit like the one in front of me when there was jack shit of the stuff in the surrounding area just screamed WRONG at me.

Then logic dictated if the crystal peak wasn’t natural, then it had a purpose. At least more so than the natural nature stuff that was micromanaged by ponies. And the non-crystal ponies had been chipping away at the God damned thing for years.

With that little realization the little sense I had developed since coming to Equestria that told me that it was time to get the fuck out of Dodge. If Twilight wanted some new telescope lenses, then she could have some of the stuff shipped in from the Crystal Empire and arrest Starry Eyed for treason if he refused to make her a telescope using imported crystals that were apparently the same fucking kind we were harvesting from God knows what. I wasn’t about to start dicking with a artificial magical construct that had magic running through it.

I took in a breath to call out to Spike…

“Hey Fae, I got a big enough crystal to make both lenses for a telescope!” the dragon said as he ran up to me with a hunk of transparent rock as big as his head with some bite marks where he had obviously chewed it off of a larger deposit. “It was part of this really big rainbow-colored crystal right in the center of the-whoa!”

…and stopped when I felt the ground begin to shake.

The weather spire magic around me sputtered for a few seconds before dying completely, and I groaned while the gravity of the situation pulled me down into a slump. Fucking Equestria, let’s screw the bug over bullshit. It was bad enough that it tried to drown my Dashie when she poked a dam, but if I had to deal with an exploding mountain because Spike chipped off a sliver of crystal, I was going to find out if Fausticorn really was out there somewhere, and kick her ass. Someone had to be responsible for all this destiny shit and crappy contrivances, and I blamed her!

“What’s going on?” Spike cried out in terror.

To answer the kid’s question, some of the crystal in front of us cracked, and a geyser of lava shot into the air.

“So, its an active volcano,” I grumbled.

With that, I snatched up Spike in my magic, planted him on my back, and teleported the hell out of there before the toxic gasses and heat could kill me. A second later I reappeared in the sky several yards above the mountain’s top, and about half a mile closer to Canterlot.

As the tiny cracks in the crystal that were shooting out geysers of molten rock became a full-on eruption that sounded akin to a giant beast roaring in triumph, I picked up a wave of black magic coming from the epicenter of the explosion. Then, I watched as the lava flowing down the mountain just lurched upwards. The half-mile-long streams of melted rock formed crude arms and hands that reached towards the top of the volcano as more and more of the eruption just piled up on itself to make an upper torso of a monster that seemed to be just a giant mass of burning goo with its crudely droopy face in the upper part of its chest.

At that point, my basic knowledge of Equestrian geography kicked in, and I looked back at Canterlot that was just visible on the horizon, then to the Crystal Mountain to the North. And if I kept flying North, there was no doubt in my mind that I’d hit the Crystal Empire capital city, dead center. If I had to guess, the top of the Crystal Mountain was a fucking demon cage that I bet the princesses used to lock the lava monster up before he got to their capital city back when Sombra was still around.

"FINALLY!"

The giant lava demon that had just formed reached up into the sky with his arms.

"AFTER ONE THOUSAND YEARS, I’M FREE!"

Figures, I thought to myself.

"IT’S TIME TO CONQUER EQUESTRIA!"

Even with the demon’s voice reverberating in my ears even after he stopped talking, I could still hear Spike speak to me. “So uh…this is another one of those things we probably shouldn’t tell Twilight about, right?”

Chapter 37: The Incredibly Bittersweet Day of Spike the Dragon

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Floating in the air and glaring at the latest threat to Equestria’s continued well being below me with its face that had features made from fire and rocks surrounded by flowing lava situated in its chest, I had to wonder two things.

The first had me wondering just how the hell the imprisoned creatures knew about the passage of time in the first place. Did every banishment/imprisonment effect had some law that put the maximum amount of time served at about a millennium so when the bad guys got out, they could set the dates on their watches to a reasonable guesstimate?

The second thing was: Where in the hell is Godzilla when you really need him? With all the giant monsters roaming around as of late, Equestria could really use a giant radioactive lizard that breathed green fire and took care of that kind of shit. That wasn’t the job of a pony! They sung, danced, made out, and solved problems while teaching life lessons! Fighting giant monsters, while cool, was just...not pony.

“What the hay is that thing?”

As the pre-pubescent voice stopped ringing in my ears, I looked back at the rather small dragon with a small frown. Truth be told, I wasn’t actually mad at Spike for shouting in my ear that time. It was his existence as a very crappy answer to my question that helped me drudge up some anger at Equestria in general.

But then the part of my brain that was geared towards surviving until nightfall made me look back towards the demon with an upper torso sticking out of the mountain. The action let me catch sight of the titanic bad guy pitching an empty hand at me that shot forth a trio of blazing balls of magma and flew right where I was hovering.

Oh great, he saw me, I thought as Spike screamed in my ear before I dodged.

Thanks to the vast amount of distance between us, it was pretty easy for me to be gone from their general vicinity before the attack got even halfway to where I was flying. Then I dodged a second, third, fourth, and fifth volley before deciding it was probably a good idea to get out of the monster’s line of fire. While I was in no real danger from the demonic pitcher, I kept imagining the great balls of fire he was chunking landing on ponies half a mile away that were minding their own business until their lives were cruelly ended for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Since the guy didn’t seem to be growing a head, I decided the best course of action at the moment was to just move behind him, and quickly did so via teleportation before I landed on a nice section of ground that had enough trees to hide little old me should the burning blob manage to turn around, but not so many that they obstructed my view of him. Out of the creature’s line of sight, I had a few seconds to think of a way to deal with said monster.

“GAAAA! COWARD! FACE LAVAN! LORD OF THE FLOWING FIRE! SUPREME SERVANT OF SOMBRA! FACE ME ALICORN!”

After finding my footing on the solid ground that was still trembling ever so slightly, I finally got around to addressing Spike’s question. “And other than that, he’s some kind of elemental demon,” I explained. “Like that thing that showed up in the Crystal Empire and tried to eat every pony’s shadow. But made of fire and junk.”

In fact, if he followed the same rules as Evil Smog Guy, then the demon had to have some kind of statue or something at his center as well. It was what gave him form and anchorage to Equestria. Without it, all that lava that formed his body was…well…just lava. Although how the magical center was actually surviving being in the middle of a moving mountain of molten magma, I had no idea.

Was it protected somehow?

Was it made of adamantium?

Drenched in SPF 5,000,000?

What?

Up above me and a ways off, the giant pile of red gak began to move and struggle. It shifted left, then right, then it let out a bellowing shout before slamming its fist down on the side of the mountain. The blow caused a small avalanche before he grabbed the sides of the landmark and grunted while struggling back and forth with his whole body. Despite what was going on, I couldn’t help but think of a fat guy that had fallen into something and couldn’t get out.

But with the little bit of time given to me, I quickly assessed the situation to try and figure out something to do Unlike the creature in the Crystal Empire, I couldn’t just randomly throw magic through Lavan’s body while hoping to hit his weak point, and there would be no challenge to the demon to gain superiority over it this time around. The monster had been called about a thousand years ago, after all. I had nothing to do with the blood that hit the summoning altar.

What was even worse was that Lavan didn’t have a master at all. While I didn’t know for absolute certain that Sombra called up the creature, I was pretty sure its boss was no longer around. The idea of a giant the size of that thing just wandering around free actually sounded worse than having a killer dog on a leash that was being held by a psychopath.

And even if I did beat him, lava was much deadlier than air pollution. Without something to hold him together, his body would flow out of the volcano and into the land surrounding it. In my minds eye, I could see the victory party in Canterlot that would happen after Lavan got creamed turn to shrieks of horror when the demons dead body just fell forward and onto the city.

Okay plan, need a plan, I thought to myself.

Since the last plan involving such a creature boiled down to flying around and shooting it at random had no real effect other than nearly getting me some other ponies killed, I didn’t really think that was the best idea.

“What’re we gonna do?”

Spike’s question drew me out of my thoughts, or lack thereof really, and I looked at the little dragon sitting on my back before I put my butt on the ground to make him slide off. “Just a second,” I told the kid before resuming my natural form with its better protection and precise flight control. Despite all the time I had spent training with Dash for the Games before Derpy took my place, I could still turn, bob and weave much better with insect wings than I could with feathered ones.

As anything I did do would probably involve more dodging than anything else, I wanted maximum maneuverability. Being coated in an armored shell didn’t hurt when I didn’t have anything in the way of defensive magic either.

But I still needed to find a way to reach the monster’s achilles heel, and I really had with me was a whiney lizard that needed to be at home in bed where it was safe.

I looked back at the dragon behind me. “Hey Spike, mind if I ask you something?” I asked. The question had me kicking myself, I always hated it when people did that to me.

The response I got wasn’t very encouraging. “We don‘t have time for talking, we need to call the princesses for help!” the dragon replied before he started looking around.

I frowned at him for a second, and sighed when I guessed what he was trying to find. “Well since I doubt there’s any stationary around here, I’ll take care of it. Just… kick me in the plot to wake me up if anything happens.” The fact that Tia hadn’t just popped into view was a little disconcerting. She had to be able to see the monster from anywhere in Canterlot that had a view of the north. I needed to check up on things.

Then I laid down to close my eyes and entered the hive mind. After a few seconds of thought, I sent a message through to one of the changelings ‘sleeping’ in Canterlot’s telecommunications office, then started to awaken.

At least I started to. But I changed my mind a second later and focused on my connection with Tia to see what was going on at her end of things. For all I knew, she was already suiting up and rallying the troops with a plan that was better than the tiny beginnings of the one I was coming up with.

I found Celestia in the middle of a controlled mob of guards and nobles. She was as naked as ever except for the tiara on her head and that giant golden necklace of hers, standing in the center of her throne room while well over a dozen voices were talking to her at once, and even more ponies behind the ones running their mouths seemed to be waiting their turn to do the same.

While I could only pick up bits and pieces of the conversations, Celestia didn’t seem to have much trouble hearing everything and addressing the important issues. “Once the unicorn guard ponies lead the evacuees through the tunnels have them return to the palace. Earth ponies members will follow with supplies and go with the train to distribute food and other necessities as well as set up a refugee camp,” she said before looking to a few ponies in fancy clothes. “All civilian passengers are restricted to saddle bags only.”

She looked at a unicorn scholar. “Every unicorn in advanced classes and the professors are to report to the palace to assist in powering a protection spell. Have them report to Shining Armor or my sister as soon as either of them arrives. I’ll have them wait here in the throne room.”

A guard became the focus of her attention next. “And just where the buck is Luna?” she shouted, which actually made the other ponies stop their yammering.

The white pegasus looked around nervously for a moment, and gulped. “Yes, well um…you sister has erected a barrier and her quarters and isn‘t responding to knocking or our shouting so-”

“Again?” the alicorn demanded in surprise before switching to a grumble. “First she decides to sleep in during the wedding and now…ugh! That mare has the worst sense of timing! Fly around her apartment and break down a window, or knock out a wall if you have to! Just wake her up! We don’t have time to wait for the earthquakes to do it for us.”

A few more ponies tried to press Celestia on the issue of carry on luggage only, but she ignored them in favor of another white pegasus that became the focus of Tia’s angry attention. “What are you still doing here? I ordered you to go to Cloudsdale and have the Wonderbolts bring us all the rain clouds they currently have in storage!”

The guard gulped. “Yes well um…your highness, I just thought that was a mistake, I mean…all of them?”

“YES!” the goddess shouted at the pegasus, which sent the pony into a cowering bow before he dashed off towards the throne room’s exit.

The alicorn's irate panic grew a bit as she looked around the crowd and her lips curled into a little snarl as more and more of the angry worry that I could feel flowing through her made its way to her face. “And where is changeling Number Four? Is he done sending out the general warning to the other cities yet?”

When the black bug arose from the crowd and hovered over them, Celestia frowned. “Did you send the message?”

“Yes, Celestia.”

The fact that #4 addressed Tia in such a way made me a little irritated at his manners, but the changelings didn’t really acknowledge Equestrian authority all that much. They followed the rules because I told them to, but actually respecting the ponies was a whole other cup of tea. Ponies were our prey after all. It was like asking a bear to have a nice dinner with a rabbit and not eat them.

A normal bear that is, not the doormat that Fluttershy had as an overgrown pet.

“Good,” the goddess replied curtly. “Now, what is the status of my…the six mares of importance in Ponyville?”

“The pink one is currently in Sugar Cube corner, Yellow has yet to leave her house for the day, the whiney pony is sewing at her working dormitory, the orange one was last seen in the northwest fields, and both of the concubines have been arguing loudly in the castle.”

If I had been there, I would have smacked the damn changeling. Twilight and Rainbow were hardly my concubines, courtesans, waifus, or other such nonsense.

Me and Rainbow were Twilight’s.

As the remaining ponies in fancy clothing started muttering to themselves, Celestia looked around the room, silencing all of them with a glare. “I’ve already given the lot of you your evacuation orders. Why are you still here?”

“Princess, I must protest the seizure of our property like this!” one of the darker unicorns in a tux with a tophat complained. “Your guards that took my ship said you were using it to-to shuttle away ponies that-”

Celestia drove a hoof into the ground hard enough to crack the floor, silencing the stallion and making the rest of the nobility inch away from him. “Fancy Shmancy! If you have a problem with the guard using your airship to transport the weak and infirm from the city after it has sailed, I would remind you and all of your friends that without such conveyances, you will have to get in line and wait your turn to leave Canterlot on your hooves! So rather than sitting here running your mouth, I would suggest you begin RUNNING FOR YOUR LIVES!” she finished in a voice that made the windows shake.

The loss of the goddess’s temper had the desired effect. One thing I had to say about panicking ponies, they sure as hell did it in an orderly fashion. A few seconds, and some screaming later, the throne room was empty of ponies except for the angry princess and her trio of guards. And there was absolutely no trampling, shoving or knocking each other around as they galloped away at top speed.

Then Tia was on the move, heading out of the room with three ponies and one changeling on her heels. I felt guilty concern run through Celestia’s mind as she turned her head and looked at the changeling for a few seconds before speaking while hurrying down the hall. “What’s wrong with Twilight and Rainbow now?”

“The purple one is accusing the pegasus of hiding something, but the blue one is claiming otherwise, very loudly. Which is causing the alicorn to become even louder in her accusations that something is wrong.”

Celestia groaned and shook her head. “Why can’t those two just… never mind,” she said before taking in a deep breath. “Send a message to one of the sleeping changelings in Ponyville and have the five mares of importance moved to the Crystal Empire via Vanhoover using the train I have stationed there for emergencies. Tell Twilight to fly to Canterlot. Alone. Nopony else is to come with her, especially Rainbow Dash! If she tries to follow, have the guards-changelings drag her into the traincar. Last thing I need is that little mare getting herself killed.”

Immediately dismissing the changeling, Celestia looked back to her two remaining guards as she came to the castle‘s balcony that observed the northern part of the city. Off in the distance, I could see the smoke from the volcano through her eyes, but everything else looked more or less serene. “Have the search parties managed to find Cadence and Shining Armor yet?”

Yet another white pegasus shook his head. “No word from them yet your highness. But we are following the track they left on, the troops should come in contact with them any time now.”

I felt the goddess grit her teeth and move onto the balcony at a fast pace before we both apparently caught something out of the corner of her eye that shouldn’t belong, and the panic in Celestia’s mind increased when she turned to see Sunset leaning up against the wall by the door with her arms crossed.

While I had gotten used to Smelling someone else’s fright, and even sensing Tia’s emotions when we dreamed, it was another thing entirely to feel the mother’s reaction to her daughter’s presence as if her body were my own. It almost felt like Celestia’s heart exploded when she caught sight of Sunset standing next to the door, and I felt Tia flight with everything she had to stay on her feet while forcing breath through her lungs.

The recovery was pretty quick too. And in an instant, terror became anger. “What the hay are you still doing here? I had a chariot prepared to take you to the Empire where it’s safe!” Tia demanded in a yell.

Sunset raised an eyebrow at the goddess for a moment, and then sighed. “Okay, ignoring the fact I’d probably freeze to death in the open air before we ever got to the damn Empire,” the girl replied. “There was only enough room for one pony, so I put Trixie on it and had them leave.”

Celestia glared back at her, although a little bit of confusion helped mitigate the anger I felt. “And they listened to you?” I could almost hear the ‘I’ll have their heads for this’ comment that I knew Tia would never make, but…if it was anyone else…

“I threatened them with my dark magic,” Sunset replied before she raised her hands and wiggled her fingers and shook her head. “Like I would ever use that kind of stuff again. Look, if it comes down to it, you can just ship me off later. Hell, I could even just jump on your back, and we can both get out of here if it comes down to it.” Her face became serious a moment later as she looked at the pony goddess. “I know you’re just covering your bases, but do not tell me to run and hide when you’ve probably got some plan to make everything better.”

Anger and fear for Sunset rolled over Celestia in waves, but she pushed it back down after a second of letting her body tremble with the emotions. “As a matter of fact, I don’t. Not a real one anyway.”

That seemed to knock Sunset for a loop, completely replacing a cocky frown with a shocked expression. “What? But when you were shoving me out the door, you were calling for the guards and-”

“Commandeering all the airships in the city to move the ponies too old and injured to get away on their own and sending for rain to soak a giant creature of molten rock as to slow him down a bit is hardly a plan, it’s making sure nopony gets hurt while I stall for time,” Tia replied with a frown.

Sunset winced. “So what can you do?” she asked. “I mean, that thing…you stopped it before right? When we saw it, you said it uh…broke free! Things don’t break free unless they’re imprisoned.”

“That was a long time ago,” Celestia replied before she moved past her daughter where a telescope was waiting. “Now, I need to find Shining Armor and Cadence. We can’t afford delays. Lavan isn’t completely mobile yet, which means I still have time to find Cadence and put an end to this before he even gets to Canterlot.”

As Celestia peered into the eyepiece, and got such a view of the mountain Lavan was struggling to remove himself from, Sunset made an annoyed sound that drew Celestia’s attention away from her search. “What? You can’t look and talk at the same time?” she demanded with a frown. “And just because this thing showed up a long time ago doesn’t mean what you used back then isn’t an option now! And for that matter, just what the hell is that thing?”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Why would you need to know something like that?”

“Because if there’s a key element to defeating him in his back story, it would be nice to know it before it stomps down here and kills us all!” Sunset snapped with eyes full of fear. Apparently, her bitch defense reflexes were starting to kick in like they had during the Grogar incident. As weird as it was, I actually felt a little relieved at seeing Sunset being snappy. Sunset without her fire was just...not Sunset.

Tia took a moment to study her daughter, then I was treated to a nice view of Equestria’s newest rail line that went straight from Canterlot to the Crystal Empire as the goddess began her elaboration. “Shortly after Sombra took over the Crystal Empire, he sent a powerful demon into Equestria with the intention of destroying the largest collection of unicorns in the land and the center of magical knowledge, Canterlot. On to of which, the last of the crystal imperial line were hiding in this city after he forced them out. It could have been that Sombra summoned Lavan to deal with them before they could point out a critical flaw in the Empire’s defenses and give my sister and myself pause using a shock and awe campaign.”

As she talked, I became more focused on Celestia’s search than her words. The image displayed by her telescope was…freaky.

It wasn’t a kaleidoscope of colors or anything, but whenever Tia adjusted the zoom on the thing, trees, rocks, and whoever else was being zoomed in on just disappeared from her view to reveal what was behind it. Basically, he alicorn goddess had a telescope with infinite zoom, perfect clarity, and magical X-ray vision that would have made Superman envious. And despite everything that was going on, I couldn’t help but wonder if she ever checked in on me, and Twilight, and Dash when we were…together in that private kind of way.

“Yeah, yeah fine big monster sent by Sombra, figured that much out,” Sunset replied, which made Celestia look up at her in confusion at the lack of the girl’s surprise. “What? Yes, I know about Sombra! The Crystal Empire is a whole new country, I’ve been researching it in my spare time. Where you do think I got all those crystal enchantment ideas? Now that there’s actually enough to the stuff to go around, I started spitballing ideas. But do have anything you know…important? Like how you stopped it the first time?”

Celestia continued her search through the telescope. “None of the magic at our disposal could truly hurt the demon, what with his heart being so protected by his body. Any attempts to cool the creature using water were also ultimately fruitless, as the magic that keeps his form together also continuously keeping it hot enough for the magma to stay mobile.”

“Lava.”

Once again, Tia looked up from her telescope and back to Sunset. “What?”

“Magma is underground molten rock, lava is…you know what? Never mind,” Sunset replied with a shake of her head. “Now, how did you stop it?”

Celestia sighed and shook her head. “While powerful, Lavan wasn’t exactly the brightest creature. So it was easy to figure out his course of a straight line, and then create a trap capable of containing him long enough to get the crystal construct in place that would draw power from the monster and immobilize him,” she explained before looking back through her telescope. “Even then, he was almost able to escape from the pit Luna and I had managed to-”

“Wait…what did you just say?” Sunset spoke up.

Once again, the view I was getting from Celestia changed from areas full of panicked woodland critters to Sunset’s face as the goddess turned to address her daughter. “What?”

“A giant demon the size of a mountain, and you stopped him by…digging a hole in the ground?” Sunset deadpanned.

Celestia rolled her eyes. “It was a big hole, with illusion magic that made it look covered over,” she said before getting a little snappy herself. “The less complicated plans are, the less than can go wrong! We just needed it to hold Lavan long enough to place the rainbow crystal that formed the prison on what passed for his head! Without the ability to look up, our really big hole provided the perfect opportunity! By the time he clawed his way out, the demon only moved another step before he was fully encased in the crystal and we erected a mountain around him to hide him from sight. After Sombra was dealt with, and the Crystal Empire gone, the last of the crystal royalty changed the configuration on Lavan’s cage to use his magical power instead of just containing it by making it affect the weather around the mountain and keep ponies away. By draining away his magic in such a way, there was no possible way he could escape. It should have held him forever!”

“So that’s why nopony’s ever found another deposit of imperial crystal anywhere in-wait a second,” Sunset said as she changed the conversations direction mid-sentence. “You mean to tell me, ponies have been chipping away at that thing’s cage for hundreds of years? And you didn’t warn anypony about that? Didn’t you think something might go WRONG some day?”

Once again, Celestia looked away from her search to meet Sunset’s eyes while her own gaze became half-lidded. “Yes Daughter, I am a complete and total moron,” she replied before letting out a disgruntled sigh. “The crystals of the cage slowly regenerate over time, and they can only be harvested by ponies that walk up the mountain for a single season. The only possible way something like this could have happened is if the rainbow crystal that was the keystone to the whole enchantment was damaged! And that’s practically impossible! The only thing that could do that is alicorn magic, a mouthful of mystical weapons that I know the locations to, or a dragon’s teeth! And…” Ever so slowly, Celestia’s opened mouth went from shout-wide to a simply grumbling crack of an opening. “Oh buck.”

A second later, Celestia was back to looking through her telescope that could somehow just edit out objects by zooming close to them. “Why? Why did I let a dragon climb that bucking mountain?” she cursed while searching to the left and right of the train tracks.

“Okay um…then, why exactly are you looking for Cadence?” Sunset asked. “Unless she can make that thing fall in love with the ocean and want to give it a hug...uh, she can’t do that, can she? I mean, we didn’t have much time to talk the other night, but she said most of her magic revolves around useful babysitting tricks and-”

“I merely require Cadence’s presence at Canterlot,” Celestia told her. “With her and Twilight along with Luna…I have a plan that will allow us the opportunity to deal with this creature. And with Shining Armor’s magic added to that of the defensive spells, Canterlot should survive long enough for us to implement it.”

“Should?” Sunset asked in worry.

Celestia sighed through her gritted teeth. “Yes! Should!” she replied while she continued to search, her panic starting to build up again to overtake her irritation as she continued to talk. “The fact of the matter is, I’m not sure what this creature can do other than move around and crush everything it steps on in a fiery molten avalanche! That’s why I sent you away! That’s why I ordered the city evacuated! And now, I am having to deal with being terrified of you here in the line of fire while searching for my niece, who I should have been able to spot easily if she was flying back to Canterlot, or on her way to the Crystal Empire!”

With that, Celestia looked away from her search and glared at Sunset, her emotions a mess of panicked anger. “SO EXCUSE ME IF I’M JUST A LITTLE UNSETTLED BY THE THOUGHT OF MY FAMILY BEING HURT AGAIN!” Sunset visibly shook from the verbal assault, and I felt Celestia’s heart rip itself in two as she let out a gasp, then closed her teary eyes before she looked away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” she whispered.

“I…I’m worried too…Mom,” Sunset replied while Tia looked back up at her daughter while panting for breath. “I…if you want, I could look for you and you could…take a minute, or something.”

Tia gave a little nod. “Yes, I…I’ll go see if I can wake Luna up. She…yes.”

As Sunset moved forward, Tia took a few seconds more to collect herself. I felt the emotions in her mind get pushed to the back as the goddess slowed her breathing. A few seconds later, Celestia was back in control of herself and was moving towards the door.

“I found them.”

Shock, joy, disbelief, and even a bit of annoyance ran through Celestia’s mind as she spun away from the balcony entrance to look at Sunset. “What? Already? How did you-”

Sunset looked up from the telescope. “Well, after factoring in the train’s speed to give me a general search area based on the scheduled departure time, I followed the tracks like I’m betting you did…until I figured that Cadence could have held up the thing because she’s a princess and looked up and down for wrecking before wondering if-”

“Sunset,” Celestia warned the girl.

“The train went over a bridge, Cadence and Shining Armor are on the northern bank of the Shimmering River,” she quickly said before her expression became a little pained. “From the looks of things. I think Cadence hurt a wing.”

With Sunset’s instruction to Celestia, my ability to teleport, and extra set of eyes, it didn’t take too long to locate the married couple. I didn’t see any pegasi around, making the first one on the scene. There was even better news in the fact that Lavan was still stuck in his half-broken cage, clawing away at the rocks that concealed the crystal that kept him in place.

But that seemed to be about all that was going my way at the moment. Cadence and Shining Armor were laying by the river, and I winced when I saw the pink pony’s wing bent at an unnatural angle. Her Scent was worse. She Smelled full of fright and depression. She was horrified, but knowing Cadence, I really doubted that it was the condition of her wing she was so upset about.

“Shining, Cadence!” Spike called out as we landed and he stopped trying to dig his free claw into the folds of my chitin before he jumped down to run over to where the ponies were with his shiny crystal tucked under his arm.

A bit of startlement passed through Cadence’s Scent as she looked up. “Spike? W-What’re you doing here?” she asked before her attention turned to me. “What’s going on? What is that thing?”

I opened my mouth to explain, but Spike beat me to it. “I don’t know! One second we were at Crystal Peak getting something for Twilight’s birthday present, and the next there was this big earthquake, and then that thing just broke the top of the mountain!”

Cadence and Shining shared a worried look, and then the princess turned her attention back to the dragon that was panting heavily and possibly in the early stages of a panic attack. “Well it’s a good thing you found us then, isn’t it Spike?” the Goddess of Love said before she looked down even more. “What is that? Something special for Twilight?”

Spike blinked at the question, and I watched before he looked down at the crystal in his grip. “Oh yeah, it’s something I found on the mountain. It was part of this big crystal I saw when I melted some snow, and when the light shine through it, it made this cool rainbow on the ground!”

Right as I was about to yell at Cadence we really didn’t have time for this shit, I felt a yank on my horsey hair and looked over to see Shining Armor was motioning for me to come over while the princess distracted the boy. After I did, he gave me an even look. “What’s going on?”

“The usual,” I replied without any humor. “Some pony accidentally set a big bad lose on Equestria, and now we have to take care of it. And, where’s the rest of your guys? I know Cadence has a private train and all, but shouldn’t there be some ponies with you?”

Shining Armor visibly stiffened and averted his eyes from my questioning gaze, but not his head. “Cadence was hurt and…crystal ponies can’t swim.”

Okay, that may have gotten to me a bit. Especially if Cadence was feeling the loss.

The worst part of it was, I didn’t really know who to be angry at for all this. Me for agreeing to go with Spike, the dragon for messing with the one fucking crystal that mattered on that moutian, Tia not for putting up a ‘DO NOT TOUCH’ warning sign that lasted as long as the junk in her abandoned castle, Equestria in general for the chances of Spike doing what he did while surrounded by a forest of crystal that just screamed Equestrian Coincidence, or…well, of course I blamed the demon, but he was going to be banished back to the abyss that spawned him. What I wanted to know was, who needed the finger pointed at them after that was done with?

Yeah, ponies would shrug and move on, but I was a human deep down. The blame game was the national pastime of my whole species. Screw baseball.

I shook my head to clear it while the proverbial jury looked at me being the adult at the scene that took his eyes off the child, Spike for destroying the crystal, and Tia for not using the alicorn-sized Pinkie Sense she might or might not have had to warn us about messing with the magical prism. “Look, Celestia has a plan to take care of this thing that involves getting Cadence to Canterlot along with Twilight.”

Shining nodded and opened his mouth…

“GRAAAAAAH!”

…and that’s when the rumbling started on top of the rather loud shout that I could hear from over a mile away. Whereas the stuff I had experienced on the ground while Connected to Tia had been a little jarring, the movement that preceded whatever Shining was going to say made me feel like I was in one of those snow globes that little kids loved to shake around.

Having never been in a major earthquake before, I was glad for the extra pair of legs to keep me upright, as well as the wings that let me just avoid the thing entirely a few seconds later once I got some magic into them. Dear God did I love flying.

The others didn’t fare so well. While the clear area around us meant we weren’t in danger of anything more than some sloshing water from the river that was more than far enough away that the ground-bound members of the party weren’t in danger of falling in, it didn’t mean that all of us got out without problems. Cadence was inured after all.

The broken wing was what drew everyone’s attention, but I also realized that a pegasus didn’t get that banged up without suffering some other form of injury in a confined place like a train. She had to at least be sporting some bruised ribs.

And being jostled around in an earthquake caused by the monster of the week probably wasn’t doing her any favors.

I wanted to move in and grab her, but I had heard much too often from Twilight and Rainbow my changeling TK wasn’t anywhere near as gentle as a real pony’s. Hell, I think it gave Rainbow an aversion to being held by magic in general, or at least turn what was already a distaste for the whole thing into a full-on dislike.

So, no. Magical bear-hug wasn’t an option. And of course in the few seconds it took my brain to just swoop down and pick her up with those hoof things I hardly ever used anymore outside of sex anymore, a magical glow surrounded Cadence and lifted her up. Considering his own situation, I was impressed with Shining’s ability to concentrate even that much.

A minute later, and the whole thing was more or less over. The major shakeup passed, and it was more or less over, except for some relatively minor aftershocks that followed at irregular intervals. Once Cadence was down and I saw clearly that she was still breathing, I turned around and let out a sigh when I saw the giant humanoid monster of lava slowly moving away from the empty remains of the mountain that had collapsed in on itself with its prisoner gone.

“Okay so…about Celestia‘s plan, I don’t think we’ll be able to move Cadence,” Shining told me after I heard a little bit of chatter between him and Cadence to check on her injuries. “Unless you can teleport us to Canterlot.”

On the teleporting thing, I probably could, but…my ability to negate time and space without moving was harsh enough on my passengers under normal conditions. I didn’t want to know what it would do to Cadence while hurt. Plus, I had less pretty pink pony princess reasons of why not to go to Canterlot. “Well I can but…there’s a problem with whatever it is Celestia’s planning,” I told Shining.

For a second, I was afraid Shining was going to tell me to just get them all to Canterlot despite any of my misgivings. I mean, I was second guessing Celestia here. But instead of just telling me to shut up and do my job, he looked over to Cadence for a fraction of a second, and back to me. “What do you mean?”

I blinked in surprise at that, and gulped down my doubts. “Look, I don’t exactly know what Tia’s planning, but…it apparently involves letting Lavan get within striking distance of Canterlot and protecting the city with a magic shield while she and the other princesses counterattack in some way,” I answered before pausing a few seconds for dramatic effect. “And that’s how she’s going to get every pony killed.”

“What makes you say that?” Shining demanded with a little bit of a frown. At last came the anger at my assessment of Tia’s tactical intelligence in the real world.

I pointed a hoof at the departing titan. “Shining, look at the size of that thing!” I told him. “Canterlot teeters over the edge of a cliff. Lavan doesn’t need to attack the city, he just needs to walk up to the damn mountain and the earthquakes he’s causing will either bury the city in an avalanche, or just cause Canterlot to fall to the ground before he even takes a swing!”

The frowned deepened, and I found myself hoping that he’d counter my argument with something about how the supports of Canterlot were magically reinforced and would never crumble. But then he let me down like so many others by letting out a deflating sigh. “If that’s the case, what’re we supposed to do?”

That, I only had a bit of an answer to.

Half of an answer really, but even that hinged on what the unicorn’s magic could do.

“Depends. Can your magic shields be made air tight and hold up to being drenched in lava? Like, completely surrounded for several minutes?”

Shining nodded. “For a few minutes, maybe. I’d have to mitigate the heat as well of course,” he mumbled. “Why?”

So, I told him my super special genius plan for saving Equestria.

By the time I was done, Shining was nodding to himself. “That…might work,” he admitted reluctantly before he looked over to where the other two members of the party were for a moment. “But I wouldn’t be able to reinforce the shield once it got out of range. And there’s the problem of an air supply. I don’t know of any spells that could allow somepony to breathe without any oxygen.”

“Um, I may have one.”

We both turned to look at the down alicorn as Cadence readjusted herself into a sitting position with a slight wince. “It’s not exactly a spell that allows a pony to breathe without any air. But, it will cleanse the air in an area and recycle it.”

Shining raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you knew any spells like that,” he said before a smirk appeared on his face. “Most of the stuff you know revolves around foal sitting.”

“Well…” Cadence said before she coughed and looked away. “It’s actually to help with the smell from changing dirty diapers. But, it’s pretty much the same effect you want with how it adds fresh air to an area on top of the pine tree scent. And it’s not like we have that many other options!”

Next to the alicorn, our party’s dragon nervously messed with the crystal he’d snagged that started this whole mess. “It’s the pretty much part that’s got me worried.”

I looked down at Spike. “Well, we could always got to Canterlot, hope that the city holds of and hundreds of ponies don’t get killed right when the monster walks up to the city. And that’s not even taking into account what may happen to every pony when the real fight starts.”

“Okay okay I get it!” Spike shouted before he dropped the swag and ran over to climb on my back. “Let’s just…get this over with.”

One good thing about fighting giant monsters that I was relatively the size of a fly in comparison to, and probably the only good thing about such a situation, was that the monsters didn’t tend to give much of a damn about the little mosquitoes that flew around them. So after the royal guards showed up with a chariot for Cadence, I took off towards the hulking pile of steaming hot rock and flew up behind him as close as I dared.

Below me, I winced at the damage the monster was leaving behind. While there weren’t any heavy forests between what had been the Crystal Mountain and Canterlot, every step Lavan made left a crater devoid of any life and a ring of fire spreading outward from it. If the plant life of Equestria really did need earth ponies just to grow, then the grass farmers were going to be working overtime to clean up the mess left by the demon.

“Remember, without any magic, the lava is going to just fall apart and wash every which way before cooling,” I told my passenger. “You need to have your head above the lava before it cools, or at least as close to the surface as you can get. But since this stuff isn’t water, you should have plenty of time to get out. Just go up, and you should be fine.”

“You know, all those shoulds are really making me nervous,” Spike replied while he held tight to my armor.

I shook my head and looked back at the package when his grip on me wobbled thanks to the movement. “That’s how you know you’re on an adventure!” I told him before I climbed in altitude and flew over Lavan’s headless torso.

“Well I’m really starting to hate adventures!” he yelled back at me. “I wanna go home! I wanna read comics and sleep late in my basket! I wanna-”

“AND YOU MIGHT WANT TO HOLD ON!” I shouted to him before diving.

Admittedly, I took a little bit of guilty comfort in the fact that he was actually feeling threatened about what was happening. Hopefully the next time something bad happened, Spike would just stay home where it was safe. Little punk that needed to be put over someone’s knee or not, he really didn’t deserve to be dragged into danger by Twilight; or allowed to go into it at least.

The idea to dive didn’t turn out to be my best idea. I didn’t know how good Lavan’s hearing was, but with me being about the size of a wasp or something in comparison, it probably wasn’t a good idea me and Spike were conversing so near his face as loudly as we could.

This was mostly due to the fact that as soon as I flew over the monster, I caught sight of his coming up to try and grab me from below, like when a person hears a fly buzzing around above them and tries to shoo them away. Only this thing’s fiery hand would probably incinerate me, if not cook me from the inside out instead of bat me away.

My armor may have been reinforced by the magic of the alicorn amulet back in the day and still as hard as ever, but no changeling had ever tested if our trademark protection included heat shielding. I sure as hell wasn’t about to be the first either.

Thankfully, I was paying attention and Equestria still had to respond to the basic law of physics that said big equals slow. So after a few juking moves that got me through fingers that dripped lava and made me so very thankful for all the flight practice I recovered from Rainbow that I was so going to thank her in the most special way I possibly could, I dived down and stopped right in front of Lavan’s face.

And with his other hand still kind of at his side, I had plenty of time for a heroic quip as I raised Spike over my head. “Hey Lavan, suck on this!” I yelled before ramming my purple lizard into the monster’s mouth.

Then, free of my shielded cargo that kept me from using my OP movement abilities, I teleported free and clear of the monster to wait for Spike to do his thing and munch on whatever was holding the monster together.

As I soared above the lava demon while waiting for something to happen, I had to admit that despite his size, Lavan had to be the easiest fight I had gotten into since coming to Equestria. Probably because it was a team effort on the part of Cadence, Shining, the whiney lizard, and myself.

It made me feel…creeped out really. I could almost see Celestia telling me how it would make a good entry about teamwork that needed to be put into the Journal of Friendship or something. Togetherness and sunshine will always triumph over… I stopped that line of thought, unable to really come up with anything girly enough despite what my gender had been for the better part of my life in Equestria.

The truth was, the situation just had a niche where everyone fit into easier than the others. I mean, sure, I could have carried Shining with me and the two of us could have entered Lavan’s body while under his protection, but our chances of doing anything other than that when the shield came down to destroy the monster’s anchor weren’t very good.

But Spike, with his natural resistance to lava, he could enter the demon’s body without being harmed. Of course there was a big difference between being able to swim in lava and breathing it, which Cadence’s spell solved. Meanwhile, Shining Armor provided a magical protection bubble around the kid’s head to hold the air in and programmed the thing to dissipate upon being touched by dragon fire.

All I had to do was drop him in the creature at the maximum possible penetration. We did have to get rid of the thing before it got to Canterlot after all. So the mouth was the obvious choice.

From what I had seen of Lavan’s body, the lava comprising it was still fluid, it just flowed around him like some kind of weird circulatory system. Once Spike was inside, all he needed to do was swim with the current until he caught up to whatever was providing the anchorage that kept Lavan in Equestria. If the object’s location wasn’t static, then he just needed to swim around until he found it. Something the couple’s magic would allow him to do.

After teleporting away from the monster, I only had to wait ten minutes before Lavan lurched a little, and let out the cliché death cry before he sort of melted.

“And time for the extraction,” I mumbled to myself.

With my ears still ringing from his voice, I flew down to where the liquid rock was just hitting the ground with a splat and took a whiff when it was more of an expanding pile of cooling lava than a monster. Despite the fact that my psychic senses functioned kind of like a nose, it didn’t really detect physical particles, and it wasn’t stopped by physical barriers. Plus, in my changeling form, I could detect the emotions of all creatures.

So it was pretty easy for me to catch the Scent of a worried dragon that was close to the top of the cooling magma before Spike popped his head up amidst the flowing stuff that was starting to become more of an oozing movement than anything else. I grabbed him in my magic to pull him out. Then I frowned when I felt as if someone was pulling from the opposite direction, and put more power into my tugging before Spike rose from the mud puddle of fire.

What came with him was a bit of a surprise though. The little dragon was hugging the arm of little a fat crystal statue that glowed with a dim, multi-hued light and vaguely resembled Lavan’s burning man form, at about twice Spike’s size. Judging by the bite marks on the left arm and the missing left hand, I had a pretty good idea what had happened when Spike found it.

Considering its size, I was a little surprised that he was able to hold onto the glittering rock before I wrapped it up in my magic as well. However, the makeup of the thing did answer a question of how it survived inside lava. Magic crystals were practically indestructible after all.

Once I had gotten the object and the dragon on even level with me, I let out a sigh as the little purple lizard continued to hang onto the crystal statue for dear life. “Okay Spike, it’s over, you can open your eyes now.”

The dry tone of my voice was enough to get the dragon to look around. “Is it over, did I save Canterlot?”

That made me frown. After what happened in the Crystal Empire, there was no way in hell that I was going to let the dragon boost his ego with undeserved praise.

“No,” I said evenly, which got Spike’s attention and jacked up his fright quite a bit.

But then I gave him a little smile full of my changeling fangs. “You, me, Shining, and Cadence saved Canterlot,” I told him. “And you performed your part rather…adequately.” Which he did, I guess.

“Oh uh…that’s good,” Spike said, still clinging to the statue and obviously shaken up by the whole thing. “Can we go home now? I think…I think I’ve had enough adventuring for today.”

Of course with everything over and done with, that was when the cavalry finally arrived in a burst of purple magic with a worried look on her nerdy little face.

The most annoying part about dealing with magical kaiju was cleaning up the mess they left behind. Which thankfully, wasn’t really my job.

Still, I managed to stick around long enough for Celestia to bring Shining Armor and several other unicorns that put up magical shields to help contain what was left of Lavan while it cooled off with the help of rain from Cloudsdale.

After that, Tia had me put my alicorn makeup back on and send an all clear message to the changelings living in the cities where the evacuees were being transported to, where they were still waiting to be received. Not even Canterlot had been fully cleared out of ponies in the time it took Lavan to go down.

Then it came time for the long explanation of just what the hell I thought I was doing putting myself at risk like that, all the while Smelling the mix of worry, pride, anger, and love radiating off two of the alicorns. Luna just Smelled annoyed she had missed the action yet again, while Cadence was happy to get her wing healed by Celestia. As for me, I just wondered where the hell Discord had been. If there was any time he was supposed to use his magic for good, the giant lava monster threatening to crush Canterlot that could be seen from half an Equestria away would have been it.

Of course there was also the bad news that it seemed my coronation would have to be put off for a day. I was so heart broken I only managed to dance on my hind legs for a good minute before Twilight smacked me upside the head.

But after everything from cleanup to ordering all the evacuees back into town was arranged, Celestia was getting ready to set the sun when she called me and Twilight out onto the balcony where she was looking at the sky.

Luna was there too of course, still Reeking of annoyance as she glared at the mass of cooled rock that had been Lavan. From what I heard during earlier meetings, she was taking charge of dismantling the demon’s statue via target practice later tonight.

“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about Twilight?” Celestia asked after we all exchanged greetings. Despite the day’s events, she looked as immaculate as ever of course. Which meant I had a hard time shoving my sexual fantasies that involved me and the egghead playing with the alicorn’s body.

Being put in life and death situation really did make people want to get laid after all it seemed.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Twilight lick her lips nervously. “Have my friends made it to the Crystal Empire yet?”

Celestia didn’t even look at her telescope, meaning she had already checked on it herself for whatever reason, possibly even anticipating Twilight’s question. “The train I had stationed at Ponyville for the…personal use of your friends is the fastest in Equestria. They arrived in the lands of the Crystal Empire only a few moments ago.”

“In other words, you made sure the five of them can be shuttled off to safety as fast as possible,” I surmised with a little smile while being colored extremely impressed. It usually took a day to get to the Crystal Empire by normal train, and only marginally less to come down using the crystal one Cadence road around it. For the girls to have gotten there in an afternoon, Tia must have put some major magic on what was hauling the girls around.

The goddess gave me an even look. “Since they no longer wield the Elements, our friends need no longer be burdened with the safety of Equestria,” she said before her expression softened. “Even though they would rush to Twilight’s aid at a moments notice.”

Twilight closed her eyes for a second, and nodded. “Thank you Prin-Celestia.”

“Does the status of our friends worry you Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked.

A nervous cough from Twilight and the uncomfortable Smell coming off of her got a curious frown out of me, but I didn’t need to coax her to respond. “Well, it’s about Rainbow Dash…”

“Yes,” Celestia sighed. “I understand the two of you were arguing about something before you left Ponyville.”

Twilight shook her head fiercely. “No it’s not…I saw the bags under her eyes and she had a shorter temper than normal, so it was pretty obvious she didn’t get much sleep last night and…” the littlest goddess stopped talking as she looked at Luna with wide eyes. “Luna is…is there something bothering Rainbow?”

For a second, Luna took on a hesitant posture and looked around at the three of us. Even Tia turned her attention onto her little sister. “It is not something that won’t clear itself up tonight if the two of you join her in bed,” she finally said. “Allow me to transport the two of you to the Empire myself once the day has been replaced with night.”

I held up a hoof. “Wait a minute.”

“I can not. The day and night are on a strict schedule,” Luna told me. “And this will only take a moment.”

After resisting the urge to groan, I stepped back and waited for the sisters to do their job like the pharaohs of old. Except for the fact that they really did mess with the sun and moon while the pharaohs just stepped outside at sunrise, sunset, and during an eclipse to look good.

Not that any of them could have held a candle to Tia…if they had been ponies I mean. A thought that entered my mind as I found myself staring at the goddess’s ass instead of the terrifying sight of the sun going down at a speed faster than a crashing plane. It was a much better view, not to mention all of the ideas it put in my head were better than wondering why the planet Equestria was on hadn’t just spun out of control or turned so fast that gravity lost its hold on us to send every living creature on the planet careening off into space.

Like the fact if I was just a little bit shorter, I could walk right up under Tia’s tail and…well, do some things that probably wouldn’t have left her standing for very long. Which made me feel guilty, inadequate, and hot and a bunch of other things all at the same time. I mean, this whole thing started by me feeding off Tia and accidentally waking up her libido. If I had never done that, it was a pretty good bet that she would have never wanted anything beyond the just friends stuff we had going in dreamland, and…

I looked over when I felt Twilight’s wing press across my back. “Is something wrong?”

“You’re rather tense,” Celestia added right on top of Twilight.

The biggest problem for males when it came to polygamy was that when you were getting involved with more than one woman, more than one woman had the right to butt into your business. “Just um…worried…about Rainbow Dash,” I lied.

Twilight nodded. “Yeah…me too,” she agreed before her head drooped ever so slightly.

A tiny groan made my ears perk up, and the three of us looked over to Luna. “Well, I usually refrain from doing this, but if all three of you are going to be so worried about it, then-oh please sister, I can see your wings twitching,” the medium goddess said as Celestia gave her a sharp look. “If you must know, there are two things that are bothering her. Both of them connected, and…pardon me for saying so, rather foolish.”

It may have been Luna, but I didn’t like anyone saying something that bothered any of the girls was foolish, stupid, childish, or anything of the sort. Yeah, it was Lesson Zero, but anything that made my pony worry was something I took very seriously. So I frowned at her. “Just spit it out already.”

“The first isn’t anything she acknowledges on a conscious level yet. But because of it, Rainbow Dash’s body has grown used to the presence of others around her to the point where her sleep is troubled without a warm pony to latch onto,” Luna told us.

For some reason, I caught Tia’s worry going up a bit, although Twilight Smelled just about as confused as me.

“As for the other problem, Rainbow is afraid of what others will think of her once they learn she enjoys the feeling of coupling with the two of you,” she went on. “With my Sister soon to be added to the…group.”

That one actually did make me want to laugh. “Wait…you mean Rainbow’s afraid of what other ponies will say when they find out she’s having sex with us?” That didn’t make any sense! Most of the town already knew the three of us were sleeping together, and Rainbow was fucking proud of it! Hell, she was probably only going to get an even bigger ego boost by the fact a third princess wanted to get her in bed.

I could already hear the “it takes three princesses to handle this pegasus” in my head for crying out loud!

Luna’s face became a little scrunched up, and she cocked her head in confusion. “What? No!” she said before a little blush appeared on her face before she shook it off. “And please refrain from mentioning such things in my hearing! You’re the future consorts of my sister for pony’s sake!”

“I prefer the term wives,” Celestia told her sister in a dry tone. Then she looked at me and smiled. “Well, wives and husband.”

I preferred for the pony gods not to talk about the possibility of my future relationship like it was some unavoidable fate. Oh God, if Tia was already planning the wedding...I didn’t know what I would do.

As for my girlfriend, I felt Twilight tense just a little bit at the news, and her Scent became much more blissful as I felt her heart rate increase.

“And I was not speaking of…that!” Luna exclaimed. “I was referring to the fact Rainbow Dash apparently believes taking pleasure in laying close to her loved ones is…to use the modern vernacular, uncool.”

While I managed to just raise my eyebrow at the news, Twilight put on a frown and get out some words. “Wait, you’re saying Rainbow is embarrassed about being a…cuddle bug?”

Okay, I had to admit, that might have been a little silly. From being with Twilight, I had thought that all ponies were grabby in the bed. Hell, since sort of becoming a pony, even I was grabby in bed! Twilight was all soft, and warm, and fuzzy, and she smelled nice, not to mention her other Smell after sex was just fucking intoxicating. Once I had my pony-arms around her, I was holding on all night.

The fact Rainbow thought it was a bad thing she liked it really was silly.

Although the fact that it troubled her wasn’t.

“So…talk to her tonight beautiful?” I asked the pretty purple pony princess.

Twilight looked over to me, and looked up in thought for a second before answering. “Sex first. We’ll wear her out first so she’s too tired to argue or run away.”

It was a good plan, so I nodded in agreement as I felt Twilight’s tail flick my leg. Although not completely in the know of pony body language, she had been sure to teach the one one that shouted ‘let’s go fuck’. So of course I had to be polite and tail slap her back to scream ‘oh God yes I need you so much right now’.

Luna groaned and slumped a little. “I’m still here you know,” she deadpanned before her eyes flickered over to Celestia for a moment. “And if the three of you decide to start rutting each other here on the balcony, at least permit me time to remove myself from the area.”

“LUNA!” Celestia shouted as she whirled on her sister with a frown.

“Sister please, your tail is lifting,” Luna pointed out as she raised a hoof towards Tia’s backside.

I didn’t really see any difference, but Celestia froze for a fraction of a second before she looked back at her ethereal body part and made the slightest of adjustments.

Twilight stared at the goddess openly. “P-Princess, you want to-I mean, Celes-Tia…uh…” Despite all the blushing, I Smelled her lust skyrocket as her eyes went to Tia’s rear, Twilight’s lips parted ever so lightly as she licked her lips.

A roll of the goddess’s eyes preceded her response. “Well of course I do Twilight, I am an alicorn after all,” she said before taking a deep breath and letting it out. The lust I was Smelling from her however didn't do down very much. “But we agreed to wait, and at the moment Rainbow Dash needs the two of you more than I do. So go and get her.”

At that point, it seemed Equestria itself decided to end the conversation by the arrival of three more creatures that Animal Planet assured me couldn’t talk: two ponies and a purple iguana. Spike was riding on Shining’s back, and Cadence looked as if she had never been injured.

“Auntie Luna, I thought you were supposed to be meeting us in the throne room?” Cadence asked.

Luna took in a deep breath to let out a sigh of her own before she looked around at the new arrivals, plus me and the cute little nerd was was playing tailzies with. “Very well then, let’s get this over with. I shall return shortly sister,” the Goddess of the Night announced.

Although I hadn’t been expecting the crystal couple, it made sense that they’d also be hitching a ride. It was their empire after all. But it did make me wonder why Luna was the one moving ponies around and not Cadence or Twilight. She and Celestia were more powerful than the average alicorn, but considering Luna was the one running Equestria after dark, it would have made more sense for Celestia to manage the shipping.

I was wondering if it had something to do with the fact the moon was in the air at the moment, and then the feeling of standing on nothing overtook me before the temperature changed from a late Summer to mid-Spring while I found myself standing on an empty train platform.

“Alright, you guys made it just in time!” the familiar voice of a blue pegasus rang in my ears before I looked back to see the five familiar mares standing with their luggage. Apparently, the princess hadn’t been kidding with her moments ago comment. The girls would have gotten inside the crystal climate right as me and Twilight came onto the balcony to talk to Tia. “Hey Spike, get the bags would ya?”

A second later, most of the luggage was in a pile, although Applejack simply rolled her eyes as Rainbow’s suggestion and kept her saddlebags. Spike didn’t seem to mind though, and jumped off of the purple alicorn to run over to where the pile was.

For some reason, the whole thing kind of just struck me as wrong. But then, maybe I was just too used to having insect slaves instead of reptilian ones.

“So, is everything ready for the coronation tomorrow?” Fluttershy spoke up.

Rarity’s face got a little frown. “Aside from somepony’s dress that still needs its final alterations she means,” Rarity said while shooting me a dirty look that made me cower behind Luna just a little bit.

The goddess was quick to my rescue however. “Yes well, there were some…complications in Canterlot that are forcing us to postpone the event for a day so the…Equestrian nobility can attend,” Luna grumbled at the end. “A term I use rather loosely these days.”

That got everyone’s attention, and soon enough, Rainbow was giving Twilight a measuring look, while Rarity was moving her head back and forth between Shining and Cadence. “Complications?” she asked.

Rainbow zoomed over to get right in Twilight’s face. “You okay?”

I stuck my head out from behind Luna and sighed. “Just another leftover Sombra demon attack. It was nothing too big, Cadence got her wing kind of banged up, but we’re all fine now.”

Of course, that was the exact wrong thing to say in front of a drama queen like Rarity. “WHAT?” she shouted before rushing over to examine the alicorn. “Are you okay? Is she okay? Fluttershy, you know about wings, is she okay?”

As Rarity finished asking Cadence, Shining, and Fluttershy in a panic, the alicorn spread her wings as far as they would go in a display stance like a peacock. “I’m fine Rarity, see?”

I tried my best not to notice just how fucking hot Cadence looked standing there in all her alicorn glory with her wings spread like that. I may have not known how ponies viewed such an action even with Twilight and Celestia’s help, but I got the weird mental image of a human Cadence tearing a buttoned up shirt in half to show Rarity her boobs thanks to a stupid blending of human and pony body language.

Admittedly, I had thought about asking Celestia to explain thing to me in detail while we were asleep to try and repeat what happened with the pony attractiveness information but…I was already creeped out enough by men giving me little smiles and looks in Ponyville. I didn’t need to know if what I saw as looks were really the equivalent of a crotch thrust, or just how many women had also been sending me signals.

So I just turned my attention to the couple of girls I cared about most.

“What about you?” Rainbow asked Twilight in a worried tone.

Twilight sighed dejectedly and shook her head. “By the time I got to Canterlot, talked to Princess Luna, found Princess Celestia, and got my turn looking through the telescope, everything was over,” she said before she gave Rainbow a hesitant look. “I um…Rainbow, I think we need to work on my flying speed.”

All in all, I didn’t know how good of an idea that was. Rainbow was a pretty encouraging trainer with next to nothing in the negativity department, but having your coach be your girlfriend when it came to pushing yourself just didn’t seem to be a very bright move.

Then there was that little part of me that was so furiously protective of Rainbow Dash that it had to wonder what would happen if Twilight’s alicorn-ness actually made her faster than the pegasus whose pride was wrapped around her speed. I really didn’t want to know what would happen if something like that was the case.

But it didn’t even seem to concern Rainbow, or maybe just didn’t consider it a possibility, because she just snatched Twilight up in her forelegs. “Awesome!” the pegasus practically shouted in Twilight’s ear before she bent forward to kiss the alicorn on the lips and smiled at her afterwards.

The sight kind of crushed my overly-protective worries. Even if Twilight managed to outpace Dash, and that was a big IF, it wouldn’t destroy our relationship or anything. Cause a bump or two, but nothing more.

Everything was going to be just fine.

“I’ve been getting a little bored with all that training anyway and-” There was a dull think as something heavy fell onto the platform, cutting Rainbow Dash off before a high-pitched scream cut the air and drew my attention as well as that of several others.

“AAAAAAAAH!”

Then I heard the sound of lips detaching a lot closer to the ground than Twi and Dash were, and looked over where Rarity and Shining had just finished a kiss while in the grips of a tri-hug with Cadence.

While Rarity got a little nervous and drew in on herself just a smidge, Cadence raised an eyebrow and kept moving her head back and forth between the two. As for Shining, he just cocked his head a little bit the way ponies do when they’re confused and asked the obvious answer question while looking at the purple dragon. “Hey Spike, something wrong?”

Chapter 38: The Incredibly Emotional Thing That Can’t Really Be Called A Breakup Because The Two Creatures Involved Were Never Really Together of Spike the Dragon

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Chapter 38: The Incredibly Emotional Thing That Can’t Really Be Called A Breakup Because The Two Creatures Involved Were Never Really Together of Spike the Dragon

“W-What’s going on? W-Why’re guys kissing?”

Spike’s confused stammering made the married couple of the triple…group…thing that really needed an update in the Equestrian language so I knew just what the hell to call couples that included three or more ponies beyond a simple term like herd, since herd was the term for polygamous relationships that had tied the knot, looked at the dragon. “Because we’re dating?” Cadence answered uneasily before she threw out a wing to bring the uneasy marshmallow unicorn closer. “And as I just told Rarity that we survived a near death experience, emotions tend to run high. It’s all rather basic, really.”

The announcement made Spike’s entire body suffer a minor spasm that straightened all of his limbs out before he kind of just froze on the spot.

As all the ponies waited for Spike to process the information, I caught sight of Rarity straining upwards to whisper into Cadence’s ear through her teeth. “I thought you two were going to tell him!”

“What’re you talking about?” Shining asked from the other side of the alicorn.

Rarity moved her head around the back of Cadence’s neck. “The two of you said you were going to tell your family in Canterlot about us. Spike lived in Canterlot at the time! How come he didn’t know?”

While the…group that included three ponies I’m pretty sure were doing it shared some confused looks that were becoming more guilty by the second, Twilight landed next to me right as Rainbow came down on the other side of her and looked over to the two of us. “Uh…what’s going on?” my little pegasus asked.

The strange shock I Smelled coming from Twilight probably meant her face matched my own in the way of disbelief as I looked over to Rainbow. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Rainbow,” Twilight said in a deadpanned tone. “Spike had a crush on-”

“TWILIGHT!” Pinkie’s voice rang in my ears as the pink party pony just kind of appeared right in front of us with a trail of pinkness behind her. There was an odd scowl on her face that just looked out of place on the pony with the poofy mane. Even her eye color seemed a bit more…fiery before she drawled out a single word. “For-Ever!”

The sheer intensity of Pinkie’s gaze forced the alicorn back before her common sense apparently kicked in. “Wait, you’re talking about-Pinkie!” she snapped as a wide-eyed expression became one of mild annoyance. “I don’t think that promise really matters anymore.”

“It was a Pinkie Promise Twilight,” Pinkie insisted. “A Pinkie. Promise!”

I sighed and looked over to Rainbow Dash. “Spike has a big crush on Rarity.”

As Rainbow’s face went through a weird series of expressions from mild surprise to ones where I could practically hear her thoughts asking how she had missed something so obvious.

Twilight glared at Pinkie. “How come you’re not mad at her for telling secrets?” she grumbled.

“Well duh, Fae-Fae never made a Pinkie Promise…relating to that anyway,” she added after a second of thought.

The pink and purple pony rolled their eyes at each other, and then smiled before Twilight let out a giggle.

“Rainbow,” Applejack said as she trotted up to the blue mare’s other side. “Yer seriously tellin’ me you didn’t know nothin’ ‘bout Spike and Rarity?”

The pegasus’s expression changed to match Twilight’s. “Well excuse me for not caring-er, butting into somepony…dragon’s personal life!”

AJ gave Dash a Southern chuckle and shook her head. “Head in the clouds.”

With Applejack so close to me, my psychic stomach rumbled and I did my best to ignore how cute the farm pony looked with the little dots on her coat that looked like freckles and that hat she always wore. Not to mention her flanks that were as toned as Dash’s, but with her earthiness giving her more muscle that made me miss my hands and their ability to just dig into a girl’s rear.

God damn it, I thought to myself as I couldn’t get the image of laying belly to belly on top of Applejack in her barn, with a pile of hay underneath us while a nice sheen of sweat covered her after a hard day’s work that I was helping her cool down from with my tongue in her mouth and another part of my anatomy I currently didn’t have somewhere else.

Why did Twilight have to mention sex back at the castle? We’re not going to be in bed for plenty more hours, I thought to myself while reminding myself that the last thing I wanted to do was try going after another girl on top of all the relationship problems I already had.

Yeah sure, Applejack was the pony equivalent to a down to earth, corn-fed Midwestern girl with plenty of sense in her head and a body that any man who had been cursed by a sun goddess to recognize and react to pony beauty would give their left leg for…but I had to remind myself that I held off Fluttershy’s sexiness enough that I could resist AJ’s allure.

Even if I was more than a bit hungry after saving all of Equestria.

Good God did I need to get laid.

A sigh escaped from Shining’s mouth drew my attention to the other conversation that I latched onto like a life preserver. “Well of course we told my parents about you Rarity.”

“Although, Spike might have been in his room at the time,” Cadence added hesitantly. “And by then everypony was focused on Omnifarious when dinner started, so the fact Shining and I had a fillyfriend kind of became old news.”

The conversation of the horny group literally made Spike snap out of his stupor as a jerk of his head moved all of his attention onto Rarity. “Wait…you… You knew how I…about how I…felt?” he whined in one of those pathetic little boy tones that kids used when they found out that Santa Claus had in fact died over a thousand years ago.

The trip to the Crystal Palace was muted. Not the quiet kind of muted, as Rarity did her best to try and console Spike without any real success before Shining pulled her away. But muted on the usual kind of super happy fun time emotions that usually accompanied not dying by giant monster.

As Cadence and Shining walked with Rarity up to the castle, I got flanked by Twilight and Dash as alicorn magic hauled the luggage that Spike wasn’t in any mood to carry, while Fluttershy, Pinkie and AJ brought up the rear and the dragon that sat down on Pinkie’s back.

Personally, I didn’t see how Spike could have missed Rarity’s…kind disinterest in him. Although she never outright shot him down, and let him hang out with her, Rarity spent all her time talking to ‘little’ Spikey-Wikey as if he was a baby. It sent a pretty clear message to anyone who decided to listen. Sure there’s the old adage of love is deaf/dumb/blind and a level of retarded that makes even Spongebob seem intelligent, there was a limit to that stuff.

Right?

“Well what was a I supposed to do?” Rarity asked Cadence on the subject of Spike’s obsession. “It was just a harmless crush! He would have gotten over it in time. Found somepony else closer to his age. I couldn’t break his little heart.”

I looked over to Twilight as the royal couple and their consort shared a bunch of uneasy looks, probably torn between agreeing with Rarity and being angry about her letting things go as far as they did. Or maybe with how she secretly passed the drama bomb off to them in the hopes of having to avoid the fallout of Spike hearing the news. But hell, they were ponies, I had already learned my ability to read their emotions was a long way from truly guessing what when on as far as coherent thoughts. The only thing I knew for certain was that all three of them were upset.

More than Twilight was at least. The alicorn seemed about 99% less panic stricken than I thought she should have been. I couldn’t help but ask why.

My little pony sighed and hung her head. “Well it’s not like I didn’t know this was coming,” she mumbled. “Rarity’s twice his age. Frankly, I’d be more disturbed if they did go out. It would be like...Trixie dating those two colts from school! Give him some ice cream at dinner for the next few nights, listen to him complain a few times, and he’ll get over it.”

It was a perfectly logical way of dealing with the situation that any human adult would use. However, the fact that I was a human adult that got transported to a magical land of talking ponies and got pretty read up on magic while posing as a guard helped my rather bleak outlook on life consider a more terrifying possibility that was open to Spike.

“You don’t think he’s going to do something stupid and desperate?” I asked in a low voice.

Rainbow looked over to me, and Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Like what? Try and convince Rarity to run away from Shining Armor and be with him by showing off or something?”

For some reason I felt like a heel for suggesting what I was about to, but…it had to be said. “Something like a love potion,” I mumbled. “And I can think of at least three different things back at your castle that I could use to turn Rarity into my own personal plaything.” One of which was actually made for sex toy transformation mental manipulation. If I could destroy the thing without causing an explosion that cursed every pony in then thousand miles to a life-long heat or worse, I would have. But since all that magic stuff was unpredictable, there it sat.

Twilight glared at me. “How could you even suggest something like that?” she demanded through gritted teeth.

“Because it’s a choice I have to make every day,” I told her with a frown. “Not to turn Pinkie into my own personal music box, or when I met all six of you girls, I could have used changeling magic to make you like me. I could have reassured Rainbow at the tryouts instead of letting her agonize over her choice, or made her love me the first time we asked her out instead of letting my heart be crushed. It is the number one go to option for changelings, so yeah, I’m going to bring it up.”

The glare Twilight was shooting me with lessened just a tad. “Well Spike’s not a changeling.”

I sighed in response. “You’re right,” I agreed before pausing for dramatic effect and putting on my serious face. “He’s worse.”

That brought the glare back on full force, and even got Rainbow to frown at me. “Excuse me?” Twilight mumbled in an even tone.

“Spike is a foal. Now, he’s followed you around all his life, so he’s smart. But that’s the big problem,” I explained. “He knows how to do something, but not when, and if it should be done at all. Add that to a panicky little broken heart, and it’s a recipe for disaster…like when you turned Ponyville into a mob over a doll.”

I really hated pulling out the old Smarty Pants thing on Twilight like that. Not just for the knife in the heart that it was, but because ponies really didn’t rub each others noses in past mistakes. They got over it and went on. Even Trixie didn’t get more than a single unfolding of Twilight’s wings as if to say ‘I’M AN ALICORN BITCH!’ before Twilight made it clear to the unicorn that being a mini-goddess didn’t mean Trixie had to bow and scrape like she had thought the second time they met in class.

But on the other hand, I wasn’t a pony, and neither was Spike. He was a dragon, all of whom I had observed to be douche bags that either didn’t care about others, killed at the drop of a hat, or murdered unborn children for fun. Spike may have decided what he was didn’t make him who he was, but genetics always has some kind of say in personality no matter how much nurturing is done.

Twilight didn’t seem too disturbed by the reminder though. There was no flinching, or drawing away. It also didn’t stop her from arguing. “That was an accident. What you’re suggesting has Spike mixing a potion or stealing something! He…he would never do that!”

The intensity of Twilight’s glare cowed me pretty good.

“Well, maybe we should at least talk to him or something, ya know.”

I looked over to my blue angel of salvation with her rainbow hair and silently vowed to give her the best night of her life as soon as I could. Not the usual teat sucking and attention beneath the tail either. I intended to give her everything she wanted and more for saving my ass.

“Not that I think he’s going to go nuts or anything,” she quickly added, “but you know, he probably is gonna need somepony to talk to…when he’s ready.”

Twilight’s annoyance lessened, but I could Smell it was still there as she turned her attention to the pegasus. “Rainbow, I know what I’m doing.”

“Oh yeah?” she replied before flapping her wings a little and getting a height advantage on Twilight. “Out of the three of us, which ones have been dumped and laughed at by the stallion they had been crushing on ever since they possibly could?”

That made Twilight’s ears lower while I grit my teeth at the comeback. Not at Rainbow’s attitude, but the core reason behind it.

Back during the royal wedding, my little pegasus had finally manned up, or mared up, and asked Soarin of the Wonderbolts if he wanted to go out with her on a date. While Rainbow hadn’t been clear on the details, the end result had left her feeling as if no one would ever find her attractive until Celestia proved otherwise by making out with her during our first date.

Although my first reaction was to cripple the sorry bastard before scarring him to the point ponies would puke upon looking at him, time had allowed me to look back on things and allow Equestria to do its karma thing. I had already seen the douche get into one accident at Rainbow Falls because he’d been checking out the Cloudsdale cheerleaders. So when the idiot caused Cloudsdale to lose the Games thanks to some well placed quintuplets with hot plots shouting his name and shaking their secret changeling pussies at him, I would be there to point and laugh as Soarin flew into the stands and crashed.

The last of Twilight’s indignation faded. “Well…okay, you’ve got a point there.”

But it wasn’t like Spike was just sitting around moping. Oh no, he was riding Fluttershy like nobody’s business. Not in the ’rebound girlfriend’ kind of way, but the whole on the back of a horse kind. I found it a little curious as to why she got the dragon, but it became pretty obvious Spike had wanted the sympathetic ear that Twilight apparently never gave him in regards to the Rarity situation.

“How could they do that to me?” Spike asked in a whiney voice.

“Oh…um…well…w-what do you mean they?”

“Shining Armor and Rarity!” Spike went on, obviously more to himself than the pegasus with the way he threw his hands up into the air. “It’s like being stabbed in the back and having your heart ripped out at the same time.”

From her place beside Fluttershy, Applejack looked over to the dragon with an even stare. “Now ain't you bein’ just the tiniest bit melodramatic?” she asked. “Shining Armor didn’t know nothin’ about how you felt about Rarity.”

“But Rarity knew about mine!” Spike went on loud enough for me, and probably half of the Crystal Empire to hear. “How could she just let me go on like that without telling me?”

“Well why didn’t you tell her then?” Pinkie asked in a voice that sounded far too cheery to have a conversation with. She wasn’t actually super cheery, it was just how her voice normally was. Good for in the morning when you needed to get energized, but bad for a serious conversation.

I glanced back as Spike looked over to glare at Pinkie. “What?”

Pinkie cocked her head to the side. “How come you didn’t tell Rarity how you felt about her like you wanted her to tell you how she felt about you?”

“That’s different!” Spike counted as I had to put my eyes back on the road. “That’s…she knew how I felt, but I didn’t know how she felt! She was just…using me to do stuff for her!”

“But you didn’t know that she knew how you felt,” Pinkie’s replied. “Besides, weren’t you just using all those errands as an excuse to be near her? You got what you wanted, and Rarity got what she wanted, so…what’s the problem?”

I caught the sound of Spike growling. “That’s not-”

“Unless you’re thinking about it in the way that favors between friends should be traded,” Pinkie continued on in a way that I didn’t even need to look back to see her tapping a hoof to her chin. “In which case, because you didn’t know that Rarity knew about your feelings for her, you were being sneaky and sneaking time with Rarity when all she thought she was doing, or what you thought she thought she was doing was letting a friend to her favors out of the goodness of his heart!”

Then, the pink pony let out a loud gasp, and I had to look back to see the disturbing sight of her reared up on her hind legs with an astonished expression mostly covered up by the hooves in front of her face. What made it disturbing was the fact her rear legs didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the fact they were doing all the walking. And then she put one more leg on the ground to point an accusing hoof at Spike with her last one, all without breaking her pace. “I’m on to you sneaky, sneaking, sneaker!”

“Wha-” was all Spike managed to get out before Pinkie let out a disgruntled ‘humph!’ and increased her pace to join the group I was in.

“What? What was all that about?” Spike mumbled.

Applejack cleared her throat. “Ah think what Pinkie's sayin’ is ya shouldn’t be expectin’ returns fer favors that were supposta be done between friends.”

“Well how what I supposed to get her to notice me?” Spike demanded, with his voice going from whiney to slightly whiney with some anger mixed in.

I let out a groan and looked back at the conversation going on behind me to point out that Rarity not only noticed Spike’s affections, but also dropped some less than subtle hints that she didn’t think of him as anything more than a child. Which, in the unicorn’s defense, he was.

But then an aura of purple magic clamped my mouth shut, and I looked over to Twilight with a frown before she shook her head at me. I didn’t know if it was her aversion to being the bad guy when it came to dealing with her dragon, or maybe some misguided attempt to keep me and Spike ‘friends’ but I found myself bowing to her will. It really sucked that I couldn’t say no to that purple pony princess.

“Spike, yer half her age,” Applejack deadpanned before adding, “and a dragon.”

Unfortunately, while Spike didn’t seem to have any way to counter AJ’s hard facts, the investment he made in riding Fluttershy’s back finally paid off when the yellow pegasus spoke up. “Oh, well Applejack…I don’t see what Spike being a different species has to do with anything. If a pony wanted to be with another creature, it shouldn’t be frowned upon.”

The comment actually brought our party to a screeching halt, and…yeah, I started getting some disturbing ideas as to why Flutters lived with all those animals.

Of course, all the attention had Fluttershy taking cover behind her hair a second later as she dropped to a volume only something with a pegasus hearing could pick up without standing inches from her mouth. “If they’re a pony on the inside I mean,” the pegasus added before she turned all her hesitant cuteness onto the youngest princess present. “Don’t you think so, Twilight?”

Sparkle blinked twice, and then looked over to me for a second. “Oh…right,” she agreed hesitantly before giving a nervous laugh. “Good point Fluttershy.”

“Yeah, but it don’t change the fact that you and Rarity were never gonna work out on age alone,” Applejack said to Spike, steering the conversation back to its starting point as we approached the palace.

Once we actually got in the palace, Cadence was swarmed by guards and nobles that needed her to do this and that before she sent us all off to our rooms to unpack our bags while dinner was being prepared. Not having anything of our own, me and Twilight just went with Rainbow. Spike got his own room.

Away from the slice of life drama, Rainbow managed to gripe about how uncool it was for Celestia to ship her off when there was a giant monster that needed fighting. As damaging as it was to the pegasus’s pride, I remained silent while Twilight explained to Rainbow just why it would have been a bad idea to fly up and kick a lava monster in the face. I was just glad that was as far as she went instead of telling Dash that without her Element, she was just about as helpless as the average pegasus when it came to the real threats against the world and needed to run for cover.

What I was worried about was the last thing Applejack had told Spike before our conversation was brought to a halt by Cadence’s goons. My sense for Equestrian foreshadowing and knock on wood stuff had latched onto the farmer’s age argument and wouldn’t let go as it assaulted my mind with images of Rarity being turned into a filly before Spike came around with a bunch of roses to ask the girl out.

Or maybe the whole age idea was kind of hanging around because the live forever deal might have been at the back of my mind since I came to accept Equestria as real. Changelings weren’t designed to have a maximum age, so we could keep on going as long as we had something to eat. Ponies, not so much.

While I hadn’t approached Celestia about the subject, kind of fearing what the immortal goddess would say, Zecora hadn’t been much help as to the eternal youth answer. Considering just how much Equestria had in common with Greek myth, I wasn’t stupid enough to just try for an immortality spell. I knew how that kind of shit ended. Nope, eternal youth all the way.

When the servant came to get us for dinner, and I was allowed a light snack by my girls to tide me over when Twilight noticed me checking out her ass, we also found Spike had decided to forgo the food in favor of sulking in his room.

But most of the ponies decided to ignore that in favor of the other honored guest that the Empire received about an hour before all of us showed up as she walked into the room few minutes after us. It was a light blue unicorn with silvery hair that put a scowl on the faces of five mares in front of me when she walked into the dining hall.

Even Fluttershy didn’t seem too happy to see Trixie.

“What the hay is she doing here?” Rainbow demanded as she got up in the air with a scowl on her face while everyone else decided to take a defensive lineman approach and got in front of Twilight.

For her part, Trixie winced at the attention, probably more out of fright than anything else. “Um…Trixie was sent here by Princess Sunset when Canterlot was put in danger. She did not want to go… Well, go alone anyway, but…Sunset made the guards throw her on the chariot.”

Twilight sighed and shouldered her way past the girls. “Okay everypony, cut that out! I already told you Trixie was attending classes at Celestia’s school. She’s sorry for what happened and is trying to be a better pony, so cut her some slack! The last thing anypony trying to get over the past needs is everypony else constantly reminding her of it.”

“Well,” Applejack drawled out as she and the others found their seats. “Ah still don’t much trust her, but…you got a point there Twilight.”

Thankfully, the room Cadence had made ready for us wasn’t the big thing with the semi-circular table with enough space to fit every noble in town with a stick up their asses and their irritable grandmothers too. Instead, we got a basic rectangle dining table with enough room for sixteen ponies to sit down at, in a room just big enough to hold a basketball game. Dash got surrounded by me and Twilight before the purple princess stuck Trixie on the end next to her. My sanity cried as Pinkie plopped her plot down next to me before Applejack flanked her and Fluttershy brought up the end of our side of things. Rarity was placed on the other side of things next to Shining Armor.

As usual when lunchtime came around, everyone got a plate of food in front of them, and I ended up with water.

“You sure you don’t want anything Fae-Fae?” the pink pony next to me asked. “We’ve got crystal fruits and vegetables, crystal pecan pie, crystal…uh, well you might want to skip the crystal turnips.”

Rainbow sighed and moved her head forward to meet Pinkie eye to eye. “Oh come on Pinkie, you know she doesn’t eat anything except…um…you know,” Dash finished with a bit of a blush that made me internally cringe and yet be thankful her lack of tact had only taken things that far.

A little whine escaped the party pony’s throat. “Yeah, but it just seems wrong. Sharing food with friends is one of the basics of socializing. It creates an a friendly atmosphere and gives you an easy topic to discuss to break the ice like Rarity does when she complements my punch all the time at our parties,” Pinkie explained before shaking her head sadly. “The fact one of my bestest buddies can’t share in that and kind of becomes a little ostracized by default is just…sad.”

The fact it was Pinkie that said something like that kind of just…froze me for a second. There were times I forgot just how deep she could be. “Well that’s um…thanks for thinking of me, Pinkie,” I replied before patting her on the back a few times.

“Does it really bother you that much?” Twilight asked as she leaned back to face me.

I shook my head. “Not…really,” I explained, careful not to let the anymore word slip out. I had more than gotten used to it since moving to Ponyville, and it wasn’t like changelings had gathered for meals. When I first moved to Ponyville, I might have been a little curious as to how everything tasted. But I had long since adapted.

Wanting to change topics as soon as possible, I looked across the table at the easy out. “So Rarity, do you think you’ll be able to finish my dress tomorrow with the extra time before the coronation?”

The unicorn gave a dramatic sigh. “I suppose so,” she said before glancing over to her lovers. “Quite frankly, I would have loved to take advantage of the extra day in the Empire to be with some other special ponies, but work before pleasure.”

“Oh come on Rarity,” Twilight said in a voice that let me just hear the rolling eyes. “It’s just some last minute adjustments. You’ll be done before noon and-oh! The six of us should so go on a double date!”

“Six?”

All the eyes of the table looked in Trixie’s direction at the question before Cadence let out a little laugh. “Yes. Both Twilight and I are involved in communal relationships,” the princess explained. “Twilight and Omnifarious are courting Rainbow Dash, while Rarity has shown an interest in joining my and Shining Armor’s marriage.”

And of course, that opened the floodgates when it came to Trixie getting in on the conversation. As the meal continued, more questions as to the whos, whys, and of hows of everything that had happened were given out, including a rather grand explanation of the night Rarity went to the crystal ball where their relationship started to take root, which eventually let to Pinkie…well…

“So uh, how do the three of you do it?” the pink party pony asked as she looked back and forth between our two groups of three ponies.

“P-PINKIE!” Rarity shrieked. “T-That that is not proper discussion at the dinner table!”

But Pinkie simply rolled her eyes at the scandalized gasps and raised voices of our friends that threw in with Rarity while Dash just stammered in embarrassment. I think I even heard Fluttershy say a few words, and I’d been having a problem picking up her voice all night. “Oh come on, you were all thinking it,” Pinkie said when the talk died down. “And it’s not like I’m asking for details, but…is it like a tag team thing where one pony always watches? Or do you get a two on one deal going?”

On the other side of the table, Rarity kind of cowered down in the pony equivalent to sinking in her seat while Shining Armor looked over to a nice painting, and Cadence got a slightly thoughtful look on her face. As for my party, my jaw felt like it wanted to unhinge. Dash kind of just went bright red, and Twilight…answered the question.

And in a normal tone at that. “Usually, it’s two of us focusing our attention on one mare until she climaxes, then the couple engages in intercourse until the pony receiving stimulation needs a rest, but the first partner is usually recovered by then to make love to the third,” Twilight explained before becoming thoughtful. “Although, I’m not sure if my experiences can be used as a guidepost for the population at large since we’re currently all females and Fae feeding off of me and Rainbow causes our pleasure to be increased beyond the normal limits of physical interaction.”

The lecture mode voice was something I hadn’t heard from Twilight in a while, and it still didn’t manage to stop her rather vague descriptions of our nearly nightly orgies into something completely unsexy. So my horned head quickly went down to bang itself on the table in an effort to try and damage my short-term memory enough so that I could forget the last two minutes ever occurred.

Still, everyone except Shining Armor was staring in our direction. The captain of the guard had his head on the table with his hooves covered his ears. “Not listening!”

Then things just kind of got worse when Cadence opened her mouth. “Well, I can’t really claim to have a method since the three of us were only together once, but Shining and I did team up on Rarity, as it were.”

And so all the attention fell upon her side of the table as Rarity whipped her head around to frown at the alicorn. “C-Cadence!”

“Oh come on Rarity,” the pink pony princess said with a giggle before giving her lover a wide grin. “You had to of realized that everypony would be curious. And if you can’t share even this much with your closest friends, then how do you expect to set an example for the rest of Equestria? Besides, it’s not like we’re giving anypony any real details.”

From his place down on the table, Shining Armor let out a groan. “I still had to hear my little sister talk about…that!”

Twilight shrank in her seat and gave her brother an apologetic look. “Sorry Shiny. So…um,” the alicorn paused as she looked around and settled on the unicorn sitting next to her. “Trixie! You never shut up about yourself. Quick, start bragging about something!”

“Well there was that time I completely humiliated you in our magic class with my superior intellect and-”

Twilight reared up and slammed her hooves on the table before Trixie could finish. “That didn’t count! You only scored higher than me were because of a bunch of lucky dice rolls, and a rather iffy interpretation of the rules!” she said before spreading her wings. “In fact, I’m writing a letter of complaint to the Unicorns of the Beach company to have the GM’s decision overturned!”

“Hey!” I complained in a voice that might have sounded a little whiney. Then I actually had to wonder if Twilight could really do something like that. Not in the way of the princess following through with the threat, that was kind of a given. I just wondered if they’d actually respond.

As Trixie lifted her eyebrow in response to Twilight’s declaration, while everyone else that wasn’t in Canterlot the night before Reeked of confusion, Cadence cleared her throat and spoke once she got everyone’s attention. “So…um…Fluttershy, what’s been going on in your life lately?”

“Oh, well Fae and I went to a seminar with Sunset on breezies,” she said, perking up a little while I tried to hide my cringe. “Their migratory patterns are going to take them through Ponyville later this year, and I’m so excited to meet with the little creatures!”

And of course I soon had to contribute to the conversation on the subject, without hurting Fluttershy’s feelings or picturing just how much of a safety precaution headache the number one creature on Equestria’s list of things that wouldn’t last twenty-four hours if the planet I was on had even heard of natural selection would cause.

The sad thing was, the next topic for conversation was even worse.

For the first time in my life, dinner with the girls left me feeling drained.

Apart from the breezie reminder, Twilight’s pouting over receiving less than an A+ in class, and Rarity’s leftover embarrassment from the sex chat Pinkie had tried to start, the other mounting problems on the girls that I was just now starting to hear about were kind of wearing on my mind.

For starters, Trixie was apparently having trouble finding work as a stage magician. Her reputation was still shot to hell thanks to the Ursa incident, and a lot of ponies were apparently wary of the unicorn that had slipped on the alicorn amulet despite being pardoned for her actions by Princess Celestia. In fact, her wagon was still lacking a replacement, and the poor girl had been hauling a much smaller bag of tricks around via levitation. Which meant she had even less to work with, and even tougher crowds to please.

Then there was some troubles at home for Applejack. It was nothing major, but Granny was still up in arms about the change to major cider production over the old schedule of only so much cider a year with apples being sold the rest. Of course AJ was trying to keep everyone happy by increasing her workload, which had me worrying about her health.

As for Pinkie, the odd sex questions had me a little afraid she was hoping to get in on the action. I may of not have Smelled anything but the usual stuff coming from her, but…love and friendship weren’t all that different, judging from what I could pick up from Twilight and Dash.

Personally, I hoped the pink pony was just being curious, or wanting to embarrass Dashie. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Pinkie to death, and if I was a total douche bag with no soul and only interested in banging ponies while possessing the proper equipment, I would have definitely gone after a piece of Pinkie’s pie. She had a little bit of pudginess about her, but it was well proportioned in a way that made everything look good. Especially from the back. Seriously, Pinkie’s ass was perfect in the way of normal pony beauty. But her personality and Pinkie-ness would have me ice picking my brain to stop it from screaming at the impossibility of the pony that was Pinkie.

But it was probably my ponderings over a Pinkie Pie love interest that made me consider another topic in my head. Which in turn forced me to seek out Cadence in her royal apartment’s sitting room so I could talk about something with the pony love goddess while Twilight went to see how Spike was doing with Rainbow Dash in tow.

“Ugh, I think Pinkie’s got it backwards,” the pink alicorn moaned as she crawled onto a pony couch to lay down on her side with a belly that looked a few months pregnant. “You changelings are the lucky ones. Eat all you want, and never gain a pound. I’m going to be working that dinner off for at least a week.”

I forced myself to give a polite chuckle at Cadence’s complaint before putting my own ass into a seat and laying down on my side like a pony should. I also decided not to mention what happened when a changeling decided to overindulge on love and took a look around Cadence’s sitting room while she waddled her body into place.

With the pretty pink pony being my third princess whose dormitory that I had seen, I was starting to get the idea that simple was a running theme when it came to Equestrian princesses. Okay, she lived in a giant crystal palace, but aside from that, Cadence’s living room didn’t seem all that decked out with anything too lavish. Hell, I think the most expensive thing in the room was the floor. Everything else was a little high class, but only enough so it didn’t clash with the scenery.

Case in point, the couches we laid down on were all red and comfortable with some pretty nice material, but there weren’t any jewels or gold decking the things out in gaudiness.

It kind of made me wonder what Luna’s place looked like.

Or if the whole ‘humble’ requirement to be an alicorn was something Tia had set up because Luna had turned to the Nightmare when no one else seemed to give a shit about all her hard work.

“Something wrong?”

Cadence’s question made me look over to the pink pony, and I realized I was frowning.

I shook off the expression, and let out a sigh. “Sorry, I was just…letting my mind wander,” I admitted before nervously clearing my throat. It helped give me some time to set my mind back on task.

After I got a bit of curiosity out of the way. “Uh, where’s Rarity and Shining Armor?” The last thing I needed was Shining stumbling in, or Rarity interrupting us with some wild cries of passion from behind the doors of their bedroom.

Cadence looked over to a window. “I might have said a few things to…guide Shining and Rarity into taking a walk through the palace gardens. Those two really need to spend some time alone together if this whole thing’s going to work out. The three of us can’t run in step all the time, unfortunately, and I don’t want Rarity coming to think of herself as some kind of weekend…distraction.”

Another deep breath bought me some time. “So um, from what I remember you saying in Canterlot…you can like…tell if ponies can…work out together?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Cadence told me. “But…basically, yes.”

The conformation wasn’t really needed, but it did help to calm my building nerves. “Right…so, I was wondering if you could tell me if…uh, me and Twilight and Rainbow would work out with…” I took a breath to help calm my nerves. “…another pony.”

Cadence raised an eyebrow and I could Smell her amusement, even if it didn’t show on her face. “Would this pony be six feet tall with a mane that moves on its own and the biggest pair of tribal features in Equestria?”

The description of Celestia made me wince, and I felt like hitting myself as Cadence’s mouth curved upwards into a smirk. When I had been eavesdropping on Tia’s life, the alicorn had mentioned about how she had asked an expert on the subject of me and the girls. Of course it had been Cadence. “Yes,” I replied as the smirk become a soft smile.

“So what’s the problem?” she asked gently.

I tensed. The way she had phrased that question…the amount of loving kindness didn’t matter as much as the words. “Well um…is it going to work out? With Tia I mean?” I asked hesitantly. “And the rest of us. Twilight’s more than onboard to give it a go, but…I don’t know why Rainbow’s agreeing to give this whole thing a shot with her.” Not to mention I was afraid that she might just be going along with me and Twilight out of some kind of fear of abandonment by her friends or something.

But that was a problem for later tonight once me and Twilight had pinned her down in bed for some pillow talk.

Cadence’s smile widened a bit. “Now Omnifarious, I asked you first.”

That got a frown out of me. “What?”

“Oh please,” Cadence said before sighing. “Do you know how many ponies have come to me when they don’t see some kind of trouble with their relationship on the horizon?

“Zero. Nopony needs my help when all they can see is a happy future,” she went on. “So tell me what’s wrong. Tell me what you’re worried about, and we’ll see if we can fix it with just the two of us, or if we need to get the whole gang in here to work things out.”

I felt like a deer caught in the headlights. It was a weird, powerless feeling the likes of which I had only felt about two times since coming to Equestria, and the first time that didn’t involve someone close to me laying on the ground in pain. So there was no panicked burst of anger and need to do something to snap me out of it. So I just kind of… “Um…it…you…that’s not…”

Cadence looked me over for a moment with a discerning eye. “I saw how you behaved with Twilight and Rainbow tonight, and you weren’t upset or nervous at all. So…it’s not connected to them,” she mumbled barely loud enough for me to hear. “Which means…you’re the one that’s having some reservations about Celestia wanting to court the three of you, and you alone. So, what’s the problem?”

Completely trapped, I let out a sigh and hung my head. “I…don’t know,” I told her before falling over to my side and laying down all the way on the pony couch. “Or…more like…I don’t know how to describe it.”

The main problem was, it was complicated. Ponies didn’t do complicated.

Except for Celestia, but she was special.

“Then make it simple,” Cadence told me in a voice that wasn’t quite gentle, but a long way from demanding. “Take your time, and I promise that nopony else is going to hear about what we discuss.”

As much as I tried to order my thoughts, Cadence’s promise just opened my mouth and started making words spill out like crazy. “I don’t know! I mean, with Rainbow and Twilight, it’s easy! I know what they like, what they hate, I practically know everything about them! But Tia? I don’t know anything about her!”

Then that damn pink pony actually smirked. “So, you’re nervous.”

“That’s not it!” I replied as I raised my head and glared at her. “It’s…it’s just… Celestia doesn’t want other ponies to think that she’s all perfect, but she is! Or at least as close to perfection as you can get, and I’m not talking about her power and magic and all that other superficial stuff! She’s kind, and loving, and forgiving, and-and smart and I’m…not.”

The admittance made me grimace, but I couldn’t deny it either. I wasn’t good enough for Celestia, or Twilight. Even Rainbow deserved better than what I could give her insofar as the kind of person I was.

I had hooked up with Twilight out of necessity and been unable to break it off because of the pain it would cause her. With Rainbow…Twilight might have been the one to suggest it, but it was only because I had been sending out enough signals for even her to pick things up and…I really had to wonder if the reason she voted yes to the polygamy proposition was because she saw her boyfriend eyeing another woman and thought it was the best way of dealing with the situation.

Okay yeah, she had kind of been ignoring me for a good week before then, and I might have spent a lot of that free time with a blue pegasus, but that didn’t mean I had been planning on cheating on her or something. It was a moot point anyway. Considering how they were taking the idea of more than one special somepony, ponies probably didn’t even do that!

But when it came to Rainbow, I had become a fan again and jumped at my chance without thinking things through. Hell, I still didn’t even know if she really wanted what was happening with the three of us, or if she was just going along with it to make her friends happy like she always did!

Celestia made even less sense to me. On top of which, the stuff I could work out as to why she was suddenly so frisky for a real relationship instead of one that could involve any number of royal guards she could get with a smile and a wink didn’t look that good.

“And then there’s all the other junk!” I went on after shifting around to throw one of my hooves out in a dramatic fashion. “I mean, she did just kind of break up with that good version of Sombra that turned evil in some parallel universe!”

Cadence’s expression became a little deadpan, and I Smelled a little bit of annoyance coming from her. “That was months ago.”

To which I rolled my eyes at. “Well Tia is like a thousand years old! A month to her is like…um…”

“A month to us,” the pink alicorn told me. “Just because Auntie is older doesn’t make time pass any faster for her.”

I gritted my teeth at the evil logic and frowned at Cadence. “Oh come on, it’s the whole rebound relationship problem!”

Cadence tilted her head a bit as some confusion made its way onto her face. “The what?”

“You know,” I prompted her before pausing for a second. When she didn’t say anything, I let out a groan. “When a human breaks up, they get this pain of loneliness and junk that we immediately try to fill by going out and finding a replacement. And most of the time, we’re willing to settle for someone with a lot of flaws we just don’t care about or bother noticing because we just want to be with someone.” Or have sex. But considering just who I was talking to, I didn’t feel like getting Cadence pissed off at my race in general because we took the ‘purest expression of love’ and basically just used it to feel good.

As it was, she didn’t seem to like my whole rebound explanation since her face became a little scrunched up, like she had smelled something rank. “That’s um…Celestia is more than just some school filly looking for a hole in her life to fill.”

A theory I doubted. Mostly because Tia had outright told me she wanted more than just some friendshipping in her life while I had been laying in a hospital bed. “Oh yeah, that’s why she’s so desperate to get a colt friend, she’s reaching out to Twilight and Rainbow. I mean, I can kind of understand why she wants me. I’m new and shiny, and you ponies like to go for that sort of stuff before the sparkle wears off. But them? What the hay is up with that?”

Cadence raised an eyebrow. “Well, Celestia told me it’s because of you.”

“What?” I asked, my ranting train of thought completely derailed and any hope of making a counterargument go up in smoke.

After taking one of her calming breaths, Cadence looked at me. “Well, not outright told me, but… Look, Auntie Celestia tends to…live vicariously,” she said after a moment of thought. “You pointed out her age just a few minutes ago, remember? While she hardly blinks and misses a few days, I’ve been around her long enough to see that boredom is a major problem for her. In the weeks before the wedding, I saw the highlight of her day was getting reports from Twilight and her friends. Celestia experienced joy through their actions, despite the fact that she has learned such lessons a thousand times over by now.

“Then you come along, going on and on about your days together with Twilight, and now Rainbow Dash. Not to mention the connection you all but forced her to make with Sunset,” the pink pony princess went on before she frowned. “What the hay did you think was going to happen?”

I bristled at the accusation. “You make it sound like I brainwashed her or something!”

Cadence shook her head. “No, but you did make her look at them through your perspective,” she told me before a bit of sadness entered her eyes. “And while I don’t agree with you on this whole rebound idea, I do know that Celestia is lonely. Even with Luna returned, she has to be the pony that everypony relies on, this central figure that everypony looks up to, the one with all the answers. Except when she’s with you, because the two of you meet in a place where false confidence and empty assurances can’t exist.

“And you didn’t…well, act like Twilight would have if she had seen Celestia worried. You listened to her problems, and allowed somepony who can’t ever show her vulnerability to let her mane down, to let her air her stress. Then on top of all of that, you provided comfort. Never sell that kind of kindness short Omnifarious. It alone is the beginnings of many relationships throughout Equestria.”

My head hit the couch again as I just let my body relax. “Seems too simple to me.” Especially for someone like Celestia. Falling in love with someone because they listen to your problems? Who in the hell does that?

Okay…I admit that it was pretty nice to have Tia there for me after Rainbow Dash shot me down…but that was a hell of a long way from what she had me doing.

Across from me, Cadence gave a little shrug. “But we’re not here to talk about why Celestia likes you,” she told me before her warm gaze turned hard and her whole body followed suit little by little. “We’re here so that you can admit to yourself why you can’t seem to accept Celestia’s feelings.”

By the time she was done talking Cadence looked like...the pink monster that had visited me in the hospital during my first trip to the Crystal Empire.

The return of the pretty pink pony of my nightmares got me to gulp.

“So why don’t you love Celestia in return?” she demanded sternly.

Thankfully, I did manage to find some backbone and groaned. “Oh come on Cadence,” I mumbled. “We’ve only really been on one date.”

“You’ve been on dozens!” the Goddess of Love exclaimed. “Every night, the two of you have curled up with each other and shared thoughts that nopony else has. You’ve played games, watched movies, and even shared your most private of thoughts.”

I shrunk at the accusations, most of which weren’t all that true. The only reason I curled up with Tia was because she was so damn grabby, even if it did feel pretty damn nice to be with her like that. And just because Tia ran her mouth about stuff in her personal life didn’t mean I shared all of my problems; just the stuff I knew Twilight couldn’t handle without freaking out. And the Rainbow thing of course.

“Is it a lack of physical attraction?” Cadence asked a little more calmly than before while she looked me over. “I know you’re a different creature in your mind, but Auntie said you learned how to…deal with that.”

The question brought back a load of experiences that I would rather have forgotten, and left me with the mental image of Tia practically shaking her ass in front of my face on several occasions. Which of course led to fantasies where I took measures to steady her involving X-rated means.

Of course, the whole thing got a groan out of me and made me want to head to bed all the sooner as I spoke. “That’s uh…definitely not a problem,” I said. “Anymore, I mean.” If anything, being attracted to ponies was a problem for me, especially when I got hungry around the girls these days.

“Then look inside yourself, and tell me what’s troubling you about all of this,” Cadence ordered as her annoyance with me grew. I was apparently trying her patience.

I gulped. “Well…it’s…um…” I said while trying to think of the answer to Cadence’s question. The only thing I could come up with what I had already told her. “She’s too good for me.”

Cadence raised an eyebrow. “And?”

That got me to frown back at her. “What do you mean and?” I demanded. “Newsflash Cadence, I’m a jerk! Tia may be going gaga over my varnish now, but as soon as its gone, she’s going to see me for who I really am, and she’s going to dump me like garbage!” Not to mention take Rainbow and Twilight with her.

All of a sudden, the room got a little…pink. And a scary pink at that. It wasn’t a major change, but whatever was going on had to be some excess magic Cadence was radiating. That, and the Smell she was giving off made my ears go flat against my head. “I don’t know that makes me angrier,” the Alicorn of Love grumbled. “The fact that you think Celestia hasn’t already seen you for what you are.” A second later, she was off the couch and face to face with me. “OR that you think not being worthy of your beloved is a bad thing!”

Amidst all the cowering, I managed to keep myself still long enough to get all eloquent. “Huh?”

“Of course you don’t think you’re worthy of her!” Cadence exclaimed as her wings spread out all the way. “Nopony who truly loves another does! I feel that way about Shining Armor! If I didn’t, if for one single second, I actually started thinking that I deserved his love, that I owned it, then I would be no different than…well, Chrysalis.” She let out a sigh and shook her head. “Sorry.”

The withdrawal of Cadence’s lovely fury gave me enough freedom to shake my head. “The day I was born, she put me in the changeling’s version of a hospital to heal normally instead of a cocoon teach me a lesson, and that was after telling me my whole purpose in life was to murder Twilight.” Just plain wrongness of hurting the purple pony aside, it probably would have been a much better plan to have me just off Twilight and replace her.

But for that a changeling would need to know enough about her to impersonate the alicorn, which Chrysalis hadn’t been aware of when it came to me.

“So I’m not too torn up when some pony calls her a monster,” I said before smiling at the pink pony. “And a scary as you are, you’re no Chrysalis.”

At that, Cadence’s cute pony face got all scrunched up and her head tilted to the side in confusion. “…what do you mean I’m scary?”

And so, things got all deer in the headlights again. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to explain the facts of how terrifying the pink pretty pony princess was to her, but…well…she wasn’t Tia. Celestia was a big pony, she could take criticism and all that other shit that I just didn’t heap on the rest of the girls. When I didn’t think their moral reasoning was completely in the wrong that is.

“Um…well…you see…”

Thankfully, I had apparently built up enough good karma for Equestria to finally pull my ass out of the fire, because a minute after my all-powerful oratory skills failed me, the door opened behind us. Me and Cadence looked back to see Shining Armor and Rarity coming in from their little walk. Which apparently really was just a walk, judging by the fact that the marshmallow unicorn didn’t have a single hair on her body out of place.

“Oh, Cadence, Fae,” Rarity said. “How are my two favorite alicorns that aren’t purple doing?”

Cadence released me from her gaze and looked over to Rarity with a smile. “Oh just gossiping about my favorite topic,” she said before giving me a little look that I really hoped was to assure me ponies believed in confidentiality. “So, how was your walk? You did show her the crystal lilies, right? The way the light those flowers give off just accents a pony’s mane is just-”

Before she could finish, Shining held up a hoof. “Yes Cadence, we had a good time, and the scenery did make me tell Rarity how beautiful she looks in the light of the gardens,” the stallion said before his face turned a little dour. “Would have been perfect if Double Talk hadn’t wandered in to try and press his crystal tariff on me again.” Shining sighed and shook his head. “Equestria hasn’t had an abundant source of imperial crystal in a thousand years! With as much as the Empire has, we can actually give everypony what they need.”

“Indeed!” Rarity agreed. “I’m all for obeying the laws of supply and demand, but the added tax that mule of a noble wants to add onto the crystals will drive the price back up to where it was before the Empire returned.”

With my world building senses tingling, and the need to get away from all that romance junk, I asked the obvious question. “What’s so important about imperial crystal anyway?” I had heard it mentioned before now, but never bothered to ask.

After I got an odd look from all three ponies, Rarity spoke up. “Right…alien,” she reminded everyone in the room before taking in a bit of air. “Well I’m not as thorough in explications as Twilight, but I’ll give you the basics.”

I had to force myself not to cry in thanks before Rarity began. “While there are other gems that can hold a mystical charge, imperial crystal is the only one that can be used to draw magic in from the surrounding area and recharge the spell within it.”

“They’re also commonly used to power more mundane things by enchanting the crystal with a lightning spell,” Shining added.

So they’re rechargeable magical batteries, I translated.

The explanation did answer a few questions for me, at least indirectly. I already knew ponies used crystals instead of batteries to power the bits of technology they had that seemed to fluctuate from place to place. While electricity generation wasn’t beyond their grasp, Celestia seemed to have shied ponies away from major pollutants like coal power plants and the like in favor of hydroelectricity like what Ponyville had. Considering how much Twilight’s horn could bench-press, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find the plant that supplied Canterlot’s electricity had turbines that were turned manually by a bunch of unicorns. Hell, they could even get rid of the need for that completely with a Come to Life spell and a few crystals to power it.

Considering that Equestria only had one source of the things that could only be accessed three months out of the year, I was actually a little surprised the country didn’t look more medieval than it already was in some places. Or at least less modern.

Then Rarity drew me out of my ruminations with a rough clearing of her throat. “Now, Omnifarious, as much as I enjoy your company…could you get the buck out of my room so I can salvage the little bit of romance we have left tonight before-”

And of course the door opened once again. This time it more of a loud crash that had me wondering if crystal doors could shatter before the instigator of the disturbance dashed with her rainbow trail and our shared girlfriend following after.

“Have any of you seen Spike?” Rainbow asked in a slightly panicked voice.

I had to split my attention between the flying pony and the purple one on the ground as I gave them both a questioning frown. “I thought the two of you were talking to him.”

“We were!” Rainbow exclaimed.

“Well, not really,” Twilight said at the same time.

The purple alicorn’s statement got everyone’s attention, and she wilted a little bit before beginning. “I knew Spike wasn’t feeling up for dinner, and he needed some time away from Rarity to sort things out,” Twilight said before she looked over to Rarity. “Um…sorry?”

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

“Well, I know you care for Spike,” Twilight told her in an uneasy tone before she poked the ground with her hoof. “Just…you know, not like…he wants you to. And…thanks for not…hurting him. I know it must be pretty lonely for him in Ponyville, and you being there for him...helped.”

The whole thing made me repress a Marge Simpson disappointed groan. Now that I kind of couldn’t ignore the little lizard, I felt like I needed to weigh in on the subject, my place or no. Wanting to follow your older sibling around and hang out with her cooler friends was part of being the little brother. The same thing had happened with me…except for the fact my older sibling was male, and the same species.

But I also had my own set of friends. And while I knew Spike had a few back in Canterlot that he would be seeing on the weekends, following Twilight around the rest of the time was just sad.

“So the egghead dragged me to his door so we could talk, and spent about half an hour just going on, and on, and on,” Rainbow said before Twilight gave her a raised eyebrow that made the pegasus stop and land. “Then I got bored and kicked open the door to tell Spike what was what and…well, he wasn’t there.”

Apparently taking that as her cue, Twilight stepped forward. “And now he’s missing and we can’t find him anywhere in the palace, and…have any of you seen him?”

Frankly, I didn’t really share Twilight’s concern for the little guy. Yeah, the last time he ran away he almost got eaten by the dragon whose head now adorned the wall above the thrones that I was just keeping warm in Everfree Castle. But Spike hadn’t run away into the Everfree Forest, he ran away in the freaking Crystal Empire.

Even if he wasn’t some kind of celebrity, I doubted that a dragon that ate shiny things had anything to worry about from ponies made of crystal. For one, they were crystal, and for two, they were ponies. Even Sunset Shimmer at her non-dark magic induced worst hadn’t hurt Spike when he was a dog, and since the demon summoning shiny guard psychopath was no longer a threat, Spike being put in danger where the majority of the populace thought spitting on the sidewalk was the worst thing you could do made me want to laugh.

Still, silly things like facts meant jack shit to a panicked pretty pony princess of purple pigmentation. She sent the guard looking for Spike in a search pattern that covered fifty-percent more ground than he theoretically could have traveled and checked to make sure all the carriages were still in the motor pool.

It didn’t take long for the guards to find the kid and report back to us. They apparently spotted Spike the Brave and Glorious, a title that still made me want to puke, huddled up under his own statue.

So after a few seconds of five ponies and one changeling looking around at each other, we all decided that Twilight and harem should be the ones to go talk to him thanks to some pretty twisted reasoning on Rainbow’s part that she explained on the way to the nearest winged-pony exit.

“I mean, Spike is your son and all, so-”

Twilight frowned at our mutual bed partner as we headed out of Shining’s love next. “Wait, what?!” the little goddess nearly shouted as she stumbled in her trotting. “What the hay are you talking about? Spike’s not my son.”

On her side of the conversation, and me as the girls had decided I made a nice middle to the pretty pony sandwich, Rainbow continued through the air and looked down at Twilight with a look that just screamed ‘HUH?’ “Uh…he lives with you, gets his bedtime from you, and you did hatch him from that egg so…doesn’t that kind of make you his mom?”

“Oh for crying out-I was six when Spike hatched Dash! Six!” Twilight argued a bit more fiercely than was normal for her. “And going by your logic, since you’re the one that give me the push I needed to hatch that egg Rainbow, You’re Spike’s Father!”

Unfortunately, a promise I made to myself that involved never laughing at Rainbow kept me from cracking up as the little pegasus kind of had a double-take jaw drop that really messed up any counter argument she might have had to Twilight’s statement before going, “Bu-ja-wa-huh?” as she fell out of the air and lost her footing, and stumbled around on the ground as we made it to the balcony to plant her face on the floor.

Thankfully, Twilight didn’t fall into a fit of giggles either, and just settled for a raised eyebrow.

Two minutes later, we got Rainbow off the ground and glided down to where Spike was…sulking…in a little ball of curled up scales underneath his statue that held up the crystal heart. And of course, Spike the Brave and Glorious, He who single handedly defeated Sombrero, Chrysalis, and made me into his bitch upon the icy snow of the forbidden zone of the great frozen north that not even Celestia could tread without freezing her teats off had little tears in his eyes again. Not the running down waterworks, just the kind of stuff that slowly built up and fell in time.

Twilight was the one to start the conversation when we landed right in front of him loud enough for the little dragon to look up at us. “Spike! What the hay were you thinking running out of the castle without telling anypony?” she demanded. “Do you know how worried I was when Rainbow opened the door to your room and you weren’t there?”

What with his hands and feet and all, it was a lot easier for me to get a read on the dragon as he flinched and dropped his legs before bringing his arms up just a little bit as if to shield himself from Twilight’s words. “I-I’m sorry,” he said before dropping his arms and hanging his head. “I just…couldn’t stay in that castle with Cadence and Shining a-after they…took Rarity away from me. After everything I did for her, they just…Shining Armor, he-”

“You’re kidding, right?” I deadpanned, speaking before I could stop myself in response to his final mumbling of words. Memories of the past few minutes replied themselves in my head and I couldn’t help but get in a bad mood because I was about to use Cadence’s love-logic and stomp on this little idea about Rarity belonging to him and how he was ‘due’ some love from Rarity or something because he helped her out.

That is, if the blue pegasus next to me didn’t clip the edge of my ear with her wing. While it didn’t hurt, the action did make me duck my head a bit and look at Dash with a little frown.

She ignored me completely and just talked to Spike. “You know Spike, you got it pretty good,” Rainbow told him in a tone that only sounded a bit more heated than her normal one.

But he just looked up at her with a frown. “Good? How is this good?”

The demanding tone let me pick up some anger on Rainbow’s end as well, but she didn’t let it show on her face. Her voice was another story. “You know when I found a stallion I wanted to go out with, I jumped through hoops and did everything I could to try and impress him, and all of his friends. Then, when I did get around to asking him out, he straight out laughed in my face,” Dash told him. “He told me that he didn’t want anything to do with a flat-flanked mare, who’s got more muscles on her wings than most stallions. I put my heart on the line, and Soarin said he didn’t want anything to do with me before he crushed it.

“He was a jerk, yeah,” Rainbow went on before poking Spike with her hoof. “But I was a bigger idiot for thinking I could buy another pony’s affection by doing tricks and squealing over them. Like you did with all the stuff you and Rarity did together.”

Then, she got quiet for a moment, and lowered herself to look at the dragon directly in the eyes. “Rarity may not like you want her to, but she does care for you.” the pegasus went on. “She wants to be your friend, and that’s awesome! It sure as hay beats anything I ever got from the Wonderbolts. And yeah, it hurts now, but just eat some ice cream, deal with it, and move on. Then find somepony else even more awesome, and if that doesn’t work out, find somepony else, because one of them is going to make you feel warm, and special and all that other junk, and one day you’re going to find out that you make them feel the same way too.”

A few seconds later, Rainbow broke eye contact with the dragon and Spike kind of just sat there for a second before straightening his back out a little. Considering how passionate Rainbow had been towards the end of her little speech, I wondered if Dash had turned on her emotional affecting abilities that I’ve seen her use to stir up a crowd for tornado duty, convince Twilight Sparkle of all ponies to become a pirate, and turn the Ponyville relay team into a Wonderbolt bashing brigade.

“Is it really going to get better?” Spike asked.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Umm hello? I got thrown out by that idiot Soarin,” Rainbow replied before she spread her wings to grab me and Twilight. “And now I’m doing your mom.”

Spike’s eyes went wide at Rainbow’s ‘encouraging’ words.

I groaned and shook my head. And Rainbow Dash fumbles the ball mere inches from the goal.

Twilight face hoofed hard enough for me to hear it and wonder if I needed to worry about a concussion. “Ugh, so many things wrong with that.”

Chapter 39: The Incredibly Powerfully Powerful Power of Pillow Talk

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Chapter 39: The Incredibly Powerfully Powerful Power of Pillow Talk

Thankfully, not even Dash’s hoof in mouth disease could stop the power of an alicorn’s libido. It was one of the few times that Twilight’s stubbornness was something I loved. She wanted to have sex, and no amount of unsexy events were going to stop her from getting it.

That said, Twilight had to spend a good fifteen minutes clearing up the fact that Rainbow was in fact not sleeping with Twilight Velvet as the alicorn once again had to tell Rainbow Dash in no uncertain terms that she was in no way, shape, or form Spike’s mother, and more of a big sister. Sure, she was the big sister that took her little brother off to college, made sure he was eating well, and tucked him in at night, but considering Twilight had her eyes on the aunt of her sister-in-law, something told me the Sparkle family tree was going to get really twisted if Tia and Twilight said their vows.

But when that was all done, we took Dash to bed, threw her on it, and ravished her more than anyone had a right to be. All in all, she got about twice as much as me or Twilight with the two of us managing to get each other done before we jumped back on the pegasus and left every little sensitive spot on her body a mess of sensitivity. And after we finally got done with all that, we flanked the pegasus and latched onto her forelegs before pinning her wings with our bodies and crushed the slightly shorter pony between us in a snuggle while our little Rainbow came down from her orgasmic high.

While my normal nose was full of a mix of smells of alicorn and pegasus love juice, my Nose was filled with nothing but contentment and love as I busied myself during Dash’s recovery by laying soft kisses along her neck, on her cheek, and behind her ear. The later got a tiny girlish giggle from the chromatic mare, and made me smile.

Then, I just had to go and open my big mouth. “Okay, I’ll admit it. This is my favorite part.” I had worn dresses, been talked to by stallions looking to get laid, and gotten my mare parts paid attention to by others. I was girl enough to admit that the afterglow was my favorite part of pony sex.

When I was a girl I mean. Guy sex was way different. At least I thought it was. It had...been awhile since I had done things as a guy pony. Not that I wanted to remember being pony-Brad.

Twilight apparently didn’t like my admittance though. She stuck her head up all worried, and gave me those big purple pony eyes of hers that just went ‘do whatever the hell I say!’ all on the own. “What?” she asked in a little bit of a panic. “Did I do something wrong? I know the position we were using wasn’t the most effective for pleasure because we’re both stimulating each other at the same time, but we needed to be ready for when Rainbow Dash recovered and-”

“Twilight!” I exclaimed, stopping her cold before letting out a breath. “You were great.” Which wasn’t a lie. Twilight’s ability to talk endlessly had given her major mouth muscle plenty of dexterity when it came to other things.

“Yeah egghead,” Dash moaned. “Way awesome.”

I chuckled and threw my free wing out to run one of the primaries across Rainbow’s chest belly. “But this…being with the two of you here like this, feeling your love and seeing how happy you are…I…um…”

Okay, maybe I liked it before I was a girl most of the time too. Even when Twilight was just being another species and not attractive in the least beyond that cute as a button thing I just wanted to snatch up and hug but resisted because I was a man, I still loved to hold her.

Yeah, it probably had something to do with moments like that being true intimacy as well. Of being able to let down my guard and just relax in the alicorn’s wings, or grab her up in mine from behind before I took in the scent of her lavender shampoo and junk, but…

Twilight giggled. “I love you too.”

Rainbow blushed. “Yeah, same here.”

Okay, down to business, I thought before looking over to the pegasus. “So Rainbow, can I ask you something?”

While kind of inane, the question did serve a purpose. It was the little warning that their was a possibility that Dashie wouldn’t like what this conversation would go, and gave her an out. Although I really doubted Rainbow would see it like that.

“Sure.”

“What were you and Twilight fighting about?” I asked softly before answering a question she had to be wondering about. “Earlier today I mean. I um, heard about it from Celestia.”

Rainbow took a look at Twilight and I caught the hint of a hesitant expression before she turned to see the alicorn’s concerned one, and then she looked up at the ceiling to let out a sigh. “It’s…stupid,” she mumbled.

“I don’t care how stupid it is,” Twilight told her gently. “You’re worried about it, and that means its important. Please Rainbow, tell us what’s wrong.”

A moment passed. But it was one of those moments that felt like forever. The kind that let a million worries and fears built up to drown the rational mind. I mean, while we had gotten from Luna the idea that Rainbow was just embarrassed about how much she enjoyed sleeping with us in the actual sleeping kind of way, she hadn’t actually confirmed anything.

Which meant it was probably something much bigger, and considering that this was Rainbow I was dealing with… Did she think that by leaving to talk to Twilight’s parents without her, we were tossing her off to the side or something? That she was just a third wheel of a distraction that me and Twilight liked to indulge in?

We did make plans to come back to Ponyville after class, but when that whole thing with Spike was over and done with, I…didn’t really remember sending a message back home telling her about our delay.

That little realization kind of had me feeling like a douche, and I could really see Rainbow being worried about us not even bothering to call home with a message like we had forgotten her. Because I did. What made it all even worse was how I hadn’t even realized it until I was laying down with her.

“I don’t like going to sleep without you guys.”

Rainbow’s words made my conscience put my beratement on hold, although I had already gotten that I was an insensitive jerk of a boyfriend that was apparently all out of sight out of mind. Then I had to switch gears from listen to talk since it didn’t seem Twilight was going to say anything. “Come again?”

The question burned away Rainbow’s reluctance and replaced it with a little bit of annoyance. “I said I can’t sleep without the two of you around!” she exclaimed. “I get to sleep, but then I’m up like an hour later, and my wings won't stay still, and then I had to go out flying until I wore myself out, and even then I couldn’t get to sleep! So then I was sore and tired and I it still took forever!”

“Hmmm.” Twilight fidgeted around a bit until she was propping herself up on her knees, or elbows considering how using her from legs like arms. “So, you’ve gotten so used to Fae siphoning your love that you can’t relax enough to go to sleep without it? Or is it something else?” she asked before placing her nose on Dash’s chest, and then one of her legs, and then her neck. To be honest, it still kind of weirded me out that was how ponies got around the fact that hooves didn’t have much in the way of tactile sensation. “Well, you’re not tense or anything but…we did just have sex and fed Fairy, so I can only make wild guesses until tomorrow night. And you did say you got to sleep so…wait, did you have a nightmare or did you just wake up by yourself?”

I didn’t know what scared me more, the idea that my feeding off Rainbow was like some kind of addicting sleep aid, or some fear of abandonment that she had strong enough to cause nightmares. While I tried to counter the second panic inducing possibility with some logic of how we were only gone one night and that was hardly long enough for someone to develop some kind of fear of abandonment issue, it didn’t help much. For all I knew, Rainbow already had such problems from her family. In which case me and Twilight not coming home one night might have been the thing that set it off. That led me to review some of her past actions to try and find some things that seemed OOC for RD to do.

Like the fact she learned anything about Starswirl.

Or how Rainbow stood up to Celestia of all ponies for Twilight during our four pony date.

And then there was the way Dash was so damn afraid of what would happen if she went out with us in the first place. That seemed to have scared the hell out of her for fear of her blowing it.

But...I didn't really see some kind of base cause regarding the whole thing. If anything, the incidents were so spaced out and random that it made me wonder if I was just getting worried over nothing.

“No…I just woke up and…wasn’t comfortable.”

While Twilight seemed satisfied with the answer, I could practically taste the lie on Rainbow’s tongue and worked to examine her Scent. Of course there was plenty of love radiating off of her. But then, friendship, the real deep kind the ponies practiced was nothing more than a kind of platonic love. Caring commitment, without the kinky stuff. A little wishful thinking from me, and I could easily mistake it for the passionate stuff. There was also some fear and shame tangled in with a mass of other emotions that were impossible to make out. I could tell she was uncomfortable talking about it, but I didn't need to Smell her to figure that much out.

“And I thought it was just some embarrassment over how much we cuddle after sex,” Twilight said before I saw her roll over halfway and lock Rainbow’s foreleg in a bear hug with both her pony-arms before she threw a wing across the pegasus and laid her head down on Dash’s chest. “I’m sorry for dismissing your problems Rainbow. I…well...we’ll figure this out, alright?”

The Scent of love coming from Dash went up a bit after hearing that. And she smiled. Or smirked, really. “Typical egghead, I have one bad night, and you’re all...well...you. It was just me having some trouble getting some sleep.”

That got an eye roll from Twilight.

My worries were hardly put at ease either. I was pretty sure Luna paid special attention to the girls when it came to their dreams, so I sincerely doubted she would have brought anything up if there wasn’t a major problem in the land of unconscious mares. That little worry also reminded me of another topic I needed to mention to the two of them. “That…um…girls, you know how me and Celestia meet up in that dream world every night, right?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s okay that me and her hang out and do stuff together, right?” I asked as my nervousness built when I realized how that could be taken. “Not that I uh, you know…do anything with her that I do with the two of you when we’re together.” As if that couldn’t be taken the wrong way. “The three of us, I mean. Me and Tia just, um watch movies and talk and play some board games. And me might have sort of kissed…once.”

Dash’s Scent became to confusing to read, and I might have gotten a little nervous when she didn’t reply immediately. And then her face got all scrunched up, which made me even more nervous and… “Ancient nerdfest and sitting around for a million hours. That’s it? Okay seriously, I am calling the shots on our next date,” she told me. “You two stink at it.” …kind of annoyed that was how she took it.

So I had to fire back. “Yeah uh…we’re not going to another Wonderbolt show Rainbow,” I said. Sure, we could get in free and screw them out of the price of admission, but even that wasn’t worth having to be around them for more than half an hour without beating three of them half to death.

I could feel Rainbow’s frown. “What’s wrong with a Wonderbolts show?”

Twilight kept me from inserting my foot into my mouth. “Soarin hurt you,” she said in a tone that was…not exactly angry, but completely devoid of her usual friendliness. “Spitfire and Fleetfoot lied to you, and manipulated you when they used your love of the Wonderbolts to nearly drive a wedge between us Rainbow. I don’t like those ponies.”

“So because they’re jerks, I can’t ever go see a show again?” the pegasus asked with more than a little agitation in her voice. “How is that fair? I don’t have to like them as ponies to enjoy their flying.”

I lifted my head a little to look to Twilight for some inspiration, and got a worried look in return. Well shit.

It was the old actor/singer/athlete was a douche, but you liked his movies/songs/sport problem. Back on Earth, I had always kind of avoided the whole thing since I considered such people to be the equivalent of overpaid clowns with no real purpose other than to amuse me. Their opinions on anything were worth about as much as what a dog left on the front lawn. Perhaps even less when I considered the fact the whole point of their existence was to take our minds off reality for a short time. So what if they had an opinion on something? I didn't care what it was one way or another, they existed to entertain me and that was it.

But then, I hadn’t know any of them on a more personal level, or even whatever level it was when said athlete messed with your girlfriend. And did I even have a right to tell Rainbow what to do in regards to the Bolts?

That thought alone really shut me down.

I didn't want to see her hurt or taken advantage of, but I really didn’t have the right to tell Rainbow what to do either. Not to that extent at least.

“Okay, you got us there Rainbow,” I admitted while I silently prayed for Twilight to take the out and roll with it.

But of course she didn’t.

“Rainbow! You can’t expect me to just sit there and cheer for ponies who mistreated you,” she mumbled after a burst of anger. "I know you like their shows but...those ponies..."

“You didn’t cheer for them the first time either,” Rainbow pointed out. “You uh…spent most of the second half of the show trying to shove your tongue down my throat.”

The psychic Scent of Twilight’s lust filled the air along with Rainbow's as I saw the alicorn's visible wing stiffen ever so slightly, and the little goddess giggled. “Oh yeah. Well, I think I can see the appeal of going to one of those shows now,” she said before letting out a sigh. “Just don’t expect me to do any cheering.”

“Or go to too many of those things,” I added. “I know I’m supposed to look past this stuff girls, but....when it comes to the two of you, I just…” I let the rest slide because I didn’t want to get myself worked up. “I just care about you girls, and it really makes me angry when I see you mistreated. And...don't ask me to smile at the ponies that take advantage of you.”

After a moment, Rainbow took my hoof in a fetlock grip. "Okay but...I'm not just going to stop going to air shows."

I made myself a little more comfortable with a little adjustment to my wings. "No pony is asking you to."

Twilight yawned. "Just...don't make every date you drag us on revolve around them, please?"

Rainbow just kind of laid underneath the two of us.

I found myself wondering if there were any animals in the Crystal Empire. Not pets, I had seen a few of those the last time I had come up north, but actual wild animals. At least as wild as animals were in Equestria.

If there weren’t any, did they have to import them or something?

Did they even need them?

How the hell did crystal crops work, anyway?

Before I could drive myself half-insane with wonder, I latched onto the first topic that popped into my head. “So, how do you think Spike’s taking the fact Rainbow’s…with us?”

And I really wished I had waited for the second one.

“Oh come on,” Rainbow said with a little laugh. “What foal wouldn’t like that his parents are finally together?”

Twilight groaned. “Seriously Rainbow? You’re really going to keep that up?” she asked before immediately going on. “Considering what happened with Rarity, we could have probably told Spike anything, and he would have shrugged it off.”

I saw the way to alter the topic of this conversation and grabbed it as fast as I could. “You’re not mad at Rarity over this, are you Twilight?” I asked. I didn’t think she was, but I had been wrong about stuff before.

“Maybe a little,” she mumbled uneasily. Then the alicorn fidgeted around a bit and I threw out a wing to put it over hers. “Massive age difference aside, there really was no way it could have worked out on species alone. Ponies and dragons can’t breed, and…well, herding solved the problem of Rarity never being able to have foals, but there’s so many other hurdles. I know Spike’s young, but he has to hibernate eventually if he wants to grow up. That’s one hundred years. Even if he went to bed today, Rarity would be dead by the time he came to.”

That little reminder of pony mortality made me cringe just the tiniest bit. Because it touched on another little subject I was doing my best to repress until I had found a solution to the whole thing.

Rainbow looked down at the alicorn snuggled to her chest. “What about that greed thing that had him running around Ponyville? I thought he grew up then.”

“Well…I asked Princess Celestia about that after we met those teenage dragons. They sure as hay didn’t act that much older than Spike, but...well...” Twilight replied hesitantly before I heard her take a breath and enter her lecture mode. “When they enter a growth period, dragons grab as much treasure as they can find and then go to sleep. By the time they awaken, any mental imbalance caused by excess growth is sorted out in their subconscious.

“Not that dragons usually get a chance to amass as much as Spike did,” she added. “The dragon tribes apparently have a big free for all in which younger dragons fight for gems every decade or so, and that determines rate of growth. A few more than double in size, a few get a little and back out while they still have the intelligence to do so, others get nothing and there are those that…get killed.”

I picked up that Rainbow felt about the same way Twilight did about the whole thing, which was apprehensive. As for me, I had to wonder if they allowed guests to watch the show. But I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut on the subject and leave the conversation at that.

Unfortunately, that brought the silence back, and left me alone with my own thoughts for far too long as I wondered about a little oddity I had kind of noticed way back when I assumed the identity of He Who Shall Not Be Named.

But something else also came to my attention of a much more pressing matter before I could wonder about it for more than an instant. “Do you girls always talk this much after I go off to meet Tia?” I asked. To be honest, I didn’t know to feel left out if they did, or disappointed if they didn’t.

“Sometimes,” Rainbow replied.

When nothing else was forthcoming, I started to get a little worried. Were the girls talking about me behind my back? And if so, what were they saying? Despite ponies being paragons of virtue, they did love to gossip. My best friend by default (since I was sleeping with Dash and kind of dating Tia) was the gossip queen of Ponyville, so I knew from personal experience how much ponies loved to talk about ponies.

“Um…sorry I missed out?” I said.

“It’s okay. You have to…” Twilight paused to yawn. “Make sure Celestia doesn’t...whatever the hay is supposed to happen if she falls asleep without you.”

Rainbow Dash let out an annoyed groan. “Ugh. As cool as it is you get to be with the princess every night, isn’t there a way to…I dunno, make it safe for her in case something does happen?”

While I just gave the pegasus a nervous look, Twilight did the talking. “Yes. I looked into the process, but from what I understand it’s very…difficult. Princess Celestia gave Fairy a piece of her magical core, the light that all her magic is produced from if you will. Fairy can access the raw power, and maybe a tiny fraction of Celestia’s abilities, but the princess is the only one who can control it enough to remove it. But that would mean she would have to reach into Fairy’s magical pool and…well…taking something from somepony is a much more…painful than giving of yourself,” she explained between yawns. “I can’t even imagine what it must have taken for Celestia to remove even the tiniest sliver of her magic to begin with.”

“Hold on a second,” Rainbow replied. “We give Fae our magic all the time. It’s not that big a deal.”

I let out a tiny moan I hoped they thought was a yawn or something before speaking. “It’s not exactly the same Dash.”

But before I could try and think up a way to explain it, Twilight spoke up. “Think of it like this Rainbow, we’re giving her feathers that will grow back overnight and Princess Celestia gave Fae one of her wings.”

“A piece of her wing,” I quickly added before Rainbow could get super defensive or pissed off at me for Tia’s actions. “A very small piece that only grows about one feather at a time.”

Even with my limited magical knowledge, I knew it was a crude analogy, but Rainbow would get it. Although the whole part about the removal being painful was new to me. Tia had used words like ‘complicated’ and ‘difficult’ when I asked her about it. She never led me to believe that those complications would have been on my end of the process.

I didn’t know what made me feel worse, the fact that she had hidden the truth from me, or the fact I was a little grateful she had decided not to rip out that little sliver of her magic despite the dangers of letting me use it. I wasn’t exactly proud of the fact that I felt that way, but I wasn’t going to lie to myself either. I didn’t really like that whole ‘pain’ thing.

The last few minutes of our night was spent talking about what we wanted to do tomorrow and if we should take Cadence up on her offer, Rainbow asking us again when we were going to get a cloud bed back at the palace, me asking what the hell the difference between a cloud bed, cloud walls, a cloud floor, and cloud streets were, and Twilight giving us a short lecture on the whole thing that I’m pretty sure put Rainbow to sleep. Then I asked Twilight for one teeny-tiny little favor that made her roll her eyes before agreeing to it.

We kissed each other goodnight.

Gave the pegasus a peck on her cheeks before dampening her snoring.

And I went off to meet Celestia.

Despite the nightly temptation from the forbidden fruit that was Celestia, I really enjoyed the time I spent with the older woman. Even if she was grabbier than anyone I had ever met. But then with all the hugs they threw around on top of the nuzzling and other stuff, ponies were a pretty affectionate species. Tia was probably just working hands into the equation or something. She hadn’t really had them before after all.

Tonight’s time together had been a bit more ‘annoyed Celestia’ than usual as she told me bout the half-evacuation of Canterlot that was still being taken care of even after she had gone to bed. Hospital patients and elderly were due back tomorrow, and the nobility was complaining about how they were being forced to turn around on top of suggestions to update the city’s evacuation protocols. Of course most of those plans were for a special route for the lot of them that they could use to get away with more valuables.

All the while, I was being treated like the teddy bear by the amazon that hugged me close to her chest. Except when she wanted to run her fingers along my arms or legs. Four times the woman’s hands got a little too close to my crotch and I was forced to slap them away.

After the fourth time, I looked up at the woman with the aurora of hair and frowned. “What the hell is up with all that anyway?”

Celestia’s mouth closed mid-complaint about some rich idiot and she looked down at me. “Up with what?”

I groaned as one of her hands snaked around before me to grab my thigh. It was her usual move when pulling me close into a sitting cuddle. It also usually turned into an ass grab at the end. “Ever since like…the third night we started doing this, you’ve been grabby and junk.”

And over I went until the fleshy tree trunks that were Celestia’s legs were mashed up against my own. Then her eyes went a little lower. “Well you seem to be enjoying it.”

I covered my erection and blushed. “J-Just because I want to have sex with you right now doesn’t mean I’m…um…” I stopped myself and looked away. There was no real good way that sentence could end. Especially since I couldn’t get the thought of Tia just coming down on top of me to take care of my little problem out of my head.

The goddess let out one of her usual melodious laughs that sounded more like a beautiful musical instrument than something coming from a person’s mouth. “Oh come now Omnifarious, can’t I indulge just a little bit?” she asked before her fingers dug into my skin. “You know what hooves are like. The tactile sensations I get from these are just so much better and so…new!”

“So now you’re doing a Lyra?” I asked the goddess.

She rolled her eyes and a second later, descended on top of me. The weight of her body alone drove me down, although thanks to our respective positions on the couch before Tia came down on me and maybe with a little help from her hands that were still covering my ass, we ended up face to face. Of course, hers still had that little smile on it. “Do you know what its like to be me?”

With the loaded question handed off to me like that, I decided to play it safe rather than shoot myself. “Not really.”

After a few seconds of readjusting, Tia propped herself up on her elbows, and ran a finger along the side of my face. “I won’t lie and say it doesn’t get lonely, but even with close friends and the joy they bring me, sometimes everything is just so boring,” she said before sighing. “I mean, I’ve heard it all before, done it all. Except for this.”

A hand moved to nearly cover my vision, and Celestia flicked me on the nose. “Here, like this, everything’s new. Just touching something is unlike anything I’ve experienced before, and a body with no coat, hair that doesn’t feel the same, toes and fingers, my mouth,” she said with a laugh before bending down to give me a light kiss where she touched my nose earlier. “Teeth…all of it, just so new. So I’m going to indulge.”

I groaned at the confirmation to what could have been called something in my top ten Equestrian fears. “Well crap.”

Celestia frowned. “What?”

“I talked to Cadence today and…” I told her about my little talk with the pink alicorn, Cadence’s little ideas about my relationship troubles. Which of course meant revealing to Celestia all the doubts I was having when it came to her coming into me and Twilight, not to mention Rainbow.

It was…a lot easier that I thought it would be actually. And trust me, telling an immortal goddess that controls the sun and is the nicest person anyone’s ever known that you were having doubts about any hope you might have of making her happy is not an easy thing. But Tia had always been easy for me to talk to. It was that weird calm presence she always had and…well, the fact that we were in my mindscape probably helped.

By the time I was finished, our little lay about seating arrangement had changed, and Tia was back to leaning up against the side of the couch, with me not too far off. She had a bit of a death grip on my hand, but other than that, Celestia was keeping her hands to herself.

“You could have just told me you were nervous you know, that you were having doubts,” she said. “I would have understood. Taken things slower perhaps, or been more open. You don’t have to hide your worries from me Omnifarious. I thought you would have known that by now.”

I sighed and sank into the seat a little bit. “Yeah well, I haven’t had any of those kinds of thoughts…with Twilight,” I added after a moment. “And then Luna opened her big mouth, and you were all…

“Tia, I know you don’t want to hear it but…you really are perfect,” I went on. “Not…oh my gosh let me gush over you perfect like with Twilight but…I can talk to you. I talk to you about anything and everything and…well…I don’t want to mess that up.”

“Do you really think so little of yourself?” Tia asked. “That you could do such a thing?”

I groaned, and snatched my hand away from her before glaring back at her. “Yes!” I shouted before standing up and looking back at her. The fact she was barely shorter than me while sitting down didn’t fill me with confidence. Still, I managed to keep talking thanks to my indignation. “Excuse me for thinking, the pony goddess that is the definition of kind and noble is out of my league! That she’s only doing anything with me because I’m new, and she’s going to get bored with me soon enough. I’m sorry for wondering just how in the world someone perfect like you could even consider a future with someone like me, when you’re obviously going for a rebound relationship.

“Okay yeah, fine, you want to say you’re not perfect! But you know what? That whole modesty thing makes you the next best thing!

“So excuse me if I’m just a little bit worried this whole thing is going to blow up in my face, and Twilight’s gonna run off with you, or Dash is going to get hurt, or…hell, I’m going to lose the one person in this entire world that I can feel comfortable enough around to really let go!

“And you,” I went on. “You go on about how great I am, but I’m not! I am a selfish, self-centered jerk, who is only going to let you down. And then everything’s going to go to hell, and then Twilight and Dash are going to have to run off with you, because there’s no way in hell they’re going to stay with me when everything falls apart, I won’t let them if they tried! Which means all the other girls will hate me and…it’ll all just…fall apart! And...and now I’m rambling!”

Completely spent, I looked around the room, and sighed at its spartan makeup that consisted of just a television and a couch. If I had known I was going into a tirade, I would have built an extra chair to collapse into away from Celestia. But without that, I kind of shambled back to the couch, and let out a yell when my wrist was put into an iron grip before Celestia yanked me into her lap.

The goddess’s arms encircled me, and I didn’t put up much fight before giving into the much stronger woman’s hold. After a few seconds, she finally spoke. “Are you done?”

“…yeah,” I replied as I looked away from Tia. Then she kissed me on the side of my forehead, and I felt even more embarrassed for my outburst that all these stupid pony relationships made me do.

Beneath me, the amazon’s legs shifted a little, and I was forced to lean back just a bit until she guided me around to the point where I was looking at her lovely face again. “Let’s start with that self-evaluation of yours. I know you’re hardly the best pony, but if I only wanted the best pony, I’d be fucking Twilight, and dragging Cadence into my bed and-wow,” she mumbled as her face got a little perturbed. “That was a little…crude. Not that I didn’t mean it, but…human language is just...”

“Well, like I said,” the goddess started again after shaking off her surprise. “If I wanted the best pony, I’d be content with Twilight. If I just wanted a pony that made my tail go up on its own, I’d take Rainbow Dash. But no, I want you. And Twilight, and Rainbow Dash. And if you think I don’t know you after all this time, that I’m suddenly going to run away because you belong to some stupid culture apparently worships violence and considers the suffering other others entertainment, then you are an idiot.”

I frowned at Tia’s explanation of Hollywood, but…I suppose I had been showing her a few too many action movies since we started…doing whatever we were doing. And I wasn’t about to let myself get distracted. “Look, I already did all this with Cadence.”

“And yet you’re still having problems,” Celestia pointed out before her face became a bit more sympathetic. “And are they real doubts, or simple fear of failure that will only come about if something does go wrong? An outcome I’m finding less likely with each passing day I add.”

Celestia’s words put me on the defensive, but it wasn’t like I could get away from her or anything. “Hey I’ve got real doubts.” I tried to make that sound not so pathetic, but ended up failing pretty miserably.

It didn’t help much that Tia smiled down at me. “Like?”

For a minute, I was tempted to just up and tell her about the size issue I was having with her. She might have only topped me by a foot in la-la land, but the two feet Tia had on me in pony world might as well have made her the equivalent to a ten-foot giant in human measurements. It made her intimidating as hell, and the idea of sex...confusing.

But, despite how important a healthy sexual relationship was to a…wider relationship, I thought I needed to go with something a bit deeper than the fear of being crushed under her fat ass while we slept.

“Look…relationships are complicated, okay?” I told her. “I barely understand Twilight, and now with Rainbow around I can barely keep myself on top of things. And now you want to be added to the mix…which you totally deserve, but…I mean…I can’t even wrap my head around it all! So now, I’ve got to juggle a relationship with all three of you, keeping you all happy while I have to deal with all the other crap! Which I’m failing at by the way! I mean…you’ve seen Sunset. I just handed her off to Cheerilee like an idiot without even bothering to see what was really bothering her and I just-I… ”

Celestia’s expression turned into a bit of a frown. “Keep on top of things?” she asked before sighing. “You don’t need to try and shoulder the burden of every little thing you know.”

I frowned back at her. “Says you Miss let’s make me a princess,” I grumbled before letting out a loud groan. “Thanks for that by the way, as if I needed any more weight to add to all this gender confusion crap I’ve got in my life!” Hell, I wasn’t even sure what I could be classified as anymore. A guy? A girl? Celestia said that I was ‘more complicated’ than that, but that sure as hell wasn’t a lot of help.

A large hand clamped over my mouth, and Celestia let out a long sigh. “Alright, listen up. You said that Cadence was hoping for a date with Twilight and their...groups?”

As Celestia released my mouth, I took a few deep breaths before replying. “Yeah.”

“Cancel it,” she ordered. “You’ll be sending the day with me. If they ask, tell the girls I’m going to be…never mind, I’ll tell them myself when I get there.”

I groaned at the amazon. “Ti-ah!”

Any further protests I had tied off as the goddess dragged me face first into her chest before she fell onto her side and dragged me down with her. I tried to argue with her but…well, having my face shoved between a giant pair of breasts made it really hard to argue with the woman they were attached to.

“Now start the movie, would you?”

I let out a noise of protest.

And Celestia relaxed a bit to let me breathe before she looked down at me. “Are you going to keep arguing with me?”

“You going to tell me what we’re doing tomorrow?” I gently demanded, which sounded more like a annoyed question.

Celestia sighed. “Well if you must know, I’m going to inform you of your duties as a princess,” she explained before pausing for a moment. “Help you relax and…well, I need to talk to Twilight and Rainbow before I make any other plans.”

That did little to reassure me. Very little. But I also knew Tia had finished talking on the subject, and getting her to start back up with be impossible.

Plus, I didn’t want to spend the whole night fighting with the goddess over something that may or may not happen. She might have had a point about that when it really came down to it. A lot of my fears aside from the stuff I talked to Cadence about did revolve around what would happen if things went south.

Or why Tia was trying to hook up with a herd in the first place. I was still pretty sure the alicorn wasn’t going to like what she was going to find if we did start going out.

Even if...we kind of did share everything already. More than either of the other girls did in some ways too.

I sighed after she loosened her grip enough for me to turn around. Complicated relationships sucked. I got settled back in when the much larger woman pulled me up against her body and brought her arms around to place her hands on my chest.

“Just um…stay away from the crotch, okay?” I asked in a way that might have sounded like a plea.

A kiss to the back of my head preceded Tia’s response. “Don’t worry, I won’t play with you any more like that. Even if you want me to deep down. Or halfway down at least.”

“Hey!” I replied.

Which Tia responded to with another kiss. “Well this is a mental construction, so you can’t really say it’s just your body that’s just wanting the attention Omnifarious,” she said with a little laugh. “But…I don’t think Rainbow and Twilight would like it if we did more than kiss before the three of us sleep together. Although the thought of having sex as another species does make me curious.”

That took a few seconds to process. “You mean you…with…you and me…here?”

“Is that so surprising? I know you think about it,” she replied softly. “And like I said, I am curious. The two of us...you’d have to explain a few things to me of course, and we’d need a real bed.”

As my mind was filled with the possibilities, I felt Celestia’s hand go where it wasn’t supposed to, and my eyes widened while she spoke. “Although, you may want to make yourself a bit longer. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to feel much as things are now.”

The moan I let out definitely wasn’t one of pleasure. “Just watch the movie please. I’ll…give you a backrub when we’re done or something.”

And so, another night I spent naked next to the most beautiful woman of all time went on without me getting anything but a lot of unsatisfied needs.

Chapter 40: The Incredibly Overly Concerned Friends

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Chapter 40: The Incredibly Overly Concerned Friends

Tia woke up a bit earlier than usual, which left me plenty of time to let my own thoughts stew on the subject of…everything. All in all, it really sucked. Mostly because being alone with your own thoughts is never a good thing. Negative thoughts anyway.

Especially when you can’t really work them out. Confusion leads to anger, which… leads to something else and ends with the Dark Side.

I mean, I had the whole stupid princess thing that would probably be putting me in more public appearances while wearing whatever nightmare Rarity could concoct. Then there was the Relationship of Doom that involved the three ponies I cared most about in the world and the inevitability of its failure thanks to its impossibility. And then there was everything else that weighed on my mind, all the ponies and ponies-turned-people that would be counting on me for help, if they weren’t already that is.

So, yeah. Dreaded duties, worries, and future responsibilities churned inside my gut as I laid in the room alone.

But the time before that was well spent. None of which was put aside for going on about how there was no way in hell Celestia was ever going to fit well in a relationship that might not last anyway, or my growing discomfort about that fucking coronation thing. Something that I was starting to dislike more and more the closer it got.

I might have been able to stomach a dress or two, and the idea of walking around without a pair of balls between my legs was at least manageable when stacked up against the whole pony thing, but...the princess stuff. I couldn’t really work it out.

Sure, it was just a title, but...it seemed to just bring back everything I hated about my current situation. I didn’t mind having ponies expect things from me, but when those expectations were to be princessy...it just put an uneasy feeling in my gut the likes of which rivaled that of the ones that came up whenever I thought about the inevitable end of the romance that was destined to go south.

But even so, there were some good things.

After my little rant, we watched some movies, I listened to the rest of how Celestia’s day went, and she did the same with mine. Of course I didn’t bring up the other stuff that was bothering me, like the relationship or my gender identity crises. Tia also decided to share the news about Sunset’s little sketchbook again, and explained things to me as only a proud parent could. She also went on for a few hours about what the girl had done to help coordinate everyone’s return to Canterlot.

That did manage to cheer me up a little. Sunset...she needed to be acknowledged by Celestia in more than just an unconditional love kind of way.

And we kissed a few times, although Celestia seemed to lose her enthusiasm about the fifth liplock in. Apparently, pony tongues and mouths were superior to human ones. Her words, not mine.

I was just glad she stopped with the kissing. Being pinned on the couch by the most beautiful woman in existence as she explores the makeup of your teeth with her tongue was not a way to keep things PG for long. Especially considering the fact she was naked, and her hands had an odd need to feel every inch of my body.

When morning came, and I opened my eyes to the colorful sight of Rainbow’s mane. As usual, she continued to snore away with her mouth under a silencing enchantment. Just looking at her, I couldn’t help but wonder if her troubles sleeping the other night really were a side effect of not getting a love siphon, or something more…mundane.

Part of me thought it was stupid, but I also couldn’t help but wonder if she thought that me and Twilight might ditch her, and the lack of our presence by the pegasus just played on those fears.

Then an even worse thought came to mind, one that I had been considering for a few days. What if Rainbow was only doing the relationship thing to keep us on friendly terms? She could have guilted herself into saying yes on our first date!

Although, that had mostly been because of me egging her on. If I had just kept my mouth shut, half of the crap I was dealing with at the moment wouldn’t have been a problem.

And I would never have slept with Rainbow.

That little thought made me...a little sick with myself.

Dash wasn’t just a notch on my belt or conquest. I cared about her like no one else. But...well...there I was. I banged Rainbow Dash, and more than once.

Then there was the fact that Celestia would have been taking up the middle of the bed instead of Rainbow if things had gone a bit differently. I was a little grateful that hadn’t happened yet. Even with the little step forward the two of us had made in the dream house, I was still plenty nervous about trying to date a creature twice my size and at least fifty times my life experience under her belt, not to mention more magic than anyone had a right to.

As the image of the pegasus was replaced with the giant alicorn in my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder how in the hell was a relationship between the four of us could work for about the millionth time. But attempting to back out of things now that the ball was rolling was impossible without causing a pair of ponies some major heartache.

Twilight stirred, and I shoved all my worries onto the back burner as I looked over to the purple goddess to smile at her. “Morning beautiful. You have a nice night?”

She smiled back. “I had a weird dream, I was eating ice cream.”

“That’s not exactly-”

“It was on top of your vagina,” she went on, which shut me the hell up while her face took on a perplexed expression. “It was cold, but when I sucked the ice cream into my mouth, it was warm. How can something be cold and warm at the same time?”

My face went blank as I tried to process what she had just said. “You dreamed my pussy was some kind of ice cream dispenser, and the thing you found weird was how you could feel hot and cold at the same time?” How Twilight’s mind worked still confused me so much it wasn’t even funny.

“Well it’s contradictory,” she complained. A second later, Twilight must have picked something up from my body language, or just wanted to get away from her less than nonsensical dream, because she changed topics on me. “So how was your night? Did you and Celestia have fun?”

All of a sudden, I wanted to keep talking about Twilight’s dreams. But...delaying things would only make her worry something went wrong between us. “We talked about stuff and relaxed like always,” I said while the alicorn’s horn was wrapped in a little purple glow. “She did get up a few hours earlier than usual though.” Which was pretty weird considering how she nearly always woke up at the same time every morning as far as I could tell.

“Well, considering what happened at Canterlot, she probably wanted to get an early start,” she replied before dropping her head back onto her side of the pegasus a few seconds before the blue pony’s snoring reached my ears along with a loud smack of a kiss. “Rainbow, it’s time to wake up.”

“Muuuuh, don‘t wanna.”

Twilight let out a little sigh, and then rolled over onto Rainbow’s stomach all the way, getting a groan from the pegasus. “Come on Rainbow, time to get up.”

Then, she kissed her. Or to be more precise, covered Rainbow’s major air hole with her mouth. A few seconds later, and Rainbow’s eyes shot open before she struggled around for a bit and Twilight removed her mouth to let the pegasus breathe.

The sudden decrease in oxygen, which might have been a complete lack considering how pony noses were positioned, did its job of speeding up Rainbow’s heart in a mild panic, or at least made her body react with a surge of energy that had her pushing Twilight’s shoulders up and her lips off of Rainbow’s mouth. “Gah! Twilight!”

Twilight giggled. “Well you’re awake now, right?” she asked before moving Rainbow’s hooves away and falling back on top of the pegasus. Then the horny little alicorn went to work on Rainbow’s neck, and I could hear the loud smack of every kiss as she worked her way up to the Dash’s mouth.

“Somepony want to tell me what’s going on?” Rainbow asked before Twilight smacked her on the nose again.

I did my best to shrug while in bed. “She gets like this sometimes…or a lot of times really.” In fact, I think Twilight had been repressing her sexual desires a little bit since Rainbow had joined our little group.

Twilight kissed Rainbow on the lips again. “Well I just had a nice little dream, and now I’m hungry.”

While Rainbow was subjected to the attentions of an aroused alicorn that continued to cover her in wet kisses, I found myself in need of an old morning ritual that I hadn’t performed since…it actually took me a few seconds of thinking to remember the last time I had taken a shower in Equestria. It had been awhile. “I’m going to go get cleaned up.”

Twilight looked up and took her mouth off of Rainbow’s ear. “Okay just transform, and give me a second to concentrate on the spell.”

“I meant I’m taking a shower!” I snapped a second before I rolled out of bed.

And noticed the harshness in my words when my hooves touched the ground.

Both Rainbow and Twilight were giving me wide-eyed looks, and I sunk in on myself a little bit for losing my cool over something so stupid. Spending a couple of hours by myself hadn’t done me any good, but I didn’t need to dump my problems on the girls. “Sorry, I had a…rough night.”

That proved to be the wrong thing to say too.

“Did something happen between you and Celestia?” Twilight asked with hesitation in her tone.

I groaned at the question and my own stupidity. I had known Twilight would take any news about last night in the bad kind of way, and yet there was my mouth letting slip the information.

In all honesty, I didn’t think anything in the way of bad could happen between me and Celestia if I tried. Two times I had really yelled at her, and during the first time she ended up agreeing with me, while the second time last night she had just…let me vent my frustrations and held me afterwards while I got everything under control.

Since ending up with Celestia in my dreams, I had come to appreciate the feeling of that close contact with another person in its non-sexual way. It was reassuring, warm, protective, and bracing all in one simple motion. It was probably what I loved about the goddess the most. She could somehow be a sexy as hell, and yet manage to to change from alluring to comforting at the drop of a hat when I needed it.

I kind of wanted to stay in that memory longer, but with the girls waiting on an answer, I had to give them one. “No.”

Then Rainbow spoke up in her usual Rainbow-way. “Uh…did you want something to happen?”

I gave the pegasus a confused frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Did the two of you make out?” Twilight clarified.

The question made me cringe for a second before I straightened back up and glared at the two of them. “NO! She kissed me a few times and we talked about stuff, then we watched a movie and talked about more stuff like we always do before I helped her relax with a massage! We don’t...”

Once again, I found myself regretting my tone. Especially since both of the girls had pulled back their ears and I kind of did just tell them me and Tia had...experimented; on her part at least. “Sorry. I just…need a shower,” I grumbled before heading into the bathroom.

The hot water would help me clear my head.

Sometimes it really sucked being a selfish prick.

Especially when said selfish desires went hand and hand with not wanting to upset ponies. Yeah, there was the argument of how that was an altruistic desire, but when disappointing ponies made you more angry at yourself than sad at their disappointment, it was more of a selfish selflessness than it should have been.

Plus, it kind of made me angry at other things.

Like the fact they didn’t come into the bathroom and check on me. Sure, I had given them every ‘FUCK OFF’ signal possible and probably let a few slip with my pony body language, but it still would have been nice if Twilight or Dash had walked into the room and talked to me. Even if I would have also found it annoying as hell and probably gotten even more pissy.

Basically, I was just in one of those moods that wouldn’t let me be anything but angry. The hot water helped though, if just a little.

A few seconds after I got in the shower, muffled cries from the bedroom told me what Twilight and Dash were up to. I could tell by the voice it was Rainbow doing down on the alicorn instead of Twilight doing the pegasus.

That, and how the talker was shouting out both instructions and encouragement while using very scientific terms. A few more weeks, and I was pretty sure Rainbow would be able to name every single part of the pony sex organ there was.

The bath was something out of a motel room, just constructed from crystal instead of the usual materials. There was even a shower head and everything else that should have been there. Although the tub looked a little wider than usual and had more box shape at the bottom that the rounded sides that curved upwards like a human tub. Obviously, the whole thing had been built for ponies rather than something with two legs. It gave my quadruped body better footing as the water fell down from above.

As my level of dampness increased, I felt a bit of the tension melt away.

I had forgotten how good a hot shower felt. Not that I had been missing them, or maybe I had. But after my time at the hive, I got used to not having a lot of things. Then when I got reintroduced to ponies, well...didn’t really see the need to start some of them again.

But it still felt good.

And made me a little uneasy for some reason.

I mean, back when I was a human, hot water was one of the ways I relaxed back in the day, and I had forgotten what it felt like. Despite the warmth hugging to my body, I couldn’t help but shiver.

Of course, it wasn’t quite the same as when I was a biped. My coat made things feel a bit different, and I looked at the shampoo in confusion. Just how in the hell was I supposed to really work that kind of stuff into my scalp with hooves? Even washing horses with hands required a few tools to scrape off water and work with their manes.

So I just stood there, letting the water run over me and help me wash out the anger while I listened to Twilight and Rainbow go at it for nearly half an hour. From the sound of things, Twilight got her release fifteen minutes in, and worked on Rainbow for ten before the pegasus reached her limit. As for me, I found myself needing to readjust the temperature knob.

I took the three minute silence that followed as my cue to finish my shower, shook myself off like a dog, and then came out into the bedroom where both of the ponies were laying on the bed in each others pony-arms while the smell of what they had just finished doing lingered in the air.

With my indignation burnt out and the cries from minutes ago kind of making me horny, I walked up and slumped my head. “Hey girls.”

Twilight was the first to look up. “Hello Fae, you…feeling better?”

That, I honestly didn’t know.

But, I wasn’t about to dump my problems on their backs. So I gave them both a little smile and did my best to push what was on my mind to the dark recesses like usual. “I’m…okay,” I assured them. “Just…one of those mornings, you know?”

“Eh, I used to get those all the time,” Rainbow said before scooting away from Twilight a little bit and motioning me towards her with a hoof. “Now come here.”

I looked back at my still slightly damp fur and mane that was still pretty wet. “Rainbow, I just got out of the shower. We’ll get the bed all wet.”

“Yeah, like we didn’t do that the night before, or just ten seconds ago,” she replied before giving me a lecherous grin. “Now get your plot over here. You’ll feel better when we’re done, promise.”

Rainbow was right of course, spending the morning in bed with the girls did cheer me up. Or help me relax or…whatever. The end result was enough happy chemicals got generated to suppress the other forces at work in my brain trying to bring me down. Then we all had the brilliant idea of taking a shower together in the square tub only built for one pony before we got the whole place all kinds of wet.

I did get a good wash of my mane though. There was a special brush that ponies used which Rainbow had left near the sink the night before, so I hadn’t seen it while in the shower.

By the time we were done washing, brushing, and watching Rainbow properly preen Twilight since my wings fixed themselves and the alicorn took forever when she did it alone, I was feeling kind of refreshed. Rainbow even left the shower looking marginally pretty when it came to her mane, which usually just had the appearance of something the wind had murdered thanks to all the flying she did.

Don’t get me wrong, thanks to Celestia I still thought she was sexy as hell. But...well...even if I hadn’t spent all that time with Rarity, I still would have thought it looked like a rat’s nest.

Then I had the misfortune of looking at myself in the mirror on the way out. My hair was still a little damp, but Twilight managed to comb it into something approaching its usual level of Fluttershy-ish primness that nearly touched the ground and framed both sides of my neck at different points. My black coat was also gleaming, and there wasn’t a feather out of place on my wings. The later was more to be not being a real pony than anything else, but still…

I sighed at the mirror, and remembered one of the two bigger things dragging me down.

“Something wrong?”

Twilight’s voice coming from behind me made my whole body tense. But I managed to get myself back under control easily enough before she noticed anything beyond me just looking at the mirror. “No, I’m good,” I mumbled before looking away from the reflection and heading out the door.

Not even a second into the hallway, Twilight was back beside me with a worried look on her face. “There really is something bothering you, isn’t there?” she asked.

I remained silent.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she went on.

That made me a little angry. Why people…or ponies thought the best thing to do was talk about problems never made sense to me. Talking about stuff just brought everything to the surface where it didn’t belong. “No. I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong.” Nothing they could help with anyway.

Rainbow came totting up from behind to match pace with the two of us, and Twilight continued to look at me with her God damned concerned eyes. The kind it hurt to look at because they showed Twilight was in pain, and I was the cause.

The whole thing just made me angry.

Not at Twilight.

At least, not all of the anger was directed at Twilight. Maybe five percent of it because she didn’t feel like dropping the subject. The rest of my anger was directed at the situation, and me for not being able to deal with it better. Which I should have been able to. I mean, I had worn dresses before when acted like a living mannequin for Rarity, and even gone out in public with them on a few times. One more day shouldn’t have made that much of a difference, but…

For some reason, it was determined to.

“You okay?”

I had to stop myself from screaming at Twilight when I heard the question. Which turned out to be a good idea, as it was the pegasus who had asked it.

I’ll admit, I didn’t react as harshly as I did when Twilight asked. Mostly because I knew I really must have been showing the strain if Rainbow Dash had noticed something wrong with me. Twilight had been with me for months and learned to read me like a book, but Rainbow was...well, if something wasn’t right in front of her, jumping up and down while screaming its head off, then she wasn’t going to see it.

“I’m. Great,” I told the pegasus firmly before throwing open the doors to Cadence’s private dinning hall with my horn. I didn’t even need to drudge up the anger to use my magic. I had plenty on hand.

Despite our morning activities, the three of us weren’t hideously late to breakfast. The food hadn’t even been set out, and the other royal trio was nowhere to be seen. The rest of the gang was present though. Applejack making small talk with Fluttershy, and Pinkie apparently getting Trixie to do magic for her as the unicorn used magic to rearrange the shape of a balloon animal in a flash of light instead of the slower method. As to where the balloon animal came from…well, I had seen Pinkie pull weirder stuff out of her mane.

Of course, being the queen of tact, Rainbow delicately asked the other question on my mind. “What the hay is Trixie still doing here?”

The unicorn looked back to Dash with a frown on her face. Then her expression lightened considerably and became a bit more hesitant when she noticed me and Twilight standing next to the pegasus. “Um, Trixie was-urk!”

Cut off by the pink pony-arms that dragged her over in a hug that cut off her windpipe and had her turning a darker shade of blue, Trixie only managed a minor struggle against Pinkie’s friendly strangulation. “I invited her silly! We’re all over that amulet thing and friends now, right?” Pinkie asked before immediately going on. “So that means she has to stay for the big party tomorrow!”

As Pinkie released her choke hug and Trixie was able to breathe again, Twilight let out a little giggle. “Of course you can stay Trixie. It’ll be good to see another friendly face.”

Equestria seemed to take that as a cue, and my ears twitched as I heard the telltale sound of hooves connecting with crystal before the doors on the other side of the table opened via magic and two more mares walked into the room. Cadence looked as hot as ever with her supermodel body and perfectly combed mane topped by her little crown that rested on top of it. Rarity had a bit of a limp in her hind legs as she spared a glance at Cadence and I concentrated on her Scent.

Lust and a bit of guilt along with some embarrassment assaulted my psychic senses. Going by that and the fact Cadence was an alicorn and they were coming to breakfast as late as we were… I smirked at the marshmallow unicorn. “So Rarity, you and Cadence have a fun morning?” I asked before making a show of looking around. “And where’s Shining Armor? Already wear him out?”

Rarity blushed and looked away. “Omnifarious,” she mumbled.

“Shiny had to get an early start with the coronation preparations and told me to leave everything to him so we could all spend some time together this morning,” Cadence explained before she leaned over to kiss Rarity on the cheek. “But he should be done in time for lunch.”

That little reminder made me wince. “Oh right, um…about that lunch date thing,” said. Then, I told them that Celestia had other plans for me when she was due to show up in the empire later this afternoon.

Cadence got a little curious at that, but since I had no idea what Celestia was planning, I couldn’t give her anything more.

As our little conversation ended, Twilight walked up to her in-law and cleared her throat. “Oh Cadence, there’s something...um…” she made a little motion with her hoof, and the pink pony princess’s face lit up in recognition right as I backed away to give them room.

“Oh! It has been awhile,” she said before assuming the position.

“Sunshine sunshine ladybugs awake! Clap your hooves and do a little shake!” they both said before going through the motions that ended with the two of them spinning around and shaking their rears at each other.

I simply watched the long awaited performance from the front row seating that I was given. Seeing the whole thing in person, it was way more...erotic than I remembered. I mean, Cadence and Twilight were shaking their pussies around for crying out loud!

With the ritual complete, Cadence let out a joyful giggle and turned around to sit on the sparkly floor. “It’s been awhile since we did that. What brought it on?”

Twilight smiled back. “Oh, just a bit of nostalgia,” she said before turning and walking towards me. When she got to where I was, the alicorn’s smile turned predatory, and she leaned to whisper in my ear. “Okay, you owe me a horn-job.”

The mention of the little deal I made with Twilight the night before didn’t even make me flinch. I mean, sure I was kind of...well...the idea of me doing the human equivalent was kind of terrifying, but it was for the lady bug dance. In comparison to what I got, it was a small price to pay.

And...Twilight had kind of been wanting me to expand my bag of bedroom tricks.

Despite the bad news about lunch, breakfast was a mostly refreshing affair. Cadence spent most of her time talking to Rainbow Dash about everything from what the three of us did for our first date, to asking her what she liked most about Twilight. The answer kind of surprised me.

“Well she’s an egghead, but not the kind that makes you feel stupid or anything and…I kind of get her,” the pegasus explained with a little blush. “I mean, the first real date kind of date we went on, she wanted to go to this traveling museum and she was…well, she got all excited and tried to share what she liked with me in a way I could get it. Plus, she was…kind of like me if it had been a Wonderbolt museum, ya know? I thought it was…pretty…cute.”

After the chorus of dawwws which I joined in on got Rainbow to blush and look away, Cadence thankfully left the pegasus alone for the remainder of the meal. At least when it came to conversation, I did notice her giving Dash some pretty measuring looks though. It didn’t take a genius to see what the Alicorn of Love was doing. From what I knew about how everything worked in Equestria, Cadence was able to tell if ponies would mesh well at a glance. It didn't take long to see she was seeing how Rainbow would fit with Twilight.

I just sat back and enjoyed the company. Focusing on everyone else, it helped me get my head back to where it needed to be and forget my troubles.

Then breakfast ended, and Rarity told me she needed to put the finishing touches on my dress.

With me inside it.

And I remembered why I had been in a bad mood just a few minutes ago.

“So Rarity, what’s up with the uh...weird walk,” I asked the unicorn as I followed her down the sparkling hallway towards some room she had set up to do her magic. And what she did with clothes really was magic. Rarity could put stuff on and take it off with a flash. Not super speed, but an actual magical flash of light that was like some kind of super short-range teleportation with incredible accuracy.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I started to regret them a little as the marshmallow's facial fur went bright red. “Well um...remember what you said earlier?” Rarity asked before we came to a door and she opened it with her magic. “She really did, ahem...wear Shining Armor out before the two of us could...enjoy the morning together.”

I stumbled. A Lot. It was only my wings that kept me from getting my horn stuck in the floor from the sudden offset of my balance. Then, after my recovery, I mangled a few words like, “Guh ge bu...huh?”

Rarity cleared her throat and looked away. “Well, you asked darling.”

In the ensuing silence I noticed our surroundings. As far as rooms granted to royal consorts, the thing was...pretty dinky. The entirety of the space was maybe ten paces across, with nothing but a mirror, my dress set up on a pony mannequin, and a box of materials that I was pretty sure Rarity brought with her from Ponyville. Considering just who Rarity was, and the ponies she was sleeping with, I had been expecting something much more grand. Like her own personal design studio or something.

Once I had recovered fully, I gave Rarity a worried look. “Why the hay are you even telling me something like that?” I sorted of demanded in one of those pleading tones that really doesn’t get the level of authority I needed across.

“It’s not as if I have any other friends I can talk to about this,” she replied, a little confused. “Cadence and Shining are Twilight’s family, so it would just be a bit too weird. Pinkie Pie is...well, Pinkie. Applejack is just as squeamish as Fluttershy when it comes to physical relations, and Rainbow Dash...ahem… You’re pretty much the only pony I can talk about these things with. Plus, you asked.”

I lifted a disbelieving eyebrow. “You want to...swap sex stories now? Or just brag?”

Ponyville’s gossip queen rolled her eyes. “You make it sound so vulgar,” she said before clearing her throat and looking away. “And...well, I need some advice. You see, Cadence is… well...she...”

The only thing that moved for a few seconds were my eyes while I put everything in order in my head. From the sound of things… “You mean...Cadence is the one that’s got you...um...limping?”

Rarity cleared her throat and looked away for a few seconds. “I’ll spare you the details but...let’s just say Cadence’s love magic includes spells that um...allow her horn to...well...it was better than anything Shining Armor has managed since we began seeing each other,” she said before looking back at me. “Not that I’m meaning to pry but...it Twilight um...just as...um, active?”

“I thought you heard all the noises coming from the treehouse back when we started dating,” I replied. Not that the little purple monster had toned it down in the following weeks when it came to the getting part of our bedroom relationship.

Although, looking back on things, Twilight had seemed a bit less happy about the whole bedroom thing until I spread my legs.

The blush increased, and I sighed. “Look, from what I understand, alicorns get hungrier than normal ponies, and I mean that in every possible explanation of the word,” I told her while keeping my own voice level. “They eat more food, and they have a much higher libido. Although, Twilight seems to like giving it just as much as getting it so...I guess Cadence is the same way.” And Celestia as well, but I didn’t need to let Rarity know that.

Rarity nodded. “Yes, Cadence was very...” She cleared her throat and looked at me. “Thank you I...well, with the way she acted towards me last night and this morning, I was afraid Cadence was trying to overcompensate for a lack of...real feelings. If Twilight is just as...enthusiastic. I...thank you.”

A few seconds of silence followed, and then Rarity apparently remembered why we were in the room. She looked over to the dress and quickly got to work taking it off the fake pony while the two of us talked about things that had nothing to do with what alicorns did in bed. It actually helped me not think about what was going on around me until she finished with the last minute adjustments and did a few extra things using a kit that had nothing to do with sewing. So when the talk about what everyone had been doing in Ponyville during the time me and Twilight had been gone ended, Rarity shoved the horror of my situation right in my face.

I stared at the mare looking back at me with unease. My discerning eye told me the light green gown she wore was…just as gorgeous as she was. And that’s what bothered me. I knew she was gorgeous, on an academic level at least. She had a perfectly plump plot that gave her dress plenty of back, long hair that had been done up in a nice braid to make her seem a bit more regal, a slightly longer than average horn with a point at the end sharp enough to pop balloons, a pair of wings that were preened to perfection, and she was covered in a dark coat that went perfectly with her green eyes.

And then there was the makeup. The awful makeup that accented everything perfectly and made the air around her eyes just seem to sparkle. It turned what had been a naturally beautiful mare into something on the level of three real alicorns that stood with their heads above most other ponies, one of which I was sort of forming a relationship with.

Of course, this was all academic. I wasn’t so far gone that I could find myself getting hot about my own reflection.

But the fact that I was looking at myself, looking like I did, it made me more than a bit disturbed. I wasn’t just hot, I was…pretty. Not just someone a guy would want to bend over a table and stick his thing in, but someone that elected a stammering ‘gawish’ kind of response that made someone go ‘she’s too beautiful to bang’. Kind of like how Celestia was when I first saw her.

“Oh, and I decided to go with the silver horseshoes,” my personal fashion designer, as in the only pony I ever let put me in a dress, said as the objects in question floated over in front of me. “I know Twilight had gold, but silver goes much better with your coloration. Now, do you think we should add something distinct to the outfit? Make it really you?”

The words ‘cutie mark’ went unsaid, but...that was all that it could really mean when it came to ponies.

I ignored the question. Instead, I just continued to look at the mare staring back at me on the other side of the mirror.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you looked at yourself and asked, how in the hell did I end up here? And then you look back, and it doesn’t seem to be anything too big. A favor here. A little playcation there. Some residual wearing down of one’s hesitation as the unnatural becomes more commonplace.

All I did was say yes to a dress and sex, and maybe some more dresses in the privacy of Rarity’s shop because she told me that ‘I must’ in her over the top Rarity fashion. And well...she needed my help. Helping the girls...it was what I did in Equestria.

Next thing I know, I’m standing in front of Rarity, wearing a pretty pony princess dress, getting ready for my induction in the hall of aforementioned royalty. In one day I would walk into the crystal throne room, Princess Celestia would give some big speech, welcome the newest Princess of Equestria. Then I was supposed to address the crowd about how I was going to fulfill my role of a princess or something.

Tia actually wanted me to think of what to say on the spot. Speak from the heart and all that crap. Considering Twilight’s little speech was a mirror to a certain human that need not be named, I was expecting the stuff that made everyone in Equestria go Broadway on command to kick in.

The weirdest thing about it was, as I looked into the mirror and asked myself, is this my life now?

I didn’t feel all that creeped out about it.

But I didn’t feel comfortable about it either.

I felt…nothing.

Apathy.

Empty.

It was like finally getting the title of princess cemented me in the role I had railed against for over a month, and…slowly learned to tolerate the months after that.

But…a crying baby on a plane was tolerated.

A rank odor was tolerated.

It was disliked, but dealt with it. Endured until it was over.

There might have been no pleasure at seeing myself decked out in full gown with lace and everything else Rarity could put on my dress to make it princess-worthy, but there wasn’t any revulsion or hesitation either. I felt no need to compromise with my thoughts to say it looked like German military wear, tell myself it was all for the ponies of Equestria, or something else. I simply didn’t care.

I didn’t care that I was wearing a dress.

“Is something wrong darling?” my all too observant dressmaker of a friend spoke up. It really made we wish she was as oblivious to a pony’s body language as I was. The damn girl knew me better than I knew myself sometimes.

It was the worry in her Scent that got me to answer. “It’s just…is this my life now?” I asked in response with a bit of a whine.

I may have shoved the question off when Twilight was asking, but decked out as I was and dealing with a different pony, I might have let my resolve slip a bit. Plus, I was in a dress. The dress helped chip away at my resolve too.

Chip away a lot.

Rarity looked at me with an expression that said she was lost, but trying to figure something out with that raised eyebrow of hers. “Pardon?”

I sighed. “I don’t hate being in this dress.”

Instantly, the concern changed to annoyance and the expression to a frown. “Yes, well I’m glad the dress I slaved over for days to make perfect for one of my dearest friends on her special day managed to not be thought of as some kind of rag,” she grumbled.

That made me wince. Even if I couldn’t resist Rarity’s question, it didn’t mean I could hurt her. “No!” I replied quickly, almost pleading for forgiveness with that single word. “I mean, I don’t feel bad wearing a dress. That…well, it kind of…scares me.”

The frown disappeared, and concern reappeared. “What do you mean?”

I tensed, unsure of if I should proceed or not. My stupid gender crisis wasn’t Rarity’s problem, it wasn’t anybody’s but mine. A little part of me even wondered if it was a problem at all. I had already switched species, not counting the changeling magic. And it wasn’t even to something resembling a human. I became a fucking horse! What was gender after a loss of species, combined with a complete change in the manner of motion?

But on the other hand, my guy-ness was one of the few things from my old life I had managed to hold onto, mentally at least. I had turned into the worst male pony in existence, but I was still male. I might have been a kind of sexless bug that would lay eggs one day, but I was a guy where it counted.

Then I started giving it to Twilight as a girl. That was when it really started I think. After that, she got all excited at the prospect of going down on me and…sex as a girl. I’ll admit, it felt good. Then we started going at it more and more until it was a nightly thing. Then I started wearing a few dresses for special occasions like my date with Celestia…and now I was being crowned as a pretty pony princess.

And…I wasn’t freaking out about it.

At least not like I should have been.

I should have been angry, disgusted and distraught. I should have been raving about the idiocy of making me of all people a princess. I should have been doing something other than just standing there like nothing was going on!

It made me uncomfortable, but not in and of itself.

“I’m…not sure,” I admitted with a droop of my head.

Rarity looked me over again. “Is it the dress?” she asked before sighing at my lack of response. “It’s not the dress, is it?”

The unicorn’s concerns sealed the deal for me about talking to her about it. “Look, Rarity. It’s nothing you need to be worried about. It’s not the dress, it’s not you, it’s nothing you did. It’s just me being…” I looked for the right word to say, and came up confused.

I was a guy. Guys didn’t worry about emotional ‘who am I’ crap. But not worrying about it had apparently let all the girly stuff creep up on me until I was un-guy-like enough to worry about it. So I could either be more like a guy and not worry about something until I woke up one morning to find I was having my period, or be less like a guy and worry about how less and less of a human male I was becoming in my mind.

“…stupid,” I finished rather lamely.

It was an un-guy like finish, but I at least held to the spirit of the thing. Rarity...I didn’t want to bring her in on my problems either. Especially since she was the one who made most of the dresses I wore.

“But you’re worried about it?” she went on.

With no way to get out of it, I had to agree on that with a nod.

And then the angry frown came back to dominate the unicorn’s features, with a glare accompanying it as Rarity stuck her face in mine. “Then I’m worried about it too!” she exclaimed right in my face hard enough to make me take a step back.

Not letting up a bit, Rarity let out a disgruntled groan. “This is just like with that stupid amulet! Here you are with a problem, and you just up and decide to put everything on yourself!” she went on. “How did that work out for you by the way?”

I gave Rarity an even look. “That and this are completely different.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “You’re not fighting some kind of insect alicorn bent on turning all of us into food! Which means it’s something I can help deal with. Now talk!”

Another step back didn’t give me much room, as Rarity was up on me a moment later. With no escape that didn’t involve teleporting, I sighed and hung my head again. “Look Rarity, can we just…not?”

She gave me another look over and straightened up a bit. As I still had my head hung low, it made her look pretty imposing. “Do you know what it means to be a friend?” she asked me.

The rather childish question got a frown out of me. A confused frown, with maybe a hint of insulted anger.

But Rarity was off again before I could talk. “Princess Celestia may have sent Twilight to Ponyville to study friendship, but I’ve learned quite a bit about it as well,” she went on. “It’s more than just doing favors for your friends and being there for them. It’s sharing in their joys, their triumphs, and their pain. And so when I see one of my best friends, a friend who has spent hours and hours in my shop to help me with my work when she could have just sent a changeling to do the job for her, the one I can share things with that I can’t with anypony else …I worry, and I hurt.”

Her expression changed, to a pleading one, and Rarity backed off a bit. “So please, tell me what’s wrong,” she finished. “Let me help you.”

And…hell, even if Rarity hadn’t been a pony, I probably would have caved at that.

So I picked myself up and looked at her in the eyes. That kind of killed the last of my resistance.

“Ever since I came here, I’ve found myself wrestling with…well…being here, like I am I mean,” I explained. “It’s not some evil tendencies junk that I’m having to deal with, or anything like that. It’s just…I just...I...”

I looked at myself in the mirror. “When I see…that,” I said while gesturing towards the mirror. “Part of me says that I should be angry at having to wear a dress at all, or put on makeup, or braid my hair and get ready for some stupid little crown and be called a princess. But I’m not! At least, not in the way I should be.”

I sighed. “I see a beautiful mare, in an amazing dress with a gorgeous mane, and…and there’s this little voice in my head that says I should feel good about it,” my soft voice said as it filled the room with a slightly depressed tone. “But I don’t. And I don’t want to either! I don’t care either way, and it’s weird, and I can just shove that to the side when Twilight needs me for something, or when I’m with Celestia at night, but then there’s times like this when I’m just stand here looking at myself and…” I couldn’t finish the verbal thought. Mostly because I didn’t know how to.

Rarity sat down on the floor doggie style. “Have you talked to Twilight about this?” she asked.

I shook my head. “She’ll just get freaked out and think it’s her fault for not being able to figure out the stallion gender transformation thing.” Something I was starting to suspect was impossible.

“Princess Celestia?” Rarity asked hesitantly. It was probably still weird to her that the goddess that had been around before her grandfather was in diapers was basically having dinner with them once a week.

“She’s all, learn to accept the new you,” I said in a mocking imitation of her voice. “Like that’s a lot of help! Even if there is some new me, then I don’t even know who the hay that is! I don’t even want there to be a new me! I liked the old me just fine!”

The old me kept me from thinking of ponies as food and just replacing Twilight after I got to Ponyville. Without that strong sense of identity, I sincerely doubted I would have bothered to throw my lot in with Princess Celestia way back during my first visit to the Crystal Empire, and Chrysalis would be the one moving the sun around in return for the loving worship of everything on the planet.

So, I was a little attached to the old me, thank you very much.

Rarity nodded, and then stood back up on all fours to get a little closer. “You know, when I first went to Canterlot, I found myself wanting to be a Canterlot pony more than anything. It was the center of art and Equestrian culture. I spent months training myself to get rid of my normal…metropolitan accent and pick up what I needed to fit in there,” she said before sighing and shaking her head. “But despite my accent, my looks, my sense of fashion, I am still me. I am still the mare that my parents raised, that lives in Ponyville, and everything else.”

“Yeah I know,” I said, a little uncomfortable at having to bring up the show. “You had that big party the same day as Twilight’s birthday and then told Tia how you should never forget where you came from or something.”

My rundown of Sweet and Elite had Rarity wide-eyed for a moment, and then she shook her head. “Right, you’ve seen…never mind. And that wasn’t what I was talking about,” she added at the end. “Look, I can’t just make this go away for you. But… I can change the style of my mane, and I’ll still be me. I can change the way I talk, but the pony speaking would still be the same pony I am now, and I can change what I wear, but I’d still be the same pony I am underneath.”

The simplification of my problem made me want to shout in the damn girl’s face that it was nowhere near the same, that my problems weren’t just a stupid change of style, but…that wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere and just make Rarity upset. She was just trying to help. Just because the help sucked didn’t give me any right to be angry at her.

So I kept my damn mouth shut, and just smiled a little. “Thanks Rarity.”

Thankfully, I didn’t have to add some BS words to the fake smile on top of the two I had because fate decided to throw me a bone and have the door slam open to admit the best princess in Equestria, surprising the hell out of both me and the marshmallow.

And that was before she spoke.

“GREETING COMPATRIOTS!” Luna said in what was a pretty low voice for being excited as she was. The ancient alicorn had a bad habit of using a voice enrichment spell from time to time when it was the most inopportune times. Sometimes I had to wonder if she even knew she flipped the thing on. “Tell me Dame Rarity, how fares our newest princess-to-be?”

And thus the little bit of excitement I had upon seeing Luna, which was still a pretty rare sight for someone who hung out with Celestia on a nightly basis, died.

The unicorn managed a hasty bow, and I saw Luna’s expression become a little strained. “We are in private my friend, no need for that,” she said in a normal tone before waving off the bow. “I have come to agree with Twilight Sparkle’s disdain for seeing those dear to me lower themselves when public ediqute does not require it. Now, let me get a look at your work.”

“Hello Luna,” I said as the dark alicorn finished checking out my ass and came around to look at my face. “Is it lunch time already?” That was the time Tia had said she would be showing up, if not later. And why I had to cancel my lunch with Cadence.

A few more seconds of examination passed before Luna finally spoke. “The hour is halfway past ten in the morning, but Celestia decided to push us thanks to Sunset’s growing discomfort,” she replied. “Despite the body of my adopted niece’s apparent design, it was not meant for prolonged placement upon her mother’s back. She is currently um…walking it off, she said.”

It took me a few seconds to work out just what Luna had said. When I did, I might have forgotten all about my discomfort. “Wait a second, you mean…Sunset...rode Celestia here? The two of you just…flew?” I didn’t whether to laugh, or wince in sympathy for my tenant.

Luna’s confusion was apparent, even without my ability to Smell her emotions. “Of course. The rail line going from the Empire to Canterlot has been disrupted thanks to the other day’s events. We would have teleported, but measure of the damage needed to be taken once Canterlot was set to task of returning families to their proper place. And it gave time for Celestia and Sunset to talk.

“Now come, you are to be presented to her at the earliest opportunity,” the alicorn added after looking me up and down. “And you seem more than presentable. I take by the makeup, Rarity is finished with her fitting, correct?”

I groaned and looked away. Sure Tia was going to see me in the damn thing at the coronation, but more than once would be…annoying.

No, it would be worse than annoying. At least in a public place, I wouldn’t be subjected to any stupid complements or anything else Tia had in mind. Like teasing, which I know she would do.

And if she didn’t, I knew Rainbow Dash definitely would.

“Is something amiss?” Luna asked before she completely demolished my personal space with a worried look that filled my vision.

As I stepped back, Rarity answered. “I am afraid Omnifarious is…having difficulties.” Then she gave me a sympathetic look.

Luna nodded and looked over to Rarity. “Yes, I suspected as much from my sister’s conversation with young Sunset,” she said before turning to me before I could ask just why the hell she would be suspecting about anything. “But you seem more than presentable. Now come along.”

With little other choice, I sighed and did just that.

We walked out of the small room that had been set aside for my fitting and into the crystal hallway. All the glittering lights coming from the walls and way the place just kind of lit up from everywhere all at once made me glad we didn’t spend too much time in the Crystal Empire. The novelty of crystal castles grew old real fast.

“Give voice to your worries,” Luna told me.

I focused on the alicorn that was walking just a little bit ahead of me, and quickened my pace to keep up. “It’s…nothing beyond the usual,” I mumbled before looking away from the larger pony.

The wing she threw across my back in a comforting gesture was…unexpected.

“If your troubles have become what you usually experience, perhaps my sister is right to be concerned,” Luna said, which made me look up at her instead of the wing. “Tell me, what ails you?”

I didn’t know if it was just that easy for some ponies to read me, or if Equestrian coincidence was working overtime to make everybody talk about the same damn thing when I was having a bad day. With the fact they wanted to talk about it being the cause of the bad day of course.

So, I did the usual and focused on something else. Something dark and evil that was better left unknown. One of the great mysteries of Equestria, to which the creature in front of me had an answer to. “Hey Luna I’ve been wondering, just how do you bring out the stars at night?” I figures if someone took an interest it her work, it would easily get her sidetracked.

That got a bit of a head tilt out of the horse. “Pardon?”

“It’s just something that’s been bugging me. I’ve watched the sun set and the moon rise a lot since I got to Equestria,” I told her while not bothering to mention the horror I felt every time I saw such a sight. “And they’re just up there so fast. How do you do it?”

The confusion I was picking up fro Luna didn’t clear up. “I am not sure of what you speak.”

Feeling a bit nervous, I took a second to try and reword my question. “The stars. They’re up the second Celestia lowers the sun and I’m kind of curious how you put them up there so fast.”

Luna blinked. “You…think that I…place the stars up in the sky?”

And then, she laughed at me. It wasn’t quite as musical as Tia’s, but…was still pleasant enough that I didn’t want to shove a hoof in her face hard enough to break bone. Not that I would ever do anything like that to Luna of all ponies. I think the lack of any meaningful contact between the two of us allowed me to keep my fan boy infatuation with the Princess of the Night.

“Celestia did say you have an odd idea of how the world works but…oh heavens above,” she got out before another fit of giggles stopped her.

Then she turned to me, and must have noticed my frown, because the alicorn’s face became a warm smile I was used to seeing on Celestia’s face. “I do not place the stars in the sky every night Omnifarious,” the alicorn assured me. “They are always there, it is simply that my sister’s sun is so bright they cannot be seen when it is out.”

I…blinked. The normal laws of the universe reasserting themselves caught me a bit off guard, and it took me a moment to process. It was a reassuring fact actually. And I had to smirk at the whole thing.

I mean, stars were basically giant balls of burning gas, billions of miles away. There was no way Luna could simply create the damn things. The thought of such a thing, even for Equestria, was pretty ridiculous. The movement of the sun and moon I could accept, but the nightly creation of stars? That strained credulity quite a bit.

“No, I simply move them as to better decorate the night sky,” she went on in that same happy tone before looking away from me.

For a few second I found myself unable to walk as a pony, and stumbled forward thanks to the disconnect that bit of information caused between my brain and my legs.

With hooves on the ground being easily heard, Luna obvious picked up something was wrong and turned her head back at me. “Is something amiss?”

I regained my footing, and looked up at the alicorn’s face. “You…move the stars?”

“Yes,” Luna replied.

“The stars, the stars at night?” Which were a lot further off and had several among their number a good deal bigger than the one star that existed during the day according to my rather meager knowledge of astronomy. And that wasn’t even starting to take into account the stars that had burned out but were so far away they could still be seen. “Those stars?”

Luna gave me a blank look for a few more seconds. “Yes. I was taught the spell when I was much younger by Starswirl. Although I know not where he learned it, such magic is beyond the abilities of unicorns. He couldn’t even cast it.”

That was…much more confusing.

Not the Starswirl thing. I was more concerned with the fact Luna could apparently move light particles and God only knew what else that was billions of miles away with her horn. It made Celestia’s throwing the sun around look like nothing.

Unless...that wasn’t how Equestria worked…

You know what? Fuck it. I give up, Equestria will never make sense, I told myself. It was a completely different reality with its own little set of rules that did whatever the hell it wanted.

After I had gotten over the revelation of Luna’s other nightly duty, the night princess was actually a pretty pleasant conversationalist. For all of the ten minutes I had to talk to her anyway.

“So uh…you’re not angry at me for kind of giving Celestia this whole herding idea?” I asked as we rounded a corner in the crystal hallway. “Accidentally I mean. Because, it was totally an accident.” Which it was.

As I remembered, Luna hadn’t been too keen on the idea.

Luna turned to look at me for a moment with an even expression, and then she let out a sigh before giving me a smirk. “In truth, I still find the idea of more than one special somepony a bit odd, but…I have seen this change’s effect in the world of dreams, and…I have not seen any ill effects with all the ideas it has created in the dreams of my ponies.

“Ponies naturally seek harmony after all. A generation or two and a…herd of three to four ponies will probably be the norm,” she said before clearing her throat. “And to be honest, I have not seen Celly this interested in a relationship since before we began raising the sun and moon.”

I didn’t have a chance to ask Luna just what made her so interested before she opened the door, and my spider sense began to tingle as I was greeted with the most horrifying sight of all time.

Now, I had seen some pretty frightening things during my time in Equestria. In fact, my natural form was easily in the top three, with Chrysalis being number one. Sure the Celestia-sized bitch might have been shaped like a pony, but she looked more like someone had taken one of those monsters from Aliens and ponified it without getting rid of the exoskeleton.

But when I went into that sitting room and saw Celestia, Twilight, and Rainbow standing there on the tail end of a conversation, with Sunset sitting on the a couch not too far away… It was like one of those horrific moments when your old girlfriend meets up with your new girlfriend before the girlfriend of Christmas future appears with her really long horn and sparkling aurora hair. Plus there was also Sunset, who was like…well…some kid I was helping to take care of while she just happened to live at the same address I was just happening to be staying at.

So...yeah, all the major girls in my life...in one room...with no Pinkie Pie to distract them.

Luna wasn’t any help of course. By the time I turned to look for her, the door had already shut.

“-s why I think we just need to be supportive of whatever-oh, Omnifarious,” Tia said in a way that just let me know whatever they were talking about probably didn’t have anything to do with something that was not me.

Three girls, or possibly four, talking about me.

And what made the whole thing even scarier was that if everything worked out perfectly and I got the happy rainbows and sunshine ending to whatever hellish dating sim I had stumbled into, my future was going to be me in a constant three against one scenario that was now standing before me.

Yeah, apart from the threesomes, or whatever the hell was supposed to happen with four ponies in bed, polygamy really sucked. And hell, I didn’t even know how a four pony orgy was supposed to work! Nevermind Twilight’s diagrams that she showed me.

And I use that term loosely, as the pictures my pretty purple pony princess pinned up to facilitate her lectures was practically pony porn that came with instructions.

I took a look around as I walked into the room. Both Twilight and Rainbow Smelled worried. So did Celestia, but she didn’t reek of it as badly as they did. If I had to guess, she was…apprehensive, that was the word. Not quite worried, but...a long way from happy.

And of course, I couldn’t help but offer the perfect baiting question. “So girls, what’s going on?” I asked as I looked around the room.

“Wow,” Rainbow said, making me focus on her for a second while she dropped onto her hooves. “Fae you look…wow.”

It was a simple comment that made my mind erupt into a civil war. On one hand, Dash had…complimented my attractiveness. On top of which, she wasn’t laughing at me. It felt nice to be noticed by one of the special ladies in my life. On the other hand, she was noticing me for being a pretty little pony in a princess gown with glitter on my face. In other words, for all the wrong reasons.

But before I could blush, or maybe freak-out, the little purple alicorn took center stage in my attention with a stomp of her hoof. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Twilight demanded in a voice that required the descriptive of hurt.

Which in turn made me completely lost, and worried, and maybe a bit hesitant. “T-Tell you what?”

Before Twilight could go on in a voice that might as well of been a hammer to my glass heart, Celestia stepped forward and put her wing on the smaller alicorn’s back. “Twilight,” she said before the little alicorn backed off while the giant one looked over to me. “I spoke with Twilight about some of the things we discussed last night.”

The myriad of possibilities that particular sentence created ran through my mind at a million miles an hour. Feelings of anger, betrayal and all that good stuff mixed with fear of just how badly Twilight was going to feel for not noticing anything and…well, I latched on to all those dark side emotions so I could shoot Celestia a good death glare. “You what?”

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Rainbow spoke up with an annoyed voice as she hopped up into the air. “So you’re a girl, what’s so bad about it? Especially when you look like that. Ponies would sell their right wing for a body like yours.”

I pulled my head back as Rainbow zoomed in close, and glanced over to Tia for help. In the face of Rainbow checking me out again, my anger at the alicorn for spilling the beans on my whole gender crises kind of just got pushed to the side.

“Rainbow,” Celestia spoke in a less than perfect tone that I had heard her use when slightly annoyed before a light golden glow surrounded the pegasus and pulled her back.

With a breather and a pony to focus on, I glared at Celestia. “What the hay Tia? I…what’re you doing telling them that junk?” Once again, Twilight was freaking out about something and Rainbow… Okay, Rainbow not giving a shit, or maybe being put off about the whole thing, actually kind of hurt a little bit.

“She told us because she’s worried about you!” Twilight snapped at me. “I thought you were adjusting, what with your growing comfort with having sex and the way you didn’t put up much of a fuss the last time we went on a date, but Princess Celestia said you broke down last night and had a freak out on top of everything else!” Then, before I could try and get all indignant at Twilight’s attitude, she hit me with the big shimmering purple eyes of hurt pony feelings. “Why didn’t you tell me you were still having problems Fairy? I could have been working on my gender spell all this time.”

It was hard, but I managed to stay angry. I had to remind myself that they were getting mad at me for shit that really wasn’t their business, but I still did it.

“Because I knew you’d do this!” I fired back.

To which Twilight countered with her own angry words. “What’s this?”

I reared up and waved my hooves around a little to help emphasize my point. “Because you’d get all freaked out and worried about nothing!” I nearly shouted before throwing my hooves wide a second before the ache in my hind legs made me drop back down onto all fours. “I don’t know what the hay Tia’s been telling you, but this isn’t a problem!” I raised my tail and pointed towards my mare parts to emphasize the fact.

And of course, Celestia had to chose that moment to cut in. “It is if it’s causing you stress, Omnifarious.”

“No. You want to know what a real problem is Tia?” I pointed my hoof at the human in the room. “THAT’S a problem.”

For the first time since the whole pony intervention began, Sunset sat up and acted like she was paying attention. “Excuse me?”

I looked up and let out a groan while asking whatever pony powers that be to give me strength. Then I looked back at Tia. “Sunset is still human, she can’t use magic, and hay, I still know she goes to bed depressed and practically cries her eyes out because of the way things are, and that’s after all the improvements she’s made!”

It was a bit underhanded of me to kind of just out Sunset’s private problems like that, but everyone already knew about Twilight and Dash’s personal problems and Celestia…I wasn’t really sure she had any. Plus, it worked a lot better than just pointing my hoof and shouting ‘Look! A distraction!’.

But, as I was dealing with a being that predated America, Celestia didn’t even look over to her daughter in concern the way the other ponies in the room did before speaking to me. “I am well aware of Sunset’s problems in dealing with her handicap and will give her all the love and support she requires while we fix it.”

“You…cry yourself to sleep?” Twilight asked in concern I could both Smell and hear.

Sunset groaned at looked away from the little alicorn with a hint of a blush on her cheeks. “Not for awhile,” she said before turning her attention to Celestia. “And what the hell do you mean you’re well aware?”

That question, or maybe the slightly angry tone in Sunset’s voice got a reaction from Celestia. The goddess turned her head and frowned at Sunset out of the corner of her eye. “Do you honestly think that the last thing I do every night isn’t to check up on you? To look into your room and see how you’re doing?”

For a second I wondered just how the hell Tia managed something like that, but then I remembered that magic telescope of hers. In that light, I honestly didn’t know if I didn’t find her actions incredibly sweet, or just really creepy. The human must have been feeling the same way, because it took the remaining wind out of her sails. “Umm…I…thanks for caring…Mom,” Sunset said as she looked away.

And thus did their little family moment end, and the monstrously huge horse that was twice my size was back on my case with an even expression. “Now if you’re done trying to sidetrack us, perhaps you’re ready to have a serious discussion about your issue before we have a repeat performance of the last two times you let something like this get out of hoof?”

“I…wait, what do you mean two times?” I asked, completely confused. I knew there was that one little incident not but a few weeks back, but I couldn’t think of a second one.

Celestia raised an eyebrow to give me an ‘are you kidding me look’ before she let out a sigh. “When your guilt override your sense of reason and had you facing Chrysalis alone in a battle you knew was a death sentence, and then there was that little breakdown you suffered that had you denying reality for the better part of a week,” she said before her expression hardened. “This time, I have no intention of standing by until you practically destroy yourself.”

A second later, the goddess walked up to loom over me. “So we are not leaving this room until you tell everypony what is going on,” she said sternly before her expression changed to something much more benign. The whole thing was really Gandalf from Fellowship of the Ring when he talked Bilbo into giving up the ring. Which really made me regret ever showing her that movie. “And you let us help you through this.”

Surrounded on most sides and with my back to the wall, I let out a sigh and looked away from the caring goddess. Mostly out of embarrassment that this was even a problem for me when Sunset was in the same damn room. Poor distraction it might have been, I really meant it when I said her problems were far more worthy of being focused on than mine.

But with two alicorns, a pegasus, and a human looking at me, plus the stuff I had talked about with Rarity just a few minutes ago…I gave up. Hell, with the timing of everything, it was like Fate, Faust, or Equestria itself had up and decided that I needed to get everything out in the open.

Stupid Equestria.

“Okay you win,” I said before letting out a sigh. “But…can I sit down first…and maybe get some water?” I did have some physical dietary needs after all.

A few minutes after I agreed to talk and Celestia had a servant bring everyone some snacks, I found myself laying on the couch with my head in Sunset’s lap, with my ears being scratched by the girl while Rainbow and Twilight munched on some Crystal Empire cuisine.

I had tried to dissuade the redhead from kind of treating me like a dog but...it felt good, almost ridiculously so. The tension that was building in my body for God only knew how long lessened to the point of nothing, and when she sunk her claws into this one spot on my back that was just an inch away from my tail, I was nearly paralyzed with pleasure. A good ten seconds of that girl’s hands on me, and my ability to resist anything had gone right out the window.

Human hands were truly a terrifying thing.

We had also taken the time to undress me. So I was naked, with my head resting in my…tenet’s lap. I didn’t know if the fact I wasn’t a little creeped out by that meant I was adjusting to my life in Equestria, or if Sunset’s touch was just that relaxing.

So, what with me being relaxed and all, I just went and started talking. “Look, I know it may not seem that big a deal but…after I became…what I am…well…”

“You changed species,” Sunset spoke up. “And not some alicorn change where you got some extra limbs. You went from two legs to four. It’s a big deal. I know from personal experience.”

All of a sudden, I had a feeling that Celestia had brought Sunset along for more than just her magic fingers. And probably what they had been talking about on the flight over from Canterlot too.

I cleared my throat and moved my head while flicking my ear to get Sunset off my head. Unfortunately, she moved to my back and…well, back scratching feels much better as a pony than it ever did as a human. It also made me wonder if Equestrian ponies were part dog.

“Okay fine, I changed species,” I said as I managed to rally my resistance to the others. “It’s a big upheaval and all, but I’m dealing with it.”

Then of course, Tia just had to speak up to contradict me. “No your not.”

Her words made me flinch, even with Sunset trying to distract me with her hands.

“Well it’s not like something bad is going to happen if I’m a little uncomfortable…” I stopped myself before I said anything about wearing a dress. “…doing...pony stuff,” I finished lamely.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “You mean bad like going crazy and mind-controlling a town?” she asked before continuing on before I could tell her I wasn’t going to go all Lesson Zero on everyone. “Or bad like locking yourself up in a room for days while all the ponies who love you are so worried they start losing sleep, can’t eat, and have to deal with a bunch of bratty nobles to keep Equestria running?”

Then Celestia stepped in to add even more fuel to paint an even worse picture. “And there is the fact that retreating into your own mind really is an option for you,” she told me.

“I’d never do something like that!” I insisted angrily. The thought of it was just…disgusting. I had responsibilities in Equestria. They might have really been Twilight’s responsibilities, but they were still…also mine. “Not when other ponies need me.”

The goddess nodded. “And so we come to one of your other problems,” she said. She also knocked my train of thought off the tracks with her statement.

“Huh?”

Celestia sighed. “Wanting to help ponies is very admirable Omnifarious, but…I think you’re using it to distract yourself from your own problems, and that worries,” she told me.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh please that’s just-”

“I spend at least six hours with you every night,” she told me. “And while some of your humanity is still foreign to me, I know what goes on in your head.”

If Sunset hadn’t been putting her hands on me, I probably would have tensed up at that. As it was, I was just…defensively curious. “Oh yeah? Like what?”

For a moment Celestia looked over at Twilight, then to Rainbow Dash. By the time she got back to me, I had the distinct feeling I should have kept my mouth shut. “Aside from your need to help ponies,” she said, stressing the word to the point I could hear the term ‘obsession’ instead. “You ignore and avoid personal issues like the plague, your anger is deep rooted and your entire species seems to view violence as the answer to the majority of its problems. Put those three things together, and…” Celestia’s face shifted to one of tension. “What it creates is something very…worrisome.”

For most of her little speech, I had plenty of counters that I had to repress.

What was I supposed to do when my friends were needing help? If it took my mind of the fact the majority of the past couple of weeks were spent with a pussy between my legs, all the better.

And of course I avoided personal issues. That was how the human race survived! Be it by hobbies, alcohol, sex, ponies or…you know, the illegal stuff. As a former biped, not dealing with my problems until they either went away or beat me down into a haze of permanent ‘meh’ was what we humans did when we couldn’t just get rid of them.

And how did humans get rid of problems?

Violence of course!

Violence was the solution to all problems. You just had to use enough of it.

But the umbrella solution that was violence didn’t work very well when it was something about me that was the problem. Or ponies. So I had to focus on more important things.

And it wasn’t like my problems were...that...big...a...deal…

At least in comparison to the stuff that Sunset was going through. She had been a magicless human for years. If she could do that, then me griping about being a pretty pony princess seemed petty.

Which I wasn’t!

“Hey, avoiding stuff is how humans deal with problems,” I told Tia with a frown before turning my head to my backup. “Right Sunset?” She had been a biped long enough to understand that.

Once Celestia got properly told off, this whole mess would be over with and I could go back to…whatever the hell I was supposed to be doing. To be honest, I really wasn’t sure since Tia had Twilight cancel our lunch date. Although since we still had a bit of time before noon, we could probably work it back into the schedule.

Speaking of which, the purple alicorn got a little frown on her face, and nodded. “Hmm, you know…now that I think about it…that’s how everyponies counterparts tried to solve their problems too.”

“Huh?” Rainbow said, speaking up for just about the first time since I found myself trapped in this little ambush.

“The girls on the other side of the mirror,” Twilight explained. “Back when um…” she paused and looked over to Sunset.

The redhead sighed and reached over to absently scratch my ear. “Short version? I saw Rarity and her clique as a potential rival and split them up.”

“And they never got back together,” Twilight added. “As far as I can tell, they never even tried. One little petty thing got between all of them, and that was it.”

Rainbow frowned. “Well that’s stupid! What the hay kind of friends break up after just one little petty fight?”

For a moment I thought about pointing out the whole Gilda thing, but…that really wasn’t a fight, more like the griffon had been caught being a douche, and refused to tone it down or try to make amends. But then I remembered the focus had kind of got off me, and didn’t want to spoil it. There was the chance that Twilight would get everyone side tracked, and I’d be able to slink away.

Then Celestia looked at me so hard that I could almost feel the temperature of the room rise, proving my chance of this whole thing blowing over was just about as fat as her ass. “So we’re going to be dealing with these things the pony way,” the goddess announced sternly before her face went back to its normal compassionate self. “And that means letting the ponies who care about you in to help.”

Of course with the giant pony cheating by being all nice again, and with both of Rainbow and Twilight in the room, and Sunset doing her hand thing to my ear, my resistance just kind of crumbled.

“And how the hay is that supposed to work Tia?” I grumbled before sighing. “It’s not like I can change back into a human. I’m not even sure I want to.” Living as a pony in a land of ponies, I could do. It was the gender thing that was the issue.

“And I’m already mixing two transformation magics just to look like this. I don’t want to know what adding a third spell would do.” That wasn’t even accounting for the side effects of mixing changeling and gender swapping magic. Not to mention it had only been a little over a month since those few changelings were exposed. Any long-term side effects were still in question.

Celestia was silent for a moment, and then shook her head as she spoke. “You misunderstand,” she said before looking at me. “I do not give some kind of instant solution. But I offer my support. And if it helps, I will rescind my decree that forces changelings to use unicorn transformation magic to appear as ponies.”

It didn’t. I had tried the whole natural look with Twilight in private, and insect chitin didn’t lend itself well to being all touchy feely with ponies. Something that I had kind of grown to like since becoming a pony.

“Still don’t see what the big deal is.”

I looked up and glared at Rainbow. Along with Twilight, and even Celestia seemed a little miffed. Sunset...well, I couldn’t see her face, but the tension in her legs spoke volumes. As for me, I had one of those moments where it took a few seconds to process just what I was feeling.

And then it came out in a rush.

A big, angry, rush.

“I’M NOT A GIRL RAINBOW!” I shouted in the pegasus’s face, causing her to back up before I noticed I was floating in the air and flew back to plant my butt on the couch. “I...I’m not supposed to wear dresses, or makeup, or...look pretty.” By the time my tirade had ended, the fire had gone out of my statement and my head hung low. And that was just the start of it.

And I kind of felt like crying, which only made me feel worse.

But instead of letting the water run, I went and used my mouth.

I jumped back up into the air and threw my hooves out at the giant pony that was an inadvertent cause of my problems. “And then there’s Celestia!”

“What about me?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“There’s you, and me, and all of...this!” I shouted as I waved my hooves around to vaguely indicate Rainbow and Twilight. “I mean, seriously? How in the hay is all of this supposed to work out? You and Twilight, maybe. You and Rainbow, you and me? That’s just not...it’s not...I can’t…”

Hell, I couldn’t even verbalize how everything I knew about Pony said this whole thing was going to end badly. It was going to turn out that Rainbow had only agreed to go along with me and Twilight because we pressured her. Then, Celestia was going to figure out I wasn’t worth being with, and Twilight...well...in a choice between me and Celestia, I didn’t stand a chance. Not to mention the fact that Rainbow and Twilight’s relationship would never be the same. I didn’t know if Rainbow would hate herself for lying to Twilight, or Twilight would be the one with the self-loathing for forcing Rainbow into the relationship, but either way it would be bad.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Twilight move, and that brought up another problem in my mind as I stopped flying and made contact with the ground. “And then there’s this whole princess thing shoving it all in my face!” I went on. “And when I looked into the mirror just a few minutes ago when I had my dress on I didn’t even feel bad and-and I’m supposed to feel bad about wearing a dress! I’m supposed to not like sex as a girl, or be scared of it or...or something! I-I’m supposed to...to just...I don’t...it’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore! AND I HATE IT!”

Out of breath, I panted after finishing my outburst. The ponies just stood and stared at me for a moment, and then the entire world lurched when Celestia picked me up in her forelegs for a hug. Then some purple blob came in from my right side, a blue one from the left, and...I think it was the crippled unicorn-turned-human that made me snap.

Twilight, Rainbow and Celestia feeling bad for me was one thing, but Sunset Shimmer? That was so many kinds of wrong that I couldn’t help but feel completely disgusted with myself. And with that feeling the last of my dignity went out the window and I really did let the tears flow before I buried my face in Celestia’s shoulder to let the big pony’s coat soak up my tears.

Chapter 41: The Incredibly Stubborn Helpful Streak of a Solar-Powered Pony Princess

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Chapter 41: The Incredibly Stubborn Helpful Streak of a Solar Powered Pony Princess

Once I started crying, I found it pretty hard to stop.

It wasn’t because of some weird physical ailment, or some kind of hormone thing. Sure, I was in a girl pony’s body that could pass inspection through an X-Ray machine, but it was a still a pretty crappy facsimile that couldn’t taste stuff, store food properly, or do a few other things that a normal pony with a horn and wings did, like molt.

No, what made it hard for me to stop were the floodgates. A pair of fucking emotional floodgates. Once I had accepted the extreme crappiness of my situation, everything I was keeping pent up just came pouring out and dumped itself into the forefront of my brain. Absolutely everything.

I mean hell, just look at where I was compared to where I had been.

Back on Earth I had an okay career that I enjoyed most of the time, good job security, a decent place to live, and more than enough in the way of pleasantries and distractions to say I had a pretty good life. It was a life that was at least in the better half of the human population when it came to where everyone stood on the happiness scale.

Then it all gets taken away, and I find myself living the life of a magical bug whose sole purpose is to steal life-force from other creatures. While I may have improved my lot in my new life with a pseudo-pony upgrade, everything had still been turned around and upside down as far as all the old rules I used to go by went.

I might have been living in Equestria, but the sparkling newness of the place had gone down a bit when I started noticing a few things in the way of differences. I was a quadruped instead of a biped, the laws of physics seemed to take a holiday every other day, and the very last bit of my personal identity that I had managed to sort of hold onto across the dimensions in the way of a penis was slowly slipping away.

Yes, I had managed to get together with Twilight, but…even that bit of sunshine was about to disappear over the horizon when we had our inevitable four-way breakup and she chased after Celestia along with Rainbow Dash; if the pegasus was even going to be in their relationship afterwards. As things were, I didn’t know if they would both leave me in the dust for something better, or if it would be just the purple one.

So, no more family, no more humanity, no more masculinity, and the one bit of true joy I had going for me had turned into a ticking time bomb thanks to some stupid offhand comments about polygamous relationships. Then, to top it all off, I was…getting used to looking like a girl. Which was the first step to being okay with being a girl, which would be followed by liking being a girl, and that would end with me pregnant and laying on my side as I had to nurse a pair of foals that had come out of me a few months prior.

Not to mention the whole egg-laying thing.

So…yeah. I cried.

I cried a lot.

I blubbered into Celestia’s coat as she gently held me against her big pony body and hung her head over my shoulder in a motherly hug. I wept when Sunset got out of the huddle hug to let the goddess carry me over to the couch and lay down with her mag before draping a wing across my back.

I sniffled when Tia kissed me on the head, and just gave me a light but warming smile when I finally looked up to her face. Plus Rainbow’s, who was floating over her shoulder and giving me a concerned expression. Twilight was left in the back, making my conscience knock me upside the head with a big stick because of the worried look in her eyes that I had put there by breaking down like a complete pansy.

Plus, there was the Smell. The delicious Smell of worry and misery hung in the air around me as it came from the ponies in the room.

“There we go,” Tia said softly, making me look back up to her. “Feeling a little better?”

The question made me do a bit of a self-diagnostic, and I sighed. Then I slumped my head back down onto the ornate couch she had set me down on. The damn thing wasn’t even that soft, made for looks instead of function.

“Why would I be? It’s not like anything’s changed,” I whispered in despair. Crying may have helped produce some happy chemical in the brain, but after I Smelled what I had just done to Twilight, I only felt worse.

“Why now?” Sunset’s words helped a bit, if only for the fact they made me confused enough to not be depressed for a few seconds as I worked out what the vague question meant in relation to my breakdown.

But it did nothing for some other emotions I was feeling at my situation. And with the depression out of the way, my anger might have shown through a bit stronger.

There were really two answers to Sunset’s question, but only one I thought any of the ponies would understand. The first was so painfully obvious I wanted to smack the red headed idiot upside her noggin. The other…

I was a changeling, which meant that I had about eight thousand voices whispering in my ear whenever I slept. They fed me information, but they also attempted a kind of weak mind control, or mental programming. It was something the Hive needed for new changelings to learn as fast as they did. While it didn’t work that well on me since I already had some prior knowledge about just who I was and the way the world worked, constantly having whispers in my ear telling me what to do and how everything was going to be just fine.

But all that changed when I became the new Queen. I didn’t need any more mental programing, no more reminders of how I was supposed to think. No more false assurances.

As sick and twisted as they were, they had done plenty to reassure me I could keep going, while not being strong enough to actually believe anything I didn’t really want to.

So, no. I didn’t tell the girls about my lack of...subliminal confidence boosters. I went with the other thing that was ruining my new life. Not to mention pissed me off to no end.

I grabbed my discarded dress and hoisted it up in my magic. “Oh I don’t know, maybe because of this!” I said before raising a hoof to my face and the runny mascara. “Or my bucking makeup! Or maybe-or maybe, because I’m going to have to go up there tomorrow in front of all of Equestria and have every pony look a the new pretty pony princess!”

My rant would have lasted longer, but Celestia crouched down to wrap me up in a hug again, this time complete with wings and forelegs, and pulled me down for a light kiss on the cheek that covered the left majority of my face. “Okay, that’s enough now,” she told me gently while her fetlock ran up and down my foreleg.

As much as I wanted to tell her it would never be enough, my guilt quickly appeared to remind me that yelling at Sunset Shimmer was on the top of my forbidden things to do. What made it even worse was that as I looked at her, I could see the pity in her eyes. Sunset fucking Shimmer, the crippled pony that was considered a pet at best and some kind of monstrous freak of nature at worst by Equestria at large was pitying me.

It made me realize just how bad things had gotten for me.

Not to mention made me feel like a complete piece of shit. I had so much more than her, and here she was, pretty much forced to feel sorry for me.

“Sorry Sunset,” I told her before hanging my head.

And then, I did something that would have normally left my stomach turning. I started making excuses. “I just…this whole princess thing…I do my best to ignore it, or look past it, or…get by, but…it’s just throwing everything that’s wrong with me in my face and…and it’s just promising things are going to get worse!”

Ponies would start calling me Princess again, and I’d have to wear a bunch of stupid fancy dresses to a bunch of snooty parties like Rarity went to in Canterlot; not to mention all the ones I’d be taking her to thanks to some offhand promises. I’d be complimented on my looks, and every fucking guy in the city would be imagining me bent over a table with their cocks shoved so deep in my pussy they were guaranteed a baby, while about one in four would openly solicit me for the chance in real life.

Hell, considering that herding was now a thing, that number would probably increase to more than half. And I’d have to be nice to them.

Not nice like I was to the stallions in Ponyville, even during my first week as a mare. I mean, I actually liked the guys in Ponyville, looking at my pussy or not. They were a lovable bunch of ponies, even counting the disappointments, like how Time Turner wasn’t really a Doctor.

“Uh…yah know, you could just not wear that stuff,” Rainbow pointed out. Of course, it was the idiot jock to not to grasp the major complexities of court.

So I looked over at her with a glare. “I can’t do that!”

But Rainbow just rolled her eyes and floated over in front of me to throw a hoof towards Celestia. “Yeah well, Princess Celestia barely wears anything at all, and Twilight goes around naked for most of the time too! So what’s the big deal about you being naked too?”

“Except for the big important stuff like Twilight’s coronation!” I shot back at Rainbow. “Even Celestia had a dress on for that Rainbow! Ponies expected her to dress all fancy, so she did. And I’m a brand new princess of a whole different species! So I’ll have to dress up all the time when I go to junk for the nobility, which will be about every other night! Which I’ll have to! I’m the thing that came out of nowhere that every pony is going to want to meet, and judge, and probably see if they can buck! Which, oh hey now that Tia’s come up with this whole more than two to a tango, THEY CAN!”

I panted for breath after shouting in Rainbow’s face, and then blinked when I saw her ears lower and her body cringe from my verbal assault. By the time a golden glow wrapped the pegasus up to take her away, I was back to kicking myself for yelling at Dash.

Before I could do more than lower my head and sigh, Celestia spoke up. “Alright, that’s enough,” she said before letting out a long breath. “I can see this is a much deeper problem than I first believed it to be.” She looked over to the human and other two ponies. “Would you leave us alone for a moment? I would like to speak with Omnifarious in private.”

“What?” Twilight asked, a little panicky. “No, Princess, we can-”

Celestia cut her off. “Twilight, I told you I would be handling this from the start. And Cadence does still want to meet the two of you for lunch,” she reminded the alicorn before I saw the usually incharge goddess lower her head a little. “Please?”

Of course the girls agreed, although Sunset got a little hesitant about it before Celestia made her go with a little visual prodding. And then I was alone with the sun goddess.

As soon as the door shut, she looked back with a concerned look that made me just feel worse about letting this whole thing out in the first place. “Why didn’t just you say something about not wanting to be a princess when we were deciding to raise you to royalty?”

“Like what I want matters,” I mumbled before crossing my front legs and looking away from her. Hell, Twilight didn’t get much of a choice for her alicornination, why should I be any different?

A second later, Celestia was in my personal space and blocking the light of the crystals that shined down from above. “What are you talking about? Of course what you want matters.”

I shook my head and turned my attention to Celestia’s hooves. “The simple fact is, I need to do this. While changelings will never really be a part of pony society, ponies need something to assure them that they’ll never be a danger to it either,” I told her before looking into the alicorn’s eyes with my own. I wish I could say that I looked all determined and junk, but the truth was my face probably looked even sadder than Tia’s. “So no, what matters is what…ponies need.”

That caused me to let out a snort of a laugh. “I guess I really do have a problem with the whole helping ponies thing,” I admitted before doing my best to get serious again. “But you can’t say we can just forget about this whole thing, or that I’m wrong. It’s…the responsibility of the people in power to use what they have to make the lives of others better.” Not exactly a Spiderman quote, but it was close.

The goddess sighed and shook her head. “How is it that you can say something so endearing and yet so infuriating at the same time?” she asked before her face became hard again. “And while I do agree that everypony should do their best to make the world a better place, if you take on too much a burden while resenting your tasks, it will only end in tragedy.”

The line about how dirty jobs that somebody had to do came to mind, but with Tia up in my face as she was, I got a little defensive.

Aggressively defensive.

“Well I’d be fine with it if not for you!” I yelled at her. After all, if not for Tia shoving her big butt into what was already a delicate relationship, I would have been fine!

Sure, having to do all that girly stuff got to me a bit, but with Twilight waiting for me at the end of the day, I could get through anything. And…okay, maybe the thing with Rainbow had me a little panicky that we were going to end up hurting her, but…that was a danger in every relationship, and I would do everything I could to avoid it!

But Celestia…the giant pony actually had the gall to look a little surprised and hurt at my accusation!

And then my psychic senses might have Smelled she wasn’t faking so… Oh God damn it all to hell, I told myself before sighing. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“You’re still worried about how the four of us will mesh?” the goddess asked as her expression took on that damn compassionate look again. “Omnifarious, do you honestly think that I would be doing this if I wasn’t certain of the outcome? I have watched Twilight for nearly all her life, and know she is a wonderful mare. And although my time with Rainbow Dash has not been nearly as long, I still know her to be an amazing mare that I respect. While the reveal of my intentions might have come earlier than I had wanted, I am more than willing to wait until the three of you are ready to give me a chance.”

Even with Celestia being all understanding, I groaned and rolled onto my back. “But that’s the problem!” I exclaimed with throwing my hooves up. “I…the one good, or really good thing I have going for me, it…I just…Twilight’s crazy about you! She’s going to be all into you, and Rainbow…well…you’re you! And they’re them! And I’m just…if they have you, then…what’ll they need me for?”

I mean, despite her protests, Celestia was pretty much the personification of the perfect pony princess. She was kind, gentle, sexy, loving, and smart. Not to mention Twilight went gaga over her pretty much on sight.

“You think I’m going to soak up all their attention?” she asked in a confused surprise.

After rolling back over, I let out another dejected moan. “That and about a million other things.” Although I wasn’t about to go into the whole problem about how there was no way I deserved Celestia, or how she would see past my pony exterior and to the jerky human that existed underneath, or even if everything did work out long enough for us to get to the sexual part of the relationship, the size difference would be a pretty big hurdle to get over.

“And yeah, I know it sounds selfish,” I went on as I looked away from the goddess while feeling like a complete douche. “But...Twilight, she kind of depends on me, you know? And so does Rainbow, and if you’re there...what will they need me for?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they had been a mistake. Not because of the self-centeredness of them. I already knew that horribleness about them before I voiced the thought. After all, if Celestia, Twilight and Rainbow wanted to get together, if they’d be happier, was is really right of me to stand in the way? Or stay in the relationship when I knew it would cause conflict within the group?

No, what got me really worried was how much terror I Smelled coming off of Celestia as soon as I finished speaking. For some reason, whatever I had said scared the shit out of her.

“No!” she told me quickly. “I would never try to supplant you, I would never do that to anypony. Not after… I wouldn’t let it happen, not ever again!”

That was as far as she got before a tingling encompassed my body and I was floating face to face with Celestia as she looked at me with yet another pained expression. Although I could tell this one was more empathetic. “Omnifarious, do you truly have such little faith in the feelings your special someponies hold for you? Or that I would even try to take those feelings away?”

The question got a frown from me. “Hey I’ve done more than my share of pony watching, and I know how you all are about something that’s shiny and new!” After all, it accounted for Celestia’s interest in me, plus the whole reverse-Sombra ex-boyfriend thing with her being on the rebound.

And then…Celestia laughed.

She actually laughed.

She laughed her usual melodious laugh that could make birds sing in the background and made her seem just a little bit more sparkly before smiling at me and speaking. “Then it is a good thing that I am the oldest thing on four legs.”

I didn’t see what was so fucking humorous about the whole thing though. But my eyes did make out a nice red tint that seemed to encompass my entire vision in the metaphorical sense. “You think this is funny?” I shouted at her.

And she did, I could actually Smell it on her. That, and relief. A good chunk of the worry that had been permeating Celestia’s Scent had disappeared when I told her about how if Celestia tried to shove her fat ass into our little love triangle, then it would all come crashing down.

So yeah, I was seeing red when she just went and laughed everything off.

Although, my yelling managed to shut her up. “You just coming around and shoving your fat plot in my business, my relationship, my-my EVERYTHING!”

Except for a little word she muttered at the end that is. “W-What?”

“You’re ruining the one, ONE, good thing I have left in this bucking backwards life that I actually like!” I yelled at her in a rush. “I can’t get out of this stupid princess thing, I know that, okay. I’m going to go to a bunch of bucking parties in a stupid gown while a bunch of guys eye by backside and think ‘gee with this new herding thing, I can have fantasies about how I’d like to stick my penis in that mare and go at it like a complete animal even with my wife standing right next to me’! And then there’s going to be the ones that actually come up and ask me if we want to go bang! And I’m just going to have to grin and bear it because-because I’m a pretty pony princess and-and I have to be nice to every pony and-”

“ENOUGH!”

Although she might have said a few words while I had been going on about how much my life was crumbling down around me despite the fact that I still had it pretty good, it wasn’t until Celestia let loose with her Royal Canterlot Voice that I actually managed to stop. Which was mostly because the force of her speech knocked me back into the couch, and then sent me tumbling along the floor until I hit the wall.

As I regained my sense of up and down, not to mention my hearing, I found the pony goddess towering over me and looking about twice as big as she usually did, which was pretty fucking huge considering the giant alicorn was naturally twice my height. “Why do you persist on holding onto these foolish notions?” Celestia demanded. “Twilight and Rainbow, do you think that is the level of their devotion and commitment? That they would simply throw you to the side if the four of us were to be together? Do you think that I would let them? That I would even want them if such a thing were to occur? That they would even be the mares you are so enamored with if they did?”

She took in a breath. “I am sorry for letting my relief wrap me up in joy like that,” she added sternly. “But when your fears are shown to be empty worries so easily removed, I cannot help but laugh at them!”

I could Smell that Celestia was a lot less angry with me than she sounded, but my ears had seniority when it came to my senses, and so I looked away from her and sighed. “You don’t understand,” I whined as I forced myself to drag out one of my darker post-Equestria secrets. “There’s things about me they don’t know. Not just the human stuff, some of the things I’ve done since coming to Equestria, even after Twilight found out I’m a changeling. Like…hay, just the last time we were here…” I suddenly realized just what I was about to do, and stopped.

Feeling a little guilty over the whole thing or not, having no ammunition to win an argument with Celestia or not, there was no way in hell I was going to admit that I talked Twilight into kicking Spike out of the house.

Celestia rolled her eyes. “If you’re speaking of what happened last time we were in the Crystal Empire, I can assure you Twilight thoughts towards you because of your anti-dragon bias aren’t half as bad as you seem to think they are,” she told me with a somewhat annoyed tone.

The statement…threw me off. So much so I just actually focused on the horse goddess and didn’t give a good rebuttal to her crazy pony logic. “Um, say what?”

“When you counseled her to get rid of Spike,” Celestia clarified as the last of the anger left her voice and she shook her head. “We know you’re biased against dragons Omnifarious. Not that I can blame you considering how all of the encounters between their kind and the girls have gone. Although, why you think we’re so stupid as not to notice your odd dislike of the entire species, I’ll never know.”

I stared at Celestia for a few seconds, and I’m pretty sure my jaw just hung down too. Because when I started talking again, there was an upward movement, but no going down for the first syllable. “But…I…you…if you knew what I was saying was…um…just trying to get him out of the way…”

And I actually felt a little stab of guilt after hearing those words come out of my mouth. Spike was...well...I can’t really say he didn’t deserve something bad happening to him thank to his anti-Sunset actions. But every time I thought about it, I just kept seeing the little boy crying his eyes out on his bed.

“Oh please,” Celestia grumbled. “It didn’t make what you said any less true. That little boy really does depend on Twilight too much for his sense of self-worth. And considering Sunset was hurt as a direct result of his actions…what happened in the Crystal Catacombs may have been an accident, but a confrontation between him and you or Spike and Sunset was bound to occur. I am simply thankful it was an overzealous pegasus that knocked her around and cracked a few ribs, rather than a dragon that burned her alive in a fit of desperate panic to save Twilight from the evil human.” As Celestia’s tone took on a bit of a darker twinge towards the end there, I found myself not having the desire to know what would have happened if that had been the case.

And then she was smiling at me again. Her usual warm smile. “But you overcame that dislike and saw him for the frightened child that he is,” she went on. “And that is just one of the reasons that I love you.”

I curled up in on myself a bit to keep from getting snatched up in Celestia’s big…whatever the hell it was she was doing to sound so uplifting. “Yeah, well I’m still going to have to be a princess,” I groaned. It was not a fate to look forward to.

She sighed, and nodded. “If you had simply told us of your feelings involving your gender at the time-”

Okay, that managed to get some fire in me again. Not just the fact that Celestia of all ponies was blaming me for the princess situation I was in, but how someone who was supposed to be so fucking perceptive didn’t see the obvious. “Oh yeah, that would have gone over great with every pony involved,” I shot back before giving her my best Tara Strong impression in real Equestrian. “You mean you hate being a girl? Oh, let me just drop any real hope Sunset has of turning back into a unicorn and get to work on this stupid gender changing junk again. Nevermind the fact that it’s probably impossible!”

When it came to changelings at least. Considering how Twilight had already tested it out on a few of the Hive, I was pretty sure she had made a workable version of her gender-bender spell when it came to normal ponies. But all that did was provide me with some pretty disturbing mental images in the way of rule 63.

I knew enough about magic to know the more layers of spells you added on top of a pony, the more complex things became. I was already wearing a jury-rigged spell that Celestia had rearranged to work on changelings to make me look like a me version of a pony instead of someone else; one even she hadn‘t been able to get right as I still lacked taste buds and couldn‘t eat food. Adding another spell on top of that to change my gender, especially since the spell by itself didn’t work on normal changelings, it just seemed impossible.

Celestia dropped her head a shook it. “Where you get these ideas of… Yes, while it is too late to back out of getting your title without major complications, where the hay are you getting this idea you’ll be dragged to balls and have to subject yourself to such foolishness?”

The question brought to mind my best friend, or at least my current best friend since I was in a sort-of relationship with Dash now and Celestia was…something in-between at the moment. “Well Rarity-”

Before I could get another word out about how I had promised to let Rarity live her dream of being invited to the tippity top of the A-list in Canterlot, Celestia let out an equine snort. “Ah yes, the socialite who thinks everypony is as giving as she is. Twilight doesn’t do those things you know.”

I groaned at the question. “Just because Twilight ducks from the social scene and the responsibilities tied to it doesn’t mean I’m going to,” I replied with a frown. Considering her status as a princess, I was kind of wondering how she had gotten away with not rubbing elbows with the social elite. At the very least, I could bring Rarity along and let her have some fun with my misery.

“Despite the fact that you want nothing to do with it?” Celestia asked as she raised an eyebrow.

The absurdity of Celestia’s words made me roll my eyes. “I’m supposed to be a princess, right?” I grumbled. “What the hay else am I supposed to do? If I’m going to be royalty, I’ve got to get to know the nobility, not to mention all the military, and important foreign diplomats I’ve probably got to deal with. Blueblood wanting to get…under my tail was probably just the first of them.” Just the thought of that possibility made me cringe. Mostly because of the pony porn mental image that accompanied it.

Not that replacing Blueblood with any other guy in all of Equestria made the image any better. Just the thought having someone shove their dick into me got a shiver out of my whole body. Hell, even the thought of Twilight and Rainbow doing it ala gender swapping made me...well, that made me a bit more afraid than sick.

The real scary thing was I used to feel that way about any kind of sex as a girl, and alicorns were apparently built to enjoy sex. Really enjoy it. My rather clumsy nights banging Twilight had proven that. So if I ever gave it a try…

Thankfully, Celestia opened her mouth above me before I could finish the thought, and for a moment, surprise overwhelmed her Scent. “Excuse me?”

“Well the usual phrase is get into my pants, but since ponies barely ever wear clothing-”

“I know what the phrase means!” she snapped before calming down just a bit. A frown did stay on her face though. “What I’m asking is, where in the hay did you possibly-wait…Omnifarious, do you know what your duties will actually be as a princess of Equestria?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t I just tell you?” I said with a bit of a moan. Going to parties, listening to everyone bitch, and having to smile at guys like Blueblood as they dreamed about rutting me. While I didn’t exactly bitch about having to listen to pony problems, that was by far the least of the three evils, and something that I at least found bearable.

Celestia rolled her eyes, and I could Smell a bit of relief in her Scent again. “No, you told me what you think you’re going to be doing. None of which you’re actually required to.”

That…surprised me. And, I could feel a rather odd sensation of hopefulness peeking out from deep within my body, even if the crushing despair of what my future would look like still surrounded me. “Say what?”

The goddess studied me for a moment, and then let out a long breath and…I could Smell she wanted to laugh again, even if it was in relief. Still, Celestia held it in and backed away before the couch I had been sitting on got picked up by her magic and placed back like it was before she pulled out her magical megaphone voice. “First let’s get a bit more comfortable, and then I’ll explain something to you.”

Unfortunately, I found out getting more comfortable didn’t involve having Celestia wrap herself around me like we then while we were asleep. It was just me getting out of the corner she had knocked me into and back on the couch while she took a sip of the tea in front of it.

Then I found myself feeling like some kind of cross between an idiot and a letch for even thinking Celestia would do something like that while we were awake and everything was real with Twilight and Rainbow off...wherever they had gone. Sure, she wanted to get in on the action between the three of us, but the goddess was very adamant that it would be the three of us that she got in bed with.

“Do you remember when I told you how Luna and I became princesses?” she asked.

As if I could forget an Equestrian history lesson. “Yeah, after the three tribes united, they sent Starswirl to find the two of you since alicorns wouldn’t have any bias and made you both princesses of all Equestria.”

It all sounded a little too fairy tale to me though, even for Equestria. Back then, Tia and Luna were barely out of their teens, and some old guy just shows up and hands over a crown?

“And do you know what we did?”

I…cocked my head in confusion. “Uh…you said yes?”

Celestia nodded a little bit. “Well that too, but do you know just what we actually ruled?”

“Um…Equestria?” I asked. I had skimmed over their journal after getting a few surprise reveals from the princesses, but…it wasn’t very detailed as to the day to day of their lives. They only really kept records of what they considered exciting, things like dragons and junk.

A laugh came from the princess. “We ruled absolutely nothing.”

Since I had no idea where Celestia was going with this, I nodded dumbly. “Okay, that’s…” If anything, it was a little reassuring as to the average intelligence of the pony royalty of ye olden times. “Confusing.”

“Luna and I were little more than figureheads as far as political power went,” she went on before I could think of anything to say. “Now, over the years we would come to mediate disputes between the tribal leaders. Then, as all the other royalty from that time started dying off from old age, everypony looked to us for guidance and eventually put the two of us in charge officially before Luna and I devised the system of regional rulers to better handle things. While everypony may have become a little too dependent on my presence over time, the official power of a princess is still somewhat limited. Outside of life threatening emergencies, you only have as much power over ponies as they choose to give you. Even Twilight’s authority in Ponyville, and thus yours, is there only at the behest of Mayor Mare, who doesn’t seem to be handling things very well if my last visit their was any indication.”

My mouth dropped for a few seconds at hearing that. From what Tia was saying… “Wait a second, you mean I don’t actually have to…” The list of things that involved fancy parties and public appearances in pretty pony dresses was too long to even start with.

“Twilight doesn’t go to major social events, she doesn’t attend high society balls, and the last time I saw her wear a dress was when the three of you came to see me,” Celestia reminded me gently. “And you already know how I feel about clothing. When the four of us do get together for a real date, the only thing I want to see on any of you are your natural coats.”

I actually felt that overwhelming despair begin to lift as I realized that my social life wouldn’t be dictated by the obligations that everything I knew about human history said it should.

And then the moment was gone when I remembered something else: I had already promised Rarity I would use my status as a princess to get her into the Canterlot social scene. So even if I didn’t have some royal obligation, which I didn’t give much of a crap about to begin with, the one I had to the marshmallow unicorn to be her social stepping stone kind of screwed me over anyway.

But there was no way in hell I was telling that to Princess Celestia. She would probably get all pissed off at Rarity, who would run behind Cadence for cover, and the next thing I knew there would be some kind of Equestrian civil war going on!

Or maybe just an overreacting alicorn mad at Rarity. But that was still pretty bad in my book.

Still, I couldn’t just bounce back and act all happy about everything with a ‘golly gee, you’re right Tia’ line. If Twilight of all ponies could more or less read my pony posture and get what I was feeling, then Celestia could probably read my thoughts.

So after a few seconds of thinking, I decided to get her focus away from the symptoms, and back to the root cause. I rolled on my side and pointed towards my unnatural anatomy with a frown. “Well it’s not like I still don’t have the source of all this junk you know!”

Even more disturbing, there was a part of me that wondered if I should just stop fighting it. Just roll over and let some guy junk in me, go full on girl and simply enjoy being somebody’s little bitch. So far, all the fighting I did just upset the girls I cared about.

“You’re right, and I’m sorry for my earlier comments,” the goddess said. “For the most part, I was happy when I heard you were worried about nothing. You must know that Twilight and Rainbow Dash would never simply shove you to the side, nor would I let them. The very idea is absurd.”

That put a bit of a snarl on my face. “Yeah well Twilight seemed ready to jump on the idea and drag me and Rainbow into the whole thing no matter what we thought.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow at me again. “Did not you and Twilight take Rainbow Dash on a date as soon as the proclamation of herding was announced?” she countered. “And it is quite obvious to me what your feelings towards Rainbow are.”

She kind of had me there, even if I wasn’t the one to suggest it. Although, with Twilight being able to read me like she could, my attraction when it came to Dash had to have been obvious. The purple alicorn had probably just been preempting what she thought was coming.

Not that I would have ever had the courage to actually do it of course. If Twilight hadn’t been up for the idea, then me asking if she wanted to try dating Rainbow would have crushed her. I had given up my pony virginity to that mare twice over, a second girlfriend wasn’t all that much in comparison.

“I’m just…I don’t want to lose them Tia,” I whined softly.

A hoof came up to lay across the back of my neck, and Celestia wrapped it around me at the fetlock. “Why do you continue to indulge this foolish fear? You will not lose them Omnifarious. If I thought that my presence would cause the three of you any sort of problems, I would never even dream of pursuing my feelings. The three of you number among the most precious ponies I have ever come across in my life. Bringing harm to any of you in any way is the last thing I would ever do.”

I…had to agree with that, if just on a logical level. Celestia wasn’t selfish, and just about empathetic to a fault. She hadn’t actually made a move on the three of us, it was Luna’s big mouth and Twilight’s…well…eagerness. And she kind of had calmed down a bit with the idea since then.

Not to mention the fact that we had only gone on one little date and she wasn’t being all insistent about going on another. But was that because her fangasm had run its course, or because Celestia had put everything into a timeframe?

I just didn’t know, and that was what was killing me.

While Celestia had some good points, I could still see Twilight walking off with her into the sunset while I was left behind. And I just wouldn’t know what was going to happen until she actually did start making our love triangle something along the lines of a square.

“And the whole girl thing?” I asked, actually hoping that Ms Make Everything Better really did have some last minute cure-all for at least one of my problems.

Celestia’s expression faded to one of sadness. “For that, you only have my apologies,” the goddess said as she shook her head. “I had no idea how much it disturbed you Omnifarious. And…I honestly don’t know what to do to make it better. But tell me this, considering everything else that has changed, why do you focus on your gender so much?”

If it wasn’t for the fact that I had been holding my breath in hope Tia would just Dues Ex Machina everything away, I probably would have yelled at her again. But, the release of air and the crushing of my hope sapped my strength. “It’s all I have left of what I was,” told her sadly. “And every day that I’m here like this, it’s like…like more and more of me is just slipping away.”

“And you think that a change of gender would alter that?” Celestia asked evenly. “Even when everything else is so different from what you used to know?”

A part of me wanted to agree with her, even just because she was Celestia, the princess that was supposed to have all the answers. She even had a bit of a point, and there was the chance that turning into a guy pony wouldn’t stop me from feeling like everything about me was wrong, but on the other hand…

“Yes! I saw myself wearing a dress today, Tia! And I…I didn’t feel comfortable, but…how long until I do? How long until I find out I like it?” I asked her. “I had sex with Twilight as a girl, and I liked it! Hay, I had sex as a pony, just a guy pony, but still a pony, and I liked it! A pony! Do you have any idea just how weird that’s supposed to be? And just thinking about Rainbow makes me want to reach down between my legs and clop now!”

The last I didn’t actually mind. If anything it made me being with Twilight and Dash that much easier. A part of me had always hated the fact that physical attraction hadn’t factored into my relationship with Twilight...although, I had to wonder if my looking at Dash’s fine form was what drove the little alicorn to be so agreeable to the herding idea in the first place.

Celestia Smelled a little amused, but there was more concern and relief in her Scent than the third emotion, and I was getting a little tired of being angry at her. Plus, she didn’t let any of it show on her face. All that came out of her big eyes was the concern. “Then perhaps it is Rainbow Dash that has the best advice out of all of us,” she told me with a little smile. “If you do not wish to wear dress and attend high society social gatherings, then...don’t. Stop bending over backwards trying to please everypony. Even if she appreciates your help, do you honestly think Rarity would feel that way if she was aware how you felt about wearing a dress?”

I looked away from the goddess. “Probably not,” I agreed hesitantly. But that wasn’t why I kept doing it. After all, considering how many dresses I had already worn for her, if she ever found out my real feelings on the subject...it would really hurt her.

Not in the way that I didn’t like wearing her dresses, but because of the fact she made me do something that made me so uncomfortable. I had barely avoided letting that information out after breakfast, but Rarity had managed to take it in a way that how the outside didn’t really affect what was underneath...when it really did.

The old saying of how clothes make the man was never more true than in my case. After all, I had gone through the ultimate change of attire, and it sure as hell was affecting me.

But...okay, I might have been able to avoid the whole Canterlot social scene with just a few appearances to get Rarity into the thing, but...well...the whole Tia-Twi-Dash thing still had me worried that things were just going to fall apart. Not just with Twilight and Rainbow, but...what me and Tia had was something I couldn’t get anywhere else in Equestria.

She was someone who I could lean on, and that…

A thought occurred to me, and I looked back up to her before concentrating on her Scent. Although I didn’t detect what I was expecting, I knew all my ranting about Twilight and Rainbow had to of left her a little hurt. “I’m such an idiot.”

“Oh?” she spoke up. “Finally starting to see some of these mountains you worry about are little more than hills?”

I shook my head at the question. Even if she was half-right with the whole upper crust party thing, I had just seen something that made me deserve to be stuck in a dress and fucked like a dog. “I’m sorry Tia, I didn’t...this must be hard for you.”

Celestia’s humor vanished. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been going on and on about how everything I have is going to fall apart when you step in, but...I never once thought about how Rainbow and Twilight...they’re something you really want too.”

A foreleg touched the back of my neck and stroked my hair. “It’s fine Omnifarious. You’re the one I’m concerned with right now,” she told me before more fear greeted my senses. “Although with the way you talk...do you not even want...me?” You keep talking about how Twilight dragged you into our poorly begun courtship and I have to wonder if you...don’t…”

What came next was the quickest headshake I had ever performed. “No that’s not it!” I assured her. If Celestia had been a normal pony, I would have gladly tried taking her in. “I love-” I barely stopped myself from speaking the irrevocable words, “um...you know...being with you.”

And I did, despite the lameness of my reply. It wasn’t what I had for the other girls because...well...they kind of needed someone to help look after them every now and then, but Celestia could take care of herself. If anything, she took care of me. So there wasn’t any need for me to dote on her, or stroke her ego, or step on eggshells around her.

“Thank you,” she replied with a genuine smile and some relief in her Scent, which meant she had probably been a little bit nervous about everything, even if I couldn’t pick it up at the time.

If anything, that just made me feel all the more pathetic. Celestia was more concerned for my happiness than her own, and I was bitching about how awful my perfect pony life was. And then that guilt over the pettiness returned. “No,” I replied with a shake of my head. “I’m the one that should be thanking you. I...thanks for listening to me being a selfish idiot.”

The warm feeling of Celestia’s head rubbed up against mine, and I found myself enjoying the nuzzle more than most I had received since coming to Equestria. I may not have been the huggy type, but Celestia was...well, it was Celestia.

“It’s not selfish to want to be loved, or to want happiness, or just to feel comfortable Omnifarious,” she told me. “And if you really do want most of your fears removed, talk to Twilight and Rainbow about your reservations on bringing me into your group.”

“What?” I yelled before using my wings to get some distance between the two of us. “That’s not, Tia I can’t just-they’d...you saw how Twilight was when she heard about everything!” And that was before everything got really serious.

Celestia frowned at me. “Then perhaps it is more than just their devotion that you need to have faith in,” she said. “From what I understood, Twilight was a pony you were forming a lifelong bond with. Well having such a bond means that two ponies walk down the road of life together, sharing eachothers burdens. The fact that you aren’t...you’re treating her like a foal! Do you really have such little faith in Twilight that you don’t think she can deal with your burdens?”

The thing was, I didn’t.

But…

“Aren’t you the one who sent her and Dash away?” I replied.

“Would you have even begun to talk to me like this if they had stayed?” Celestia countered.

I winced, and looked away from Celestia before I came back down to the ground. “It’s…” I let out a long sigh. “It’s...well...it’s not that I don’t have faith in Twilight to deal with things...eventually. It’s the pain of having to watch her suffer through dealing with something that makes me keep things from her. It kills me to see her upset Tia. And Rainbow. I hate it.”

“You need to have more faith in them,” Celesti told me, and I couldn’t find a way to argue the point.

After all, I had Smelled the way they felt before Tia kicked them out. Which was why she did it in the first place. Celestia was right in thinking I would have completely clamed up if things had gone on with the two of them in the room. So I nodded my head in agreement. “Okay. I’ll...I’ll tell them everything, tonight.”

Tia nodded, and approached me to lay a kiss on my forehead. “And, I know you want Sunset to be cured of her problem first but...how are things going on your end by the way?”

Being reminded of yet another one of my failings got me to hunch in on myself a bit. “Um...Tia,” I replied pretty hesitantly. “About that...I...I don’t think I’ll be able to help Sunset. I’m sorry.”

My magical studies in the art of shapeshifting magic had slowed considerably since getting into the area of enlargement. As it was, I could only get parts of a pony to change size, like giving Rainbow one or two oversized wings.

Disappointment and sadness poured from the princess. “What makes you say that?”

“Even with shapeshifting being my talent, I...it would take years for me to learn what I need to know in order to even have a hope of making a spell capable of helping her,” I told the goddess in a whisper. I didn’t really want to tell her, but if I was going to start letting ponies in on all my crappiness, then I needed to start with the one I knew could take it.

Celestia let out a long sigh. “So that’s why you want Twilight to continue working on the mirror. Is there no way around it, like how you used your changelings to go through all the information Twilight and Sunset were assigned?”

I shook my head again. “That’s just book knowledge,” I explained. “Not to mention it’s all unicorn magic. I could memorize all the spells, sure. But figuring out how to make them work with my magic, and practicing the application of the spells. That is what really takes time, and what I need Sunset’s help with.”

“I see,” Tia told me as she nodded her head. “Thank you for telling me. But...could you keep trying, just in case? Sunset tells me she enjoys spending time with you in magical study. It’s one of the few ways she can still exercise her talent these days, and to take that away from a pony is a terrible fate.”

“Sure,” I agreed without much life behind the words. After all, reminding myself how I was letting that girl down, it was just...draining.

A second later, and I was in Celestia’s shadow again as she came up on me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with your...female problems. But, I am here for you, and so are all the other girls. Tell Rarity how you really feel Omnifarious, she will understand.”

With thoughts of Sunset bringing me down, I couldn’t put up much of a fight as Celestia renewed her assault to my resolve. So I nodded. “Okay,” I agreed, all the while hoping I could just put that on the back burner until judgement day. There would be no way I was getting out of talking to Twilight and Dash about things, but Rarity...I might have been able to avoid that little problem for awhile.

“And it is not as if this is the end of anything,” Celestia added with a tiny smile. “If you truly wish to be a stallion, and if Sunset’s problem is to be solved first, then I can find some time to assist Twilight in her research on the mirror. I was looking for a reason to spend some time with that little mare, and that seems like the perfect excuse if you can keep Sunset entertained.”

I gulped at the of Twilight and Celestia together. Mostly because the purple pony had given me plenty of ideas on just what she wanted to do to Celestia, and my own experiences with the princess had given me plenty of ideas of just what Tia would be up to. “That’s um...you are going to help them study the mirror though, right?”

Celestia smiled. “This is my daughter’s happiness we’re talking about Omnifarious, I’ll enjoy being with Twilight, but I will be keeping my mind on task,” she said before lowering her head down to eye level with mine. “But at the moment, I think we should be taking care of your needs my dear little changeling.”

As Celestia’s eyes became almost predatory, I backed away. Only to hit a wall when she herded me into one. “Um...why’re you looking at me like that?”

“I asked for Twilight and Rainbow’s permission to feed you come lunchtime, and they agreed,” Celestia told me. “Now, let me show you how a pony kisses the mare she loves.”

And just like that, she was on me. Celestia’s tongue nearly filled my mouth, and her lips completely engulfed my own. All of the emotions she had been feeling were soon replaced by an overwhelming aroma of love.

For a few seconds, I tried to fight i, or at least protest that Tia could have just transferred magic through our bond but...my hunger and need for an emotional pick me up won out before I grabbed onto what she was offering and drank from her mana as deeply as I dared while Celestia hoisted me up in her forelegs, and my body was pressed against the wall while the giant pony cleaned my tonsils.

Although not the pure ecstasy that I usually sucked from Rainbow and Twilight when they reached their limit, Celestia’s love was more delicious than I could remember any non-sexual emotion being, and there was so much of it. Even though I fed off Twilight...Celestia was in a class of her own as far as power went. I reached my limit of what I could draw in with a single gulp and still think coherently, and Tia broke the kiss.

The goddess panted, and I swore some of her face had gone flush as she licked her lips while continuing to hold me in her forelegs. “So that what a kiss with you is like when you’re putting yourself into it,” Celestia said as she panted. “Those two really aren't exaggerating. Oh my little changeling, if that what one of your kisses does, what you do in bed must be truly spectacular.

“Now, shall we go find Twilight and Rainbow?” the goddess asked.

Even with Celestia love inside me, hesitation creep its way back up my spine. I might have agreed to tell the two of them everything, but...I needed a few minutes, or maybe an hour, to prepare. “Actually, um...I need to go lay down and...digest.”

Tia studded me for a moment, and then nodded. “Very well,” she said before bending down to kiss me on the cheek. “I suppose I’ll go find the two of them, and check up on Sunset. Do you want to continue later tonight?”

I raised an eyebrow. “You mean with the making out?” Tia wasn’t all that into human coupling from what I had gathered.

“No, I meant with the two of us, talking,” she told me. “About what really bothers you and...seeing what can be done about it.”

“Okay,” I agreed softly after a moment of thought.

After separating from Celestia, I made my way back to my room and settled in for what passed for a changeling nap, unsure about how everything felt. I was still pretty apprehensive about pulling Rainbow and Twilight into my problems, but...it wasn’t as if I could stop it from happening now.

And, as much as I hated to admit it, talking with Celestia had helped. Mostly because it hadn’t been one of those share your pain talks that so many people thought were beneficial thanks to their ability to spread misery around. Unlike those, Celestia had actually worked to help me figure a few things out and...gave me a bit of hope.

More than a little part of me wanted to believe her, to be able to think of a future that had Rainbow, and Twilight, and Celestia all together in it. Even if some of the physical stuff seemed a bit awkward, I did want her to be there with the rest of us. I wanted to be able to bury myself in her coat, to be wrapped up in her wings, to have her watching over me. I wanted a pony I could rely on to catch me when I fell.

I groaned at myself when I realized that was how I needed to think of Rainbow and Twilight too. Celestia was right, I really was babying them too much. They were grown women, not children, I needed to treat them as such and stop being such an idiot. I helped them with their emotional problems, so...I needed to be able to let them do the same to me in turn.

That was what real couples did.

A few minutes into my rest, the sound of a door opening made me look up. “Oh hey girls, I want to...oh, buck,” I mumbeled when I saw the person in the door was not Twilight and Rainbow. Or Twilight, or Rainbow by just themselves. As in a single pony.

In fact, it wasn’t a pony at all.

It was a teenage girl with fire-red hair, and a bit of hesitation on her face.

“Hey Omnifarious,” Sunset Shimmer said as she crouched down to make it in the doorway. “Can we talk?”

Chapter 42: The Incredibly Concerned Adopted Daughter of a Solar-Powered Pony Princess

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Chapter 42: The Incredibly Concerned Adopted Daughter of a Solar-Powered Pony Princess

When I looked at the horse-turned-human crouching a little so she would fit into the doorway meant for ponies, I had to repress a groan. After letting Twilight and Dash see the cracks in my happy face, and then talking to Celestia about…well, everything, the absolute last thing I needed was some alone time with Sunset Shimmer.

What made it all the more worse was the look in her eyes as she stood there. The magic-less human who was barely getting by emotionally was feeling bad for the creature that had been handed everything she ever wanted on a silver platter. It repeatedly kicked my pride in the balls.

There was some other stuff too, but...it was mostly my pride.

And, okay...I may have felt pretty damn ashamed over the whole thing too. Sunset had nothing. At least in the way of what she should have had, and she was feeling concern for someone who had everything compared to her.

So yeah, lots of shame for that.

And a good part of me wanted to just zap her out of the room, then lock the door closed with some kind of super locking magical spell.

But...it was Sunset asking, and the last thing I wanted to do was upset her anymore than she already was. Considering the mental condition she was in, blowing up on the girl, or just plain denying her anything was pretty much forbidden. “Just…keep your hands to yourself,” I mumbled before looking away from her. Those things tore through my emotional defenses like hot knives through butter.

“Sure,” the girl replied before I heard her walk over to me and the bed sunk in from her weight. “So um…didn’t see you at lunch.”

I let out a long breath. “It’s not like I eat real food,” I mumbled. And I was pretty sure my little talk with Tia meant I had missed it anyway. Although, maybe she had managed to catch the girls and tell them what had happened.

Which of course meant I’d have to talk to them about what was going on later tonight. Not just to allay any concerns but…if my girlfriend spent some alone time with a supermodel-level hot person, I would probably be a little worried over just what had happened between them. And that was without the emotional feeding that could bring Twilight to orgasm on its own these days.

A hand touched my back, but it didn’t start petting me, so I let it remain. It wasn’t like I would have been able to stop Sunset if she did decide to do anything anyway. “So let me guess, Celestia got all confrontational, and…what? It didn’t go too well?”

“Just…brought some bad stuff to the surface,” I replied after a moment of thinking about things. All in all, our time together hadn’t been that bad between us, but…well, the aftertaste of the conversation was what wasn’t sitting with me very well with me.

Especially considering how it had be looking at things now.

I had been keeping Twilight and Rainbow at arms length. Even with all my proclamation of love, when I reexamined the way I had been behaving towards them in other areas, I was starting to reevaluate our relationship.

A good bit of the evidence said they weren’t girlfriends. They were sex buddies, people that you slept with and had a friendly relationship with, but there was a distance between me and them that I had kept up. Twilight was fully open with me, and so was Celestia…if only because the whole mental landscape made it next to impossible not to be, Rainbow was getting there, but I had yet to really let two of the girls I slept with in.

And...part of me wondered if that was as far as I should go.

Which also led me to consider the horrible possibility that I needed to just step back and end things with them all here and now rather than become some kind of emotional leech that dragged them down in order to keep himself going.

Sunset hummed a bit before speaking. “Better than letting it simmer, trust me on that one. When it happened with me, the Princess…well…you know what happened.”

“Princess?” I asked with a little frown as I looked up at the teenage human. “What happened to Mom?”

I got a wince for the capital M from the girl. “Hey it’s only been a week,” she mumbled before clearing her throat. “And um look, Mom said you had some problems last night, and I just about had to tell her everything I knew about humans the whole ride over and…well, I just came to see if you were alright.”

Since it seemed Celestia hadn’t sicked Sunset on me as some sort of follow-up therapy, I collapsed towards her rather than away, and just grunted a bit. “Thanks. But, you didn’t really need to do that.”

“Just like you didn’t have to be so kind to me when I first got to Equestria,” she countered warmly while her fingers worked their way across my ribs. “So what’s wrong? I know you and Celes-Mom, had a talk, and she can be pretty intense, even when she doesn’t want to be. And hard headed, and...well, you know.”

My stomach churned at the thought of dumping my problems onto Sunset, but then, with the situation I was in, I didn’t really have to. “I…don’t really know.” Not anymore anyway.

There was the whole female thing, but I didn’t really feel comfortable talking to Sunset about that just yet. As for the dresses and fancy parties, I was still unsure what I would hate worse, letting Rarity down or going to them. And my relationship problems weren’t really something I should talk to the adopted daughter of one of the women I would probably be fucking if things ended up working out. Not that the breakup option would make anything in any way better.

“Still having species change issues?” Sunset asked.

Okay, that was one thing I could talk to her about, even if I probably shouldn’t. “Not really.”

Sunset frowned at me. Not an angry frown, just one of confusion. “But I thought, the whole way here, Celestia was going on and on about all these problems you’re supposed to be having with being a pony and-”

“Well it’s not exactly a pony problem,” I said, cutting Sunset off before I paused to take a quick breath. “See, I never really had a species change problem.” Although as memories as my first day as a changeling came to mind, I quickly had to put in a correction. “Okay well I did, but the changelings got rid of it pretty quickly with a bit of mental programming. Sure, hooves will never be a substitute for hands and I’m kind of miffed at being eye level with your rear, but I’m not exactly crying over the magical horn and wings either.”

When what I had just let out of my mouth reached my ears, I quickly sat up and gave Sunset the most apologetic look I could manage. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…oh buck,” I mumbled.

Sunset’s confusion returned, and after several seconds she blinked once before breaking the silence. “What?”

I lowered my head into the mattress. “You’re probably the last human that wants to hear the words wings and horn together like that,” I mumbled. “Hay, seeing me sad at all has got to be killing you when I’ve got so much.”

A hand touching my head made me look up, but I didn’t stop Sunset from running her fingers through my hair. “The only thing I’m upset about is seeing one of the best ponies I know so down in the dumps when all she’s ever done is care about me,” the human told me quietly before she leaned in to give me a awkwardly placed hug. “And that’s it.”

Once again, my resolve wavered…but not all that much. I had just got done talking to Celestia about everything. Rebuilding walls took time, and Sunset…well, while we weren’t exactly going through the same thing, I knew that girl could understand my hardship on some level like I could do with a little bit of hers.

Although, if I was going to compare us, the human certainly had me beat when it came to endurance. Two and a half years living a downgraded life as a human was a million times worse than the upgrade I had been given when I was made a changeling. Even if she had gotten her former primary relationship back while all the ones of my previous life were permanently severed, my gains still beat her losses by a wide margin.

But...with her being so damn...Celestia-ish and everything else, I caved.

I told her about everything. I told her my fears involving the four way relationship, my clothes issues, promises to Rarity that meant I had to go to parties in dresses, fears about sex as a girl with a man, and all the other girl trouble that was coming about because, well…I was a girl.

“And it’s not like I can just stop being a girl either,” I grumbled. “Sure I’ve got my natural changeling form, but I’ve seen how ponies look at me when I’m like that, and chitin isn’t very comfortable to sleep against. Not to mention nuzzling. I mean, sure Twilight’s working on some spell to change genders-”

“Technically, she’s completed the spell, and has for weeks,” Sunset cut in, making my ears perk up. “But it’s tooled to work on ponies, not changelings.”

I rolled my eyes at the correction. Even if they had been brought up a decade apart, Twilight and Sunset were so alike that it was kind of freaky. “Right. Not like it matters. Even as a changeling, I’ve still got all the parts I need to get ready to lay eggs, even if my face looks like a stallion’s.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “How does that work anyway? Fertilized eggs without a male, I mean.”

“Changelings are asexual, or close enough to it,” I explained. “Technically, I’m neither a guy or a girl as a changeling, or maybe I’m both at the same time. Each drone is just an imperfect clone of me, or Chrysalis considering she laid us all. Although the fact that I’m different suggests there’s some kind of real genetic programming involved that doesn’t exist back where I come from when it comes to single parent reproduction. I haven’t really looked into it since it’s the queen memories that hold all that information and…putting all that in my head probably won’t be very pretty.”

Thankfully, Sunset didn’t follow with question on changeling anatomy or start asking about my inheritance from Mom. The less I thought about all the stuff she had left for me, the better. Mostly because of how tempting it all was. Thousands, and thousands of years of magical knowledge and all the other secrets the changeling queen alone was allowed to possess. Of course it also carried everything else she had in her head too, and the queen before, and the one before that one, and…the Hive’s knowledgebase got a little murky after that. That stuff I didn’t even want to touch with a ten foot imaginary pole.

The human nodded. “Yeesh, no wonder you’re having identity issues. At least I was still sure of who I was…most of the time.”

My ears perked up a bit at that. “What do you mean?”

For a few seconds Sunset got a cute little embarrassed look on her face, and then she bashed it as she cleared her throat. “Let’s just say I didn’t know sex could be casual until I ran into your species,” she mumbled.

I…honestly had no idea on how to follow that.

Although, if Sunset was willing to talk about her time on Earthquestria, and not breaking into tears or shuddering in horror, my curiosity wouldn’t let me stay silent. So, I opened my mouth. “So, what was it like?”

Sunset’s eyes went wide, and her mouth kind of dropped just a little bit as she just stared at me in surprise for some reason.

In the ensuing silence, I thought back to what I had said to try and figure out just why the hay Sunset was looking at me like I had just gone insane. All I had asked was… “Oh!” I mumbled before the panic set in and I jumped away while flapping my wings to get some extra distance between us and giving me the opportunity to use my forearms the way my remaining humanity said they should be used. “No, no no! Not that!” I assured her quickly before dropping my arms. “I meant, what was it like for you, going from pony to human? How did well…survive, or I mean, take it?”

“Ah, that,” Sunset said before sighing. “At first, I had found it interesting. The fingers were weird and it took me awhile before I mastered bipedal motion, but once I got around to exploring, well… Everything was shiny and new. I stole a phone and some other things, played with computers and got excited about stuff like YouTube and Wikipedia. Hell, I got so caught up in all that crap I missed the deadline for my return trip and ended up in the human world for two and a half years.”

Sunset sighed and laid back, using her hands to prop herself up. “After that, well…I was kind of in a daze for my first few weeks,” she said. “I got put in the system and ended up in Canterlot High and, well…at first I got by with distracting myself with technology. I learned computer languages, managed to get a smart phone from my foster parents, and picked up a boyfriend to get some knowledge about human social customs.”

I wanted to ask Sunset about some of her past dating experiences, but as her face turned sour, I lost my chance as she started talking again. “Of course the only reason I hooked up with him was because he could play guitar and I wanted to learn to use my fingers better,” she said before readjusting herself so she could raise the things and wiggle them at me.

A second later, her face fell and she sighed. “And then came the first Fall Formal I went to,” Sunset mumbled. “I know in pony terms I was a bitch when I left Equestria, but in human terms, I was actually pretty tame at the time. Hell, I traded so many favors for basic human information that everyone in school thought I was just being friendly. So, when it came time to vote on Fall Formal Princess, I won.”

Sunset sighed and shook her head. “At first I was so happy, I thought I had finally achieved my destiny but…well, then I kind of looked around and saw what I had really gotten. I had won a stupid popularity contest. I had traded real magic for toys, surrounded myself with creatures that turned their backs on each other over the stupidest things,” she grumbled before her face fell. “And I abandoned the one pony who cared about me the most for a stupid piece of tin. Even if I had gotten my wings by going through that mirror, it wouldn’t have been worth it.”

Then, she shook off the air of depression, and looked at me. “I think the reality of everything hit me harder than it would have most unicorns, or earth ponies,” she added after a second of thought. “Probably about as much as Rainbow would feel after losing her wings, or Twilight her horn. I actually learned about human stage magicians, thinking they actually might know real magic, and tried a dozen other things.” She let out a little snort. “Man I was such an idiot. I gave up everything for…for just….”

I quickly landed and trotted over to put my fetlock on her leg. It was the closest thing I could really do to offering a comforting hand. “Hey now, come on Sunset,” I said, doing my best to reassure her. “You and Twilight are the smartest magical savants around, and Tia’s even volunteered to spend some time to crack that mirror. You’ll be eating hay and prancing around on four hooves in no time!”

Sunset reached out to scratch my ear, and I let her work her magic as the human’s face took on a melancholy look. “I know. I…thanks,” she said while I got close enough to put him head on her lap. “Heh. I came here to see if you needed cheering up, and here you helping me.”

I did my best to shrug, but…look, getting my ear scratched as a pony felt really good, okay? There was no way I was moving away once it started.

Although, I did manage to talk through some gritted teeth. “Hey, it’ what I’m here for. You’re under my roof, so you’re my responsibility, right?” It came out a little more gruff than I would have liked, but that was the problem when speaking through teeth.

Sunset laughed through her nose a little. “Yeah,” she agreed with a little smile. “Got to say, you’re a way better foster parent than the last one I got saddled with.”

That actually got me to break away from Sunset’s attentions and back up a little. “Um, wait…what?”

“What?” Sunset asked in genuine confusion while I tried to figure out just how the hell our conversation had gone into the direction it had. But she didn’t give me me much time to think before more noise coming from her lips demanded attention. “I mean, you pretty much are. You let me stay in your palace, you’re learning a whole new branch of magic just to try and turn me back into a unicorn, and then there’s everything else you did for me, like the wardrobe. I just…it’s…”

I froze as Sunset actually started to get a little teary-eyed. “Aw geez look at me,” she said before sniffling a bit. The redhead reached up to wipe her unset tears away, then pushed off the bed and got on her knees so we were at eye level. “Look, you want to know how I survived being human?”

Sunset reached forward and put her hands on my shoulders. “The truth is, I didn’t,” she said before her eyes started glistening again. “I hated it. Everything was different, and wrong and…I… It made me into something that was even worse than the selfish little brat that left Equestria.”

The news didn’t exactly give me much hope for my own situation. “You really need to work on your motivational speeches if that’s supposed to give me hope for getting through this whole me as a mare problem,” I deadpanned.

A second later, the human groaned, and rolled her eyes. “Okay, if you don’t want to read between the lines,” she mumbled before locking gazes with me. “I went she-demon bitch way before I put on the crown for one simple reason, I was all alone. I didn’t have anyone I could confide in, or talk to, or relate to. You do.”

She licked her lips and took a breath. “If you need to talk about something only a human will understand, I’m here for you,” she told me. “If you need a shoulder to cry on, Celestia is here for you. If you want to try and be a guy alicorn, Twilight’s here for you. If you just need to unwind, Rainbow is here for you. You have over half a dozen ponies who care about you, and instead you just keep everything to yourself, and that’s just…it’s a bad idea.”

I looked away from the girl as my suspicions on just what had sent her here started to turn back towards the giant white alicorn with the fat ass. My usual angry retort died before it could get past my lips as it was beaten to death both my inability to be the slightest bit mean to Sunset, and my memories of Celestia chewing me out just moments prior.

Instead, I fought her with some logic, and grumbling words. “What type friend just dumps all his problems on everyone else?”

It had always been one of my pet peeves to do nothing but listen to someone else bitch about their troubles. Don’t get me wrong, I was plenty sympathetic to a guy who had just lost his girlfriend/job/dog/whatever, but having to listen to the same whining day after day without end while nothing was really done about it, that was another thing altogether.

“One that isn’t so prideful and stupid he thinks he can shoulder everything by himself,” Sunset replied with a little smile I swore she got from her adopted mother. “And leaves the ponies, and people, who care about him in the dark to worry themselves half to death.”

It also reminded me of my earlier conversation with the horse princess, and how I had kind of just been delaying what I had kind of promised her. Not to mention how I had also been thinking about just calling the whole thing quits and backing even further away from the girls a few seconds ago.

As if I really could do such a thing. Broken pony hearts aside, Tia would haunt me in my dreams. So it was either face the girls, or run away and let whatever would happen to Celestia if she went to bed without me happen.

“Ah buck,” I mumbled before looking back to the girl in front of me. “Okay, so where are the girls? If I’m going to do the whole confession thing, and do it with every pony, I’m getting it all done in one go.” Things like that were like pulling off a band aid, which hurt a hell of a lot more as a pony than they did when you weren’t covered in fur. So I was only going to do it once, and that was it.

Sunset took on a thoughtful look. “Well, Pinkie talked Trixie into setting up a magic show down in the Crystal Palace’s courtyard to entertain all the ponies still arriving for the coronation, Rarity went off with Shining Armor after lunch, Princess Luna is still getting your coronation decor set up, Fluttershy is touring the menagerie with Cadence, Applejack wanted to take a look at some of the crystal crops, Rainbow flew off after Princess Celestia, and Twilight’s at the city’s library. At least that’s where she said she was going. Oh, and my guards are just outside the door, if you were wondering.”

After my brain wrestled to file the mass of information away without losing anything, I found at the oddity in it. “Wait, Celestia did what?” I asked.

“Flew off. Said she needed to work off some frustration,” Sunset explained before shrugging. “Don’t ask me what had her so…well, she wasn’t really upset. More like, antsy. I think. She kept fidgeting around while she told us what was going on with you, and then took off right after the explanation. Twilight wanted to go after them but…they were both already to the horizon before she even got a few feet off the ground.”

The strangeness of it all had me frowning at the air in front of me. It seemed more than a little weird for Tia up and take off for no good reason. It had me worried that there was something going on in the way of life-threatening trouble. Considering how attached Tia had become to the Mane Six in the past few weeks, I seriously doubted that the princess would have sent them on another dragon removal mission. During the last major threat to Equestria, she had her guards shove them all onto a magical bullet train and stuck them in the most defensible city there was.

“Okay, tell you what, you go round up the gang,” I told her. “I’ll go see where Tia went and…check to see if anything’s wrong.” There was no need to get too worried about things just yet.

I mean, if there really was something going on, Pinkie would have sensed it, or Tia would have teleported Rainbow back to the palace with her wings wrapped in golden magic to keep her grounded. So, there was absolutely, positively no reason whatsoever for me to be worried at all.

Just because we were once again in the place where catastrophe had struck the last two times I visited, or how there seemed to be a rule that whenever Cadence and Twilight got together Equestria had to be in peril, or Sunset had described the most in-control being of all time as being antsy, there was absolutely, positively, no reason whatsoever to be worried.

None.

At.

All.

My denial lasted all of ten seconds. Then a loud rumbling shook the entirety of the crystal palace, and its normally colorful illumination was turned up from a ten on the pastel scale to a freaking twenty-five that would have had any children watching the events through a television falling into an epileptic seizure.

“W-What the hell was that?” Sunset shouted over the ringing in my ears as she held her hands over her own. “And what’s up with the palace? Are we under attack or something?”

For some reason, I only felt more nervous when I looked out my window. Outside, I watched the magical wave of color continue off into the distance, giving everything it touched a little boost of vitality and making everything just seem to sparkle in the wake of the Rainboom.

Despite the beauty of the scene, a little voice in the back of my head said that it was probably a bad thing that Rainbow had actually flown that fast to catch up with Celestia. Or attempt to catch up to her. Honestly, I couldn’t see anything, no matter how fast, getting its hands on a teleporting magic user that could fly as fast as Celestia unless she wanted to be caught.

“No,” I assured Sunset before letting my head droop with a sigh. “But…something tells me I’m going to wish we were in a few seconds. You go get the girls, I’ll…be down in a minute.”

And with that, I quickly teleported Sunset outside my door and locked it. Then I hopped back into my bed and settled down for a quick slumber to find out just what the hell those two had been doing while I had been moping around like an idiot.

Chapter 43: The Incredibly Unrelenting Heat of a Solar-Powered Pony Princess

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Train Wrecks.

Car Crashes.

Those kids that fall backwards in the cafeteria and throw their food on everyone behind them thanks to that other kid who left spilled milk in the middle of the lunch room.

There was just something about horrible things happening to other people that made it impossible to look away. Or at least disconnect from their conscious when you shared some kind of magical-mind-link thing anyway.

And it wasn’t like I wanted to watch!

I mean, I didn’t just see everything Celestia did, I experienced it too! Emotions, physical sensations, and the annoyance of seeing through someone else’s eyes without having any say in where they went. It was like watching a television show with the worst camera-work, ever.

But as Tia’s eyes were glued on a distant cloud, I didn’t have to worry about jerk motions at the moment, despite the howling winds around her.

No, something else about Tia had me kind of upset.

She was horny.

And…well…I had been horny as a girl before. It was one of those things that just kind of happened when I let my mind wander back in the day. Thinking about sex was natural for guys, and just because it got a little more technical as I tried to imagine how to do stuff as a pony didn’t mean it made me any less stiff. Then Tia made me noticed how hot most of the girls I hung out with were, and how I started enjoying sex with Twilight, which meant I had plenty of pony porn experience to fuel my fantasies. So yeah, I had experienced the heat of what it was like to be an alicorn in need of a good lay.

However, Celestia’s burning need put what I usually felt to shame. Instead of a bonfire needing to be quelled, her inner flame was the burning core of a sun that I felt crying out for relief beneath her tail as so many tears of sexual desire were wept that, if ponies wore panties, would have soaked Celestia’s to the point of transparency.

Basically, she was as horny as hell. An almost mind-numbing level of sexual desire and frustration that had me wondering just how in the wide world of Equestria she had kept from just pinning me to the ground and using my horn to satisfy her desires.

In Celestia’s lusty haze that I was unfortunately sharing for the moment as I felt my own female anatomy start to yearn for the tongue of my purple pony princess or our perky pegasus back in my body, I duly noted that the Goddess of the Sun was outside the Crystal Empire’s dome of perpetual Summer, but was not the least bit hampered by the arctic winds that whipped around her feminine form as she made her way towards a natural cloud.

A second later, a rainbow sped past her, and came to a stop upon the cloud she was only a few feet from as the dazzling display’s creator also appeared with a rainbow of light dancing on the end of her mane for a few seconds before whatever magic that allowed Rainbow to make rainbows on her own gave out. “HA! Told you I could keep up with-”

Whatever the pegasus was about to say was lost as Celestia, and thus me by extension, focused on the little pegasus’s sleek body and toned legs as well as her wonderful wings that just begged to be bitten in a playful manner. Another bout of desire rushed through the big alicorn’s body, and I felt her wings actually stiffen a little in mid flap before sound gurgled up from the goddess’s lungs in a very unladylike, horrified shriek. “RAINBOW DASH!”

The wild cry of sexual frustration and fright from the princess made Rainbow go rigid a second before Celestia’s barely controlled flight sent her careening into the pegasus and put her atop Dash, with her nose pressed into Rainbow’s barrel.

Apparently, Rainbooms took a lot out of the pegasus. Through Celestia, I could feel Dash’s little heart going a mile a minute, but that information was put into the background as Tia’s olfactory senses detected the sweaty smell of the athlete beneath her.

Now, while I kind of tended to gag at Rainbow’s scent after meeting her when she was done with an afternoon workout and wanted a kiss, Tia seemed to find the smell of pegasus sweat more than satisfactory. In fact, the burning sun situated at the goddess’s end went supernova from the smell. And while I couldn’t actually read Celestia’s mind, I would have bet any future male anatomy I might end up possessing that the goddess in question was having mental images of the muzzle of a pegasus pushed up her pussy.

“P-Princess?” Rainbow Dash asked as her goddess kissed the pegasus’s version of a collarbone where neck met body.

Awash in a river of sensations and desires, Celestia’s wings stood to attention and locked up at the sound her name, and her lips detached from Rainbow’s coat with an audible smack before she looked at Dash with horny anger. “I thought I said not to call me that outside of the public,” the goddess said in an annoyed tone that was a hundred miles from her usual calm and collected voice. “And why did you follow me out here? I said it was nothing!”

Rainbow’s eyes widened, and I felt Celestia’s guilt spike at the pegasus’s apparent cowering. “S-Sorry, I just, well-I missed out on the last big thing and sure you just said you wanted to catch some air, but then I thought even if you really did just want to stretch your wings then we could have a race or something, cause Twilight’s not much for flying and Fairy can only really fly straight. But I figured you that you’d be awesome cause you’re a princess and-”

“RAINBOW! I am not mad at-” Celestia shouted as she slammed her hooves into the cloud…and then blinked as the mass of water vapor suddenly disappeared in a puff. “-oh buck.”

With the cloud gone, Tia moved her wings ever so slightly, but the goddess feathered limbs refused to flap and hold her aloft for more than a second. Which was long enough for her to reach out with her long forelegs and latch onto Rainbow Dash’s midsection while the pegasus floated in a bipedal position.

“CELESTIA!” the pegasus shrieked as Tia slid down the cyan flyer’s body until she finally got a firm grip on Rainbow’s rear legs.

Then, she looked up, and I kind of lost the image in a sea of blue as a warm and slightly damp sensation met Celestia’s muzzle while Rainbow let out her own shriek. As Tia took in another breath, I got another familiar smell from her nose that had filled my own from time to time…when I buried it in Rainbow’s pony crotch during sex. Much in the same way the princess had at that moment while she clung on for dear life.

Rainbow let out a panting noise that sounded something like “Ah Ah! AH! PR-RINCESS!” while she wildly flapped her wings, trying to stay aloft while with jerky bursts of movements that Celestia couldn’t really compensate for.

This was mostly because while Tia had grabbed onto Rainbow’s legs thanks to the mother of all wing-boners that left her flightless, Rainbow had wrapped her fetlocks around the pointy object that threatened to stab her and held it close while trying to pull Celestia up by her horn as the goddess channeled her magic through it.

Now, being a sort-of alicorn while dating a real one, I understood a few facts about horns. When inert, they were pretty much indestructible. But when magic was channeled through them, they came more sensitive than the thing between a guy’s legs. It was why when some unicorns got into a fight they crossed horns like swords, to prevent the other from using magic.

And Rainbow was rubbing Tia’s with both her fetlocks, so the magic the goddess was pumping through her horn couldn’t teleport them down.

While Celestia was scrubbing Rainbow’s snatch with her snout thanks to the pegasus‘s extremely erratic flying that was more down than it was up.

Wrapped within the howling winds of eternal winter, Celestia’s ears could barely make out what I was pretty sure a sound of pegasi pleasure before her horn reached it’s limit, and…I blacked out for a few seconds of shared pleasure with Celestia.

When I came to, or she did, or...something…

I felt Celestia sitting in the snow. Or sludge, really. And despite the mess of melting ice around her, the goddess body didn’t react like a normal pony’s would, as in moving the heat around to protect the vital areas. No, apparently the whole Alicorn of the Sun thing came with its super special heater that even the arctic north couldn’t do much about.

Although…Rainbow’s rubbing of the horny alicorn’s pointy extension had provided some release. As both Celestia’s and my own private parts could attest to. However, I could still feel that the goddess’s libido hadn’t been fully sated and…well, it was quickly making me a bit needful again as well.

But that wasn’t what I found Celestia focusing on at that moment, or me for that matter. She had her sights set on the pegasus before her, with her mind in a flurry of concerned emotions that were next to nothing when compared to mine. “Rainbow Dash? RAINBOW DASH WAKE UP!” the princess shouted as Dashie let out a moan and opened her eyes as she slowly got to her feet.

And saw what was already scaring the shit out of me and kind of worrying Celestia. At spots around the pegasus’s body, Rainbow was covered by patches of burning…well, flames.

It looked almost like when I had seen Tia go full tilt against Grogar. Except instead of a raging alicorn surrounded by a flaming aura of fire, it was a dazed pegasus with a few splotchy flames that threatened to consume her completely if the edges of burt coat around their edges were any indication.

“AHHHH! FIRE! I’m on fire!” the pegasus shrieked before her wings started beating and I’m guessing what was a pegasus’s natural reaction to danger told her to zoom away as fast as possible kicked in.

I was just glad that Celestia was about twenty times faster than me when it came to calling up her magic. The fastest horn in Equestria surrounded Rainbow in its magic glow before she could get more than an inch away. “Don’t you dare!”

Rainbow flailed around in futility against the princess’s magic, and then looked back at the alicorn. “P-Princess! What the haaa-um…why am I on fire but not um, burning?”

Annoyance replaced concerned as the bottom right of my Celestia-cam blacked out for a few seconds in what I guessed was an twitch. “Because you are quite possibly the luckiest pegasus alive right now,” the explained in a monotone voice that hid the mixture of fear and building anger beneath the goddess’s mask. “What in the name of the heavens inspired you to rub my horn while I was trying to teleport?”

As Rainbow was pulled closer and into Celestia’s shadow, the pegasus kind of shrank in on herself. “Um but you…um, you grabbed onto me, and your wings…hey wait,” Rainbow said as she started to get a little of her metaphorical fire back. “What the hay were you thinking when you were nuzzling my pussy?”

Celestia flinched, although I doubted I would have noticed from the outside. All that occurred was a tiny twitch of her wings. “That was…my apologies for that accident,” she said before reaching out with her forelegs and bringing Rainbow Dash in for a hug. “Now come here, I need to drain away that flame aura before the fire protection wears off and you get hurt. You’re lucky that both enchantments were included when my magic…erupted. And it was that combination of spells. Otherwise, you could have easily been burnt to ash.”

A second later, Tia brought Rainbow into her embrace, and I could feel her start to work her magic while the pegasus tensed and spoke. “Say what?”

“Have you and not sucked on Twilight or Omnifarious’s horns yet? Or at least learned of the dangers of doing so without the proper warding spells placed so that the magical release of the…I’m guessing by your expression that’s a no,” the princess said before she put her weight fully on her rear and cleared her throat. “Well, nopony’s given you the talk yet...

“Unicorn horns, and by extension alicorn horns, are very delicate when magic is allowed to flow through them. If coaxed correctly, the process can be very…pleasurable.”

After the evenly delivered, if reluctantly paced, explanation finished Rainbow’s face scrunched up. “Wait, are you saying I just rubbed one out of your horn? And you…” the pegasus paused and her expression became even more hesitant. “…sprayed your...magical stuff all over me?”

Celestia cleared her throat. “Base, but that is a fitting analogy,” the replied evenly before she looked down at Rainbow. “Only instead of fluids, the magical energy you were struck with could have had a number of effects. To be honest Rainbow, you’re lucky to be alive. If my magic had taken a more harmful form, your ashes could have been spread all across Equestria.”

Rainbow gulped.

And Celestia continued her scared straight lecture. “Or you could have been granted my flaming aura without the requisite protection,” she said to the pegasus that just stared at her blankly before she went on. “You would have been on fire without the added effect that keeps the flames from consuming you. And it is a magical flame, fueled by your own mana reserves, so simply diving into the snow wouldn’t have helped.”

“W-What?” Rainbow shirked.

Celestia simply tightened her grip. “Do not worry my little pony, the process of removing the magic is simple enough…if a little time consuming,” she added after a moment. “Simply wait, and it will be over in a few minutes.”

Which translated to a few hours in Rainbow-time.

Barely more than a minute in, which meant I was just leaving before the need to eavesdrop brought me back, the pegasus begin to fidget. Then I saw her look up at the princess while the flames around her died down. “Um, Princess, can I ask you something?”

While I felt Celestia’s eyebrow twitch at the mention of her title, what I felt coming from her was a bit more disturbing. There was a slight, but almost familiar wave of depression that washed over the goddess for a moment before she pushed it down. “Anything.”

“Okay so…when we were up in the air, did you mean to uh, rub your muzzle on my-”

Celestia bristled as she spoke. “No!” But the question had already done its work, and despite the arctic winds and the frozen water that Tia rear end was melting with the temperature it was continuously giving off.

Once again, nerves apparently got the best of the pegasus, and she quickly shut up.

…this time for a whole two minutes. As the time passed, I could see her mulling something over. Although, the lack of a tiny smirk meant it probably wasn’t anything sexual. If anything, the discomfort that I saw her exhibiting said there really was something big on her mind.

And then she was at it again.

“Okay, so I got another question, its about something Fairy said,” Rainbow went on as I felt Celestia get a little nervous while my thoughts were along the lines of: Ah shit.

Celestia was a bit more controlled with her words. “About?”

“Well, I know she was freaking out and all, but…she said you and Twilight would totally work,” Rainbow said in what I was sure was a rather twisted version of events before she paused for a moment. “But um…you and me…”

I felt like crawling into a hole and curling up to die because of my own idiocy.

I knew that Rainbow had a somewhat fragile ego, over inflated as it was. She might not have said anything about it, but she was a potential bed partner for the being that had been around since before her great-grandparents were in diapers and ruled over all Equestria! Oh course any poking at her chances of being with Tia, especially by someone whose opinion she valued, would cause a flood of doubts!

And I had been so wrapped up with myself, I hadn’t even noticed I did that to her.

I was the worst boyfriend ever.

“Yes?” Celestia prompted.

“Well, she said you and me…and you and her, but I kind of focused on the you and me part, and it might have got me thinking…” Rainbow paused and took a deep breath. “I remember you going on about how hot you think I am, but… Is that it?” she asked.

And kept going before Celestia could answer. “I mean, I know I’m awesome, but the three of you are princesses, and I’m...I’m just a pegasus. I’m awesome but…it’s not princess awesome.”

Rainbow gulped. “Am I just around because you needed all three of us?”

A few seconds passed, and the wind howling around the two horses died down a bit before Celestia began speaking. “I will tell you, if you promise to keep what I am about to say a secret from every other pony out there,” the goddess told the little pegasus in her pony-arms.

“Okay,” Rainbow reluctantly agreed.

As much as I hate to admit it, I tried to strain myself a little closer just to hear what Celestia was about to say…

“I’m old.”

…and if I had been in my body, I probably would have fallen to the floor.

Rainbow seemed just as disappointed. “What the hay kind of secret is that?” she demanded.

To which Celestia sighed and shook her head before she fell back with the pegasus clutched to her barrel. “The simple version of a complicated answer,” she explained while wiggling her burning butt in the sludge that was quickly turning to water. “The long one is… I have a wider view than anypony else, even Luna. After hundreds and hundreds of years of being…well me, I learned some things, like how love isn’t actually some unstoppable thing that will claw it’s way out no matter how hard you try.”

Once again, Rainbow frowned at the princess. “Say what?”

“I learned how to not fall in love, and doing the opposite is actually easier.

“Of course, it’s not as if I can do it on command, or through some kind of magic,” Celestia went on after pausing for a moment. “But if I know the proper pony, it is simple for me to focus my attention in the right areas and allow myself to become infatuated with a few ponies I know well. Like a certain dashing pegasus who would do anything for her friends, and throws everything she is at everything she does, even if that does tend to make her wear blinders from time to time. The fact that you have a lovely sense of humor and a flank I can’t wait to sink my teeth into is merely a bonus.”

Rainbow gulped. “Oh, that’s um…cool?” she asked after a moment of being the focus of Tia’s lustful gaze. Even without being there in person, I could tell she was totally lost on the whole explanation.

The goddess snorted in response. “Thank you for your kind words Rainbow, but let’s be honest, it’s just running away,” she said before looking away from Dash. “And now I’ve found something I just can’t run away from. Even though it hurts the pony I claim to care for the most.”

“Wait a minute,” Rainbow deadpanned as she shifted around on Celestia’s pony-chest and looked the goddess in the eye. “Is this about what’s bothering Fae?”

Celestia nodded slowly as I was treated to the sight of a jerky camera. Seriously, when you’re not the one in the driver’s seat, seeing through someone else’s eyeballs was a real pain. “Yes,” she said in a dejected tone.

Rainbow groaned. “Okay, Twilight said I really blew it in the room but…I just don’t get it,” she said. “She’s well…I’d do-well, okay I wouldn’t do any-thing to look like her, but…sometimes…”

I mentally kicked myself. Despite the fact that Celestia, and by extension me, thought Dash was just about the best piece of pegasus flank that had come around in hundreds of years, Rainbow still didn’t adhere to such standards of beauty. And as much as I hated to admit it, I was kind of glad for that. If Rainbow became some sort of sycophantic leech who determined everything about herself and what to do about it based on the opinion of just one other pony, I…probably wouldn’t take it very well.

“It’s more to do with the fact that he is a female at the moment than anything else,” Celestia explained before she sighed. “And you don’t need to feel bad. The fault is my own. I foolishly misjudged the situation. Not to mention how my efforts to fix it only made things worse. That’s about par for the course for me, I’m afraid.”

If I had a body, I would have winced. This was why I didn’t like to be all sharing with my feelings. People always say that misery loves company, but they tend to leave off the fact that it’s mostly because misery likes to spread itself around, not that you needed help to deal with it.

Rainbow’s face scrunched up again. Although with anger there instead of confusion, it didn’t look nearly as adorable. “What the hay are you talking about? You’re awesome! I mean, just look how much Twilight wants to get us all together.”

Once again, the world spun as Celestia did something that completely messed with the camera as she tilted her head. “You are aware her enthusiastic nature is the cause of some of these problems? Curtailing those thoughts was the whole point behind my actions on our first date, yet Omnifarious still believes that my intrusion into your relationship will create something unharmonious.”

And once again, I was kind of put off by Rainbow’s uncaring attitude as she let out a groan. “That stupid thing again?” she groaned. “I swear, those two eggheads are so alike sometimes, I wonder if that spell Twilight uses to get rid of Fairy’s buggyiness doesn’t also give her Twilight’s stupid freak-out syndrome over the stupidest of things.”

Huh? I managed to think.

Celestia was a bit more articulate. Probably because her mouth could actually move. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, just this whole stupid thing Twilight told me when we were flying back to Ponyville after Discord pulled his stupid prank that ruined our date,” Rainbow explained with a roll of her eyes. “Fairy was all super fan when we first met, and we hung out a lot after the two of them got back from the Crystal Empire the first time, and Twilight was…kind of having a dry spell in the bedroom so…she thought Fairy was going to like, leave her or something and try to get with me.

“As if I’d ever let her do something like that,” Rainbow went on as I felt several emotions well up inside of me. “But Twilight, said she was totally terrified of it and...thinking back to when all that was going on, she was.”

I snapped back into full control of my body and jerked upright with all the force of a person waking from one of the most horrible of nightmares, the last bit of Tia and Rainbow’s conversation in the back of my mind as they had gotten ready to head back to the crystal capital. Unfortunately, despite the rather disturbing discovery I had made about my purple mare’s motives when it came to the whole herding thing, sharing sensations with a horny Celestia had left some lasting effects towards the rear of my body, and I groaned as it cried out for attention.

By all that was holy, I hated being a horny girl. Especially when my guilt wouldn’t let me take a cold shower so that my non-solar powered pussy could actually calm down with the application of cold water.

So, despite the fact that I could probably turn the head of every male pony in the kingdom from half a mile away while the smell I was giving off gave them mental images that were like nightmare fuel for me, I made my way out of the castle and off to find Twilight so I could do what needed to be done. Sunset had told me where she was after all, so I didn’t need to do much searching.

Not that I actually walked of course. I went out the window and took to the sky as fast as my not-alicorn wings could get me there. Even though the Empire had been getting its shipments of pegasus ponies, the skies were even less populated by the creatures than Ponyville. And considering the town’s population didn’t break triple digits while the Empire had its own special tribe, that was saying a lot.

I didn’t go through the front door of the library. What with me being a creature that could summon up eldritch energies to warp the very fabric of reality, using doors were beneath me. Plus, the unobstructed skies had meant plenty of ponies had seen me gliding around, and I didn’t want to deal with other ponies asking for my autograph at the moment.

Dash may have fed of the whole fame thing...which kind of made me wonder if I could eat admiration, but as my private parts were pleading for attention, I didn’t want to take the chance of my male fans volunteering to ‘service’ me.

After I ported into the library thanks to the view of the interior one of its upper windows gave me, I took a quick look around. Just as I had hoped, there wasn’t much of anybody around. Ponies didn’t tend to go for reading things like historical accounts or ancient tales that probably had some bit of truth to them. Which was all the ancient imperial library had for the most part.

I didn’t want the clippity clop of my hooves to give me away, so I kept to my wings and looked around as quickly as I looked for the lavender alicorn. Which was kind of stupid of me, since Twilight might have come to investigate a frantically galloping pony in a library of all places.

By the grace of whatever forces that guided the actions of all of us in Equestria, I found her quickly enough that only a mild panic had set in.

Twilight was sitting on a comfy-looking blue cushion in a little niche on the second floor of the library in front of a table that had two towers of books flanking the princess. From the looks of the shelves nearest to her, Twilight had found some particular subject of interest and mined the shelves of every worthwhile nugget she could find before sitting down to study.

But whether it be Sombra’s personal journals, or every copy of ye old play colt that featured the alicorn sisters in some princest poses, I didn’t give a damn. My thought’s were only on a purple plot, and how much I would need to kiss it for Twilight to forgive me for my idiocy.

When I landed on the crystal floor with a chiming clop, the purple mare looked up at me. “Fae what’re you-” she cut herself off with a quick sniff to the air, and I was reminded of the side effects that came from experiencing Tia’s horn-gasm now that I was in a room with a pony who could fulfill those needs. “”Oh! Well let me just-”

I didn’t give Twilight a chance to finish. I rushed up to Twilight and got on the table before leaning forward to look her in the eyes. Being so close to my longtime girlfriend had my heart beating faster and faster, but my sexual needs were only partly to blame. The other was my panic of all the crap I was about to bring up with two little words.

“I’m sorry!”

My apology got a confused look from the alicorn. “Um…what?” Twilight asked as she started to Smell a little concerned. “Did something happen?”

I quickly shook my head and my frustration built. “No! It’s not what…I just… I’m sorry about Rainbow,” I quickly told her before I let out a tiny groan of concern at just how not-well this was all going.

Twilight’s eyes widened and her concern Scent started to turn into full-on panic. “What? Rainbow-what, what happened to Rainbow? I heard and saw the Rainboom, but I thought she went with Princess Celestia so there was nothing to worry about. D-Did something happen to-”

With my idiocy and hesitation continuing to make things worse, I quickly shut up and shook my head before Twilight could freak out on me. “I’m such an idiot! I didn’t-I mean, you just went and said ‘let’s get Rainbow Dash into the herd’ and I was so stupid I didn’t even think to ask why!”

Twilight said…something, I’ll admit I wasn’t paying that much attention to her by that point. I mean, I was pretty emotional, not to mention horny. Although, I was pretty sure she asked me what I was talking about. Which was good, because I wasn’t actually done talking.

“And I just went on and palled around with Rainbow and I never once thought how you thought about it and-and even when I was off with her and…I’m...sorry,” I mumbled as I lowered my head.

“Wait,” Twilight mumbled, which made me look back up a few seconds after I looked down. Her face was twisted in confusion, but was slowly working its way back to its normal shape as she worked through it. By the time she was done, the alicorn wore a frown. “That’s what you're going on about? Me worried about you and Rainbow Dash hanging out together? Fae, that was…it’s fine!”

A tiny smile appeared on the pony’s face. “Okay, I was worried,” she said softly. “But…the first month you moved to Ponyville as…well, you…the fire in our relationship dimmed. I know it was because you didn’t feel comfortable being with me as a mare like you are now, but it’s fine. Everything worked out and now Rainbow’s with us and…”

Twilight’s little smile spread across her face. “And it’s like everything just transformed into something even more beautiful than we ever had before, and I don’t want it to ever stop,” she said as tears appeared in her eyes despite attempts to blink them away. “And now Celestia-”

The name made me cringe. “That’s just it!” I insisted before looking back into Twilight’s eyes. “You were afraid of losing me, but…you went ahead with it, you voted yes to Celestia’s proposal when you could have ran away and said no and you even brought up Rainbow’s name and I just…I didn’t even bother to try and figure out why!”

“It’s-”

I cut her off. “And now I’m in your position! And I say yes, and agree with you to give Celestia a chance,” I went on before pausing. Mostly because of the fear of what I was about to admit. “But in reality, I’ve been doing everything I can to chase her away. You were afraid of letting Rainbow in, but you did it for me, you gave her a chance, y-you even went on a date with her! And…I just, I’m not even…” I gulped. “I couldn’t even try to do that, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t have as much faith in you...as you had in me.”

One of Twilight’s forelegs reached up and around me, and she pulled herself into a hug. “It’s okay,” she whispered into my ear. “I should have seen how worried you were.”

To which I had to shake my head at. “No! I’m the one with the emotion detector, I should have asked you why you asked about Rainbow and found out how you really felt about it.” My grip tightened around her, and I got a huge whiff of Twilight’s physical scent. As cliché as it was, the alicorn really did use lavender shampoo for her coat.

“Okay then,” she whispered before kissing me right below the ear and starting to back off, which worried me to no end as I had been trying to draw her in tighter. What worried me even more was the guarded look on her face, and the mix of fear, hope, lust, and love I could Smell swirling around in her head. “Then, about Celestia…what is it you want to do?”

When I hesitated at answering, and Smelled Twilight’s fear begin to grow in those three seconds, I forced myself to take a few more to pull myself together. I wanted to make things absolutely clear to the princess about how I felt. “I’ll admit, the only reason I said yes at first was because I guilted myself into it,” I told Twilight while I fought to keep myself steady. “It’s something I always do with ponies.

“But now…I really do want the four of us to be together. I want to wake up next to her, like I do with the two of you. I want the three of us to go to sleep wrapped in her embrace, and I want her to make you happy, and I want the three of us to make her happy and…I want um…” My rear might have wiggled a bit as I was reminded that I had something else that Twilight needed to use her oral skills on.

The princess apparently caught on, because she smiled a few seconds later. “You want her to use that big tongue of hers to mash your clit, and see if you really can fit your whole muzzle inside her pussy, right?” Twilight said with a sly smile that made me gulp.

Mostly because after she said it, my mind was filled with mental images that featured every one of Twilight’s theoretical herd sex diagrams she had shown me and Rainbow, personal fantasies that involved a six foot pony me with all the proper equipment mounting Celestia, and perhaps a few fan inspired things as I…praised the sun. “Um…w-what makes you say something like that?”

“Probably because I’ve been getting a whiff of you ever since you came in and…honey, you’re really making me horny,” Twilight said before she gently kissed me on the nose.

“Fairy, I’m sorry I never saw your fear over Celestia, and I really am happy you’ve managed to get past it, but…I really need you to come back to our apartments in the castle, and let us take care of each other.”

I blushed, and if the other hole in my back end could have talked, the purple pony princess probably would have heard a shout of ‘FINALLY’!

Of course, the first thing I had to do after Twilight teleported us back to our bed was follow through on the offer to give her a horn job. Although unlike Tia’s, Twilight had time to put on some protection spells. I ended up with a very good feeling sent throughout my body when she…released, and wondered if it was the same for all ponies who did things like that, or if being a changeling actually let me eat the magic that was released in such a manner. Miniscule as it was.

I did feel a bit more nutritionally satisfied when the whole thing was done though.

And then came the lesbian sex that had me and Twilight facing opposite directions as we went at it for about two orgasms each. Without the feedings attached to them of course. There was still some time before dinner, and I didn’t want Twilight nodding off into her soup.

So we just had some normal lesbian sex, as ponies…which kind of made me realize just how fucking weird my life had become as I just kind of laid there on the bed with Twilight’s teats in my face after we had rolled onto our sides and she lost her top position.

“Is something wrong?” she asked as I felt a little tug from the girl petting my pony tail.

I blinked, and raised my head to look at her. “What?”

Twilight turned her head enough to get me with one of her beautiful eyes. “Well, usually when we’re done with this position, you like to suck on my teats, or kiss me on my underbelly for a little while,” she explained before quickly adding, “not that I mind! I mean, it’s a little ticklish, but…I know how humans don’t really have coats, so you’re probably used to the uncovered skin and…is there a difference? I mean, you didn’t really kiss me a lot when we started dating, except for on the lips and those are-”

“Well-” I cut her off before she could get all panicky, or even worse, inquisitive. “It’s not really that different. Plus, I think the whole lack of taste bud thing helped. Hay, I’m not even human anymore, so the nerves that control my sensation of touch could read things slightly different too.”

“Do you miss being human?” Twilight asked. It was a question a few others had asked me, Twilight included. Although considering how many times I had lied to make her feel better, I kind of understood why she asked it again.

I shook my head. “Maybe at first, but not any more,” I told her truthfully. “Being a pony, or even just a changeling is great.” And then of course my mind had to bring up a few things. “Okay, there are some things about Earth that I do miss that I just can’t get in Equestria, but I’ve got you and the girls for friends, so I’d say I gained a lot more than I lost.”

Twilight looked at my stomach, or more likely the pony boobies I was sporting. “And the mare thing?”

That one, I couldn’t lie about…and after what happened a few hours prior, the thought of how much I had tried to sideline the feeling made me groan. “It bothers me, okay?” I told her in a whine. “And I know, keeping my mouth shut made things even worse. So…yes, I want to be a stallion, and as soon as Sunset’s spouting a horn again I want you to do everything you can to fix this, but not a second before, okay? I’m still firm on that. You need to focus on her problems right now, not mine.”

“Fae, why are you so adamant about that?” she asked. “I can budget my time and do both you know.”

I took in a deep breath as the guilt stirred up from inside me at Twilight’s question. “Sunset is suffering, and it’s all my fault.”

Twilight frowned at me. “Okay, she can’t use magic but…she’s better off now than…how I left her,” the alicorn admitted before her ears lowered and she looked down at my ass.

I shook my head. “No. At least back with the humans, she didn’t get a constant reminder of what she had lost and only had two and a half more years to wait for the portal to open again. Now, Sunset is surrounded by unicorns, and we’ve got at least ten years of waiting before the portal will open up again on this side. That is if the tunnel isn’t redirected halfway there and we have to deal with something wandering around the abyss like Tambelon.” That whole thing still left a bile in my stomach with its magic eating mist and zombie goat.

After a few seconds of silence, the alicorn lowered her head with a groan. “You’re not the only pony who doesn’t like not being able to help her friends you know,” Twilight told me. “But…I’ll keep my mind focused on the mirror, and the Harmony Box, and all those books Princess Celestia has been sending me. You know, it’s a wonder she ever thought I could officiate Ponyville with all the new books I’ve been getting.”

At my girlfriend’s annoyed tone, I readjusted myself a bit, and planted a kiss on her cutie mark before resting my head on the side of her rear. I kind of wondered if I could get out of my royal duties with that opening, but…well…there was the question of just what else I would have to do if my time got freed up?

Although, they were technically Twilight’s royal duties that I was doing, which meant she would probably get burdened with them if I gave them up. At least until she found out that she didn’t actually need to do them, and started freaking out over what Celestia would think if she just gave the problem that was Ponyville back to the mayor…

And considering how I just learned the ponies gave the princesses their jobs…I had a feeling my regency over Ponyville would soon turn the whole place into my little demesne soon enough.

A second later, I felt Twilight snuggle in closer on her end before a weight was put where I cutie mark shoulda been, and I had to force myself to compare what we were doing was more like head to toe sleeping than some kind of ass-pillow position. Which lasted a full two minutes before the door was kicked open and our heads shot up.

“Hey girls I need a little help with-whoa,” a rainbow blur that turned into a pegasus said as she hovered in the room and took a sniff before glancing down at the soiled sheets that Twilight and I shared. “Got started without me I see.”

I felt a little guilty at the comment, even if all Dash did was get an even more lecherous smile on her face. “Guess that means I get the middle position again this time.”

As for me, my shoulder angel saw fit to remind me that I had just been freaking out about Twilight going off and doing what I had just done with her to Dash. I know there wasn’t a rule about threesomes only when it came to sex in our group, but…leaving her out…it kind of felt like cheating.

But, Twilight wasn‘t put off by our position in the least. She actually smiled, and licked her lips. “Well then stop flapping your wings and get on down here so I can make you squeal Rainbow.”

Finally, the pegasus became a little hesitant, and dropped her hooves onto the floor. “Yeah um…before we do…there’s something I gotta tell you girls.”

I tensed. Oh no…Rainbow, please don’t, I mentally begged the pegasus. What had gone on with her and Celestia, I could totally see it as an accident, and knew there was no way in hell she would have done it otherwise. Twilight…might not have been as understanding.

Of course, that was if Rainbow could even explain things to their fullest. Which, despite my faith in a lot of her abilities, I knew Rainbow couldn’t do very well. And that meant I would have to step in to defend her by explain what really happened, and…I really didn’t want the girls could know I could kind of spy on Tia.

Or that I spent so much time doing it just a few minutes ago. Something I really needed to stop doing.

Unless there was some sort of super big emergency.

Which I had thought it was thanks to the Rainboom.

So, it was Rainbow’s fault, not mine, that I had basically shared in Celestia’s accidental horn-gasm.

“About this Celestia thing.”

Rainbow’s words pulled me out of lawyer-mode and my body trembled as I fought the urge to tell her to shut the hell up before applying a twenty-four hour mind wipe, or join her on the floor in begging Twilight for forgiveness after I had kind of cheated on her too. So torn I was, I didn’t get a chance to actually stop her before she spoke again.

“I don’t want to wait.”

And by speaking, she completely knocked me off kilter.

“Huh?”

It took me a moment to realize that had also come from Twilight. Which was the reason I didn’t really have a comeback to what I was really fearing the pony who didn’t know how to take her time was about to say.

“Look, the whole reason you two haven’t um…you know, with Tia is because I’m here, right?” she asked.

I winced. That was so not the reason that I had been…well… Okay, if Rainbow hadn’t been part of the equation, Tia might have already made her move about a week or two ago, and all the shit I had gone through today might have been cleared up, and... Hell, if I had done the whole confession to Celestia a week ago, I seriously doubted that I would even be having a coronation at all!

But as that line of thought was leading to a dark place, I had to let Twilight reinforce the fact that Rainbow’s presence was in fact not getting in the way of her childhood wet dream while I beat down the notion that Rainbow Dash was in fact one of the root causes of my prolonged emotional turmoil.

“Oh Rainbow, that’s not a big deal,” Twilight assured the pegasus with a wave of her hoof. “I’ve waited since puberty to have a shot at the Princess, I can wait a whole other month.”

And as I watched Rainbow’s frown deepen, I made a mental note to never let Twilight be the one to try and talk Dash out of anything, ever again. Plus, that whole other month thing kind of had me a little worried. Twilight may have sounded sincere, and I didn’t Smell any anger towards Dash, but…a whole other month?

The choice of words were pretty telling.

And…I…had to force myself to not ask Rainbow if this was all out of some weird misplaced guilt-thing over rubbing off Tia’s horn not an hour ago. Although, she sure as hell didn’t Smell guilty. Angry and excited with a hint of horny, but not enraged.

Ugh, why couldn‘t have just stayed connected with Tia when she came back with Dash? I asked myself. With Rainbow getting all gung-ho about Celestia, I had to have missed some kind of major conversation in which Dash got the idea that we needed to sleep with Celestia.

“Well what about her, huh?” Rainbow shouted as she jumped into the air and glared at us before cringing a bit, and then landed back with only a few flaps. “Look it’s not…Celestia has been alone, and having to deal with it since before any of us were even born! She’s been missing a stallion for hundreds of years, and we’re supposed to make her wait even more to make me feel better?”

I blinked at the odd turnaround Rainbow had made of the situation. She…actually had me sounding like the total douche instead of the fat ass alicorn ho was shoving her big butt into my business.

“Rainbow-”

“I love you girls!” Dash went on right on top of Twilight’s words. “And I don’t need a month to tell me that! I don’t need to get settled, I don’t need to adjust, and I sure as hay don’t need to keep one of the most awesome ponies in the history of Equestria waiting another day that she has to spend alone! Do you?”

The challenging glare she gave both me and Twilight had me at a loss for words. As much as I tried, I…couldn’t really come up with an argument to what Rainbow was saying.

Oh, I’m sure there was plenty of things to say against it but…the longer I thought about it and considered my history about such things, the more I knew I’d be able to come up with plenty more reasons not to get with Celestia if I had enough time. In just a little over a week I had managed to convince myself that Twilight would leave me if Tia came into our lives. With a month…I didn’t know what kind of relapse I would manage to get myself into.

“Um, Rainbow,” Twilight spoke again. “Not that I’m not thrilled to hear you so optimistic about the prospect of courting Celestia, but just how in the hay do you propose we go about approaching her out of the blue.”

I let out a snort. Considering how Tia had been feeling… “What? Do you expect us to just go flying right up to her and go, hey Celestia, wanna do it?”

“A bit crude, but expedient.”

The melodious voice coming from the other side of the door sent a shiver up my spine as both my body and Twilight’s jerked up before my Nose alerted me of another presence that hadn’t been there before. Or…had been there, just hidden behind a few layers of magic that concealed her presence from multiple forms of detection.

Rainbow just jumped up and hovered with a smug look on her face as she glanced over to the alicorn. “Told ya they’d be up for it if I asked.”

“P-Princes Celestia,” Twilight breathed out with wide eyes as the goddess walked into the doorway in all her sexy glory…with a Scent that spoke of a sexual hunger that was aching to be satisfied, and…well, a scent that spoke of a sexual hunger that was aching to be satisfied that even got to my nose. Both of which made my mouth water.

My eyes darted down to the pegasus that had set us up, then over to the former-unicorn that looked up at her goddess in longing, and finally up to the Alicorn of the Sun as she stood there…nervously staring at the two of us. Oh God fucking damn it all to Hell, I mentally shouted while wondering just how in the hell something like this had even happened.

“I had a talk with Rainbow Dash on the way back from our flight together,” Celestia said, as if answering my unasked question. “And after trading a few words, she…convinced me to approach the two of you rather than let her do so on her so own and…offer to advance the time table of our relationship, if both of you are agreeable to the idea.”

If I hadn’t been within olfactory range of the princess, I wouldn’t have believed it. Although considering how much she did want it, and with the way Rainbow could kind of talk ponies into things...

The pounding of my heart over what was happening managed to drown out everything else, even Twilight’s response to Celestia’s proposal. A way of thinking that made me even more…confused/nervous/fearful/hopeful/angry/sad/and maybe a little horny from smelling Celestia’s desire on top of a lot of other stuff.

In the ensuing seconds, I actually found myself thinking it all over, even if it was just a rehash of everything I had been thinking since…well, since Luna had made her announcement about Celestia’s feelings.

And about two seconds after I started that, I kicked all my thoughts to the curb.

I was thinking about things way too much. Whenever I thought about being with Celestia, my mind started going on and on about all the impossibilities and about how we couldn’t be together because of age, or size, or how her divine status was so far out of my league it might as well of been a different sport.

But whenever I was actually with Celestia, in my dreams or in pony, everything was just so…perfect. She was kind, confident, silly, a little annoying at times, patient, understanding, and oh so very loving. I felt safe with her. I looked up to her. I trusted her. I wanted nothing more in my life than to see her be truly happy.

I loved her.

Even if all the pressure to say yes was all on me, I didn’t feel like backing down, or saying yes out of a need to keep others happy. I wanted Tia, with Rainbow and Twilight in the mix. And if I was going to do this, I would be going in full-tilt boogie, deep end...something.

So when Twilight got done with her, “Well if everypony else feels the same way, then I don’t see why we should torture ourselves by holding back or putting things off.” I kind of got caught up in the moment, stood up, pointed a hoof at the giant sexy pony, and said the first thing that came into my head thanks to all the history of sexual tension she had managed to create.

“Okay Tia, let’s bang!”

Chapter 44: The Incredibly Overdue Friendship Journal Entry

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You know, I could probably make this whole comment about cougars, and how experienced women with impossibly hot bodies were demons in the sack. But, that would kind of cheapen the whole thing I had just finished experiencing.

Because Celestia wasn’t a demon, she was a goddess.

You don’t have sex with a goddess.

You do something people don’t have a word for yet, and when you come back from the place that she sent you to, you just lay on her stomach in awe at the realization that everything you had called joy up until that point in your life was just a dull imitation of what you should have truly been experiencing.

At least that’s what you do after the goddess magically makes the bed big enough for herself plus a small crowd.

And gets reminded to take off her regalia. I swear, Tia would sleep in that stuff if someone let her.

But, long story short, Tia was awesome in bed. She did things I didn’t even know were possible, and left all three of us in heaven for the longest time. Even with the emotional high that came from sucking on pony love, I think she was better at getting Twilight and Dash to where they wanted to be than me.

To top it all off, she cleaned us all up quite nicely with her magic while we were laying around, too pulled into our pleasure to move.

“Well, it looks like everypony’s come back to us now,” the gentle voice of my goddess whispered in my ears before I looked up at her face, with Twilight and Rainbow both snuggled into her neck, their heads resting against Celestia while her wings wrapped both of them up in a blanket of snow white feathers.

“Tia?”

“Yes?” she replied to my question.

“That was…” I couldn’t even get a word out, and just settled for a blissful sigh.

“Awesome,” Rainbow Dash supplied while Twilight just gave an agreeable moan as she buried herself deeper into Celestia’s mane while it waved around and entwined itself around her body.

She smiled back at me. “Well, it’s a good thing to know I’m not out of practice,” the goddess replied before she shuffled her wings around and made both Twilight and Rainbow lift their heads. “But now that you’re all back with me, there’s something I believe we need to discuss.”

Twilight moaned in pleasure. “Oh pillow talk!” she exclaimed before the brief bit of energy ended and her face returned to the serenity that only someone who had just gotten laid could show. “I love you Celestia.”

The goddess kissed her lesser co-ruler on the top of her head. “I adore you as well Twilight,” she said before her face got a little too serious for my post-goddess coitus liking. “But there is something we really need to discuss. If the three of you truly wish to do this, then we need to figure some things out going in, and lay down some rules. Not to mention figure out what we’re going to tell the others.”

“First rule is, sex every night,” Rainbow motioned before she kissed Tia on the neck.

“Seconded!” Twilight agreed as she raised a lazy hoof.

After I gave the vote a three-fourths majority, Celestia let out another laugh. “Well, not exactly what I was going to suggest, but…” she took in a deep breath and schooled her features. “I know my duties will take me away from the three of you. Sometimes I will just be in Canterlot, and sometimes I will have to go further away, but…I will always do whatever I can to come back to the three of you at sundown, and we will finish the day together.”

I didn’t need to be prodded to go along with that. “Sounds good to me.”

“Me too,” Rainbow agreed.

“Motion carried. Snuggle time,” Twilight said before she nuzzled into Celestia with enough gusto to make me think she was trying to rip a hole in the alicorn’s throat with her nose.

Celestia let out another laugh that shook me from underneath. “Very well, perhaps this isn’t the best time to discuss such matters,” the goddess agreed before she kissed the top of Twilight’s horn, and then the top of Rainbow’s head, and then leaned forward to kiss me…

…but not before the door to the fucking bedroom slammed open again, and I had to restrain my urge to murder the creature that dared to intrude upon my post sex glow with my girls.

Mostly because I doubt Twilight would have liked it, and I was pretty sure I would have felt a little guilty afterwards considering just who had walked right into the lion’s den.

“Hiya girls!” a much too cheery pink party pony said as she raised her hoof high in greeting. “Can I borrow Fae-Fae for a few? I need to go over her pre and post coronation parties! There’s some details I need to work out and everypony knows you can’t do that without input from the pony the party’s planned for.”

While Rainbow just put her head back down onto the bed, and Celestia was too perfect to get all worked up, and I might have been a little ‘wtf’ at Pinkie’s sudden appearance to say anything, Twilight had no such reservations.

“PINKIE! You…wha…WHAT THE HAY ARE YOU DOING HERE?” she shrieked. Although, she looked a little more scandalily surprised than angry.

Pinkie cocked her head to the side for a second. “Getting Fae-Fae,” she said before righting her neck and giving Twilight an innocent look of confusion. “And what’re you so upset about Twilight? I waited outside until you were all done.”

I cringed at the implications of that statement, and then looked back to the biggest goddess in the room. “Tia…I thought you uh, put up a privacy spell or…something.”

“I did,” she assured me with the confusion in her Scent obvious in her voice. “Nopony could have possibly heard Twilight past those doors. Unless she peeked.”

Pinkie actually seemed to get a little angry at that suggestion. “Hey! I would never do something like that!” she exclaimed with a stomp of her hoof. “When I figured out what itchy throat, warm lips, and a twitchy special someplace meant, I learned to stay out of Mr and Mrs Cakes bedroom during their super special fun time!”

“You…” My mouth worked hard to close and open again as I wrapped my head around what I thought I had just heard. “You did not seriously just say you have a Pinkie Sensation for when ponies are doing it.” Then of course there was the question as to the range of the thing, and if she got a message every time a pony Pinkie knew was getting some.

But before I could begin my investigation, Rainbow groaned and raised her head. “Oh for crying out loud, you know how Pinkie is with parties Fae, just go with her already!”

Apparently Celestia agreed with Rainbow’s reasoning on the most expeditious way to remove the pink pony, and I quickly found myself cleared by a wave of Celestia’s horn before I was thrown out on my ass. I landed a second before the doors slammed shut while Rainbow probably went to sleep in the embrace of Celestia’s wing as Twilight planned out our whirlwind romance that would soon be followed by some overly extravagant wedding.

Although after I recovered from the whole thing, got back on my pony-feet, and looked over to Pinkie, something crossed my mind. “You…didn’t look all that surprised to see Celestia in there,” I noticed as she watched me get up.

“Why would I?” she asked, which…I didn’t really have a response to.

Yeah, she should have been surprised, or freaked out or…something! But then again, it was Pinkie I was dealing with. The list of things that got her excited compared to someone in the right mind was...strange.

Plus, out of all the girls, Pinkie treated Celestia pretty much like just another pony. I was pretty sure when the time called for it, she would follow the commands of the goddess as quickly as any other Equestrian, but aside from that, Pinkie was exactly what Celestia wanted in a friend. Someone who didn’t treat the goddess like she raised the sun.

And as I walked down the hall with the pony, I started to get a little worried about something else. While I wasn’t exactly a supporter of the doomed relationship that would involve Pinkie and Rainbow, the two of them were extremely close friends. “Umm Pinkie, about Rainbow,” I began uneasily.

My not-question made the pink pony’s head turn. “What about Dashie?”

Several weeks too late, I did something that I really should have before this whole mess started with me making a move on the pegasus. “Are you sad that her and Twilight and me, are…together?” I asked.

Rainbow and Pinkie were more than a bit on the inseparable side when they wanted to go have fun together, something I had joined from time to time since the ability to use magic and change one’s shape was a nice thing to have when fooling ponies. While, I hadn’t Smelled any major love Scents when they were looking at each other, friendship was little more than sexless adoration. Love without the X-Rated material.

And going from not knocking horseshoes to Rainbow tasting Pinkie’s pie wasn’t an impossibility. If I had somehow gotten in the way of that, or broken the pink little pony’s heart…I didn’t know what I’d do.

But instead of a deflated hair Pinkie, all I got back was confusion, both in her Scent and on her face. “You’re all making Dashie happy. Why would that make me sad?” she asked before smiling a little. “And you forgot Celestia! I know she’s the new special somepony in the group Fae-Fae, but you really shouldn’t leave her out like that!”

The dating advice combined with the fact Pinkie had just seen her god-empress shortly after the throws of passionate sex without thinking anything of it shut me up for the rest of the trip to the kitchens. Pinkie just wasn’t a pony you talked to without plenty of aspirin on hand.

And then, I had to sit through the explanation of the problem which was…well…it was a Pinkie Pie party problem. Which meant it didn’t really rate very high on my panic list of things I needed to be worried about.

But I listened to it all the same. It was important to Pinkie after all.

“Usually I make sure there’s a good two-to-one ratio of the special guest’s favorite snacks compared to what everypony else wants, which usually has some kind of treat that everypony likes, but you eat pony love! And I don’t think very many ponies will like it if I try to bake love juice into cupcakes,” Pinkie said as she finished explaining her problem with a tiny frown.

I blinked several time to keep my annoyance at being called out of bed with Celestia for something so stupid from showing on my face. “Pinkie, I’m sure whatever you pick out will be fine,” I assured her in as even a tone I could manage. “It’s not that big a deal anyway.”

Apparently, I couldn’t have chosen a worse collection of words to say to Pinkie. “Not a big deal?” she asked before shouting, “NOT A BIG DEAL?” complete with her front hooves raised and flailing.

To which I had to cringe at, which gave Pinkie all the opening she needed to go on. “It’s a big deal, a super big deal! A super-mondo-big deal!” the pink party pony said before she poked me with her hoof. “This is my first big just for you party I’ve thrown! Everything needs to be perfect!”

Despite Pinkie’s frantic insistence, I managed to keep my cool. “Pinkie. One, most of the ponies coming over are just a bunch of stupid nobles from Canterlot. And two, I’ve been to plenty of your parties.”

The pink party pony made an annoyed face. “Not the pre-coronation party, that’s just going to be snooty and blech!” Pinkie replied as she stuck out her tongue as if rejecting the taste of the very idea. “I’m talking about he post-coronation party, that’s just going to be you, the girls, the princesses, the human, and…do you want Trixie too? I like her now that she’s not wearing that necklace, but its your super special party, the first party I’ve thrown just for you by the way!”

I…kind of saw why it was such a big deal to her after hearing that. Parties were her thing. In a lot of way, they were how she showed how much she loved her friends. If she wanted me to plan something like that, I supposed that I had better give some input. “Oh…sure,” I relented before actually putting some thought into the question she proposed. “Well, I guess that if I can’t really eat anything, then just make a favorite dish for every pony.”

“I can do that,” Pinkie reasoned for a moment before she stood up on two legs and smacked one hoof into the ‘palm’ of her other one, which kind of weirded me out for a second. “That means I gotta go find out what Trixie likes! Thanks for the help Fae-Fae!”

And with that, she was gone.

And I do mean gone. As soon as Pinkie had left my field of vision, the sound of her clopping feet disappeared and I turned to find the kitchen empty except for the staff. Considering the fact that was the norm for the pink pony, it was no wonder I thought I was crazy when I first arrived in the real-life version of a cartoon horse program.

With the pinky pony party crisis dealt with, I headed back to my room for some much needed together time with the rest of the girls.

Or I tried to anyway, but Equestria threw a roadblock in my way.

Oh sure it might have looked like a beautiful unicorn with a marshmallow-colored coat and diamonds on her butt, but I knew a roadblock when I saw one. And judging by the scowl she was giving me as I met her coming around the hallway, on top of the Scent of frustrated anger she was giving off, I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever was about to happen.

“Rarity,” I said to the angry roadblock in a bit of a cowering way. Mainly because of the fear I had from her glaring at me.

Okay sure, after just feeding off Tia, and not having to deal with anything major in the past twenty-four hours, I could pretty much squash her like a bug when it came to raw magical power. But the options of using violence against friends, or just scaring them away were completely verboten, and I really didn’t want to open the big can of worms that mind control would lead to. Just realizing that option assaulted my mind with mental imagery that involved me sitting on a throne while all the girls around me wore sex-slave collars. So, with no magic or mind control options, I was left powerless against Rarity’s wrath.

“Um…something wrong?” I asked as she backed me up in her elaborately skillful way.

“Wrong?” she demanded in a huff before quickening her pace. “You-you-you, have the gall to ask me what’s wrong?”

My peripheral vision went to zero for a few seconds, and I found she had managed to maneuver me into the little room Cadence had set aside for her outfit crafting. Then, as I started to dread what fate might befall me within Rarity’s back room…she began to strangle me with a measuring tape.

Okay, maybe it was more like she very roughly got the measurements for my neck. But judging by the scowl on her face and Reek of anger she had, I was pretty sure she wanted to do it.

“Yes?” I replied with a gurgle of a noise, not really sure if I was answering a question, or asking one.

Rarity shot me another look, and my ears lowered along with my crouching body before she walked up to tower over me and began speaking. Somehow, the fact that she added glasses to her face while doing so made her look more…strangulator-istic. “I had lunch with Twilight today, do you know what she said?”

As I had been around females of multiple species long enough to notice a loaded question, I just gulped.

“Apparently, I’ve been torturing you with all the dresses you’ve been putting on for me,” she snapped. “I’ve been making you suffer and dread having to go to dinner parties. And, let’s not forget how I’ve been making you break down in tears because I’ve helped undermine your very sense of self!”

I stayed on the ground. “Uh, well…that’s just…I was kind of, um…”

The mare sighed and shook her head. “Why didn’t I see it before?” she grumbled. “Fitting as a stand-in stallion, you’re fine! But when it’s time to do your measurements as a mare? It’s all back room and blushes and hurry, hurry, hurry to get it done!”

“Whatever happened to clothes don’t make the mare and appearances are only skin deep?” I asked with a voice that was way too whiney for the taste of my ears.

Rarity let out a snort. “I thought you were just being like Rainbow Dash!” she shouted at me before turning to walk away. “The last time I was allowed to make her a dress was for the royal wedding! Now it’s all vests and-and things fit for a stallion! And I thought you were being like her, running away from your beauty. The two of you do seem a lot alike, after all.”

Despite my fearful mindset, I still had enough working gray matter to put two and two together thanks to the royal wedding comment. As Rarity finished nailing yet another nail on the coffin that held my opinion of Soarin, I took the anger that I held towards the pussy-chasing pegasus, and focused it on Rarity. “Now hold on just a bucking second!”

I got to my feet, and before she could argue, I wrapped the unicorn in my magic. The glow around Rarity’s horn winked out and I let the tape measure around my neck go limp before I gave my best friend by default a rough shake that made her glasses fall off and tumble onto the ground.

Back on my proverbial feet, I watched Rarity struggle and try to talk, but I held onto her firmly and kept her muzzle shut to keep from being interrupted. “You were just trying to help me! I was the one who kept my mouth shut about everything! You just saw another mare who was beating herself up for stupid reasons, or was afraid, or...or something! And did your best to help me overcome all of it by making the most beautiful dress to wear that you could.

“And it is a beautiful Rarity,” I went on before releasing her and looking at the article of clothing for a few seconds before I looked back at Rarity with a softer expression on my face to put her at ease. “One I would be proud to wear tomorrow, and let every pony see me in.”

Rarity let out another little grunt, and I saw hesitation written all over her. “But Twilight said wearing all these dresses like a mare is making you-”

I cut her off with a hoof to her lips. “That’s not a dress,” I said before lowering my leg from her mouth and looking over to the piece of clothing on the pony-shaped mannequin. “That’s a gift from my best friend, one that she put all her love and care into. And I love it. Almost as much as the mare that made it for me.”

After another second, Rarity blushed and lowered her head a bit. “Thank you Darling,” she whispered before looking back at me with a smile. “Although, I suppose this will be the end of our fitting sessions. Such a shame, it really did help with my business.”

I rolled my eyes. Although, I really did symphonize with the unicorn on that point. Important ponies with not enough time to stand around all day had been coming to Rarity’s little shop from pretty far off because they got top quality work without having to wait around for the fittings and the much more time consuming adjustments.

“I guess I can still stomach that.” Or at least get a changeling to do the female clothing stand-ins.

It wasn’t like I was going to start going to the spa or anything. Wearing a dress in the privacy of a room with only one other pony around was one thing, having two ponies I barely knew mess with me while Fluttershy and Rarity were there was another. Plus, I had heard Sunset came to Rarity’s last spa day and I did not want to be in the same room with a seventeen-year-old-physically-but-somewhere-in-her-twenties-actually human girl while she only had a thin silk robe on that probably didn’t reach her ass since it was made for a pony, or nothing at all.

“Stomach?” she repeated with a frown at my obviously bad choice of words.

I sighed and slumped a little. “Rarity I love spending time with you,” I told her. She was a huge gossip after all, and just because I could turn into a candy-colored equine didn’t mean I was going to stop talking about ponies. “And to be honest…it more the expectations other ponies had of me and wearing that stuff in public that really made me uncomfortable. And I really am sorry that I made you think you hurt me, this was all my fault for not telling you how I felt from the get go.”

The explanation seemed to work, as I could Smell Rarity’s anger decrease significantly before she sighed and shook her head. “It’s alright. I know I have a bad habit of pressuring ponies into things they don’t want to. I just see something that I think will be good for them, and charge ahead like an uncouth minotaur.”

With the double apology out of the way, I looked back over the dress for a second, and then to Rarity. Unsure of what to do next, I reached over and rubbed one of my front legs with the fetlock of the other. “So uh, what now? We hug and…something?”

“Oh Darling please,” Rarity replied with a roll of her eyes. “Hugging is for mares. Stallions bump hooves.”

After what happened with Pinkie Pie and Rarity, not to mention Celestia ambushing me with an intervention and making me talk about before Sunset Shimmer just showed up a few minutes later to talk…which really had me wondering if Tia had planned everything up to that point so I would let my guard down…

Which was a little disturbing when I thought about it…

So, I stopped thinking about it and concentrated on what might be an even bigger problem: the fact that Equestria looked like it was going to make me talk to all the girls I might have upset with my actions for the past while.

It was something I really didn’t want to do. Mostly because there were three very hot pony girls waiting for me back in my magically re-sized bed and I was missing out on what I guessed was all the fun.

In order to avoid that, I did what any sane man in the same position would do when faced with the proposition of facing several angry friends who happened to be female.

I jumped out the nearest window.

Of course the pair of wings I had on let me avoid falling to my death, and I managed to fly around to where my quarters were located before coming in for a landing on the balcony that the bedroom had. From there, I looked inside and saw while I had been gone, the girls had apparently decided to live out one of Twilight’s fantasies.

Both the little alicorn and the pegasus were snuggled up next to the biggest pony in Equestria. Half of Rainbow was tucked underneath Celestia’s wing like it was a blanket while the pegasus was using Tia as a back rest as the goddess laid on her stomach. Twilight was also letting Tia’s wings double as her comforter, but her position mirrored Celestia’s with how she was just resting on her belly.

Oh, and they were all reading something. Dash had a book I could tell even from the balcony was Daring Do, Tia was looking over some paperwork, and Twilight had one of the books I thought I recognized from the Crystal Library. All three of them were cuddled up next to each other and reading. It was something I knew from personal experience Twilight considered to be the perfect date. Mainly because I accidentally took her on one while I was dressed as an unspeakable horror before we officially started dating.

After opening the door with my magic, I went inside to look around, and using a great deal of self restraint, managed not to make a comment after coming inside the room. “Hey girls, did I miss anything?”

“Nope,” Rainbow replied without looking up from her hack written novel she had probably gone over about twenty times.

Twilight didn’t even bother to respond, but Celestia moved the floating papers that were wrapped in her golden aura away from her face and addressed me directly. “Luna came by a few minutes ago with a report from Canterlot. There’s a few oddities, but everything seems to be settling down and getting back on track for the most part. Blueblood has even resumed rooting around through the archives.”

The mere mention of the royal pain killed any hope I had of cultivating some inner fires of my own. Sure, we had just gotten through with everything, but…I had three hot girls in my bed. Dress-wearing pretty pony princess or not, I had enough guy in me to obey the ancient man code and ye olden quest for more than one woman at once.

Plus, I hadn’t actually fed off of any of the girls since I had talked to Tia the first time. While I wasn’t really hungry, I knew better than to let my gas tank fall to near empty again.

“But I suppose that isn’t important at the moment,” Celestia said before a golden glow surrounded both Twilight’s and Rainbow’s reading material. “We need to finish the discussion that Pinkie Pie interrupted.”

Rainbow let out a little whine as her book was torn from her grasp. “Aww come on, I was just about to get to the part where Daring Do figures out that the solution to the Puzzle of Pazazma is the same as the nursery rhyme she was taught as a foal by her father.”

Celestia’s expression became quizzical, and she looked over to our little pegasus. “You’ve read that book once before, then?”

“Try more like twelve times before,” Twilight deadpanned. “I’ve tried to introduce to other books, even other adventure books, but that is all she reads.”

“Oh please Twilight, all those other books you showed me were totally boring,” Rainbow replied with a roll of her eyes.

Before the argument could erupt, as I could tell by Twilight’s Scent that having any of her books being called boring was something she considered fighting words, Celestia cleared her throat. “Alright everypony, let’s get back on task here.”

“Agreed,” I said before putting my hooves up on the bed and leaning up to kiss the princess. “And how about you take your crown off this time?”

The action from the alicorn across from me was less than one-hundred-percent, and after we broke the lip lock, Tia rolled her eyes and sighed. “There will be time to indulge in our desires later tonight Omnifarious. For now, I think it best to continue our discussion.”

I groaned and rolled my eyes. “Fine. So let’s hurry up and get this over with. What was it you were talking about earlier?”

After Tia was sure she got all of our attentions and none of us had anything else to interrupt her with, she let out a long sigh. “I just wanted everypony to know what they were getting into before we…get in too deep and end up with a misconception.”

Twilight’s Scent went from content to slightly nervous.

“You mean like having sex? Cause we just did that,” Rainbow told her with a deadpan expression while I had to stop myself from chuckling nervously.

Most ponies took their physical intimacy very seriously, and even the tiny few that didn’t considered their sleeping partners special in their hearts. Even Cloud Kicker only slept with good friends. While changelings offered the same service to help scratch an itch, ponies went to my little brothel more to fulfill some personal fantasy and the company changelings gave rather than just cheap thrills. But with Twilight, and apparently Rainbow, if a pony lifted her tail for another, it meant she was super serious about the relationship. As in the ‘I’m in love and want to marry you’ kind of serious.

Celestia cleared her throat and looked over to the pegasus. “I have no intentions of backing away from the three of you,” Celestia replied before glancing my way for a few seconds. “I just…don’t want something to crop up in a few short years that may come between us when it can be addressed now.”

While Twilight and Rainbow just turned curious at the announcement, I got a little apprehensive over the idea that Celestia just wanted to bring some big issue up now. Especially with her being the new member of our…whatever we were.

Not to mention how she apparently wanted to bring it up on top of all the other crap that I had been forced to go through today. After my little heart to heart with the girls, Tia, Sunset, avoiding some Pinkie party disaster, and my talk with Rarity, all I really wanted to do was surround myself with my ponies and experience the closest thing a changeling could for sleep.

But instead, all I got was a fat alicorn wanting to introduce more headaches and drama. So, even when I was sleeping with three girls, life sucked.

“What the hay is gonna come between us?” Rainbow asked cautiously.

After a few more seconds of silence, the big princess looked over to Rainbow while the rest of us remained silent. “After we finished our talk in the snow and you convinced me to go with you to approach Omnifarious and Twilight, I began to wonder something Rainbow Dash,” she said. “Do you want foals one day?”

The question actually knocked me for a bit of a loop, and I found myself sitting down as my stupid brain pointed out a few facts to me.

Thanks to whatever magic made ponies into alicorns, Twilight and Celestia couldn’t have babies. I’m sure all of the other royals would go on about the greater good and how some sacrifices needed to be made for Equestria, but it still affected them. Cadence and her doing everything she could to tie the knot between herself, Rarity and Shining Armor was proof of that.

But Rainbow wasn’t an alicorn, she could have kids. As long as she wasn’t with us, that is. Even if I did get back to being a guy, changelings couldn’t produce offspring with ponies. The magic that let us change out shape didn’t function away from where we were. In other words, no matter how pegasus or alicorn I appeared, I would never leave behind a feather...or the special stuff for making pony babies.

That left another option to make almost everyone happy, but…I held no illusions about my tolerance for letting another guy in the group. I had just about lost it with the possibility of Twilight and Tia getting together.

Male pony X and anyone in our little club?

That idea wasn’t even on the table.

And that was before I shuddered in revulsion of the idea of male pony X standing over me before he shoved his cock up my pussy.

“Honestly?” Rainbow asked before she got a little fidgety and looked away from the others. “Not really.”

The pegasus’s response quickly banished any thoughts I had of swallowing all my protests about having a guy in the herd if it meant keeping Rainbow, and got Twilight’s attention too. Since I was too busy sighing in relief, she was the one who spoke. “What? Why not?”

Rainbow stood up to look over Celestia and to Twilight. “You mean aside from the fact I’m the mare with the stallion-wings and no plot?” she asked while extending her feathered appendages. “Come on Twilight, can you honestly see me as a mom?”

“Welll…” my little alicorn drawled. “You seem to do great with Scootaloo, and you’re usually the one we get to watch all three of the girls.”

Twilight’s attempts at a confidence booster didn’t seem to sit well with Rainbow, and I found myself starting to get a little frustrated as well. Considering where this conversation was probably going, I couldn’t help but blurt out the obvious. “Are you trying to talk Rainbow into breaking up with us?” I said loudly in Twilight’s direction, which might have been seen as yelling after I realized just how loudly I was talking.

As for Twilight, she put her neck up a little straighter and looked over at me. “W-What?”

“News flash Twilight, if Rainbow stays with us, she can’t have foals!” I exclaimed.

Then, that little fact really hit me.

And I mean really hit me. It was one thing to just think about, but saying it out loud actually made me have to fight to keep my balance.

I knew without a shadow of a doubt I would never be okay with another guy running with the herd. I was selfish like that, and I held absolutely no qualms about it. But…denying Rainbow her chance for children. Dash wasn’t so old she wouldn’t change her mind on a decision like that.

Fucking Celestia and her immortal sense of time bullshit, I thought to myself. Of course Tia would have noticed something like that right off the bat while I was still mentally doing my happy dance that Rainbow had bothered to hook up with me and Twilight.

Although noticing and doing something about it was another thing altogether!

Sure ponies tended to make up their minds and stick to their decisions, but…this wasn’t something as simple as most things! What Celestia had just dropped on Rainbow was big life decision stuff. Like, cutie mark skill that will determine a pony’s path in life big.

While the little alicorn said some single syllable thing that sounded like an ‘oh’, Tia was a bit more articulate when it came to her horse words. “That is why I wanted to bring this up now,” she explained to Twilight before turning to Dash. “I have resigned myself to never finding a pony that I can have foals with, and ponies who undergo ascension are rendered unable to enter a breeding cycle. But you can still bear children Rainbow. I need to make absolutely certain you were all reminded of this going in because…if you do wish me to be a part of your lives, I’m afraid that one of my stipulations is that no other stallion be brought in to the group.”

“Other stallion?” Rainbow mumbled. “Where’s the first…oh, right.”

I glared at the pegasus for a few seconds, and then looked over to Celestia while trying to figure out what she was doing.

Her seeing the breeding dilemma I could understand, but the way she was wording everything, it was like she was trying to soak up all the ‘one male only’ hate that might be coming for the other girls.

“Well it’s not like I ever thought I’d be having foals one day, even with all this herding stuff,” Rainbow replied with a shrug. “What with the Wonderbolts and all. And that was before uh…never mind. Look, point is, me and foals…not gonna happen.”

Celestia beat me to the punch of consoling Rainbow by wrapping a wing around her and holding the pegasus close.

And so I may have panicked…just a bit.

I mean, sure Rainbow said she didn’t want kids, but the girl wasn’t even out of her twenties yet! The possibility of her changing her mind later in life or was practically…

I put on the breaks when it came to that train of thought, took in a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh. If Rainbow did change her mind later on down the road, we’d just deal with it then. And even if Equestria didn’t have the equivalent of a sperm donor program, I’m sure something could be arranged.

There was no need to panic or get upset over something like this.

I was perfectly centered, and calm, and all that other stuff.

And then Rainbow kind of killed that whole thing when she shrugged and said, “Besides, I’ve already got Spike. One kid is enough for me.”

Every pony in the room with wings and a horn looked over to the pegasus, although it was Celestia that asked the question. “Um…what?”

Twilight groaned. “Rainbow, I was making a joke. You are not Spike’s father!”

“Hey Twilight, just because you’ve abandoned your parental duties to our son doesn’t mean I’m going to! Somepony has to raise that dragon right,” Rainbow said with a smile that made me wonder if she was just messing with the purple princess, or actually believed her own words.

“Would somepony please tell me what this is about?” the giant goddess asked as she looked back and forth between the two mares.

And so, it was with great reluctance that Twilight explained to Celestia about the events of the previous night and how a heated comment had led to Rainbow claiming parental rights over the dragon.

When she was done, Tia nodded her head in understanding. “Well that is an interesting take on the circumstances of Spike’s birth…and I can’t exactly discount Rainbow’s claim to the title of parent either.”

Twilight groaned. “Celestia! That would make me Spike’s mom! Do you have any idea how weird that would be?”

“As strange as this thing between all of us working out and you becoming the mother-in-law to a pony more than two years your senior?” Tia replied with a little smile. “Or have you already forgotten the position Sunset has taken in my life?”

In response, Twilight groaned and let her head fall back onto the bed. “Please don’t remind me about that. Sunset may be fine with us dating, and she’s one of my best friends, but there is no way in Tartarus that I’m going to let her call me Mama.”

The mental image that came to mind of that got a laugh out of me, and apparently everyone else messing with Twilight as the little alicorn covered her face with her wings. But the whole thing was short-lived, a few seconds later the goddess made her apologies and continued on. “So, anything else anypony wants to add?” Celestia asked as she looked around at the three of us.

Twilight shook her head and leaned back into the larger goddess. “No. I already have more than I ever wanted…or even dreamed,” she added after looking to me and Rainbow.

“I’m cool with everything,” Rainbow replied before she also pressed up against the goddess.

So with the mood set, I stepped forward and prepared to leap into the pony-arms of my girlfriends for a nice and wholesome orgy…

…and was extremely disappointed when I did jump forward, only to smack face first into an overly thick book.

When I backed up to get a look at the thing, I frowned at the Diary of Friendship, and then looked around it to glare at Celestia. “You brought this thing too? Seriously?”

And of course Celestia gave me one of her ‘I’m two-hundred moves ahead of you’ smiles before she let out a musical giggle. “Oh, I had a feeling that somepony would be needing to tell others about the long awaited lesson she learned.”

I groaned, and then took the Book of Cock-Blocking in my magic before I headed to the apartment’s foyer for a little peace and quiet.

Okay so…I’m supposed to write some big personal life lesson down here for future generations to read from…

Don’t eat tacos just because it’s Tuesday.

Alicorns are sex fiends.

Well if I’m going to have to take this seriously…

I guess the biggest life lesson that managed to get hammered into me today after I talked to pretty much every important woman in my life thus far and then some is…

Most people think that putting yourself in a bad position for the sake of another is a noble thing, and while there is something to be said for the people that do such things for the sake of their family and friends…being put through the ringer on a daily basis with no end in sight is not a very good way to go through life. Especially when you’re putting yourself in a bad position just to make some of your friends or family happy but not really feeling the payoff yourself.

Hell, if its your friend making the request, she might actually be a little pissed off that you didn’t tell her in the first place before she tries to strangle you with a measuring tape.

There’s also something to be said about bottling up your emotions because you think the people around you shouldn’t have to deal with it. Just because you don’t share your thoughts and feelings with others doesn’t mean they won’t be affected by them. If anything, trying to just carry everything on your own will cause them even more pain when the dam finally bursts, and trust me, it will.

So, bitch and complain to your friends about your troubles. Even if there’s not much they can do about it, at least you’ll have a sympathetic ear.

And of course the second I get done writing this, it’s time for us to go to dinner.

Okay, future generation of Equestria, you want to learn something by reading this, so here’s some ancient wisdom for ya.

Polygamy means there will be more than one woman in your life with the right to tell you what to do, hog the bathroom, and spend your money sure there's more girls to go around in bed, but they also hog all the sheets.

All thirteen of us (you know, me, Tia, the Mane 6, Shining, Luna, Cadence, Sunset, and Trixie) sat around the private royal dining hall that was actually filled to capacity thanks to so many ponies and one human being in the same place at this particular time. I found myself acting as a buffer between Trixie and Twilight while the purple princess got to sit next to Dash, and Tia had a place at the head of the table while Luna got the other end. Spike was...still sulking apparently, and hadn’t bothered to show.

Sunset poked a crystal cucumber with her finger while Trixie couldn’t seem to make up her mind on which princess to gawk at more, and the rest of the girls made their usual small talk as I watched the food pass me by and sipped some water.

Then Tia telekinetically tapped her glass with a tablespoon. “Everypony, could I have your attention for a moment please, I have an announcement I would like to make,” she said before clearing her throat after all the talking died down. “I have no intentions of making an actual announcement until we’ve decided to how shall we say, make something a bit more official, but for those of you that are my close friends, I would like to preempt whatever gossip columns come up with and inform you all that after talking things over with some ponies at this table, I have decided to court Twilight and her two companions.”

The reaction was almost instantaneous.

“WHAT?”

Trixie shouting in my ear from her place beside me made me wince, but that did nothing to keep me from noticing an extremely odd oddity about everyone else’s reactions.

Like the fact that they just sat there, as if Celestia said she was going to raise the sun on time. Just like she always did. In other words, nothing that would have caused any amount of alarm.

The goddess looked round, and then raised an eyebrow. “Well, don’t everypony get excited all at once.”

Surprisingly, it was Fluttershy who spoke up first. “Oh well that’s very nice your highness, it’s just that…Sunset already told me about your um, plans a few days ago when we were feeding my chickens,” she said before giving Celestia an apologetic smile.

“Cadence might have mentioned something when I had a bit of a…nervous fit during our first night out together,” Rarity added. “Just to, well…put me at ease, you understand. Even Celestia is looking for love, she said.”

Shining Armor raised a hoof. “I was there too.”

Applejack was the next to testify. “RD can’t keep her mouth shut, and might have said something about you shoving yer tongue down her throat in a carriage a few days past,” the farmer said before shrugging. “Course she can’t lie none neither, so…Ah figured it had to be true.”

“I walked in on the four of you in bed, remember?” Pinkie Pie said in a much too cheery tone for such subject matter, which earned her a glare from most of the ponies at the table. Of course she just looked around with a clueless expression. “What? I waited till they were done.”

I watched as Celestia took in the news with her usual level of calm, and then blinked when she slumped a little. “So much for getting some fun out of that,” she mumbled before looking around the table. “Well, anypony else have to good news to share?”

Thanks to Trollestia’s attempt at causing a scene ending in a fail, the rest of the night was spent in friendly chatter. Something I realized we hadn’t actually had in a little while.

With Trixie being the new pony at the table, she was the one who most of the questions were direct towards in the case of the three biggest ponies in the room. I got the feeling that Tia was just having a little fun needling her since ‘Sunny Skies’ had already gotten on friendly terms with Trixie back in Canterlot, although the fact that she and Sunset had something to talk about was surprise.

“Well of course stuck on a backwards world of hairless apes made me look into any kind of magic I could find. It was all gimmicks and misdirection, but I could show you a few tricks that human stage magicians used if you want,” she said with an indifferent shrug. “There was this masked one on television that went around explaining how they did everything.”

The unicorn rubbed her chin with a hoof. “Trixie has been needing to improve her act.”

Then of course there was the usual town gossip that Ponyville had. Although for once I wasn’t hearing it from Rarity…

“Course these days, Big Mac’s hiddin’ in the apple cellar more often than not,” Applejack said as she recounted the newest bit of news from her family farm. “Don’t see why he’s avoidin’ them fillies so much. With the way they grow their flowers, they’d be great help on the farm durin’ the growing seasons.”

I looked across the table to the orange pony. “All the flower girls are after Big Mac now? I thought Rose had a thing for Time Turner.” She had shown up at the guy’s shop more than enough times when I had been looking for a Gallifreyan pocket watch.

“The clock stallion?” Fluttershy spoke up. “I’ve met him. He’s nice, if a little…odd.”

Then there was Rarity’s rather disappointing news…

“As much as I’d love to stay here in the Empire for a few days, I’m a bit afraid of what my sister would end up doing if I wasn’t around to check up on her now and then,” the unicorn explained after AJ asked her about any future plans.

A second later, a pink wing extended to touch Rarity’s shoulder, and Cadence gave her a little smile. “Well, Shining has to go to Canterlot on a weekly basis, I don’t see any reason why I can’t head on down to Ponyville then.”

“Oh! Or I could meet the two of you up in Canterlot!” Rarity exclaimed. “We could even make a day of it every week. Although…just what were the two of you up to over there anyway?”

Unfortunately, the blissful talking about nothing didn’t last. As with all good things, it came to an end when an idiot decided to open his mouth. Of course that idiot was me and I was a girl at the moment, but…eh.

“So Tia, what exactly am I going to be the princess of anyway?” I asked her. “And just what exactly am I supposed to be doing in Equestria once I get my title?”

“Oh that,” Celestia replied after she finished a glass of sparkling cider. “I spoke to Twilight about it while you were off with Pinkie, and we believe it would be best if you would continue to function in your current capacity as the warden of the Everfree and coordinator of Equestria’s telepathic communications network. Once your status as a princess becomes official, I have a feeling that many more ponies will be using the services of your changelings.”

“The laws regarding changelings needing to use pony metamorphosis magic while in Equestrian townships will also be repealed,” Luna added as Tia paused to breathe. “Considering what my sister has said you told her about changeling origins, your kind might as well be a new tribe of ponies.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “You all do know that changelings are never going to really integrate into Equestrian society, right?” The need for love was actually the least of the obstacles preventing that. Changelings were geared towards the enjoyment of pain and suffering, even if we didn’t get much in the way of energy from eating it.

“Oh come on Fae,” Twilight said before she reached out with a hoof from her spot beside me and placed it on my shoulder. “I’m sure everything is going to work out just fine.”

After the purple one finished tempting fate, I let out a long sigh and looked up at the ceiling, then checked behind me for guards wanting to put a knife in my back before I turned my attention on the double doors that looked like the most likely target of a grand villainous entrance.

“Um, what’re you doing?” Twilight asked.

I sighed and slumped just a little, since I knew everyone would just think I was crazy when I gave Twilight the honest answer. “Considering what you just said, I waiting for Sombra to walk in and try to enslave us all.”

Chapter 45: The Incredibly Unneeded Coronation of a Pseudo-Pony Princess

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To make a long story short, my coronation sucked.

Well...to be more precise, it was the public after party that sucked.

Plus the party for friends and family and the family of friends after the first party sucked.

Not to mention all the stuff leading up to the coronation.

And, the time before that wasn’t all that great either.

Even the time before the day began sucked.

And it all started when I had sex with Celestia.

I mean…

Okay, look… Celestia is amazing in bed. Yeah, the only two girls I have to compare her to were virgins before they got involved with me, and later me and Twilight in the case of Rainbow Dash, but still... Tia’s had a lot of time to refine her technique to the point of perfection. So of course she’d be better at doing it than the girls in every measurable way. But, one must not forget all of this supremely sublime sexual skill she possesses…is of the pony style.

Now of course after we got back to the royal apartments, Tia took the three of us to nirvana. This was quickly followed by my own changing feeding habits that ended the whole thing in a series of blissful cries before I crawled back on top of Tia’s stomach with more magical energy than I ever had before. She wrapped her forelegs around me and her wings took care of cradling the other girls in the royal harem, and then we all fell asleep.

The night that followed that was even worse than the first time I found myself sharing a room with a butt-naked human Celestia that was twice as hot as any woman had a right to be. After what we had just done before going to bed, the only thing on my mind with the naked woman providing me company involved attempting to do more of our pre-siesta activities the way the last remnants of my humanity were screaming at me that they should be done.

But…a few things stopped me from just trying to get Tia to spread her legs. Things like the need for post-coitus conversation about the various things in our life and what happened in the day. Celestia also felt the need to go on about Sunset and how wonderful it was she was making friends outside of our little save the world circle…even if it was Trixie.

Not that Trixie was that bad a pony anymore. But…with the way the blue mare had talked Sunset’s head off about magic tricks and followed her around after dinner… I really hoped the stage magician wasn’t just milking my girl for her knowledge of how a race without any magic did their shows. I had actually started to like Trixie a bit, and taking advantage of Sunset’s knowledge just to advance her career was a good reason for me to put my Trixie-hater hat back on and maybe even take a few steps to ensure her return to the stage was met with abysmal failure. Considering my army of insect ponies that could look however I wanted them to, it wouldn’t even be that hard.

Aside from the talking about her daughter, which I could tell put Tia into a little bit of a melancholy for some odd reason I just couldn’t understand, the other reason I couldn’t just…you know, fuck the hot chick was…I had standards.

Not that Celestia didn’t surpass them in every way, shape and form. But my standards didn’t just apply to the girl I wanted to…well…do stuff with for the foreseeable future that might have included sex but also involved oh so much more. There were procedures for these things. Dates had to be gone on, romance had to be…done. Celestia wasn’t some loser you picked up at a bar for a night of fun that only cost a few beers, she was…well, Celestia!

She deserved the best. Better than the best even. At least when it came to the best that I could give her.

And about the time I was reminding myself that she was way out of my league, completely undeserving of someone like me that would drag her down and probably stain her image, the goddess’s hand came to wrap around mine and she whispered into my ear.

“So, are you ready to make love to me as a human now?” the goddess with the aurora-colored hair asked me gently.

When I looked up at her, I couldn’t help but notice where her eyes were looking, and I cleared my throat before looking away. My nerves about this whole thing reached a new high and… “Well…um…you know…if-if you…want…to. And it’s…uh, okay…with you, I mean. Like this.” We were bipeds at the moment after all. It would probably be weird for her.

One of Celestia’s arms snaked under my leg, and the goddess put her other behind my back. “I already told you being together as we are right now has me more than a little curious,” she said before kissing me lightly on the lips. “And…I now understand how hard it has been for you in Equestria, being as you are. But here, we are not ponies, nor are you a mare. And I want to love you as you are now, and I want you to love me in turn.”

I…didn’t really have much to follow that up with.

And like with my personal beliefs, pride and all that other stuff a guy is supposed to stand up for, my standards kind of just got shoved to the side when Celestia offered to do it with me.

“Okay,” I agreed in a bit of a squeak. At the very least I would be doing it as a guy again. My manliness would at least be able to get some recovery after the non-stop beating it had been taking for the past several weeks. I took comfort in that.

The comfort kind of decreased slightly when Celestia hefted me up into her arms like I was her bride to be carried across a threshold but…logic helped stem the pain the comparison caused me when it reminded me she had no idea about human customs, and there was no way in hell I would be carrying her around without a horn.

“Now let’s get going upstairs, shall we?” she asked. “As comfortable as our love seat has been, I think it’s a little small to follow through with the promise that its name entails.”

As my…girlfriend carried me up to one of the bedrooms, I simply focused on the fact that I was finally going to have sex as a guy, and a human guy on top of that.

But…you don’t have sex with a goddess.

Especially one that has no idea what she’s doing as a human while also being seven feet tall and about twice as strong as you are physically. Oh, and being an immortal creature that is older than most countries, she’s also pretty stubborn and likes to be on top.

So…after having this…thing that was technically sex…I had a new record for the worst time in bed that actually topped my first time with Twilight, as Flash Sentry, doing it before I even found ponies the least bit attractive in a body I only knew the technicalities of.

When it was all over, we cuddled and lay in the bed that was too small for Celestia and left her feet hanging over the edge even with a little bit of her body propped up on some pillows. Meanwhile I was once again feeling like the girl, or maybe a goddess’s stuffed animal as I laid my head on the shoulder of the arm that Celestia had wrapped around my body to let her hand dig into my rear with a strong grip.

And we just laid there in the bedroom of my old house, which wasn’t all that much to look at. No posters adorned the walls, and with the nothing outside the windows both off to my right and straight ahead that somehow still illuminated the place, there wasn’t much to distract me from the fact there was nothing look at either.

Except for the big naked woman holding me, I mean.

Hell, we weren’t under the blankets. There was no real need thanks to the temperature being a permanent comfortable heat and Tia providing me with plenty more in the way of body warmth on top of that.

So of course, we started talking. Or, Celestia did anyway.

“Hmm, so that’s how humans make love,” the goddess told me in an even tone before she gave my butt a squeeze.

“Yeah,” I replied just as evenly while doing my best not to comment on her…horribleness at it.

The silence stretched on for a few more moments, and Celestia sighed. “You’re disappointed.”

It was stuff like that that really put a crimp in the whole ‘mental landscape causes 100% honesty’ thing. Of course, the same thing also made me choose my next few words very carefully. “It’s…not really…your fault.”

Which it wasn’t, not entirely anyway. Sure Tia had turned out to be a disappointment in the sack but…I’ll admit, after what she did two times the previous day, anyone could have had high hopes for what was coming. Plus, it had been a long time since I had done it as a guy, not to mention as a human, and never with someone as beautiful as Celestia. All of those things combined made for some pretty impossible expectations.

“No,” she replied before I felt her lips on my head touch for a quick kiss. “You’ve been looking forward to this and I didn’t give a very good showing. I seem to do nothing but bring disappointment the ones I love lately.”

I knew I should have said something to cheer her up but…once again, I was stuck with the whole honesty thing. So even the whole ‘well that just means we’ll have to let you get plenty of practice’ line probably wouldn’t work all that well.

“Sorry,” Celestia apologized. “I shouldn’t be talking about such things now but…whenever I’m in this human form, I can’t help but think about Sunset if I don’t keep my mind on task.”

And with that, I felt even worse. Bad sex was bad enough without the woman you were doing it with saying she was thinking about her daughter when everything was said and done.

What made it worse was that from everything I could see, Sunset was actually doing better than she had been just a few weeks ago. Sure, the whole breezie instructional weekend had gotten her down after some stupid pony had thought she was Fluttershy’s pet, but…the human in Equestria had recovered and managed to make a home in Ponyville.

Which…she would have to leave once Twilight figured how the mirror worked and fixed her, but it wasn’t like Sunset was just going to stay in Canterlot after she got her horn back. At least not on a permanent basis. She could easily hitch a ride with Tia at the end of the day…if she wanted to.

“Can we just talk about something else?” I asked before I started to wonder if the future princess would even bother coming to visit us.

After a few seconds, Celestia nodded. “Very well. Are you nervous about what’s coming?”

“The coronation? No,” I told her. They had helped me get over all of that. “What comes after…maybe.”

“What do you mean, what comes after?” Celestia asked.

I tried to gather my thoughts to make sense of the creeping doubts that were running through my head, but all I ended up with was some big question marks. I didn’t like question marks where a clear path to the future should be. Even when I was freaking out about my inevitable break-up with Twilight, Rainbow and Tia, I at least knew what was coming and could prepare for the blow.

An unknown, not so much.

When I finally managed to put all of that into words, Celestia let out a little chuckle and held me all the tighter. “My love, thinking you know the future and trying to plan for it is one of the worst curses a pony can endure,” the goddess told me before she became a bit downcast. “After all, I knew my sister was returning one day, I knew that a confrontation between us was inevitable, and I knew if I were to face her in such a battle, neither of us would walk away. So I found a pony I thought could be my replacement. I trained her, I taught her everything I knew about magic and government, and as the date for Luna’s return neared, I continued to push her so hard I forgot to love her enough, and instead I cast my disappointment on her every day when she didn’t turn out to be exactly like me that she broke under the strain and disappeared for over a decade in a foolish move to try and earn her wings. All because I knew my sister was returning, and I needed somepony to raise the sun in my stead.”

I let that not so little tidbit of information wash over me and sink in. At first I had thought she was going on about where Twilight might have gotten some of her less than admirable qualities, but after that last line… “So wait…that’s what Sunset was supposed to do?” I asked for a little calefaction. “You wanted her to be the new you?”

It…did make a sort of sense. Whether it was her own precognition, some kind of seer pony, or just some very obvious stellar signs involving the position of the stars, Tia had known the exact time and probably place when Nightmare Moon was due to show up in Equestria. And all that had been long before Twilight had been born.

If Sunset had been around at the time, even decades before Luna was due to come home, Celestia would have made plans years in advance thanks to the alicorn’s long lifespan. Hell, she had been willing to do that after the first evening with the three of us!

And, a unicorn with a sunburst on her butt was a pretty obvious sign of what her destiny should be.

“Yes,” Celestia said in a sad whisper. “And I was…” The goddess stopped mid sentence, and frowned for a moment. “Oh, the awakening spell is becoming active.”

The sudden stop to our conversation had me do a quick mental reset to my emotions, and I went from getting ready to give the goddess some pitying reassurance to feeling a proper bit of indignation at getting cut off like that.

But before I could even start to tell her this wasn’t finished, she up and disappeared on me, letting most of my body just roll over and onto my face without the wall that was Celestia to stop it.

Despite the escape attempt that Celestia had made to get away from our conversation, she soon found such an action impossible thanks to the fact that changelings could also get up on command, and I had been snuggled up under her chin and using the goddess’s body as my personal bed while Twi and Dash were stuck with her being an oversized body pillow.

While I had gotten a little used to just laying around for a few minutes to let the rest of my body catch up with the awake status of my brain, stumbling around while I waited for my four legs to wake up didn’t put me too far behind Sunbutt. This was mostly because of the fact that she had to take a few moments to offer apologies to a complaining Rainbow Dash about the ungodly hour the little pegasus was forced to be up at now that she and Tia would be sharing a bed.

And then there was this…other…thing we became aware of.

“Aw seriously? Both of you?” Rainbow Dash demanded as she looked at the sticky evidence of our unconscious activity that Tia left on the bed and I…left on Tia.

Rainbow looked over to the two of us, and I might have actually been embarrassed enough to blush for some reason. “How in the hay do you even do that after we spent like, an hour doing it before you two knocked me out? Ugh, and why am I all…sticky down there now too?”

“Well we did spend all night smelling the aftereffect of their wet…dream,” Twilight supplied before she looked over to us with wide eyes before I could almost see the light bulb come on over her head. “Ohmygosh! The two of you, you…you had sex in your dreams!”

Although the purple alicorn didn’t seem the least bit angry or embarrassed about it, only happy that she suddenly had figured something like that out, Celestia looked a tiny bit annoyed for some reason. “Yes well, we are together for six hours straight. Did you honestly expect us not to?”

As for me, I blushed and looked away from Twilight. Sure she was happy about it. But I did just have sex with another girl while in the same bed as her...sort of. Which was really going to be a problem if Tia and I kept doing it.

The expression on Rainbow Dash’s face became a little hesitant. “Uh…I thought you turned into um…monkeys when Fae went to sleep.”

Celestia just shot Rainbow a warning smile before she returned fire verbally. “Yes we become humans. What’s wrong with that? I remember Fae saying something about you wanting to be a griffon several nights ago,” the goddess replied in her usual voice. “While I have yet to master the art of making love as a human, I have already discovered human digits are far more useful in loving interactions than griffon claws could ever be my little Rainbow. Would you like me to bring Sunset in so I could use her as a template and provide you with a personal demonstration? You do need to be taken care of this morning, correct?”

After her wings slowed down in their flapping intensity, Rainbow landed and…kept her wings up. “No that’s uh, fine! I’m uh-”

Before Rainbow Dash could say any more, Twilight trotted over and touched wings with her. It was a little odd for me to see them side by side like they were. Twilight’s looked so much bigger than Rainbow’s…I had to take in the rest of the purple pony’s body wonder if the purple alicorn would keep growing. The question that arose from that observation made me wonder. Were me and Rainbow going to end up being the little ladies of the relationship as Twilight and Tia towered over us in a couple of years? It was kid of a disturbing prospect, to be honest.

A little treacherous thought told me I could match Tia’s height and more if I would simply submit myself to a royal cocoon to really take my place as a changeling queen.

And then I found myself having to chose between thinking of the odd sex talk Celestia was giving Rainbow, or the three of us towering over Dash as her much smaller size reduced her to little more than a preteen in the comparison department. I actually found myself welcoming the human-on-pony images rather than the worries of how Rainbow might feel if she became the physically inferior pony in every measurable way to the rest of us.

“Then who’d take care of me Princess?” Twilight asked with a little smile. “Besides, you two have a mess to clean up.”

Celestia ignored the royal slip Twilight made with her title. I was just glad Tia went to using magic to de-sex gunk us and the room rather than continuing what had almost happened.

So after Twilight had taken Rainbow into the bathroom to take care of some of her morning alicorn urges that I had a pretty good feeling didn’t have anything to do with grooming or using the facilities, I followed the pony whose ass I was on eye level with out into the hall.

Of course the mention of Sunset had brought about a bit of a funk that I could pick up on, but the Smell just encouraged me to act all the more indignantly concerned rather than keep my distance. Being all pissed off at being left out of an explanation and wanting to help Celestia get whatever she was guilt tripping herself with out in the open so it could be taken care of, I went with the tough love option. Meaning that I flew up and over Sunbutt to get in her face, and after having to revert to changeling form because my wings were still asleep and insects could just plain hover better than every bit of my rational brain said pegasi should have been able to, I met the goddess eye to eye and frowned at her.

“Okay Tia spill, what’s with the dark cloud I’ve been picking up from you ever since I mentioned Sunset after we did it?” I asked in that demanding sort of way when giant solar powered pretty pony princesses were being all clammed up about something.

Celestia let out a little breath and frowned. “Omnifarious, while your previous species might give me some insight into the matter of what to do about Sunset, and I do wish to speak to you of this, I can not delay in raising the sun. It has always been on time since before Luna was banished, and I have no intention by causing a panic among my little ponies because the sun rose a minute late.”

While I was pretty sure she was exaggerating, I got out of the pony princess’s way to let her continue on. Not to mention landed and fell in step with Tia. “Okay then, we can walk and talk.”

“I would rather not hold a conversation of such importance in the middle of a hallway,” Tia countered in a slightly drier tone than I was used to hearing from her.

I groaned and quickened my trotting to keep up with her. “Tia, it’s pre-dawn hours,” I told her. “That’s when the late shift has either fallen asleep at the switch, or is swapping out for the new guys.”

While I wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure if pony guard times coincided with the norm for humans, they did have the same sleep schedules. So it stood to reason that they would nod off at the same times. Plus, the fact that we hadn’t actually seen a guard since getting up gave a bit of weight to the theory.

“Then I’d rather not talk about it right now!” she actually snapped back at me.

Celestia getting a little irritable actually made me pause for a second. Then that little bit of indignation reared its ugly head, and I flew up to look Celestia in the eye again as we went down the royal guest hallway and passed by the apartments leading to…some of Twilight‘s friends. I honestly didn’t know what room got assigned to what pony. “Okay Tia, tough love time,” I told her, glad that my voice was actually able to pull off the angry sound without a bit of sexiness added in. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but what’s going on with Sunset…whatever the problem that she’s got now, that quite frankly I don’t even see, it’s not your fault.”

To which she looked back at me with a glare. “Well of course you don’t see it. You weren’t raised as a pony.”

“Well for some pony with some big-time problem, she seems pretty happy to me!” I said, returning fire after Celestia’s opening barrage went completely over my head. “Okay, she’s a human…yeah. Is that what you’re beating yourself up about?”

When Celestia flinched just the tiniest bit, I landed in front of her again and turned on my emotion sensor picked up just a little bit of anger directed towards me, but for the most part Tia was just Smelled like she was swimming in depression and hopelessness.

“Because, I thought that was fixable,” I went on, a little hesitant. What can I say? If Celestia was getting unsure about things…I sure as hell wasn’t going to be unaffected by it.

The goddess let out a snort. “Of course it is,” she grumbled. “There isn’t a magical transformation that can’t be undone. I would have thought you of all…creatures would have known that. That isn’t what concerns me.”

“Then what is?” I demanded, the concern in my voice giving way to anger in response to Celestia’s. After taking a second for a little breath, I decided to try and approach things from another angle.

“You know, there’s a lot of things about us that are different, that are never going to be able to match up in a way for me to understand the way your mind works,” I told Celestia. “But…I also know you’re old, and you’ve got to have some real heavy baggage, and some way of dealing with it. I know you…distance from the stuff you can’t deal with. And now I think you’ve found something you can’t distance yourself from, but you can’t deal with either…at least not on your own. Sure, you can shove it to the side for while like I did. But you saw where that leads. So please, tell me what’s wrong.”

I knew she had commented about me being a former human might help her understand something about Sunset earlier, and we would talk later, but considering this was my coronation day the number of things we could all get sidetracked on was just too numerous to count. Since the only thing Tia was doing was the same thing she did every morning, I figured it was the perfect time to shove in some time for myself.

Celestia stared at me for a moment, and then hung her head and slumped her shoulders. “It’s not… It’s just something that occurred to me the other night when I was…bragging about her achievements. About all the great things she was planning to do when she regained her magic. She…” Celestia grit her teeth and her whole body shook for a few moments. “I think Sunset still thinks she’s going to be a princess.”

I had to actually let what Tia told me run through my head for a few seconds before I managed a response. “What do you mean, thinks?” I asked while trying to work through what Tia had said. Because it couldn’t have been what I was trying not to think.

But of course, I failed at that and…

The more I thought about what Tia had said, I found myself less able to concentrate on just why Celestia was saying such things, as my mind kept drifting to Sunset. We hadn’t really talked at all about her plans for the future once she became a unicorn again, but…it was pretty obvious just where she was supposed to be headed. Celestia had said she wanted to take her back to Canterlot, she had told Blueblood Sunny was ‘following Twilight and Cadence’. She had even adopted the girl as her official daughter! I knew Tia wasn’t just going to stick a pair of wings on her back, but…that didn’t mean Sunset’s dreams of finally fulfilling her potential were just wishful thinking, right?

If that was the case…it would crush her.

And the thought of that girl being disappointed…it might have made me just a bit panicky. “Okay yeah Sunset made a mistake, but…if messing with a bunch of humans’ minds disqualified a pony from being a princess, Twilight would have never gotten her wings.”

“That’s not it,” Celestia growled as she looked away while I went on a little bit faster than before.

“And hay…it’s better that she has made a mistake and learned from it, right?” I asked. “Ponies that have learned to pick themselves up, they’re so much better than a pony that’s never had a slip up because they know how to deal with failure rather than freak out about it!”

Tia looked back towards me before her words came out in anger. “That’s not it either!”

I looked up at the horse goddess as I managed to gather up enough of my spine to comfort Celestia directly. “Then what the hay is it then?” I demanded. “You’re saying that Sunset can’t become a princess, but you sure as hay haven’t given me a reason for it!”

“Because it’s not her destiny!” the princess practically yelled back in my face after another step from the giant pony filled my field of vision with her body.

With Tia’s explanation finally given, I…tilted my head in confusion for a few moments while my brain tried to wrap itself around that concept and came up with: does not compute.

I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t believe in destiny. Anyone who lived in Equestria wouldn’t have much of a choice but to accept there was some vague force helping to guide things. If you didn’t…well, I was pretty sure the horse dimension would have tried to prove it to you at one point…or maybe bring about a fatal accident if you kept to the idea for too long.

But given that little tidbit of information, I decided to ask the next obvious question of the alicorn in front of me as her levels of irritation rose to match my own. “Well what the hay is then?” I asked in confusion as my memory reminded me of an odd fact.

If Sunset was never meant to be a princess, then why had Celestia snatched her up when she was a little kid to not just become an alicorn, but the replacement for Celestia herself? It seemed a little weird that Tia would have done something like that if Sunny wasn’t meant to get a pair of wings.

“I DON’T KNOW!” Celestia yelled right in my face loud enough to leave my ears ringing. A second later, her expression tensed, and she hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Whenever I look at a pony, I can see a glimmer, or maybe get a feel of the path their future will take, where their destiny will lead them. And when I first saw Sunset, I thought I could guide her towards a future that I would craft for her. A future where she would rule over Equestria in my stead. But that is no longer an option! Now when I look at her, I don’t see…when I try to discern what her destiny is… There’s no vision of her possibilities, no inkling of her future! I just…I look at her, and see NOTHING!”

“You what?” a new voice cut into our conversation, making Celestia’s head jerk up, and me in turn notice two little things as a shiver of recognition ran through my own body when the girl spoke. The first of which being that we had been yelling at each other pretty loudly. The second was that we had been yelling in the deserted hallway outside of the guest apartments of the Crystal Palace. A hallway that was no longer deserted.

AJ, Pinkie, and Trixie, along with Twilight and Rainbow had either come out of their apartment all the way, or simply stuck their heads out to see what the commotion was about. Fluttershy might have looked at what was going on as well, but as her door was only open a crack, I could only guess. And along with all the ponies stood the red headed girl that was the center of our conversation.

I looked past Tia to get Sunset in full view. There was a look of confusion on the teenage girl’s face so strong I could practically see the gears churning inside her head as she tried to work out what Celestia had just said, but didn’t seem to be able to work through it. “What do you mean…nothing?” she asked in a near-whisper. “What…I thought you brought me back here to…to be your student again. I thought you…you needed me to…”

Like me and Tia, Sunset seemed to become aware of the others in the hallway a few seconds later and took a look around. “I…” She said before pausing and looking back to her room. “I need to…” And with that, she ran back to the guest apartment Cadence had set her up with.

“Sunset wait!” the horse goddess called out before she followed after her adopted daughter, only to stop as the door slammed shut in front of her. Then Celestia took one look in my direction, and I had a few seconds of guilt wash over me before I realized that Tia was in fact looking over my head and towards the East-facing window. Where nice view of the lower-case sunset was supposed to be in view within a few seconds.

Then she opened the door to her daughter’s apartment and ran inside. “Sunset please listen, it could just be-” I heard Tia say before the shut the door behind her to muffle her words to the level of incoherence.

Silence filled the hallway for a few seconds before Twilight cleared her throat. “Um…I think I need to go tell Princess Luna she’s probably going to be the one to raise the sun today.”

As the minutes passed, all the ponies found somewhere they needed to be. Rainbow went with Twilight to track down Luna, who I guessed did end up raising the sun as it appeared in the sky when the time for dawn came around. Pinkie said something about needing something special to cheer Sunny up before she took off down the hallway along with Applejack. Fluttershy and Trixie gave Sunset’s door a sympathizing look before they headed off to do whatever it was they needed to, and as for me…I decided to stick around.

Sure it was the day of my coronation, but that mattered little in comparison to Sunset and Tia being where they were. So I shooed away some of the servants that Rarity had sent to get me with everything from polite refusals to attend breakfast to murderous glares that sent guards running away in fear.

I wasn’t sure how long it was until Pinkie came by again with a tray full of apple pastries and other non-crystal food that Sunset could eat, but I doubted it could have been more than an hour. She was uncharacteristically silent as she just left them by Sunset’s door, asked me if they were still inside, and then left when I replied.

Pinkie’s confusion I could understand. Despite being right on the other side of Sunset’s door, I couldn’t hear anything coming out into the hallway. And I knew the rooms weren’t soundproof. Me and Tia’s little shouting match had attracted a crowd after all.

It wasn’t until I heard some weird sounding clip clopping of hooves that I broke myself out of a dazed funk to wonder what was causing the odd noise. Silver horseshoes, or slip-on shoes as Tia liked to call them since they weren’t nailed on, sounded quite a bit different than normal hooves.

I looked over at the second biggest pony in Equestria as her midnight sky mane waved around in the non-existent breeze. While Luna had on her usual stoic mask that almost always accompanied any one of her public appearances, it was the first time I had been near the alicorn when her Scent matched her face. It was actually a little intimidating. “L-Luna.”

“Are they still within?”

I gulped and nodded.

The alicorn raised an eyebrow. “And yet you remain here?”

“Well um…you know,” I oh so eloquently replied through the nervousness before cutting off my emotional sensor. Sometimes it was good to go natural changeling. “I don’t really think it’s my place to intrude but…”

Before I could mention how I wanted to be there for both of them, the frown that formed on Luna’s face made it so I didn’t even need to Smell her disapproval. “And here I have believed you to be one of the foal’s parental figures.”

The comment left me feeling a little inadequate on so many levels. Maybe because…I kind of had been toying with the idea, even before Tia admitted her feelings. Sunset wasn’t just my responsibility because she lived at the castle Twilight and I slept in, I genuinely cared for the girl more than most of the ponies I knew.

It also made me feel a little ashamed for feeling that way. Sunset wasn’t my kid. And by all chronological rights, she was an adult. My ears flattened. “I’ve barely known her a few weeks Luna.” Even if my relationship with Tia became serious, it still wouldn’t make me Sunset’s father or anything.

Luna looked at me for a few more seconds, then shrugged and lit up her horn before the door beside me opened, and a little tingle in my own horn said a muffling spell was undone. Which probably explained why I hadn’t heard anything before.

And was assaulted by sound a second later. “OF COURSE I DON’T WANT THAT!” Sunset’s voice rang in my ears.

From outside, I saw Celestia look at the open door that had ended her spell with a frown that lessened when she saw me and Luna standing there. The redness in her eyes made me glad I was a in pure changeling mode at the moment. Smelling something that had Celestia of all ponies crying that much would have been…hard.

Sunset didn’t look much better. She was sitting on the bed hugging herself and…it was a lot easier to see the tear streaks on her cheeks than it was on a pony’s coat.

Silence just loomed over our little gathering until Luna walked past me and into Sunset’s apartment. “What seems to be the problem with the two of you now?”

As Luna looked back and forth between the two, Sunset drew in on herself and Celestia slumped into a sigh. “If you must know…if you must know sister, I told Sunset what I’ve…failed to see during our journey to the Empire, or the day before while we were spending time together organizing Canterlot,” she said in a voice that sounded almost hollow.

“When you said…” Sunset’s words died a few seconds after she raised her head up to speak them, and she just went back to sulking.

Celestia looked back over to Sunset. “Yes, your work in helping to make sure everypony was reunited with anypony that was lost in the shuffle of the evacuation as fast as possible was equal to anything Twilight Sparkle could do. I’m proud of it! I’m proud of every single thing you’ve done since coming home. More than you could ever imagine!” she told her daughter. “But that doesn’t change your...what is…”

While feeling a little out of place and in no way right to be a part of such a conversation, my indignation at hearing the unsaid ‘destiny’ word got an annoyed groan out of me when Celestia trailed off and looked away from her daughter.

“Yes Omnifarious?” Celestia asked.

Put on the spot like that, I flinched away from the alicorn for a few seconds, and then slowly walked into the room. Then I shut the door before someone else could be added to our little conversation. “Okay look…I know what you said before, but…I’m just not getting something. I mean…weren’t you planning on making Sunset a princess before? What’s changed?” If anything, the hardships Sunset had endured and changes she had undergone had only strengthened her royal candidacy. Sunset probably knew more about a dozen things that ponies could barely even dream of thanks to her experiences as a human.

“You know what I planned,” Celestia mumbled before she glanced at Sunset for a second, who flinched and quickly looked away. The goddess’s eyes widened in obvious pain, before she turned her attention back to me. “And why I can’t do it now.”

Luna let out a noise that might have been a hum, or a groan. It was hard to tell with her. “And what plan would that be that I have not been privy to?”

For a second, I could have sworn I saw Celestia flinch at the question. Then she hesitantly looked over to Luna. “Well sister, my first idea for…dealing with your return didn’t involve Twilight Sparkle…or the Elements of Harmony,” she said before repeating what I had heard a few hours earlier about how Celestia had planned to take Nightmare Moon out in a suicide run and leave Sunset in charge of Equestria before Twilight had become her student. “I saw Sunset’s cutie mark and the possibilities it held, so I decided to…influence the path her life would take.

“And it worked!” Celestia continued. “When she was just ten, I saw a future where Sunset would become ready for ascension and be able to take my place as the ruler of Equestria.” She sighed and shook her head. “But it was a less likely path, and in my foolishness to push her towards it, I only ended up diverting her from where I wanted her life to go.”

As Tia finished, Luna looked over to the teenager. “You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t feel too sympathetic to your plight of my sister’s first idea not working out.”

Sunset looked up from her huddle on the bed and outright glared at Luna. “Do you think that I would have wanted-even with how I was back then when I was her student-”

“You are my student!” Celestia insisted with an air of desperation to her voice.

“I would have NEVER wanted her to di-” Sunset stopped herself and took in a deep breath before she looked away from Luna and over to her mom. “And stop calling me that! What’s the point of you calling me that if I’m not going to do anything important?”

Celestia took a few steps towards Sunset. “What do you mean never do anything important?” she asked in a pained voice. “Just because being an alicorn isn’t in your future doesn’t mean you don’t have one! You…with your new way of looking at magic, you could be the next Starswirl!”

When Sunset didn’t immediately yell back at her, I thought Celestia might have struck a chord with the girl. But after a few more seconds, Sunset’s face just twisted into one of anger while her eyes still showed a great deal of pain. “I’m not…you just…Damnit! I’m not Twilight, and I don’t want to be! I want to be what you raised me to be, what you taught me to be every day we were together! A princess of Equestria!”

“Sunset, that is no longer the path you are meant to take,” Celestia told her without any of the usual calm I had come to know in the alicorn’s voice. If anything, she sounded just as pained as the redhead. “I’m not sure what the future holds for you, but if you’d just accept-”

“THEN WHY DID YOU BRING ME BACK HERE?” the human demanded as she stood up on her feet and glared at Celestia with her puffy eyes. “If-if you didn’t need me back to-to fulfill some great destiny, then why did you…if Equestria didn’t even notice I disappeared, why…”

“What’re you talking about?” Celestia asked as she started to breathe so much quicker. “Equestria noticing you…what’s that got to do with anything?”

Sunset balled her fists. “Twilight…if she had never shown up, or any of her friends, or fuck, even just a few other ponies in Ponyville. If they had disappeared a few years ago, all of Equestria would have just fallen apart by now! Twilight wouldn’t have learned something she needed to become an alicorn, or maybe one of the Element Bearers would have left that little town or…something would have changed and made it so Luna never stopped being Nightmare Moon, not to mention Discord and everything else!” Sunset exclaimed as she threw up her hands before she hugged herself. “But me? I can disappear, and Equestria just goes on like nothing ever happened. I thought you came to Earth to bring me back to Equestria because you needed me. Not-”

“I DID NEED YOU!” Celestia shouted before she let out a tiny sob. Her legs shook for a moment, and she bowed her head while her voice lowered. “I needed you. To be here…with me.” By the time she was finished talking, I could barely make out the horse goddess’s words. “Even before I knew it, I needed you here with me.”

From my inconspicuous little corner, I really felt like I didn’t belong in the room with the royal family. Sure I had peeked in on Celestia’s life every now and then, but…this was some private stuff. And not the accidental sex kind of stuff that Celestia and Rainbow had confessed to while Twilight had been a little too happy from the climax to care about that little incident of theirs the night before. This was really private stuff.

“Ah, so that’s what this is all about,” Luna spoke up, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. Then, she looked over to the human and continued. “You’ve realized the only purpose for your presence here in Equestria is to make my sister feel better about herself.”

The larger pony looked over to the smaller with a frown. “That’s not true Luna.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Of course it is sister,” she replied before her expression darkened just a little. “After all, you have made it my only true purpose as well.”

The anger on Celestia’s face slowly slipped into confusion while her words tumbled out. “You…wha...what?”

“I may raise the moon, but my thousand year absence has proven that you are capable of managing such a task by yourself. Any real rearranging of the night’s sky in these days would panic our citizens as it has been the same for a millennium when you began stewardship of it,” she went on in a almost bored tone before letting out an annoyed sigh. “Then there is my purpose as guardian of Equestria that has been supplanted by your larger platoons that were put in place after my banishment. And despite the four months of tutoring I received upon my return to get me caught up on the modern world, I have yet to fulfill any governmental duties besides rubber stamping decrees you have already drawn up. The only thing I’ve been allowed to do is visit the dreams of foals and quite their nightmares. A task any mother worth two bits should be more than capable of doing!”

As Luna went on with her dry destruction of Celestia’s worldview, the other goddess got more and more…well, horrified would be the best word to describe her expression. And by the time Luna was done and unable to hold in her little snip at the end, Tia looked just about ready to either cry, or crawl under a rock and die.

I…couldn’t really come to my girl’s defense. Mostly because I really had no idea just what Luna did in Equestria beyond visiting the dream of an upset kid if the situation called for it. I had heard from Tia that she was giving Luna some more responsibilities a while ago but…they apparently didn’t amount to much from the other woman’s point of view.

“Luna, that’s not true!” Celestia said in a voice that was about as unsure as a goddess could get. “Yours is a vital role in Equestria. You matter!” To be honest, it sounded a lot more like she was trying to convince herself more than Luna after the younger goddess’s rant.

For a moment I really debated turning on my emotional sensors, because the look Luna gave Celestia wasn’t…bad, but…it didn’t look all that friendly either. She didn’t frown or get angry, but just gave her sister a tired stare. “To you sister. And I will admit to the need for a great deal of education when I returned from the moon,” Luna replied in a voice that matcher her expression. “But when the Crystal Empire reappeared, it was Twilight Sparkle and not I that you sent to save it.”

“That was because I needed to see if she was ready for the responsibility of being a princess!” Celestia replied frantically. “You know that!”

“And when a dragon camped outside Ponyville, she was sent to treat with it instead of I,” Luna went on. “Even without knowing the modern vernacular and customs, I would have been suited to the task of dealing with the creature. Neigh, my archaic approach might have even been better than some soft touch offered by your student.”

Celestia gulped. “You were still recovering, I…didn’t want to burden you with a problem like that,” she added while looking away.

“And when Omnifarious had…” Luna paused and looked over to me for a moment. “Um…its…mental crises?” she sort of asked. To be fair, the whole changeling gender confused me too. “Whom filled your horseshoes during those days? Was it I? No, you simply ran to Twilight Sparkle again.”

A few more moments of silence followed, and I was amazed to see Celestia actually huddled in on herself just a little. “I didn’t…you hated it when I tricked you into taking my duties for a day!”

For a briefest of instants, I could have sworn Luna bristled at the comment before she looked over to Celestia again. “You left me full day’s work after I finished a patrol that actually had an incident,” the other alicorn connected before she became serene again with some effort. “And do I need to remind you that I performed both of our duties while you were off with the…double? As Equestria didn’t fall apart when you decided to disappear for a week, I would have thought-!”

Luna stopped, and took a deep breath before she simply let it out and ended the conversation right there. Then, she turned to Sunset. “As for you niece, I would suggest getting used to what you’re feeling right now. It’s what your mother does to her family members,” the goddess said before her sad expression. “But do not be angry with her. It is not out of malice that she does these things, but love. Misguided as it is. Do not hate her for it.”

On the other side of the room, Celestia tilted her head just a little, as if she were trying to understand the sight in front of her. For a moment I had to wonder if this was the same argument that had set Luna on her path to Nightmare Moon one thousand years ago, and if Celestia was thinking the same thing.

“Luna…” the larger goddess mumbled painfully.

The smaller alicorn let out a little groan that sounded more annoyed than pained. “I apologize for my abruptness sister, but expediency outweighs tact, and I need to get this coronation back on schedule since it is the single most important duty I have been tasked with in months,” she said before looking over to me with a frown. “Rarity is waiting for you in your dressing room with everything you’ll need. I’ll send Princess Twilight there to reapply your glamour.”

And with that, the obviously irritated alicorn turned to leave. While her clip clops got further and further down the hall, Celestia turned her hopeless expression to Sunset, and then back to the door where her sister had left. I could practically hear her mulling over the possibilities of what would happen if she just abandoned Sunset to run after Luna, or ignored what was a pretty big issue for Luna in favor of talking to the former unicorn.

Then, she looked over to me…and I got a very bad feeling.

“Omnifarious, you…talk to her!” Celestia ordered before she rushed out the door while calling for Luna to wait up with a few pleases added in.

Meanwhile, I turned my head to look back at the depressed teen and found my stomach starting to knot. Or whatever changelings had that passed for a stomach anyway. Which in turn led me to remember the tray of pink pony prepared pastries just outside Sunset’s door. “So um…are you hungry?”

It wasn’t that I couldn’t at least half-understand where Sunset was coming from. Like most people who went through college before they were ready for it, I totally failed. It wasn’t the aimless drifter fail that some kids experience either. I had found out that what I wanted to do years before, read and dreamed about it, and when the time came for me to get some semi-real world experience in it...I found just staring at computer code for hours on end looking for typos just wasn’t for me. So I ended up changing my major to what was basically a plan B for my whole life.

However, like I said, I could only half-symphonize with her. This was mainly because after Twilight showed up to pretty much drag me to Rarity’s dressing room with Sunset following along before she ditched her translation belt upon arrival so we could have a half-private conversation, she broke it down for me when she finally started talking after a long enough hiatus…

“I may look human, but I’m still a pony on the inside,” Sunset explained in English as Rarity helped me into the last dress I would ever wear. The unicorn had commented on how it was a little rude to talk in another language with her in the room like we were, but she hadn’t been willing to wait for me to get my heart-to-heart with Sunset over and done. At the very least, she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what we were saying.

Considering how big a gossip she was, that made her best pony of the day. Even Twilight couldn’t stop her nerdiness. Although the comparison of the two made me wonder if I should ask the alicorn if she knew what was going on between Tia and Luna. I doubted the dark goddess found her without the lighter one trailing behind while going on and on about how they needed to talk or something.

“We don't get to just re-pick our majors. That’s what makes it different,” the human went on with a quiet tone I needed need an emo sensor to tell was there thanks to her depression. “Everything I did, everything she taught me… Celestia raised me to be a princess. I can’t…there isn’t anything else I want to do with my life, or do with the education she gave me. It wasn’t just magic and lectures about how I needed to make friends either you know. I know all the ins and outs of the government, and hell, after going to the human world, I’ve seen how half a dozen other governments work and…well democracy sucks but there’s plenty of human ideas we could use. As a princess, I could finally make those changes. I could use my magic to craft at least half a dozen new wondrous items to let ponies talk over miles and take care of those fucking parasprites and a dozen other things. And I could...I know the kind of trouble you girls get into. Another alicorn would let us keep every last one of them safe!”

The girls blinked away some forming tears. “And if I got to be an alicorn, I could…fly in the sky…with her.”

Okay ouch…unable to Smell Sunset’s human emotions or not in pseudo-alicorn form, that one made me hurt.

And that was on top of the normal level of crap she was probably feeling when it came to what happened when ponies failed at what they were supposed to do. Like, eternal night, chasing animals into a fancy party, turning a white cloud black and throwing a crazy party with turnips. When ponies failed at what they were supposed to do with their lives, bad shit happened inside their heads.

“And you know what really gets to me?” she mumbled. “If I could go back and trade what Celestia wanted me to do with how I am now, even if it turns out I’m stuck like this, I wouldn’t trade it for what she wanted to do.” A little chuckle escaped from her lips. “I don’t have my magic, and I’m like this but…if I had to choose between this and Celestia…dying…I’d choose to be a human in Equestria.” The statement was followed by a quick snort. “How messed up is that?”

For a second I actually thought Sunset was paying me lip service, but…I threw that thought away. I had come in at the end of Sunset’s shouting match with Tia, and I was pretty sure that the girl knew she could say anything she wanted to me without having to worry about it getting out if Sunset didn’t want it to.

No, Sunset wasn’t trying to play the part of the good girl. Considering how she had been when she had first arrived, there was probably still a bit of self-hate in the back of her mind next to the hopelessness, feelings of uselessness, and whatever the hell else was sloshing around in there.

The girl may have found a home in Ponyville, but…it was a pretty safe assumption that she had only considered her ‘not a princess’ problem a setback instead of a failure until Celestia had said something where everyone could overhear. Something I couldn’t even be mad a Tia for since she had just let the thing slip out thanks to my own big mouth.

Stupid mouth.

So, I considered my options while Rarity worked on my eyelashes, and…came up with nothing. The problem with this whole mess was: I had no idea just how Tia’s foresight worked.

While I could have encouraged Sunset to hyst let the whole thing go. That just wasn’t my style. Failures were only failures if you accepted them as such. If you didn’t, then they were just setbacks and obstacles to be overcome.

She said she could see the destiny of other ponies, but Celestia’s Tia Sense obviously had to have a few flaws in it that I could name just off the top of my head. I mean, she sure as hell didn’t see Chrysalis coming, or Discord, or all those…demons that Sombra’s leftovers spat …up…

“That’s it!” I exclaimed as an idea struck me. It was the kind that made me stand just a little taller. Which of course made Rarity let out a little shriek and backed away in a stumble since I was shouting in her face and all.

After the unicorn regained her sense of balance, she gave me an almost Stare level glare and I prepared myself for an assault when Rarity took in a deep breath. “Omnifarious, keep still!” she scolded me. “Honestly, its hard enough keeping myself out of your conversation, especially with Sunset acting like that!”

When the horse’s hoof pointed towards the human, Sunset’s eyes winded, and Rarity just went on. “I may not speak interdimensional monkey, but I can see when one of my friends is in pain! And you know how I feel about not being allowed to help them!”

“Thank you…Rarity,” Sunset spoke quietly after Rarity’s words hung in the air for a few seconds.

I looked back and forth between the two, and realized I needed to translate. “Oh, she said-”

“I got the gist of it,” Rarity cut in before she looked up to Sunset. “And I know you don’t want me interfering darling but…are you alright? Please, if there’s anything I can do for you, simply ask and I will gladly do it. I know we haven’t known each other very long Sunset, but you really are one of my dearest friends. And if there is anything I can do for you I…please, I beg of you to ask.”

Sunset looked down at the other pony with a lost expression, and then let out a sigh and shook her head. “I’m such an idiot. Belt.”

Once I had gotten up enough annoyance at the situation of me being in a dress, I focused my magic around the object that Sunset had thrown onto a bare pony mannequin and tossed it over to her. When she put it on, the human told Rarity what was going on.

I wanted to tell her my theory, but didn’t get a chance to before Sunset was done. And by the time she was, Rarity wasn’t in much of a happy mood. “Oh my, Sunset that must be so horrible for you.”

The human shook her head and sighed. “To be honest, it gets a little easier every time I got over it and…well, maybe I should face the truth. I never deserved to be a princess,” Sunset said in a low voice. “I’m a horrible person Rarity. Twilight never told you girls, but…when she and I met for the first time and I put on her crown…people almost died. I nearly killed Twilight.” Sunset took in a sharp breath through her teeth, as if the memory was enough to cause her physical pain. “Someone like me doesn’t dese-mmpth”

A faint flow of magic appeared around Sunset’s lips and held them shut. “The very first time I went to Cloudsdale, Twilight cast a spell to give me magical wings,” Rarity told her in a firm voice as a little glow surrounded Sunset’s mouth kept her from speaking. “I had gone there to support Rainbow Dash in a flying competition because I knew she was so nervous she could barely concentrate. But instead of cheering her on, I entered the competition with my magical wings that nopony in Cloudsdale had ever seen before, and midway through the competition my wings evaporated and I nearly fell to my death. I even nearly got three other ponies killed because of my actions. It is still the greatest shame of my life on every level you can imagine. So I know what its like to lose your head Sunset, and put other ponies at risk.”

Sunset shook her head and the movement was apparently enough to shake off Rarity’s magic, or at least signal her to let it go. “That’s not the same as-”

“I was conceited, egotistical, only thinking of myself, and I didn’t just ignore my friend’s needs, I cast them to the side and made things worse for her. All without the corrupted magic of a tiara pushing me like it did you,” Rarity told her. “But if I were to dwell on it and spent all my life looking at the past, then I would never have become what I am now. And…perhaps that is why Celestia can’t tell you of you your destiny now.”

I took my opening at that. “Actually, I’m pretty sure the reason Tia is having trouble with determining Sunset’s destiny is because right now, Sunset isn’t a pony.”

When she looked over to me with a quizzical frown, I rolled my eyes. “Oh come on guys. Remember all the stuff that’s happened with Discord, and Chrysalis and Sombra’s leftovers? I don’t remember her giving us any early warnings to any pony. And hay, Mom was wagging her plot right in Celestia’s face the whole time she was running around as not-Cadence.”

Why she could apparently predict my actions with any degree of certainty was still up for debate. Maybe it was because I was magically linked to her or something. Or she just knew me better than Mom. I was kind of a pony, if in a very weird way.

“W-What?” the girl asked in a whisper. “You mean, if I can become a unicorn again, then…maybe…Celestia will see a way to me becoming an alicorn without her needing to…die?”

I tensed with indecision. On one hand, I could just tell her yes and offer the girl a little hope for the future. But on the other, it could be very well like my magic lessons, which were nothing but a false hope to reverse her transformation.

False hope, or none at all.

It took my pansy ass about two whole seconds to decide just what route to take when it came to that question.

“Maybe,” I answered in a copout. “You’d have to ask Celestia about it to be sure. But it makes sense, right? She might have been able to plan out the whole Nightmare Moon thing, but all the other threats kind of took her by surprise. Even I walked in front of her without Tia shouting changeling when we first met. Or maybe it’s because even if you’re still a pony on the inside, being a human on the outside means you get too much free choice for some pony like her to see your path in life. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s got something to do with cutie marks, which you don’t have right now either. Just because Tia thinks things are a certain way doesn’t mean they really are.”

Hell, she once described me as altruistic. Which was about as far from the real me as you could get.

On the other side of the conversation, Sunset looked at me with hesitant eyes as she mulled over my theory. I could understand why she didn’t want to get her hopes up. She didn’t get her magic back after coming to Equestria, she wasn’t living with her mom like she had probably hoped to do upon returning, and she had just now found out that the single goal that her entire life had revolved around was all a big lie told to her by Celestia.

“Well…I suppose I could ask her…later,” the girl mumbled to herself.

The fact that I may have just held off Sunset’s onset of a whole new level of depression didn’t cheer me up any. Although next to that, the feelings that came with wearing a dress in public and being called a princess by everybody under the sun wasn’t looking so bad.

Unfortunately, later didn’t turn out to be before it was time for everyone to get in place for my crowning by Celestia. The second Rarity got everything done, she dragged us out of our room to get everything else set up, which turned out was a lot. So much so that the girls ended up skipping lunch to get everything ready.

Not that it did much good.

After all, my coronation sucked.

The whole thing was set up a bit different than Twilight’s had been. Whether this was because I didn’t have a cutie mark, and thus also lacked a banner, or my procession was made up of monsters I had ordered shipped here from Ponyville, I didn’t know. Changelings that were looking like their normal insect selves. And all but one of whom I only knew via hive mind since I insisted Sunset’s changelings needed to stay with her.

Well, that and I dealt with changelings face to face as little as possible. Being a mare for a few months had allowed me to distance myself from the changeling form mentally when it came to other changelings. Basically, they creeped me out again.

As for the one changeling I did know, we weren’t friends or anything. I doubted the bugs could really understand the concept beyond a textbook definition. But I did deal with #1 plenty when it came to the day to day needs of the castle.

So it was only natural to start a conversation with my changeling version of Spike while I waited for Celestia to give me my cue to enter. “So Number One, tell me, what does the rest of the hive think about all these recent developments?” Not that I needed to hear it from his mouth, but...there was time to kill and all that.

For a second I had to remember just what I was dealing with, and changed my voice to one of slight annoyance. “Are you disobeying my orders?”

If the drone became nervous, I couldn’t tell. “Merely following your previous instructions that the drones should question orders when a better path exists,” it told me before adding, “but if you wish me to be verbal...

“The hive has secured the section of the Everfree that we tricked the ponies into relinquishing and has continued work to subdue the local wildlife. Manticores continue to be of the easiest to deal with now that we have begun using mental magic upon them, while the parasprite population is the most time consuming. Numbers continue to decrease at a low rate, with no replacements as you have yet to enter a chrysalis to undergo royal maturation. However, the hive still has ample warriors and the act of enthralling the High Princess of Equestria means that the prey shall serve as a protection rather than a threat. Together, this more than offsets the failure to replace the drones as your conquest of Equestria apparently doesn’t require military action.”

I gave the damn bug the signal to stop before he could piss me off any more. I hated the way the Hive talked about Tia like that, like I had put her under some kind of spell. Even if I had, which was a BIG IF considering the mental rape that such an act was was actually worse than the physical kind, making the alicorn hook up with me would have been the last thing I would have done to her. Especially considering how I thought about her at the time when everything started.

“And now introducing for the first time,” Tia’s voice cut through the doors, signaling me to open them and get the act ready.

My official coronation ceremony started off with me walking into the crystal throne room where all the real princesses were waiting. I noticed the lack of any Harmony ponies besides Twilight up at the end but…I could kind of understand the absence. Twilight and the girls were practically a single unit when it came to most things. When she had thought they were drifting apart because of her new wings, the alicorn had nearly had a nervous breakdown in a Pony McDonalds.

I may have loved each and every one of the girls and was actually sleeping with two of them at the same time, but even now they would have a special connection that I would never be a part of. Although the term friendship was used to describe it, the truth was that what the girls had was a special connection that humans really didn’t have a name for. Despite the fact they called themselves friends, they loved each other as much as any wife loved her husband, sister loved her brother, or mother loved her child.

And so they just got front row seats to my humiliation.

Or as the changelings were probably thinking of it as, the day those idiot ponies we want to fucking eat were actually stupid enough to just hand over their kingdom to the thing that’s going to kill them all.

I walked up to the dais where the crystal throne sat behind four alicorns with my procession of changelings trailed behind me and some music played in the background. As I approached, I noticed the distinct lack of male authority figures standing there in various dresses, and had to wonder how Shining Armor felt about getting shoved to the side inside his own kingdom.

Which also made me wonder if their had ever been any male alicorns. All that research I had done on the subject had turned up only the casual mention of a few girls that got their wings like Twilight did. Which really had me wonder if Celestia was sexist?

Or was that feminist?

Sure, Equestria had a lot more girls than guys, but I hadn’t really seen anything approaching some sort of gender discrimination anywhere in the country. Ponies just seemed pretty ‘meh’ on the idea of gender roles in their society, and the only reason girls filled more leadership roles than guys was the law of averages worked in their favor.

But my Nose wouldn’t let my mind wander from the important stuff, like how the ponies in front of me Smelled. Tia still had plenty of lingering guilt and sadness perfume on while Luna was wearing some ode to anger and shame. Judging by their Scents, whatever beef had been raised was still going on beneath their smiles.

Not that they weren’t genuine smiles. I could smell some happiness and joy on the two oldest women in the room too. It was just that the lingering stench of the sisterly argument was what my mind focused on.

And then I realized my distraction coping mechanism of being the center of attention for large crowds that were probably judging me and whispering behind my back made me miss whatever the first part of Celestia’s speech.

“-she has proven herself a true friend and guardian of Equestria time and time again, never once hesitating to throw herself into danger to protect anypony in harms way,” the goddess spoke.

I…might have disagreed with her a little bit there.

But…it probably would have been a bad idea to do that in the middle of her speech.

“However, I am not here today to give Omnifarious the title of princess.”

Celestia’s words made me look up from the horse’s knees that I was level with, to her face in confusion. That hadn’t been part of the script. At least as far as I remembered when it came to Twilight’s coronation since these things didn’t actually have one. “Say what?”

For a few seconds, I thought…well…nothing. The announcement that Tia had made really threw my mind off kilter. So I could just stand there looking confused while wishing she had bothered to go through a rehearsal or something just once to avoid little moments like this.

I had to wonder what was going on.

Was this some way to placate Sunset? If so, it was a stupid one. The girl didn’t seem to care about me getting a stupid crown. Even after she learned about not getting her own. It was...pretty damn big of her actually.

Celestia just ignored my confusion. “That is a title she has held long before bringing her tribe into harmony with Equestria,” she went on. “As such, I cannot give her what she already possesses. Rather, I and all of my fellow princesses can only officially recognize her rightful place as a princess of Equestria.”

The telltale tingle in my horn telling me of magic in use around me made me look over to the side. Their my eyes caught sight of the crown Celestia and the girls had crafted for me. It had some disturbing similarities to the to the one Mom used to wear, just done up in good guy colors. In other words, the body was gold instead of black, and ended in pearls instead of high density polished cocoon resin shaped into little balls.

And I intended to follow Twilight’s example and throw the damn thing into a corner or…

Okay, I’d be putting it up on a nice little pedestal in the Everfree Castle somewhere, next to the mannequin that would hold Rarity’s dress for me. As girly as the stuff I had on me was, they were gifts from my friends that represented all the love and respect they had for me. I would give them the care they deserved.

Once again, I found my body had gone on autopilot while my mind had clashed with the idea of a pretty pony princess crown and dress decorating my man cave next to the complete collection of black magic bootleg My Little Pony vinyl figurines that actually had two cutie marks on each side of every pony’s butt and lacked the obvious seams that the first mold of the ponies had when it came to their necks…

Anyway, I found myself standing on a balcony overlooking the Crystal Empire…or maybe part of the Empire since I was pretty sure a whole empire couldn’t be seen from a balcony. And…

Um…

…I…

……sort of…

“Say something already!”

Celestia’s whisper jolted me out of my state of involuntary prettification and…okay look, while I usually didn’t have a problem with public speaking, I also wasn’t usually doing it in a dress while hundreds and hundreds of ponies were watching me and judging me and jealously glaring at me for getting a position that I didn’t really deserve no matter what Celestia and the rest of the royalty thought, while waiting for me to choke and…

I took a moment, closed my eyes, and took a breath before letting it out.

And waited for a second.

Then two.

When the third second came and no musical lyrics popped into my head, I…looked out down at all the nobles, or maybe they were commoners since they were out in the street instead of inside the palace. But I could still tell some of them wanted me to screw up royal.

Not only that, it seemed Equestria wanted it too. I mean, Celestia had said to just let inspiration strike me but...I wasn’t feeling anything coming to mind for my coronation speech. No ‘thank you’ lines. No musical numbers. Not a single damn thing.

Then I looked back and saw the crowd inside the throne room had shuffled around to look at me from where they were respectfully letting the princesses have their space. Or maybe they just couldn’t get past the line of national heroes who had taken up the front row by the door.

But...the presence of the girls wasn’t what got me going. It was the looks on all the other ponies back there. The ones with the sneers, the rolling eyes (aside from Derpy I mean), and that one jackass with the monocle. How the owner of Hasburro got into my pretty pony princess crowning ceremony, I’ll never know.

And to all the people who are just waiting for me to slip and fall, I said to myself before speaking in the out loud sort of way while mentally giving everyone who was grumbling about my princessness the middle finger. After all, anger and the want to screw over your enemies makes one strong.

So I looked out over to the crowd, and stomped my hoof. “Ponies of Equestria! Not very long ago, my tribe and yours were enemies.” Which wasn’t exactly true. You had to respect an enemy. Ponies were prey.

A small Whiff of the ponies around me said the princesses didn’t exactly like the fact that I had brought up that little point and…well, douche bags having a problem with me being their new insect overlord simply fueled my ability, but pretty pony princesses not liking me was actually pretty stifling when it came to my creativity and cut into my confidence.

“Um, however…this was not out of malice, but rather…” I gulped and screamed at my brain to come up with the right word. “Ignorance.”

Okay Equestria, I did the quick intro, so now would be a good time to hit me with some inspiration, I told the universe.

And then, something kind of occurred to me.

Although I was pretty sure the idea didn’t come from Equestria.

“In fact…”

Because it was an evil thought. One of those big ‘fuck you’ from your muse when it decides to hand you some really halfassed crap.

“You could say…”

But with the pressure building from Tia and the others needing me to make a nice little introduction to Equestria, I didn’t really have much of a choice. Oh God, am I really going to do this?

“I used to wonder what friendship could be,” I said, not sang. Just talked. As in released noises in the non-musical way.

Yes…yes I am, I told myself before continuing.

“Until you all shared its magic with me,” I went on slowly while waiting for…something better to pop into my head.

But of course, nothing came. Oh God damn it all, I’m actually doing it. Stupid brain and its lack of imagination. If ponies ever invented real alchohol, I would take my revenge one day.

“The adventures we shared,” I kept going while doing my best to translate what I remembered into something above the age of five would say. “The fun we had.”

And the thing that really got to me was that I could Smell the fact that all the alicorns behind me actually approved of the direction everything was going.

“You showed me the beauty in your hearts,” I continued. “Your faithfulness and strength of character. The kindness you shared with an outsider. It…made me feel complete in a way I hadn’t before. So…thank you, my little ponies.”

And then I looked back at the girls standing behind me, or standing in the crowd that was inside the throne room past the goddesses that had gathered behind me. “And thank you, to my very best friends.”

Then, with that little bastardization done, the crowd took that as their cue to cheer, and I raised my hoof in response to it all.

Tia leaned back down to whisper in my ear. “That was wonderful. See? I knew you would think of something.”

I choked back a smarmy retort and focused on the crowd looking up at me rather than the alicorn behind me. I kept my mind on the cheering, and didn’t let it wander to start questioning Tia and Lulu’s sisterly relationship status after basically hearing Luna was feeling just as unappreciated and underutilized as she had been one thousand years ago. Not to mention the whole lack of a princess destiny problem that Sunset was experiencing that was also causing a resurfacing of her feelings of worthlessness and that whole self-hatred thing she had going on for the first few days of her stay in Equestria.

All of that could wait until every eye in Equestria wasn’t on us. Like during the private after party Pinkie had scheduled in about an hour.

Until then…

Just smile and wave dumbass, I told myself while waving one of my hooves around while I wore a smile so wide that only the most brain addled idiot couldn’t tell it was fake. Smile and wave.

Chapter 46: The Incredibly Troubled Mind of a Solar-Powered Pony Princess

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Some people say that whenever a man is at his happiest, he must be the most on guard. For God will be a total douche bag and just shatter his life’s work upon the achievement of what he believed was its completion. I just thought as a former human, I was the only one who had attracted the attention of that jackass.

And as just plain wrong as it was when it happened to someone else, I kind of felt just the tiniest bit glad that I really wasn’t the one and only universe’s punching bag. I mean, I had been species-changed, girlified, hit on, and princessed. So the fact that something bad was finally happening to someone else who didn’t really deserve it kind of made me a little bit happy.

That is until my morality reminded me it was Tia a whole two seconds later, and then I just felt bad for her.

I mean, I knew from personal experience of her bitching about crap that being the head Princess of Equestria was no walk in the park. The woman constantly went on about how much things had changed since the golden age, and that in her day things were a lot less whiney on both the side of the nobles and Celestia herself. Then she’s apologize for going on about her problems before I did my best to make her feel better. Which usually involved putting my human hands on parts of her body that felt good when I touched them in certain ways that had nothing to do with sex.

But since I wasn’t male, naked, possessing fingers, or sitting next to an equally unclothed woman with female mounds too large to be natural, my options for cheering Tia up were somewhat limited. And as we exited the throne room where I had just been crowned to head to a ballroom where the upper crust of pony society were gathering to see how deep they could plant their lips up my ass, it seemed as if any chances I had of talking to my horse of a girlfriend were being put on hold.

This was mainly because some idiot unicorn with a blue coat I didn’t know was already making his way towards me. “Ah Princess Omnifarious, I am Lord Sassafras of Neighagra Falls,” the unimportant douchebag said as he introduced himself. “I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”

“Not really,” I deadpanned. Which I hadn’t of course, even before coming to Equestria. Which meant he probably wasn’t half as important as some of the ponies the fandom had picked up on, like say…Derpy.

I also made a mental note to go find Derpy and talk her up about a new job I needed her to do that involved next to no work and much more money. Being a single mom with two kids was tough no matter what species you were, and...oh hell, I was just doing it because I was a big Derpy fan.

The Smell of the guy’s offense brought me back down to Pony Earth in time to hear him start making their odd noises that some ponies would have interpreted as horse words. “Ahem yes well bla, bla bla bla, blabla, bla...bla bla bla.”

I did my best to tune out the idiot as he went on about radishes, or…something. By the time he was halfway through with his pitch for me to invest, or buy something, I was already excusing myself to move onto more important things.

And by that I meant more annoying ponies…

“Oh it is such an honor to meet the newest princess of Equestria,” the pony I recognized as Jet Set said in an even heavier Rarity-accent than Rarity herself used. “I trust to see you in Canterlot soon, unlike that other princess that lives in...oh what was it again?”

I did my best to hide my boredom behind some half-lidded eyes. Not to mention punch him out for snubbing my best friend in the pony world that I wasn’t going to end up banging on principal. “Charmed.”

Then there were the ponies that actually got an emotional reaction from me…

“Captain Spitfire of the Wonderbolts, your Highness,” the bitch that nearly made my little Dashie’s morality tear herself in two said as she gave a bow that wasn’t nearly low enough to a princess that could order her transferred to the front lines whenever Equestria had its next war.

Of course with my changelings around, replacing Spitfire so nobody would know she had been beaten to death by an enraged boy-turned-girlfriend would have been easy. But hiding the body in a kingdom that was about seventy-percent translucent walls and zero dark alleys… Yeah, she got lucky.

But it wasn’t all a pain in the ass. I did meet a few ponies that I was happy to see…

“You want my…autograph?” the gray mare in front of me asked before she turned off the sink that was running.

For some reason, Octavia looked pretty bewildered by my completely normal request that might have had me on my knees with a napkin and a quill floating in my magic as I prostrated myself on the bathroom floor where Tavi had just finished washing her hooves long after I followed her in to corner the mare to get my prize rather than just walk up to the group while it was on stage.

If anything, it would have been almost as bad as me just interrupting her when she was in Ponyville. I mean, long-distance relationships meant that every moment spent together was precious, and I didn’t want to be the jerk that ran over to a couple’s table and ruined their special night just for a signature.

But even with all the ass kissers, cello savants, and ponies that kind of needed murdering, I didn’t let my mind drift from what was important. In other words, figuring out just what the fuck was going on between Celestia and Luna. Not to mention the Sunset catastrophe that was really making me anxious. And I’m talking Twilight level anxious.

I mean, I was glad Sunset wasn’t going to go looking for a magical thingamajig to get revenge on Celestia with for giving her a failing grade on the princess exam but…the lack of revenge plotting had me worried too. There was no ‘I’ll show her’ coming from Sunset’s mouth about how she could prove she was worthy of a crown, it was just comment after comment about how she wouldn’t trade anything for Celestia being in her life.

It also sounded a little…too enthusiastic, like she was trying to convince herself of it more than us. The human in Equestria might have been adjusting to actually being a human in Equestria, but it didn’t mean she had stopped beating herself up over what had happened back in Earthquesteia.

And then there was the whole Celestia/Luna situation. Which I was still pretty confused about. From what I gathered, Luna was kind of pissed that her role in Equestria didn’t really amount to much. But…I was actually confused how Celestia hadn’t seen that.

Which left me at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Talking to friends about…friendly stuff was one thing, getting involved in demi-goddess sisterly squabbles was life threatening. But on the other hand, Tia didn’t exactly seem to be the calm and collected ruler that she usually was in these situations and actually looked at a loss on what to do in regards to Luna’s animosity.

And I could tell. Every time the white alicorn would look across the room at her little sister, the dark one would look in a different direction, and Tia would deflate little more. I was sure there was more to the snubbing I just couldn’t get, but what with me being half a room away, I couldn’t detect any of the subtle nuances that came from the pony body language that I knew next to nothing about.

Well, other than what a few tail signs meant. Twilight had no problem teaching me those.

When I finally decided to just walk over to Celestia and see what was going on, I felt my hoof land on something uneven before a loud…squawk brought my attention to something closer to my left, and down, and purple, and...scaly.

“Oh! Sorry about that Spike,” I apologized to the lizard with a little bow of my head and apologetic grin. I actually meant it too.

He gave me a little bit of a glare, but then turned his frowned down as he reached over to rub his tail a bit. “It’s okay. Happens sometimes whenever I’m in large crowds.”

Although I could detect a bit of sadness in his voice, I looked back up to where Tia was standing, and then turned my neck to get a visual read on Luna. And then…I looked back down to Spike after his little depressed tone replayed in my head.

So I could try and talk to creatures over one-thousand years old in an attempt to help them, or see what I could do with the depression of a teenage lizard…unless he was twelve. I needed to ask Twilight about those kinds of things if I was going to try and put myself in Spike’s life.

Since he was...a depressed young lizard that was kind of the responsibility of my girlfriend.

Which also kind of meant that…he might have been just the tiniest bit mine as well. God damn it.

So, managing not to look like I was getting ready to brace myself for whatever angst teenage crap Spike was about to lay one me as I…well...braced myself, I looked down at the dragon and gave him a sympathetic smile. “I haven’t seen you lately Spike,” I said while searching for just the right words to say since I couldn’t just ask him outright how he was doing.

Sure the little kid had zero chance in Hell with Rarity, and I probably would have pushed for the unicorn’s arrest had she actually done anything with the twerp, but it didn’t mean his horny little mind that thought the world revolved around him (if humans of his age were any indication) didn’t see things that way. “How’re you holding up? With the Rarity thing, I mean.” Not exactly subtle, but the whole holding up thing implied I knew it was still kind of hard for him.

The little sigh he gave in response had me wondering if I should have just gone on to Celestia. “I’m okay,” he replied before adding, “I guess.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure you would know for certain if you were okay or not Spike,” I replied before lowering myself down just a little. “What’s wrong?”

Spike sighed and hung his head. “I don’t know,” he said with even less enthusiasm as he did before. “It’s…part of me wants to be mad at Shining Armor because he’s with Rarity, but he didn’t know about me and Rarity. And Rarity was the one that ran off to him without even…”

“Well, you were in Canterlot,” I reminded the dragon before switching tactics from light placation to reminding him of reality, albeit gently as I could. “And Rarity didn’t have to do anything in regards to you. Yeah you help her out a lot, but every pony knows you do it just to stare at her and fantasize. I mean, have you ever even really talked to her about anything?”

The little dragon raised a hand and waved it around as if he was shooing away an angry bee. “Okay okay I get it!” Spike exclaimed before crossing his arms. “Yeesh, you and Twilight…the two of you are like copies of each other or something.”

I didn’t know whether to take that as good news or bad. On the one hand, it meant Twilight might have been stepping up to the parenting role she was kind of put into by default. On the other, if Spike still held resent towards me and started lumping the two of us into the same boat…I knew Twilight would get plenty emotional about it.

“Well I guess that just makes us all the more right,” I replied with a little smile before forcing myself to take on a sympathetic look. “And besides Spike, you’ll see one day that this really is for the best.” Then I held up a hoof to forestall any ‘when’ comments so I didn’t have to snark a replied about how he’s still be young when Rarity got all wrinkly and her crotchboobs started to sag…that is unless I actually got to work on solving that back burning worry of all the girls growing old without me and had Zecora whip up some sort of immortality brew. But that was a worry for another year.

At the moment, I had a sad lizard to deal with.

“He’s right you know,” a familiar voice added, which caused us both to look over to find Twilight standing there in her full royal dress. For some reason I found it a little odd that she still had on her original coronation dress, but…Rarity had been pretty busy with her latest masterpiece in-between the time she spent with her royal lovers. “It’ll pass in time Spike, and your friendship with Rarity will be all the stronger for it. And it’ll be a real friendship, not…some kind of infatuation.”

I stepped back and let the princess do what she did best. You know, lecture others about stupid stuff.

As for me, I…

“Ah Princess Omnifarious,” some stallion with a monocle and other expensive clothes that shouted ’I’M RICH BITCH’ said as he walked up to me Canterlot style with his nose slightly in the air. “I’m Fancy Schmancy.”

I did my best to seem like I was listening to him go on about…something. I thought I picked up the names Celesia and Blueblood a few times, but I didn’t really give much of a damn what he was saying. I looked around the crowd for someone I would rather talk to. When I found her, I turned my attention to the noble, or businessman or…whatever the hell he was. “Excuse me, I have a more important pony to talk to than you and don’t want to wait until you’re done yaking,” I told him before walking past the idiot while he was in mid-sentence and moved through the crowd before I came upon the pony I wanted to have a few words with standing next to one of the three punch bowls on the buffet table.

Out of all the ponies gathered, she looked the most out of place. Although made from expensive materials, her light blue dress was definitely the plainest thing on the dance floor. So much so that some ponies were actually looking at her out of the corner of their eyes with little frowns that told me to do something bad to them.

Or tell some of my underlings to do it at least.

Underlings that I was fixing to add to in a non-egg laying way.

“Hello Derpy,” I said as I greeted the most huggable pony in existence. Not that I could grab onto her at that moment though. There was decorum that needed to be followed. Plus, I really didn’t want to give her the wrong idea. I was already sleeping with three girls, really didn’t need anymore.

Derpy was really more of the mare you went ‘awww’ at and admired...even if she did have an awsome ass with the perfect mix of jiggle and destructive capabilities.

She turned and gave me a smile. “Oh, hello Princess. What’s up?”

I managed to keep from scowling since it was Derpy, and just went on with the conversation. “You know Derpy since I’m an official princess and all,” I went on while still keeping everything nice. “I need somepony to be my official herald and delivery…pony.” Sure it was a completely unneeded job for me thanks to my thousands of minions that I made up on the fly about two seconds after I got in the room, but…well the damn pony wouldn’t let me replace her with a changeling so she could stay at home with her kids all day. Not to mention maybe go on a date with Time Turner before that damn stallion actually tried something with one of the flower ponies. So I’d just have to offer her much more lucrative employment with much shorter hours. Hours that would be spent looking at pocket watches with me.

“Oh,” the mare replied before smiling a little. “Well I know plenty of ponies down at the post office that-”

Not having a second of that shit, I cut her off as soon as I could. “I want to hire you. I mean, you’re a delivery pony and a mail mare, right? That makes you perfect for the job.”

Derpy blinked. “Um…well, I’m sure there’s plenty of ponies that would make better-”

“Sorry,” I interrupted with a raised hoof before she could finish. “Royal order, or decree, or…whatever. Long story short, I’m drafting you. Can’t say no. I’ll see you at your house the day after we get back to Ponyville.”

Although it looked like the pegasus was going to interrupt me yet again, she stopped with an open mouth and brightened up a little. “Oh, hello Princess Twilight! Nice to see you again. What’re you doing here?”

I looked back to the alicorn and picked up a bit of annoyance in her Scent while she shot Derpy a smile. “Oh, just chasing down this pony. He slipped away when I was talking to Spike.”

“He who?” Derpy asked as she cocked her head in confusion.

As for me, I looked over to Twilight with a raised eyebrow. That wasn’t the first time she had referred to me as a male either. “Uh…Twilight?”

The pretty purple pony princess let out a little groan. “Look, it’s been an hour, we’ve put up with these ponies long enough. I told the other princesses. Everypony but Princess Celestia has already left, and I need to get you out of that dress for our private party.”

I looked back to Derpy for a minute and was tempted to just go ahead and invite the pegasus to join us. But after a few seconds of thinking, I decided against it. Just up and dragging someone to a private party unannounced was kind of a dick move.

“Okay,” I agreed before I noticed Twilight focusing the magic in her horn and decided to show a few manners before I left. “Bye Derpy, say hi to your foals for me.”

Unfortunately, Twilight’s offer to take off my clothes for a private party involved no desire whatsoever for her to get in my pants…or under my tail, as ponies put it. We got to our bedroom, got naked, and actually left a little cleanlier than when we went in. It was the most innocent time alone I had ever spent with Twilight in a bedroom since we got together.

When we got to just the friends and family gathering, I noticed there were a few more faces than I was expecting. Pinkie and the rest of the girls were there of course, and Sunset, who skipped out on the crowded affair thanks to…well, being in Ponyville was one thing, but surrounded by ponies who didn’t know her might have been a little much for the human.

Trixie was there too despite her new friend status, and I found myself a little glad for it. Yeah, I was still a little leery of how much she was buddying up to Sunset, but I wasn’t going to try and get between the girls and her. Living with ponies had shown them all to be some pretty sociable creatures, and the way Trixie had apparently been traveling by herself made me pity her. It also didn’t help her personality all that much.

Although it sounded a little too ‘Discord reformation’ in my head, maybe having some friends around would be good for the unicorn.

And then there were the forty some odd ponies I didn’t even begin to recognize. They weren’t like...Pie Family unrecognizable because I had only seen them a few times in pictures. I literally had no fucking clue as to just who all the new ponies at my party were.

Vinyl was in the back of the room with some sound equipment she was still setting up. But the question of why what was supposed to be a small get together that accidentally exploded into something resembling an actual small party that had a DJ was put on hold when I saw a labeled box next to the speakers that had yet to be unpacked. What with the Music of Harmony and all, I kind of wonder just how the fuck something like karaoke was supposed to work here in Equestria. Not to mention the pop stars, and…pretty much any singing group whatsoever.

That was something I really needed to ask Twilight about.

Then there were the ponies I hadn’t been expecting. Nightlight and Velvet were a bit of a surprise considering it was my head that got the crown that I left in the room I was sharing with a few other ponies. Number One was there as well, although it simply stood off to the side with Sunset’s slaves waiting for orders like a good little changeling. As to the several ponies I had no idea as to the identity to and leaned over to Twilight for some clarification.

“Oh they’re friends of Shiny’s,” the little goddess told me. “Friends from the academy and before. They probably heard about the coronation and…well, any excuse to see an old friend is a good enough reason to go, right?”

I still felt a little put off by the fact that his guests to my private party might have actually outnumbered mine. Just because I thought being a princess was stupid didn’t mean I was going to let the position be walked on. “So this is Shining Armor’s private princess ball now?” I mumbled with a raised eyebrow.

In response, Twilight rolled her eyes. “Oh come on Fairy, you didn’t even want to celebrate this. Besides, Shining Armor doesn’t have balls.”

And thus Twilight Sparkle was able to cheer me up enough to not cause a scene. To top it off, those minor differences between human and horse languages meant she also completely missed the joke, so I was really tempted to milk that little saying for all it was worth. In truth, the only thing that stopped me from doing it was the fact that I didn’t want to alienate the only other pony with balls in my social circle.

Which was kind of depressing when I thought about it for more than a few seconds. I had been on the pony planet for about three months, and the only bros I had were a ranch hand and Shining Armor. And to be honest, me and Mac weren’t all that close.

Then, as I looked around at the tippy-top of the upper crust in the room, I noticed someone was missing. The unnaturally white alicorn with the big fat butt had become a no-show.

“Hey Twilight, where’s Tia?”

“Oh she’s…huh…” the alicorn mumbled as we looked around the room. “I would have thought she would have been here by now. Even after the teleport, we took a long time putting up our clothes.”

A little bit of annoyance crept into my mood as Twilight’s tone turned to a bit of a grumble. “Yeah well just throwing dresses on the bed leaves to all sorts of wrinkles. Ponyquins are the best way to store anything as bulky as my dress, and I’ll be burned alive before I do that to something Rarity made for me, even if it is a dress.”

Twilight gave me a wry smirk. “You know, I think I should be glad Rarity went after Shining Armor. Four ponies in one bed is enough for me, thank you.”

The image of Rarity joining our herd tried to make it way into my head, and I quickly stamped it out before fantasy-Rarity could do more than give me a little smile. Then I turned to glare at Twilight. “Hey, just because I’ve ended up in bed with my last three best friends doesn’t mean it’s some kind of weird constant that’s destined to happen until there’s some sort of weird…super…multi-pony bedroom thing going on,” I snapped at Twilight.

Sure Rarity was beyond hot and totally doable, but the fact that Shining was Twilight’s fucking brother meant that once the double unicorn and single alicorn trio were together, everything would be perfectly fine.

Well…unless…

Okay, I had to ask. “But just to make one thing clear…Shining Armor isn’t really your adopted brother who you watched sleep at night before he signed with a record label, right?” Because if he was, there was going to be trouble.

Twilight gave me a look that told me she was obviously doubting my sanity while her Scent came off as pure confusion. “Um…no,” she replied before giving me a little frown. “And where in the hay did you get a creepy idea like that?”

I cringed for a moment at my stupid comment. Ever since the whole herding slip, I had promised myself to discuss the fandom with any of the ponies. Sure most of it was probably harmless, but what if the little sister liked the idea of a Lunar Republic, or Rainbow got something like Scootadoption into her noggin?

I shivered at the thought of some of the more…cupcake-ish stuff that popped into my head and instead focused on the important things. “Not important,” I told her before looking back to the crowd of ponies that still lacked a Celestia.

Twilight gave me a bit of a sour face, but didn’t push the matter any further. Instead, she looked back to the crowd and let out a long breath through her nose. “Well, lets go mingle a bit before Princess Celestia shows up and things can officially begin.”

And mingle we did, after finding Dash at one of the cider kegs with a stein in her hoof that made me start to worry about her when it came to pony-alcohol, Twi and I dragged her away from the booze and into the crowd to talk to some of Shining’s friends.

Good God were they a bunch of nerds. There was even one with a polka dot bowtie that even the Doctor couldn’t make look cool and a pair of glasses named Poindexter of all things. I got my hot little dork away from that as fast as possible.

The only highlight of the half an hour that everyone spent waiting around for Celestia to show up was that I did manage to ask Twilight about the singing thing.

“Well we can’t just use the Music of Harmony on command Fae,” Twilight explained with a shrug. Which kind of had me wondering just how I had managed to pull a musical number out of my ass on more than one occasion when the chips were down and singing was actually needed to kick somebody’s rear.

“The music comes from the heart, not the head,” Twilight went on. Not that her more in-depth explanation helped me at all.

Then she smiled and looked over to our communal girlfriend floating in the air above us with a little smile. “And it’s a good thing too. Otherwise I’d have to put up with a constant rock album.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes at the comment, then dropped down on the other side of Twilight and smiled. “Better than some constant classical background junk.”

A second later, Twilight’s eyes became half-lidded in her usual ‘I’m disappointed with you’ kind of way and she looked over to Rainbow Dash. “You have no idea what type of music I like, do you?”

“Pfft please Twilight,” Rainbow replied before she got up into the air again like whenever she was about to really get into an argument. The only thing that kept me grounded was I could Smell the two of them weren’t very heated. “You’re already badmouthed the best kind of music there is, so your taste must be pretty high on the lame charts.”

Then Twilight got miffed, and I realized my error while the urge to just duck and cover before the sparks started flying grew. One thing I had learned about Twilight after all the time knowing her personally was that she hated to lose an argument, no matter the subject. And sometimes, she went pretty far for whatever victory she could get. In the other corner was Rainbow Dash, who hated losing of any type.

So I kind of just got ready to salvage whatever broken pieces of what was going to be left of our relationship when the pegasus was snagged by a purple glow and yanked down to the ground so she was eye level with Twilight, and the goddess leaned in close to whisper in Rainbow’s ear. I didn’t pick up what she said despite my horse hearing, but judging by how Rainbow was blushing when Twilight stepped away, I’m guessing the alicorn had found the perfect way to win their little argument.

And then came the end to the sexily touching little moment. It came with the odd combo sound of silver and sneakers striking crystal from behind us. Which announced the arrival of Sunset and Moonbutt before I turned to look at them.

Sunset, I could handle.

Luna being with her, that kind of made me a teensy bit nervous.

What made things even worse were the emotions I was Smelling from her. After what happened in the bedroom in the early morning, I had been expecting Luna to be angry and a little hurt. But what I was getting off her was sadness and worry. It painted a very different picture than the one I had seen with Luna snubbing Celestia’s looks all during the public party.

Now, they looked more like she was looking away from her sister in shame.

“Princess Omnifarious, Princess Twilight, Dame Rainbow Dash,” the Lunar Princess greeted each of us in turn a little too formally for my liking, or maybe it was just her saying what was now an official title. Either way, I was a bit on edge even in the presence of best pony princess. “Did Celestia inform any of you that she would be tardy to our enjoyable swaray?”

I shook my head no while Dash kind of just got all confused at the terminology Luna had decided to enact with her final word. Twilight simply answered. “I’m afraid not Luna. Do you think she would have gotten held up by the nobles?”

The larger goddess shook her head. “My sister is always one for perfect punctuality,” she said. “Never is she late, nor early. Celestia always arrives precisely when she means to.”

That one had me starting at Luna for a few seconds as I tried to figure out if it was just one of those reference things that Equestria was kind of built on, or if Celestia was actively quoting stuff from the things I had shown her in our dream house and passing it around. Considering the things I had shown that pony, the second option was much more terrifying than the freakiness of the first.

“Fairy are you okay?” Twilight asked, drawing me out of my horrified wonderings. “You look worried.”

With everyone looking at me, it took a second for me to come up with something a lot less stupid-sounding than me panicking over Celestia spouting movie quotes. “Well…um…are you all sure something hasn’t happened to her?” I asked uncertainly. “I mean…this is the Crystal Empire.”

Twilight frowned at me while she gave off ode de confusion. “What does that have to do with anything?”

So I gave a meager defense. “Uh Twilight? Have you seen our bad stuff scorecard for whenever we come here? Something bad always happens! The last two times I was here, we had to save every pony from certain doom!”

“Plus that whole thing with Sombra, and the Games inspector thing,” Rainbow added before she put a hoof to her chin. “Yah know, thinking about it like that…we should really stop coming to this place so much.”

Twilight groaned. “Just because some kind of evil monster has appeared every time we’ve been here to cause trouble-”

My confusion joined with my curiosity to make me cut Twilight off. “There was an evil monster during the Games inspection?”

Rainbow let out a snort that only a horse could accomplish. “Dude, have you met Ms Harshwhinny?”

“The point is,” Twilight went on, a little more annoyed than when she started. “It doesn’t mean something bad is going to happen now. Princess Celestia is perfectly fine! And if anything was powerful enough to cause her trouble, I’m pretty sure we would have heard it!”

After the four of us waited a few seconds for Twilight to calm down, Luna spoke up. “Well, not necessarily. The plunder vines that Discord created were able to restrain us before the guard could be alerted.”

Luna’s little reminder of the event that I had missed made me wince and kind of a little nervous. “Okay, just because there has been one little incident…” I trailed off as I remembered how Celestia had gone missing in the first episode. “…or two, doesn’t mean something bad has happened just because all of us together big huge event with every important pony in Equestria gathered in one place-and you know what? We really need to stop wasting these precious seconds we have to prevent the pony apocalypse before something bad happens to her.”

It took a whole five seconds for me to find Tia.

Well, at least after I had taken a minute to lock my legs in place and find something to lean up against. While horses could sleep standing up, I wasn’t about to see if it was a trait shared by the talking variety of equines.

From what I got from her for the few seconds I risked connecting with the princess, she was in our room. When I first got a glimpse, I had just thought she was running late and calmed down when I noticed her looking at my dress on its stand. Then she kept looking at it, and kept looking, and…just stared at the damn thing for all the time I was linked to her head. As for her emotions, what I got from the goddess had sent me running through the hallway with the others close behind.

But of course by the time I had gotten to the bedroom door, I had gone from panicked rush to a hesitant crawl. After all, if Celestia wanted to be alone, was it really right for me to come rushing in?

But...did she even want to be alone? Her actions could have been a cry for help for a heart to heart in a private place.

I stood there for a few moments while trying to make a decision.

And then Luna walked past me before she banged open the door and stuck her head in. “Sister are you present?”

On the right side of the room, Celestia jerked her head around and looked around with wide eyes for a moment while most of the girls shuffled past me. By the time I finally got prodded by the pegasus and went in, the sun goddess was speaking.

“What are you all doing here?”

Twilight chuckled nervously and played with the carpet using her hoof. “Oh, well um…when you didn’t show up for the party, we…might have thought you were kidnapped by an eldritch abomination that wanted to destroy all of Equestria,” she said before blushing. “I’ll admit, we might have gotten a little panicked.”

After Twilight finished her explanation, Celestia stared at us all for a few seconds before a tiny smile appeared. “Come now my little ponies, it’s only been,” she said before looking over to the clock on the wall across from her and frowning. “Oh…I must have been lost in thought for longer than I believed.”

“Thinking about what?” Sunset asked.

Celestia locked eyes with her daughter for a moment, and then lowered her head. “How to fix everything,” she said before glancing back up at the lot of us. “How I’ve ruined everything with two of you…how to keep from ruining everything with three of you.”

“Say what?” Rainbow mumbled from behind me before I heard her wings flap and her voice got higher position-wise. “What the hay are you talking about?”

While Celestia looked up to Rainbow for a second, Luna walked forward quickly and broke away from our group. “Sister that is not true! You…my outburst earlier…I was in the wrong to-”

“To what?” Celestia cut in with a frown as she stood up and looked down at the smaller alicorn. “To tell me how much I’ve hurt you? To show me that even after a thousand years, I am still doing the same thing that alienated you from me in the first place? That I’m not only making the same stupid mistakes with you, but now I’ve done so with my daughter as well?”

Sunset let out a tiny groan and stepped back when Celestia looked up at her, and Twilight moved in front of the girl. “Princess, you’re the most wonderful pony in Equestria! You would never-”

“I had sex with Rainbow Dash in the middle of a blizzard just the other day Twilight!” Celestia snapped at the alicorn a second before Twilight‘s wings opened wide.

The announcement got a flinch from Sunset. “Really didn’t need to hear that,” she mumbled very softly.

The purple alicorn reached down with a hoof to get her wings under control. “Um, yes well…I’m actually glad that happened,” she mumbled while her own Scent of lust increased. “Without that little push, we’d probably still be holding onto that one month agreement and-”

“And nothing!” the bigger alicorn shouted. “Stop excusing my actions! I could have stopped myself. I could have sent Rainbow away, I could have teleported anywhere in Equestria. Instead, I got wet from another mare touching my horn and decided to sate my Hunger! I let it happen and I enjoyed every bucking second of it!”

Sunset sunk onto the floor, and Rainbow flew over her. “Hey come on, that was more of an accident,” the pegasus said. “And if somepony had said, don’t rub an alicorn’s horn when it’s glowing because it makes them-”

“WOULD YOU ALL PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS?” Sunset shouted before she got to her feet and we all stumbled away from the human’s loud shouting. Left in her own little space, Sunset turned to Celestia and pointed at the goddess. “And you! You’re older than…fuck, anything else in Equestria! Stop pouting about everything and grow up! You made mistake, fine! You want to examine things to see what you did wrong? Fine! But actually move to fix things, don’t…just…do what I did when I first got here.”

As Sunset ran out of steam, Celestia urged Luna out of the way and stepped forward. “Sunset-”

The human shook her head and hugged herself. “And stop…stop beating yourself up over me,” she went on. “The princess thing…okay yeah, I’m really disappointed. Hurt and…a lot of things, but everything that happened is my fault, not yours.”

Celestia shook her head. “No, I should have done something more…”

“And even if I’m stuck here like this,” Sunset continued when Celestia’s words simply trailed off. “It’s better than being on the other side of that stupid mirror. And if I’m not meant to be a princess, then…at least I still have you…my mom with me.”

“Your daughter is right sister,” Luna added from behind Tia. “And do not trouble yourself over my own failings. If you do not believe me capable of ruling Equestria, then…I will trust your judgment and regulate myself to simply watching over the night and assisting the EUP with their duties.”

From my place in the room, I could Smell Luna wasn’t all that pleased with the idea as her kind voice would suggest, but I kept my mouth shut and simply wondered if Sunset was lying through her teeth the same way the dark blue alicorn was.

On the other side of the conversation, Celestia shook her head. “No Luna, that’s not…it is not a lack of faith in you that keeps me from allowing more problems to drift to your court,” she said before turning her attention to the human. “And Sunset, I am sorry for what I did to you, for…breaking you as I have.”

That little bit made me step forward. “Uh, yeah…about that Tia,” I spoke up while raising a hoof halfway to my face to help get a little extra attention. “I know you’ve got your future sense, or whatever it is. But, are you sure it even works on Sunset anymore?”

Celestia looked away from Sunset and over to me. “What do you mean Omnifarious?”

The question had everyone in the room looking at me a second later, and after glancing around at them all for a minute, I cleared my nervous throat. “Well it’s just that…Discord kind of knocked you for a loop despite this future sight thing, and then there was Chrysalis, and I’m guessing you didn’t see something like the Crystal Empire being taken over…twice, since you know…with the changelings and all,” I said nervously while it looked like Celestia was fixing to deconstruct my argument. “Or maybe the reason you can’t see her destiny is because she doesn’t have one, as a human, I mean. It’s not like you ever saw this Sunset in all those possibilities before you showed her the mirror, right?”

I would like to say that it was my little talk that got Celestia to cheer up a little and come to the party with the rest of us, but…Twilight and Rainbow had their two cents as well. Although the thing that got her fat ass moving was probably the fact that Luna and Sunset weren’t shouting at Tia anymore.

Still, everything wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Celestia tried to get into the spirit during our ‘little’ private party that had what felt like one hundred guests, but my emotional sensor could see past her fake smile. And judging by how many things Pinkie tried to get her involved in, I’m guessing the party pony wasn’t fooled either.

But all things considered, it ended as well as could be expected. Rainbow Dash got so drunk she couldn’t walk. Applejack managed to walk away from their little contest. Twilight practically massaged Celestia’s ass when we had a conga line. I won the pin the tail on the pony tournament thanks to the unfair advantage of having changelings in the crowd relaying me the poster’s position with pheromone communication. Rarity and Shining spent most of the night being dragged around by Cadence as she introduced the unicorn to all of her husband’s old friends as their future third on top of Shining’s parents. Pinkie managed to be in three places at once with all the partying she did. Luna managed to keep most of the ponies at a respectful distance, which was a mixed bag as far as I could tell. Sunset stayed close to Luna for most of the night, which was where Fluttershy also ended up half the time when she wanted some space, although Luna liked having her around. Trixie stayed close to Sunset despite the presence of the dark princess that made her nervous. And Spike kind of just wandered around the ballroom and had a dance or two with the CMC, who didn’t manage to shatter the Crystal Empire.

When the whole thing came to an end, everyone said their goodnights and goodbyes, Celestia hauled Rainbow Dash out from under the table where a changeling spell was keeping her from being noticed by the rest of the ponies present, and threw the pegasus onto her back before we popped back to the room.

Although it would have been nice to say the night ended there…half an hour of fondling Celestia’s rump had given Twilight a hunger that I had been forced to endure for the better part of the night. So after I put a sound dampening spell on Dash to keep her snores from shaking the room, I was subjected to a pony porn show that involved Celestia making a meal of Twilight while I wrapped my pony-arms around an unconscious pegasus. The whole time I had to wonder what I should have been more angry about, the fact that Celestia’s explanation of pony looks made me see her and Twilight going at it as hot, or how I couldn’t clop to it thanks to the fact hooves really couldn’t be used for that while I waited for my turn.

Then, after it came my turn to give and receive some love of both the physical and nutritious kind, we took what was fast becoming our usual position with Celestia on the bottom, the girls wrapped in her wings, and me on her stomach. It still made me a little uneasy that me and TwiDash had gone from a three-way hug to just an everybody cuddle of Celestia, but…I didn’t want to complain about it. The last thing I wanted was Tia thinking I was still afraid of her taking the girls away from me.

What we had was just a little change in the physical dynamic of our relationship. Just because I would never get to snuggle with Rainbow and Twilight again didn’t mean that the world was coming to an end. Or our relationship…which was kind of the same thing in my book. I could deal with not being able to smell Twilight’s shampoo as I passed out anymore, or opening my eyes to have Rainbow’s beautiful hair greet me as the first thing I got to see in the morning.

“Princess-”

“Twilight, what have I said about using my title? Especially now that we are not only equals, but lovers?” the Celestia asked in a somewhat bored before Twilight could finish.

The purple alicorn blushed. “I’ve called you Princess for most of my life…Celestia. It’s going to take me a little while to get used to, well…just Celestia.”

“Or Celly,” the larger alicorn before she moved to whisper into Twilight’s ear. “Although I think I’ve become rather fond of Tia.”

I watched Twilight shiver as the bigger goddess began to nibble on the smaller alicorn’s ear, and get a little laugh from her. “Okay, okay, Celly, you’re Celly!” she said before pulling away just a bit. “Even if it isn’t proper.”

Celestia’s face turned sour, and she looked away from Twilight. “Ugh, proper. I’ve had enough proper to last me ten millennia,” she grumbled before her entire body jerk just a bit and she looked back to her fellow pony princess. “I’m sorry Twilight. It’s just, today has been…stressful.”

“I understand,” Twilight replied as she nodded her head.

“We were there for most of it,” I reminded her.

Rainbow silently snorted her condolences between breaths.

“That blasted ceremony today and the party,” Celestia went on before she shook her head and sighed. “I’m usually much better at dealing with all of this but…Sunset, and now Luna. I can’t stop thinking about how I hurt them no matter how hard I try. Why can’t I stop thinking about it?”

I shuffled around on top of Celestia. “Come on Tia,” I said while trying to sound a little supportive. “It’s not like you can’t turn Sunset back to a unicorn eventually, and Luna…just give her more things to do. Problem solved.”

A groan came from Twilight, and I looked over to see she was giving me a half-lidded glare. “You can’t be serious.”

“What?” I asked. As far as I could see… “Sounds like a pretty simple solution to me.” At least simple when it came to figuring out what to do. But in the case of Sunset, how to turn her back into a unicorn, and then eventually into an alicorn…that would take some doing.

Twilight raised her head to look in Rainbow’s direction for a few seconds while Dash continued to snore behind magic that kept her mute, and then she looked back to me. “I can’t believe you of all ponies aren’t seeing this,” Twilight told me.

“Not seeing what?” I asked, more confused than ever.

“Fine,” Twilight replied not a second before she looked over to Tia. “Princess, why did you bring Sunset back to Equestria?”

Celestia flinched just a little bit, and the legs holding onto me gripped tighter. “I was selfish. The second I saw her again, I wanted her to come home and be with me.”

“Not because you could offer her a better life where she belonged?” Twilight went on. “Not because you could give her the love that nopony else could? When Sunset got back to Equestria and we worked together on your project and the mirror, I listened to how her life was like after I left. What she and the…counterparts to my friends had…it wasn’t friendship. They kept her around, gave her a place to sleep, and maybe even had a few parties, but from what she says, it was more out of obligation and pity than any desire to be with her. I don’t believe for a single second you didn’t see the pain Sunset was in, and wanted to rescue her from it. Yes, you wanted her here with you, but because things should have been better for her in Equestria, not because you wanted to make things easier for yourself.

“And knowing that,” she went on while I Smelled the sadness start to build up. “I can’t even imagine you doing something to hurt Princess Luna intentionally. You just want what’s best for your sister, and your daughter, and you’re doing whatever you can to give it to them. And that’s why it hurts so much, why you can’t stop thinking about it.”

When it seemed Twilight was finished, Celestia frowned at her. “Twilight?”

The smaller alicorn sighed. “And I know about all of this because…I did it too,” she said before looking past me. “Almost a year ago, I did something terrible to a mare that I love, thinking all the time I was helping her. And it wasn’t the fear of asking for an apology that filled my mind the most. It was how by doing something I thought as good, I actually hurt her.”

Celestia shifted in the bed as Twilight finished, and I glanced over to our other communal lover. “Oh, you’re talking about-”

Apparently, all of the movement was enough to get something through to the blue pegasus and she raised up a second later before speaking.

“…”

Well, her mouth moved at least. I had to focus on the annoyance I felt at the spell for basically taking away my Dashie’s voice before I was able to focus my magic to undo the enchantment I had put on her before she could actually be heard. “Wha? Hey girls, what’s going on? Gah!…head, pain!”

When her words were followed by a slight moan and Dash pushed a hoof to her head, Celestia bent down to touch it with her horn. “Don’t think I’m going to be doing this every time you get into a drinking contest with an earth pony.”

After the glow had died down, Celestia kissed Rainbow on the cheek, and I reached out with a wing to touch her shoulder while Twilight spoke. “It’s nothing Rainbow, just talking about how much I love you.”

Rainbow looked around at the three of us with a lost expression. “Oh…uh…that’s cool,” she mumbled. “Um…are we going to have sex now?”

Of course, we didn’t.

Not right then and there at least.

It took me a whole five minutes to get in the mood. Then I ate my fill in more ways than one once Celestia had gotten Rainbow all warmed up and ready for me.

And when the whole thing was over, Rainbow kind of just laid up against Celestia’s bigger body instead of trying to burrow into the thing with a snuggle like she and Twilight usually did. With that and the Smell coming off of her once the orgasmic bliss cleared up, I had to wonder what was going through her head.

But being the fastest pegasus in Equestria, she looked up to the goddess currently serving as her body pillow and ran her mouth before I could build up the courage to ask about anything. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

Celestia blinked, and looked down at the pony cradled in her wing. “Pardon?”

“Tia, I may have only done it with you a few times, but…you were way more enthusiastic the first few times we did it,” Rainbow told her before getting a little nervous. “Did I do something wrong?”

The question had Twilight’s apprehension on the rise a second before Celestia shook her head. “No my little Rainbow. The truth is, I am the one who is at fault,” she replied before giving into the full explanation about what troubled her with the little sister and daughter thing.

It took a good ten minutes, and as Tia was wrapping the whole thing up, Rainbow get out a confused grunt before speaking. “Okay so…just give her more princess stuff to do. Problem solved.”

And that ladies and gentlemen, is my pony.

“If it were something as simple as that, then I would have already done it Rainbow Dash,” Celestia said in a tone that was a tiny bit snappier than normal as she shuffled around in the bed a little bit. Then a second after she finished, the alicorn wilted a little bit. “I’m sorry, I’m just…a bit more stressed than usual.”

For her part, Rainbow didn’t seem to mind, or notice Celestia’s attitude like I could. She just blinked. “Okay but…why?” she asked, confusion written on her face. “She’s a big princess too, right? Shouldn’t Luna being doing half the stuff in Equestria if Twilight and Fae don’t?”

Twilight groaned at the question. “You know how I feel about telling my friends what to do Rainbow,” the alicorn said before the pegasus shot her a look that obviously questioned Twilight’s grip on reality and forced her to quickly respond. “I meant in a royal capacity!”

“It’s because things have changed so much since Luna has ruled Equestria alongside me and…I don’t want to destroy her expectations,” Celestia replied in hesitation.

This time around, it was Twilight who asked the obvious question. “What do you mean?”

Having a pretty good idea where this was going, I flew off of Celestia and let her sit up in the bed while we all got out of our snuggled position and into one better fit for a four-way conversation. Twilight reluctantly let go of the bigger goddess and rolled onto the floor, Rainbow took to the air, and I ended up at the foot of the bed after landing. Then the alicorn began the exposition.

“Before Luna was banished, things were very different in Equestria. The royalty and nobility were a few simple families, mostly based out of Unicornia. While still more…prideful than most ponies, they did what was best for all ponies as a whole more often than not. What’s more, they actually did something to help with running Equestria. These days, while the younger noble houses that still run towns and villages are worth something, after a settlement fails and the noble family returns to Canterlot, they become self-obsessed within three generations. While Luna…she had no idea that is how the nobility is these days. To expose her to the headache of the Canterlot Court now, it… I just can’t do that to her!”

Twilight cleared her throat. “Um Princess,” she spoke before Tia gave her a tiny frown at the title-slip. “Can’t you just…tell her that?”

I picked up a bit of annoyance from the bigger alicorn, but none of it showed on her face. “I’ve tried that several times Twilight, but Luna won’t listen to me.”

“Uh Celestia,” Rainbow Dash spoke up reluctantly. “Okay, I know I’m always the one that’s slow on the uptake here, but…so what if the snobs in Canterlot are a pain? It’s not like one little thing is going to make everything else so bad. I mean, you like being a princess, even with so many jerks hanging around you all the time.”

Rainbow’s words actually managed to make Celestia drop her mask, and her Scent became one of anger, embarrassment, and a little shame as she tilted her head a little bit away from the pegasus while pointing her eyes all the way away. “That’s…not really the case.”

“Say what?” I asked, too shocked to really comprehend what she had just said. Because it kind of sounded like Tia…

Before I could bring myself to finish that little thought, Celestia sighed and shook her head. “When Luna and I first became princesses, we were overseers, mediators, and guardians. We protected our little ponies and settled disputes. Now, I have to spend my days listening to overgrown foals whine and nod my head. Instead of fighting dragons, I sign paperwork. Instead of helping ponies that truly need it, I placate children. Instead of spending time with my daughter, I have to deal with the…mules who consider her to be some kind of new pet!” the goddess rambled off in a tired tone before she got Dash in her sights. “The truth is my little Rainbow, I don’t like being a princess. In fact, this past year…I’ve grown to hate it.”

And that was the end of that little conversation. I could tell when Dash’s wings forgot to keep flapping and she hit the ground on her hooves and Twilight just went “Bwa?” with a slack jaw.

I…blinked. “Come again?” Unable to say more.

Celestia looked up at me with a frown, and I could Smell her anger growing. “You of all ponies I thought would understand Omnifarious,” she told me with a frown. “Every night since we have been sharing our sleep, I have told you how many headaches I get from these foolish foals a day!”

After raising my pony-arms and waving my hooves in a placating gesture, before Tia could go nuclear on me, I tried to back peddle. “Okay, okay I know,” I told her. “And I’m not saying I don’t get that you’re stressed but…well…just hearing you say you, ya know, hate it is pretty…surprising.”

I didn’t think Celestia was capable of hating anypony. Monsters and all those things that were bump in the night besides Luna. But not ponies. And yeah, if she hated her job, she hated the reason she hated it.

“And so you see why I can’t expose Luna to this,” Celestia told me fiercely before her glared turned sad. “No matter how much she wants me to.”

Silence once again enveloped the room, and I found myself unsure of what to say. Sure I had the whole ‘but have you told her this?’ question running through my mind about two seconds in, but this was Celestia. There was no way she hadn’t explained things to her sister, who struck me as the super stubborn type.

A minute ticked by.

And then another that every pony in the room with wings and a horn spent avoiding each others direct gaze.

And then-“OH COME ON!”

The three of us looked over as the pegasus once again got into the air with a frown on her face. For some reason, I had to wonder if Rainbow would have been one of those people that goes all over the room when they’re angry if she had been born a human and her wings just compensated for that.

“You. The two of you are right here and you’ve got nothing in your eggheads to fix this?” our pretty little pegasus companied. “Isn’t that your thing?”

I had to wonder just when I joined the Club Egghead in Rainbow’s mind. I read a lot, but I wasn’t a nerd like Twilight. And then there was her other misconception. “Um Rainbow, I really don’t think this falls under the whole friendship problem category. What with all the sex and junk.”

And then, I saw Twilight move to get out attention and correct me. “Actually, I’m finding my new relationship with the three of you to be exactly like friendship. The only differences is the amount of time spent together and the uses for my mouth have gone beyond simply talking.”

For some reason I found myself a little disturbed by that, but shook it off as soon as I could. Ponies were different than humans. It made sense they had a different rating system for relationships. Even if there was a difference between friends with benefits and lovers were I came from didn’t mean Equestria ran on the same rules.

Right?

“AGH! Enough of that!” Rainbow cut in before she put a hoof to her head and rubbed it while I watched on with envy. I still had trouble just touching myself as a pony.

Which sounded just plain dirty and wrong.

“You know what? I’ll do it myself,” Rainbow mumbled, breaking me out of some rather disturbing images that involved me touching myself as a pony that looked dirty and wrong. Then I blinked and looked up to her as she pointed to Celestia. “Look, you’re you! You’ve got your own thing do, and I’ve got my own thing, and-wait.”

Rainbow touched back down and frowned. “Sorry, I’ve been working on this speech since Scoots started to figure out she’s a grounded pegasus, and her parents said they wanted me to break the news to her. Cowards.”

Scoots is a what? I said without talking because…well, the name kind of said it all. There of course had been some theories floating around, but actually having heard it from Rainbow Dash’s mouth…just…I had no words.

But no one else in the room seemed to mind the announcement that Scootaloo was crippled and it was kind of the wrong time to start demanding explanations as to why there wasn’t some spell or magical surgery to fix things when it came to Rainbow’s sort of little sister.

“Okay, let me start over,” Rainbow said while Tia and Twi were just staring at her in confusion. “You’re you! She’s…her. You’ve got stuff you’re good at and she’s got stuff she’s good at, but just because you‘re…uh…not good at…something? Uh…wait, I lost it again.”

Twilight’s feather’s latterly became ruffled and she spread her wings. “Rainbow! How can you say something like that! Princess Celestia is-” Before Twilight could really get into defending her goddess/idol/wet dream, her personification of pony perfection let out a chuckle and stopped her cold.

“It’s alright Twilight,” Celestia assured her. She turned to Rainbow Dash and smiled at the nervous pegasus that had just called Celestia anything less than perfect. “And, I think I understand what you’re saying Rainbow Dash.” Which put her decryption skills far above mine, because I was still completely lost. “Thank you for trying to ease my worries.”

The pegasus reached up to rub her shoulder with a hoof, and I looked on at the adorable sight of a Rainbow Dash being a bit uneasy while her face turned just a little red. “Uh, no problem Prin-Tia.”

At that, Celestia slid back down onto her back and opened her wings and legs for the three of us to climb in. “It’s late my loves, and I need some rest after our earlier activities. Come, things always look better in the light of a new day.”

Despite my apprehension about not talking this whole thing to it conclusion, I was outvoted when Rainbow and Twilight snuggled up against Tia in their feathered blankets. So, I climbed into my goddess’s belly and carefully tucked my head under her chin to avoid impaling anything.

“And Omnifarious? Prepare some entertainment that will last the night, something with a compelling story and interesting characters. Oh, and alien. Make sure it’s nothing like Equestria. I want to lose myself in another world for a few hours,” Tia ordered.

I searched my brain for a few seconds for something we could marathon all night that fit the bill and at least had some familiar things so I wouldn’t need to explain everything to the horse that possessed barely any twentieth century level of technology. Showing her Star Trek had been a bad idea.

Of course, the answer came to me almost immediately. My mouth twisted into a little grin, and I looked down at Celestia. “In that case Tia, bundle up, because…” I cleared my throat and tried to make my voice sound as close to my memories as I could while speaking horse.

“Winter is coming.”

I actually stood a little bit higher, proud I was able to pull off.

But then…

“No it’s not,” Twilight raised her head and looked over at me with a bit of a thoughtful frown. “Well, okay it is, but we’re much closer to Fall, and still in Summer. Which reminds me, I need you to meet with the Ponyville zoning board, the Summer Wrap-up planning committee, the Ponyville-”

I groaned and looked over to the alicorn with a tired expression that I actually felt. “Not the time Twilight,” I said to the pony who really knew had to ruin one liners.

Chapter 47: The Incredibly Firey End of a Solar-Powered Pony Princess

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By mid-morning of the day after my coronation, we all stood ready to board the train the girls took to the Empire. With the direct route to the mountain still down, we would actually be going through Ponyville twice, once on our way to Canterlot to drop Tia and Luna off, and then a second time for the rest of us. While it would have just have taken her a second to get back home using her magic, the reason she gave for the delay when I asked her was…

“Do you have any idea just how much of a headache is waiting for me when we get back home?” the goddess groaned. “I’m with the ponies I love, and I intend to milk it for as much time as I can.”

Which I couldn’t really be mad at her for. Celestia still had a lot on her mind, even after our night together that was spent on other things. Although my little theory had given her some hope with Sunset’s situation, the goddess reeked of worry whenever she glanced at the human. On top of which there was the Luna problem that still plagued my solar pony princess.

I took a second to look at Celestia, Sunset, Luna, and the changelings escorting the human on top of five of the six mares the train was meant to house. Then I glanced at the single car that Tia’s new bullet train would be pulling. We were going to be sooooo fucking cramped.

“Rarity would you just shove your tongue down their throats so we could get going already?”

A few feet away from the train platform, I watched as Rarity bristled slightly at Rainbow’s comment, and turned to glare at her. “Rainbow please! As if a lady would-”

Whatever else Rarity was going to say was cut off when Cadence spoke up. “Well if you’re all in such a hurry.” The alicorn grabbed Rarity by her shoulder and spun the marshmallow mare around so quickly the unicorn lost her balance and fell into Cadence’s hooves as the pretty pink pony princess dripped her lover towards the ground while locking lips.

All of the ponies on the platform went silent, and I saw Twilight’s wings pop while Rarity moaned in response to Cadence’s oral attentions, and her cheeks bulged slightly in what I could only guess was a tongue wrestling match occurring between the two. When she was done, Cadence released Rarity from her lip lock, and I blinked at the small strand of spit linking their tongues for a brief instant before Cadence looked back to her husband and let Rarity stand upright. “Your turn Shiny.”

When Cadence had to prod the big white unicorn with her wing to get him to give Rarity a goodbye kiss, or knock him out of some sexual fantasy that involved his wife and mistress going at it, I scooted closer to Twilight. “Is it just me, or does the pony who wants Rarity and your brother to get together the most your brother’s wife?”

Twilight gave me a nervous laugh. “Well, she is the Alicorn of Love.”

“Yeesh Fairy,” Rainbow Dash cut in as she dropped down from the sky and landed between us. “It’s not like you and Celestia didn’t go at it like monkeys last night.” From the way Rainbow grumbled the m-word, I was pretty sure the pegasus wasn’t complimenting our rambunctiousness in bed.

From her place beside me, Celestia let out a very horse-like snort. “If only,” she mumbled. “We spent the night watching a human adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire.”

The reminder that Equestria had it’s own little Game of Thrones made me roll my eyes. From Celestia’s reaction to things like Ned’s beheading, the pony version had a lot less in the way of decapitation, infidelity, and incest. Which made me wonder just how like the human one it really was.

“How was it?” Twilight asked.

To Celestia’s credit, I didn’t notice the biggest alicorn around cringe, even if I could Smell the distaste on her like a dirty sock. “It was very…human,” she replied evenly.

It was funny just how much a single word could convey. Although Tia had seen plenty of action movies before, I knew the level of violence depicted as entertainment was disturbing to her. Then there was the rest of her opinions about how things should have been done in the story we had just watched play through. I really doubted she would be coming back for another dose.

Thankfully, before Twilight could wrangle any actual details out of her, Rarity came trotting up with Cadence not very far behind and talking the marshmallow mare’s head off. “I’ll see you at the end of the week at the Wrap-up Festival, Rarity.”

The unicorn gave a little blush in response. “Cadence, you don’t have to make a special effort just to come see me for some end of the season celebration. I’m sure there are far more important duties to attend to here. ”

A much more together pony followed Cadence up and smiled down at Rarity while I…might have had a shiver run through my body from the sight of said pony prince charming thanks to that attractive pony shit Tia had put into my head. For all the good it did me when it came to appreciating female pony looks, I was really not liking the fact I might have had the tiniest attraction towards bright white stallions.

Which kind of explained Tia’s useless royal guard. The bastards were just eye candy for her royal high-ass.

“We were planning on going anyway,” Shining assured her. “Ever since Princess Celestia came to Ponyville for the last Festival, everypony has been planning to make it this huge event.”

I looked over to the biggest goddess around and arched an eyebrow. “So, it’s not like the Sun Celebration where you go from town to town?”

Tia shook her head. “No. I have no official duties during Summer Wrap-up,” she told me with her trademark gentle smile before it became mischievous. “I did take home the hoof-wrestling trophy though.”

“I got the rest,” Luna suddenly chimed in with a smirk on her face from her place beside us before she let out a yawn. From the looks of things, Lulu was up way past her bedtime.

A disgruntled grunt came from the pegasus beside me, and I caught a whiff of anger from Rainbow Dash before she mumbled something just loud enough to hear. “Well with somepony like her competing, what’d you expect?”

I…wasn’t exactly sure to back my Dashie’s dissatisfaction up or not. The one thing I kind of shared in common with most ponies was my opinion of sports. To me, they were a game. You go out and have fun, win or lose didn’t really matter; long as you didn’t come in dead last anyway.

But Rainbow was an athlete. Sports weren’t a game to her, they were her life, something to be taken seriously as Twilight took her tutelage under Celestia. Winning was practically part of her Talent.

Meanwhile Luna… well, she wasn’t just an alicorn. Twilight was an alicorn and Rainbow could still fly circles around her as well as pin the purple mare to the bed with raw strength. Luna was an alicorn connected to a secondary power source that put her a head above even other alicorns.

I knew this because I was currently feeding off the pony that was head and shoulders above everybody else. Even factoring in the different levels of love that Celestia and Twilight felt, there was a HUGE difference between their power levels.

So…while I couldn’t really get behind Dash being angry about losing…

Dash losing to a demi-goddess that was probably only winning a contest thanks to what was basically magical steroids? That ruffled my feathers. Even if it was Luna.

“Isn’t you competing against regular ponies a bit unfair though?” asked the darker princess with a little frown. Sure it was more than a just a bit unfair, but…once again, it was Luna. I could only get so mad at her even with Dash being distressed.

Celestia let out a low hum before she looked over to the other alicorn. “He has a bit of a point there sister. Perhaps this year, we should do something a bit different rather than romp with our little ponies.”

The suggestion got an eyebrow raise from Luna. “Oh? And what would that be dear sister?”

In response, Celestia gave a little shrug. “Well, I’m sure we can come up with something.”

The train ride back to Ponyville was a disturbing mix of uncomfortable and terrifying.

The uncomfortable came from the fact that Celestia’s new bullet train was made for one purpose: to transport six ponies to the various locations that could be reached by railway as fast as possible in case of emergencies. As they no longer wielded the Infinity Gems of Harmony, emergencies meant that five of the six girls would be shipped off to the most defensible place in Equestria in record time. Because of this, the train only had one car built for six ponies plus two emergency guests at most. And in that one car there stood nine creatures of normal pony size, a biped, one creature that was about fifty-percent bigger than the average pony, and another that was twice as big with an ass three times the norm. To say the thing was cramped was an understatement.

Me, Rainbow, Twilight and Tia were situated at the very back of the car with Rainbow on the bench next to me at the window seat while I had the aisle. Twilight was also seated near the aisle, mostly because our sun goddess was having to actually sit in the aisle just to my left thanks to the fact the benches weren’t built for her celestial-sized ass in mind. Applejack was on the bench in front of me and Dash, while Sunset had to curl up a bit to fit into the one in front of Twi. Then came Fluttershy on the left as she shared a seat with Trixie, and Pinkie took up the place on the right along with #1. At the very front of the car, Luna was also forced to endure the cold floor on her rear while Rarity shared a seat with #619, and Spike ended up on the other side of a drowsy Moonbutt with Sunset’s other servant.

Then there was the terrifying aspect of the train: it’s speed. As a glanced out the window and watched the scenery zip by, I could tell we were going at what should have been an impossible rate for something like an Equestrian train. Hell, nothing on the ground could move like we were going.

I looked over to Celestia as she sat next to me with her rump on the ground in the middle of the aisle at the back of the train. “Just how fast is this thing Tia?”

“The enchantments allow the Harmony Express to travel at speeds over two-hundred-fifty miles per hour Omnifarious. Why do you ask?”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. My mind was much more concerned with the fact that we were basically using a wild west rail to guide a bullet train. I had to use all my brainpower to remind myself that I lived in a world of magic, and there had to be some kind of spell keeping us from going off the tracks at the slightest turn or we would have died about ten times over since leaving the Crystal Empire. “Just…curious.”

Tia must have noticed my nervousness, because she bent down and nuzzled me a little. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t put the ponies I love most in this world in here if I wasn’t certain it was safe.”

The physical contact helped, if only because it was a nuzzle. After three months, I still wasn’t quite used to the affectionate move that didn’t really have a human counterpart. Ponies and humans hugged, kissed, threw arms around each others backs, grabbed butts, and did a bunch of other things that crossed over well, but nuzzling was equines only. It was probably why I was so bad at it, and now that I had time to think about it…I realized both Twilight and Rainbow had tapered off on that form of pony affection in regards to me. It still happened from time to time, but I didn’t rub cheeks with either of them as much as they did with each other or Tia.

But with my fears of having to watch my friends die in a fiery death or hitting the walls of our train car at terminal velocity, I turned my attention to something else that had been troubling me since the night before. While Tia could have probably provided me with all the information I needed, she hadn’t been wanting to talk ponies, and the fact Sansa’s dog got killed because of Joffrey and her lying about what happened had the goddess in a mood. A foul kind of mood.

“So um girls,” I said with a little hesitation. “What’s up with Scootaloo and her not being able to fly?”

My question got the attention of the three female ponies sitting around me, with Rainbow turning away from the window she was looking out right next to me, Tia ending a little joke with Twilight in the middle of the punch line, and Twilight leaning over to look around Celestia’s impressive profile.

Twilight was the one who asked the obvious question…for the ponies anyway. “You mean you didn’t know that Scootaloo couldn’t fly?”

I gave Twilight a look that asked her in turn just how big of an idiot did she think I was, and then responded with some words. Slightly agitated words. “No! But every one back home thinks she’s just a slow learner or something.”

It wasn’t much of a defense since I now knew that My Little Pony was simply based off the universe I was in and not a cartoon brought to life. Everything really wasn’t picture perfect. There was still crime, personal problems, pollution, and of a few other things that also plagued humanity. They just weren’t as prevalent as they were on Earth. Equestria was just…twenty-percent less than utopia.

“It happens to ponies sometimes.”

Sunset’s voice drew my attention and I glanced over at the human who had managed to poke her head past our little privacy screen that filtered out some of the sound. It was apparently rude to do but…it was also the only way the four of us could have some semblance of privacy.

“Humans have it too. Just think of it like a magical birth defect,” the human went on before turning a little nervous. The reaction was kind of understandable considering the fact that Sunset had her own unicorn disability at the moment.

But she managed to keep talking about it. “Sometimes its mystical leakage, or a horn that can’t do anything but be used at full power, making a unicorn clumsy with their magic and easily tired out. I’m not really sure what’s wrong with Scootaloo though.”

For that explanation, Twilight stepped in. She spoke in a dull tone, as if just reading something off a page. “She can’t generate any lift with her wings.”

That bit, I understood, if just from hanging around Rainbow and my own changeling-granted knowledge of pegasus magic. Although a few pounds lighter than most other ponies on average, pegasi weighed way too much for wings of their size to get them off the ground. It was a fact Rainbow had helped me test more than once when she took the top position in bed and…humped me.

The explanation for the ‘fuck you’ to science was once again that ever so all encompassing Equestrian thing called magic. When pegasi flapped their wings, some magical component to their flight helped them generate more force, or lift, or…something. It wasn’t as simple as just making herself lighter though. Rainbow had carried multiple ponies at breakneck speeds that wouldn’t have been possible if the wind could have blown her around like a leaf.

But the why wasn’t really important to me at the moment. The thing that was…

“But can’t you guys just do something to fix it?” I asked in what most people could have called a pleading tone. Sure, I may not have any personal interest in Scootaloo besides the pity I would have had to any little girl confined to a wheelchair, but that was more than enough to try and get the Goddess of the Sun involved. “The two of you are alicorn’s for crying out loud!”

When both of the goddesses turned their eyes away from me, it was Rainbow that came in to save their sorry asses. “Come on Fairy, do you think I haven’t already asked them that?” she said, making me look back to the pegasus sitting beside me with a sad expression on her face. “I asked Twilight when I found out about Scoots, after she became an alicorn, and I even asked Celestia on our first date when you and Twilight were doing stuff in the bathroom.”

Twilight looked up with a hurt expression. “It’s not that I don’t want to do something about it Rainbow! It’s just…”

“Pony magic isn’t meant to make the…well, the unnatural. It is meant to work in harmony with the world, not go against it,” Celestia added.

I gave both the royals a half-lidded glare. “Yeah, cause Twilight turning animals into oranges, you making stuff just appear out of thin air, or me shrinking Rainbow Dash down to something that can stand on my hoof is completely in tune with the way things are supposed to be.”

While Twilight blushed at the mention of the oranges, Celestia shook her head and sighed. “I know it upsets you my love, but it is just the way things are,” she told me with a gentle sadness. “It takes a great deal of magic to create something from nothing, and no matter what something looks like on the outside, those animals were still what they were before their transmutation.” Then the goddess smiled and looked past me. “And no matter her size, our little Rainbow was still herself, right?”

Rainbow groaned. “Please don’t get any ideas. Fluttershy wouldn’t stop talking about how adorable I was for days.”

“And Omnifarious,” Celestia cut in, the soft seriousness of her voice and Scent holding my attention while the delightful smell of sadness came off of her in waves. “Do you think that if I could, I would have done something already? Not just for that little one, but for all my little ponies that suffer from conditions that inhibit them so?”

I had the decency to shrink in on myself a little bit at that. Not that I had really meant to accuse Celestia of sitting on her ass when she could have helped a little pony. But…judging by how she was talking, that was how she was taking it.

“My magic can mend the broken, restore feathers and even whole limbs and organs should I come across the damage soon enough,” the goddess went on. “But in ponies like Rainbow Dash’s little charge…there is nothing I can do. It was simply how they were born. Dwelling on it…concentrating on what she can’t do…it does nothing but cause mystery to everypony involved. Best to focus on what is possible for her, where true destiny lies, than wishing for something that isn’t there.”

While I might have agreed with some of what Celestia said…with how some people, or ponies, needed to accept the way things were and move on, the D word made me need to repress a groan. And so did the whole giving up thing, especially when I looked over to Sunset Shimmer.

There was a crippled unicorn that Celestia was practically doing back flips to try and help. And once we did fix Sunset, it was pretty obvious Tia would be doing her best to put the future quadruped on a throne once she glued some wings to her back. Not that I was resentful or angry over Celestia’s actions involving the teen with the bacon hair, but…it just didn’t seem fair that Tia was certain she’d be able to fix Sunset’s problems while another little girl was going to be going without what made her a pegasus and Tia didn’t even bother to try.

Stupid destiny shit.

The whole conversation put me in such a bad mood that I just kind of put myself into the back of the conversation as Twilight and Celestia talked about princess stuff. Most of it had to do with all the junk that was still left to do back in Canterlot.

Although reports said the ponies had gotten back into the city with little trouble, Celestia had gotten dozens of letters from various nobles that had attended the coronation demanding various things like some kind of upper class escape procedure that was faster than that of the commoners, if not some type of personal conveyance in the case of some idiots. Then there were the other letters demanding that airships never again be commandeered to transport the ponies that were too sick and injured to move from the hospital as they did things like dirty up the deck with their commoner-ness (which was apparently a word in Equestria) and left the place smelling of antiseptic. All concerns that she would have to address once she got home.

All of which mattered diddly to me in light of the real problem Celestia was facing back in Canterlot. And in my sour mood at her impotence in being able to help Scootaloo…I decided to bring it up.

“So, any plans with how to deal with the Luna situation?”

My question made Celestia flinch and…that little response might have killed what was left of my anger for the flightless pegasus problem. Angry or not, it wasn’t like I enjoyed nettling Celestia. Even if she did need to get poked in the emotionally sensitive spots from time to time.

Celestia sighed and shook her head before looking up at her little sister, laying down for a nap on the other end of the train car next to Pinkie Pie; who could somehow get through the little crowded room on wheels with no apparent trouble. “What can I do?” she asked in a sad voice.

“What happened to that stuff I said?” Rainbow Dash cit in. “You’re you and she’s her?”

A second later, Celestia perked up a little and looked over to Rainbow Dash with a smile. “Oh my darling little Rainbow. I know you said not to project my own dislikes onto Luna,” the goddess replied while Rainbow’s face got a little confused at Celestia’s interpretation of her words. “And you are right about that. But…it’s not so simple.”

Celestia let out another sigh and went on. “Even if Luna were to enjoy the prospect of ruling Equestria…the subtleties of court and personal quirks of the nobles takes a decade to learn. Equestria has lasted as long as it has because I am able to guide those in charge of Canterlot in the direction I need them to go without them even knowing about it. A word here, a suggestion there, my appearance at a party, each move is carefully planned to keep Equestria running smoothly.”

And considering Celestia’s apparent foresight, I could imagine she was able to do such things with precision. Although...her confession to being a master manipulator was a little disturbing.

“Luna is…not as subtle,” she mumbled before a small smirk appeared on her face. “As wrong as it sounds…I think my actions do more to protect the nobility from her than they do to guard Luna from them. Once again, I find myself choosing my country over my sister.”

A slight shift in the alicorn’s seating posture made me look past her to see Twilight had wrapped the larger goddesses foreleg in a supporting embrace. “Oh Princess no!” my purple pony told her quietly. “You just want what’s best for everypony.”

Dash gave me a measuring look for a second, and then flew over me to wrap her forelegs around Celestia‘s neck. “Even the lame ones.”

Not about to be the one left out, I reached over and grabbed Celestia’s other front leg, and laid my head up against her while being as careful as possible to keep out from under Dash. Just because the nudity didn’t bother me didn’t mean I wanted a pony butt directly over my head.

Outside of the bedroom I mean.

Of course our little group hug didn’t go unnoticed by every other pony on the train, and I was the one who had to deal with the crowd before they started going ‘daaaawww’ or something. So I dispelled the sound dampening spell and frowned at the others who were smiling at our little moment. “Oh take a picture, it’ll last longer!”

And…well…you know those saying about big mouths, watching your words, and all that.

In response to my…less than intelligent quip that had a lot less heat than what I would have yelled at humans, Pinkie brightened up the train with a huge grin on her face. “Great idea!” she said before reaching into her poof of a mane and pulling out a camera. “Saaaaaay ménages a trois!”

“Pinkie, that’s only for three-” Twilight managed to get out before I was blinded by the flash of Pinkie’s ancient pony-camera and the rest of my purple pretty pony princess’s words were cut off by a surprised cry from what I guessed was her own optical deficiency.

While we three little ponies were recovering from retinal damage, the horse we were holding onto let out a thoughtful hum. “You know, Ms Pie has a point. We really should be putting some of these moments on film to help serve as reminders of all the times we’ve shared.”

And thanks to the fact that my mind worked in some pretty dark ways, I couldn’t help but picturing Celestia a century or two from now, looking down at a worn photo album filled with pictures of the four of us. The whole thing made me look away from Tia and clench my teeth. No! Bad brain! Stop thinking about shit like that and…ugh, I really need to ask Zecora if she’s got an eternal youth potion or something. I didn’t give a damn about the moral implications of artificially extending the lifespan of the girls a few million years. There was no way in Hell, Heaven, Tartarus, and whatever else kind of afterlife there was that I was going to wake up one day to a wrinkled Rainbow Dash that nearly broke into tears every time I flapped my wings because she was too old to do it too.

“Is something wrong Fae?”

The question made me look up, a direction that Rainbow had thankfully vacated since Pinkie finished with her picture, and over to Twilight. “Huh?”

“You had one of your looks on your face, and I was wondering if something was wrong,” the purple alicorn said with that cute little curious face she usually wore when being concerned and inquisitive at the same time. The one with her lips pressed together just a tiny bit, not enough for a kiss, but not her normal look either.

I just crammed my ‘I’m going to end up immortal and alone except for the one or maybe two girlfriends that are also immortal with the possibility of Cadence also joining the mix if she was still around too but probably not since Luna and Celestia would never be getting together and with Cady and Twily kind of being sisters that incest stuff wouldn’t be happening to them either’ and my ‘I’m going to end up being immortal and alone except for Celestia since Twilight will grow old like all the other ponies’ worries off to the side. That was stuff that could be dealt with in plenty of time.

Not that there was even all that much to worry about anyway. Even if Zecora, Celestia, Discord, and whatever the fuck else was out there didn’t have an answer for keeping the girls around, I had my own solution. There were a few risks involved for my part, and even if staying together with two of the girls I slept with would be a little…weird, I would rather have them around in a platonic way than not at all.

“Fae?”

Twilight calling my name made me shake such thoughts from my head for real this time. Plan C was just in case of emergencies anyway.

I smiled back at Twilight. “Sorry, I was just thinking of the four of us starting a scrapbook or something,” I replied before another little concern dug its way into my mind and I grit my teeth while turning my eyes away from Celestia in discomfort. “You guys are going to want a picture of me in my coronation dress, aren’t you?”

“With your crown, and the make-up,” Celestia told me with a tiny mischievous smile on her face that I caught when I looked back up to her. Then her eyes turned all apologetic. “”You did look very beautiful my love. It would be a shame not to have something personal to hold onto. Especially since it is the last dress you ever plan to wear.”

Surrounded by ponies, and after seeing Rarity take a particular interest in my response upon hearing of the fact I would be putting on that gown she made again, I lowered my head in defeat. “Just make sure to get my good side, okay?”

Celestia giggled in her usual melodious way. “Okay, but we’ll need more than just pictures of your plot if we want to show them to other ponies.”

I groaned and wondered how much longer it would be till we got to Canterlot.

And of course, the trip to Canterlot took way longer than I was hoping.

Thankfully, Celestia kept the sexual comments to a minimum after her opening barrage. In fact, most of my time was spent listening in on the half-conversation that occurred between Spike and Rarity after the dragon finally got around to talking to the unicorn. Even Rainbow managed to shut up and take interest.

However, the whole thing ended up being more than a bit of a disappointment. Mostly because it went something like this…

“Uh…hello Rarity,” Spike said after over half an hour of being in the seat on the other side of the aisle from her. “I um…I wanted to um…apologize.”

The final word made the unicorn’s attentions go from half-hearted to full. “Apologize? What? Whatever are you talking about?” she asked. And before Spike got his answer out, Rarity just continued blabbering on. “I’m the one who should be apologizing for not sitting you down and ending this foolishness with your crush before it got as far as it did.”

But then Spike quickly gave his retort. “No it’s my fault! I mean…when I really think about it like Twilight told me to…you’re twice my age Rarity! You make look pretty, but you’re an old nag on paper!” I didn’t even need to see Rarity’s face to know that her eye had started twitching like crazy. “And what do we even have in common besides gems?”

“Yes…well…” Rarity replied before she turned back onto her seat all the way. “I’m glad we…got that settled.”

Oh God, I’m going to have to hear her go on about this for an hour when I visit the boutique, aren’t I? I asked myself with a groan while wondering how long Rarity would complain about her age. On top of which, I’d be needing to bring some chocolates and ice cream for the unicorn to stuff her face with too. Sometimes, having her as a best friend totally sucked.

But then again, my other choices were a trio of unattached girls who were… Well, Pinkie was definitely the kind of girl you wanted to get your hands on and squeeze. Applejack probably had tons of stamina. And I could get wet just thinking about Fluttershy thanks to the curse Celestia put on me. So, while Rarity was the most high-maintenance, she was also the least likely to get the idea into her head that making a fivesome was better than my current sleeping arrangements with three other ponies.

And considering what happened with my three other best friends…yeah, no way in hell was I risking adding onto the group like that.

I just sat, enjoying the silence for a good ten seconds before Twilight and Celestia started talking shop. Mirror shop, which made Sunset join in. I understood about five seconds of what was going on before my brain reminded me that when it came to magic, I was one of the guys that just figured out how to work it, not how it works. Which was why I was still stuck in the size-alteration school of transformation magic.

So I found something else to occupy my time. That being the mare in front of me. As for what to talk about, I went with the obvious. “So Applejack, how’s the farm and family?”

AJ looked back at me and shrugged. “Same as ever. Applebloom was a mite put off ‘bout not getting to come to the coronation, but we need to hurry and get ready fer the Fall harvest. All that cider makin’ means we’re a bit short on our winter stores this year, and need to work hard to play catch up.”

Or at least the first Fall harvest, which would probably be followed by another one about a month later. Even though I knew next to nothing about apple trees before moving to Equestria, I was pretty damn sure that level of fruit production was impossible according to human rules.

Although, it did explain why nine times out of ten I saw AJ hauling apples and asking for help when it came to harvesting, even if only a year had passed since Twilight had come to Ponyville. Despite the lack of a horn or wings that shouldn’t hold them aloft, earth ponies liked to cheat just as much as unicorns and pegasi.

Then, I Smelled Applejack get a little nervous, and she glanced over at Celestia while the nerds spoke their secret lingo for a second before turning her eyes back to us “Mind if Ah ask you two something?”

I put on my best reassuring smile. “Of course Applejack. You can talk to me about anything.” It had taken forever for me to get that idea across to Rainbow, the one where I wouldn’t judge or laugh at her for having ‘uncool’ thoughts or questions. The rest of the girls, not so much.

“What’s it like?” she asked a little hesitantly. “Bein’ with Twilight and Celestia, with the two of ya too, I mean.”

My mind went to a very dirty place for a second there, and then I sat back to seriously consider the question. “Well-”

“It’s awesome!” Dash said as she cut me off before I could get more than word one. And it was the whole ten yards enthusiastic cut off too, where she just sprang up and completely blocked me with her wing. “Okay, Twilight? She’s like, super enthusiastic, and is just getting better and better. It was kinda weird to have to tell her how everything really was if she starts asking questions, but Twilight does stuff different the next time around to make it better!”

I froze after hearing Dash’s little description. Oh my God, is she…

“And Fae?” Rainbow kept going. “Applejack, you have got to do it with a changeling at least once. When you like, hit your limit…nothing feels as good. Sweet Celestia, nothing even comes close. And yeah, that saying? Totally spot on.”

She is, I realized, too stunned by my horror at the situation to actually make her stop. Plus, the complement might have had me blushing a little too hard to shut Rainbow up with my magic.

“But Celestia? She is like… Twilight says her tongue is so big, it feels like there’s a stallion inside when she does you. But you know, better because she can wiggle her tongue around,” the pegasus said before she put her ass back on the cushiony seat and smiled. “And don’t get me started on all the magic stuff she can do.”

And by that time, Rainbow Dash finally seemed to take notice of the fact that Applejack’s face had become redder than that of her brother’s, and every other conversation on the train had come to a complete stop so that all the ponies could give Rainbow their looks of interest, indignation, and other words that started with the letter I.

“R-RAINBOW!” Twilight shrieked at a pitch I barely ever heard outside of the bedroom.

Celestia laughed and leaned over to Applejack with her troll crown on. “As for Rainbow Dash. She’s very enthusiastic and eager to please, although I have to admit that her inexperience and lack of stamina tends to work against my little pegasus,” she added with a smile.

As for me, I was kind of paralyzed from a simple little thought running through my brain. Something Rainbow had said made me relive every moment headed to pony nirvana I had spent thanks to Celestia’s masterful attentions that were better than both of the other girls combined. It really was a hell of a lot different than either Rainbow or Twilight, and yeah, her tongue was a hell of a lot bigger than the main mouth muscle that either of the girls carried.

I reached out for support, and wrapped both of my forelegs around the pony-arm of the pegasus next to me before leaning into her completely like the helpless chick in need of comfort I probably appeared to be to most ponies. “W-What do you mean it’s like having a stallion inside of you?”

Have I mentioned how much being an empath sucks?

Yeah, there’s some good points to it. I can usually tell when someone is lying, always know when they’re hiding something, and nothing beats the feeling of actually Smelling how much the people around you love each other. It took me months to learn all the Scents, but it was worth it.

However, the bad times usually end up being what I focus on because…well, it's hard as hell to ignore when someone else is feeling down when you're usually the one responsible. I wouldn’t go so far as I made Tia depressed on our little train ride back, but after hearing she had basically been using her tongue like a certain guy’s only anatomy part…all she had done was both worry over me.

And Luna.

On top of Sunset.

“Is it really that bad?”

My whole body shuddered at Celestia’s question as me and the goddesses of day and night walked through the Canterlot Palace gates with Twilight, Rainbow and Spike trailing behind a few feet. After Rainbow’s little explanation of our herd sex life, the dragon had started asking questions and the alicorn had spent the last ten minutes of the ride explaining the birds and the breezies to him as Tia put it. And since Rainbow was the ‘dad’ of their little nuclear family, she had decided to put her two bits into the explanation too.

Of course Sunset was there too. But she and Luna were having their own little conversation that seemed to only be happening to help keep Moonie awake.

As for why the three of us were in Canterlot at all, while the rest of the gang had taken the magical bullet train back to Ponyville for various reasons, Twilight had managed to wrangle me and Dash into saying goodbye to Tia where we were suppose to drop her off…and then casually mentioned that she had promised her parents a sit down with the pegasus that was banging their daughter. Since the princess’s mom and dad were taking an airship back home, they wouldn’t be in till dinner, and that meant we were all stuck in Snob Town until after dark.

Something told me that I would be needing every moment to help me get over the fact that I had basically been getting fucked by Celestia’s tongue. Or repress the memory into a deep, dark place and never let it out again.

…even if it had been the best sex I had ever had.

……bipedal included.

The question itself did manage to get a rise out of me though. It probably also helped that we were behind a vocal privacy screen so the little school ponies that were busy gawking at the four princesses walking past them couldn’t hear what I was about to say.

“YES!” I shouted at Celestia before getting into the air to look at her in the eyes. Even as thick as she was, Rainbow really knew how important a height advantage was when arguing.

Although me looking at her in the face didn’t really seem to distress Tia any more than she already was. Which was a lot. Part of me just wanted to roll over and accept the latest loss to my masculinity in what was already a long list of man-death. But…

“It’s just…it just another thing in the whole gender-bender stuff, and I didn’t even know it was happening this time, ” I told her miserably.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Luna and Sunset went over to talk to the kids before Tia gave me a concerned look. “I can stop if you want. If it makes you uncomfortable, just give me the word and it will be over. There are a million ways to share our love Omnifarious, I can refrain from that one if you so wish.”

Of course that was the problem.

A part of me. A big part. The part that I was pretty sure held a controlling interest in my decision-making process…didn’t want it to end. Celestia was fucking awesome in bed…even if it was me she was...fucking.

With that little revelation, I dropped out of the sky and hung my head. All in all, I blame this whole thing on the ponies. I mean, I started watching some show meant for little girls because I was bored one day and there was nothing else I could really stomach watching thanks to my mood. Then I got addicted to it. Then I turned into one. And now I’m having sex like one…sort of.

Stupid slippery slopes.

So I let out a sigh of defeat and looked up at Tia. “No it’s fine. I mean, I really do enjoy being with you like that,” I added after my cheeks got a little hot.

Our conversation was cut off when we reached the palace gates and Luna decided to rejoin us along with Twilight’s party. But before we could make our way inside, one of the guards stepped up and addressed the tallest goddess.

“Princess Celestia, Prince Blueblood commands that you report to him in the royal audience chamber.”

The…command the guard just gave his goddess made us all just stop cold. I think even Luna’s hair stood still while her head tilted in confusion. However, her mouth was still able to move. “Pardon?” she asked as a frown formed on her face. Lulu apparently got cranky when someone got her up from her nap.

Looks like someone just pulled latrine duty for the next ten years, I told myself as my mouth curved upward into a smirk at Luna’s anger. Twilight didn’t seem to be all that happy about it either, and Rainbow was practically fuming.

But before any of them could do anything, the biggest pony in the world stepped forward. I took in her scent and winced. Celestia just Smelled…tired. She let out a grunt of a sigh and nodded. “Very well. Best to get this out of the way before anything important comes along.”

As we fell into line behind the guard, Rainbow got into the air and frowned. “Who the hay does he think he is talking that way to Tia?”

Luna let out a single ‘heh’ and I noticed a bit of her anger turn into amusement. “Well obviously not a pony who ranks as much as a paramour, to use my sister’s name with such familiarity.”

“Luna please,” Celestia mumbled. “I would appreciate if you didn’t nettle my lovers.”

The other alicorn’s face became a tiny smirk. “Oh sister, I am simply following your example.”

That actually got a bit of surprise to radiate from Tia, and she turned her head to look over to Luna. “Excuse me?”

“I’ll explain everything later,” Luna replied with a dismissive wave of her hoof as we reached the door to the royal audience chamber. “For now, let us see what the overgrown foal wants with you.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow at Luna, then shook her head and looked towards the opening doors. “It’s probably just him wanting to make a big deal out of nothing. I assigned him a simple task before the coronation and he probably just wants as big a pat on the head as he can…” Tia trailed off as the golden doors leading to the audience chamber opened, and the goddess frowned. “Why is he on my throne?”

I’ll admit that I didn’t pick up on that little fact until after Celestia said it because…well, form an aesthetics and economics standpoint, the Canterlot throne room is pretty fucking amazing. I had clings that went nearly on hundred feet high, marble columns, golden decor and all the stain glass windows were big enough to drive a train through. But in my defense, not noticing something you’d rather ignore with all the cool stuff around isn’t that big a deal.

And yea, Blueblood wasn’t standing off to the side, waiting to be called like a good little boy that had just gone to the bathroom by himself for the first time ever. He was sitting in the seat meant for an ass twice as big as the one he possessed, flanked by a pair of guards and a few other ponies I only half recognized thanks to #4’s presence in Canterlot and the information he filed away in the hive mind.

Aside from Blueblood and the guards, four other ponies stood up on the dais with the idiot. There was Lined Pockets, Special Privilege, Noble Lineage, and another pony known simply as Entitled. The whole lineup made me want to groan. As members of Blueblood’s social club, they were just as bad a complaining about everything while doing nothing as their de facto leader. Someone who I think only got the job because he had more money and connections than the others. Other times, I was pretty sure he could out-wine Rarity.

The little scene made me just about as confused as Tia. But I kept my mouth shut and followed my big girlfriend into the room as her confusion slowly turned to anger. By the time she had gotten to the usual place where a petitioner presented himself, I could Smell it had come to a nice boil. “What are you doing on my throne Blueblood?”

Tia’s voice lacked any of its usual warmth. It had been replaced with a cold anger that, in all honesty, just sounded creepy coming from the most loving being I had ever encountered.

“Ah yes, Auntie,” Blueblood addressed his goddess in a tone that just said ‘I’m talking down to you now bitch’. “While I was perusing the Canterlot Archives as per your…foolish assignment, I happened upon an ancient piece of Equestrian law.”

A second later, the dickhead’s horn lit up, and an old parchment flew out from behind him to unfurl within his magic. “Apparently, when Equestria was founded, the superior minds of the Unicorn Kingdom saw the danger of having a mixed pony leading the nation and wrote in a law to the original Equestrian Accords that allows the eldest of the unicorn royal line the right to deem both of you unfit for the position as leaders of Equestria.”

I…could only stand there dumbfounded for a moment at Blueblood’s announcement. And judging by the thump I heard from behind me, even Rainbow found herself unable to keep her wings flapping.

But even though my body refused to move, my mind managed to keep going. Mostly because I had something to fight the disbelief that was going through me over the situation. A few days ago when I had been a blubbering mess over my upcoming princess position, Celestia had told me that the title was given to ponies who were more or less protectors of the realm, not rulers. Any actual political power came at the behest of the ponies Celestia ruled, not from the fact she was the driving force of their solar system.

Which meant…Blueblood’s little find might actually be a legitimate check to her rule.

Once again, it was Luna who came to her senses out of all of us first. And she did with all the power and fury of a demigod that just got talked down to by an ant. The room suddenly got a lot darker while dropping a few degrees, and the Alicorn of the Night stepped forward while throwing her wings wide.

“USURPER! YOU DARE TO TRY AND USE OUR-”

Then Celestia stepped in front of her and threw her even larger wings wide, blocking Luna’s face. “Sister! I am trying to put this-this, disgrace in his proper place!”

Celestia looked back at Luna with a cold expression for just a second before the warmth in her eyes returned. “One moment Luna,” Tia told her before she turned her head back to look at Blueblood. “I would like to know our nephew’s grievances.”

“Grievances?” one of the other snobbish ponies yelled.

“You take our priceless airships and fill them with disgusting rabble!” another shouted.

“You give earth ponies titles of nobility just for making towns where they got at it like minotaurs!” another unicorn added.

“You always take the last slice of cake at parties!” the last of Blueblood’s cronies said. Which made all the other ponies in the room look at him with questioning expressions. “Well, they took all the good ones!”

Blueblood cleared his throat. “Yes, well…because of this and several other reasons we need not go into any further…I, as the head of the original unicorn royal line, have decided to remove you from your unwarranted position as a princess of Equestria.”

“You can’t do that!” Rainbow shouted before she was yanked back down by Twilight. Probably because she looked about ready to rearrange Blueblood’s face into something resembling one of those artistic genres that crapped out stuff which didn’t look anything like it was supposed to.

After the pegasus stopped her struggles, Twilight stopped her magical glow and went to her usual thing: the lecture. “Rainbow! I’d like to turn this loudmouth into a newt myself for the way he’s talking to Princess Celestia,” she whispered fiercely. “But this is Canterlot! Let the Princess do her thing.”

As for the Princess herself…Tia stood there calmly while…well…let’s just say she didn’t Smell as calmly as she looked. “And you, nephew? What is your reasoning behind this farce?”

“This is not a farce!” Blueblood shouted back.

Luna rolled her eyes. “Yes it is. You cite a law without even bothering to take into account the fact that-”

Celestia clearing her throat, stopped Luna before she could finish. “And your reasoning boy?”

“Because you’re a pathetic excuse for a proper royal pony!” Blueblood shouted before he pointed his hoof at Celestia. “You invite commoners to events meant only for the greatest of ponies! You even put a crown on two of them! You let that-that animal stay at the castle and even prepared a room for it, and refused to have the mare responsible for turning me into one of them for a night placed in the dungeons where she belongs! Then you go and make her royalty too! You constantly give the riffraff things like tax breaks, and encourage ponies to help with foolish things, like making us pay for hospitals, orphanages, and guard stations in the deepest of gutters where no Canterlot pony would dare go for fear of their…stench lingering on our noble coats! Under your rule the…mud ponies and sky farmers have even started moving to Canterlot to do more than clean our sewers.”

Then, Blueblood passed for what I guess was some dramatic effect, and pointed his hoof over to Luna and Sunset. “And worst of all, you let that monster back into our midst!” he finally proclaimed. “She doesn’t belong in Canterlot! She doesn’t even belong in Equestria! And the fact that she’s here instead of rotting in a dark jail cell is proof that you should be stripped of your crown and cast out of our city!”

I think it was the comment about…well, both Luna and Sunset fit the bill of who he was describing, so…Celestia got hit with a double whammy there. But whoever the comment was meant for…it was definitely what set her off.

Before, I had thought I had seen Celestia angry. I had definitely Smelled the emotion coming from her plenty of times before. She had just as many emotions as anybody else, no matter where that person or pony lived.

But there was a big difference between feeling something, and letting it out.

The air around Celestia kind of got all wavy, the way that an intense heat source makes things seem. Which probably explained why it felt like someone had turned the room into a freaking sauna. And when she spoke…

“I…see,” Celestia said slowly while tiny flames that I could barely make out just sparked to life around her for a second before dying out. The goddess’s legs shook, and her folded wings twitched before she frowned at the unicorn. “And I suppose you waited until anypony who might knock you upside your head was in the Crystal Empire for Omnifarious’s coronation before you…dared…to do something like this?”

Blueblood stomped his hoof onto the padded seat of Celestia’s throne. “I have made my declaration, and all the important ponies of Canterlot, will agree with it!” Although just who he and Celestia considered important probably differed quite a bit.

Celestia just…stood there for a moment, taking in deep breaths through her nose and snorting out bits of flame. “I have ruled Equestria alone for a thousand years,” she said evenly. “I have given all of you everything you have, everything of myself, and time and time again have chosen to even give those I love in sacrifice to Equestria. To place those that I love in danger, for Equestria, and deny myself true pleasure because it might interfere with my duties to Equestria.

“And every generation, I find ponies like you crawling out of the lap of luxury to demand more of everypony but yourselves,” she went on. “And every generation, I find a few that are willing to see the proper path to do things, to understand that their titles exist to provide the ponies under them with opportunity, and a chance for prosperity, a better life. And then I find ponies who follow your path. Ones that will not work for a better tomorrow, but somehow believe the purpose of the ponies beneath them is to only elevate themselves higher.

“I tell myself that they’re not the norm, that ponies…even ponies like you can be shown the light. And every year, I find more and more ponies like you. Ponies I spend every waking moment of my life excusing and plotting for, so you don’t feel too hurt or insulted when things don’t go your way. Ponies I try to guide and nurture with wisdom, only to see my lessons cast aside.

“I neglect my sister after promising myself that I would always be there for her because of ponies like you,” Tia growled. “My daughter is unable to return to Canterlot out of fear of ponies like you mocking her! Our entire race is on the verge of a population upheaval thanks to the over-harvesting of alchemical reagents on the orders of ponies like you, who want to have as many stallions as possible so they can all fight it out for a bunch of meaningless words added to the back of their names!”

Celestia spread her wings that looked to be made more of fire than feathers and stomped into the carpet before smoke rose from her hooves. “I have even done something unforgivable to Luna because I…I was protecting ponies like you…from HER!” she shouted before going back down to a normal volume. “And this is what you and your friends do?!

“You take this chance I have offered, and waste it,” the goddess went on. “You take your responsibilities, and ignore them. And you take my faith in you...and destroy it.

“So…fine. You win,” she said through gritted teeth. “I will no longer push my loved ones aside, or let them suffer because of my inability to act against ponies like you. I will no longer shelter you from the consequences of your actions, or spend entire days cleaning up the messes those actions cause! I will no longer berate my own sister for the ideas on how to deal with ponies like you.”

And a second later, the flames died down, and Celestia let out a little laugh. It was...disturbing. Not creepy like her ice cold voice had been. It was just...wrong. Like it was happy and sad at the same time. “Although...I think I should take you for one small thing nephew. Without this, I wouldn’t have seen the perfect way to help Luna, to give me the opportunity to help my daughter, and finally give the ponies I love all the attention they deserve.”

Another laugh followed, and I gulped before Tia kept going. “And if you want me gone, there is no need for you to try and enact that useless law.”

The goddess reached up and took the crown from her head. She looked at it for a moment, and I saw it turn red-hot in her grip before she tossed it away as hard as she could. It made Blueblood shriek and jump for cover as it flew a foot over the head of where he had been to impact the wall like a blazing comet.

“BECAUSE I QUIT!”

Chapter 48: The Incredibly Equestrian Fallout of a Solar-Powered Pony Princess’s Resignation

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The entire room was silent after…well, considering her use of the Royal Canterlot Voice, I was pretty sure the whole castle heard Celestia’s declaration. And I was about as stunned at the whole thing as everyone else.

In front of us all, Celestia blazed with the same fiery aura that I had seen her us against Grogar to near-lethal effect. The last bit of shouting having lit her up.

I knew Celestia had been having problems with the whole princess thing. She came to me every night grumbling at something Lord This or Lady That did to piss her off. I did my best calm her down while listening to all her troubles and either put her mind on other things with movies and make out sessions, or helped her relax with some cuddling and relaxing massages. But it didn’t seem to be working all that well.

Hell, she even outright told me and the girls that she had grown to hate her job before we came home. But, I hadn’t really thought about it all that much. I mean...everyone gripes about their jobs, right? That’s why it’s called work. And even if there was the occasional jackass that she had to listen to, the amount of ponies Tia helped and her support from the rest of Equestria more than offset that.

Then there was the thing with Luna…and Sunset…and…me with the gender problem stuff…again. All of which apparently had been building up for the past few days into an eruption of both fiery magic and temper that had literally set the Solar Princess on fire.

And the spark that started that far still sat, or…cowered really, on his ill-gotten throne.

“You…what?” Twilight asked from behind Tia with a tilted head. Although I didn’t really pick up that bit of pony body language, I was pretty sure I had my own little look of WTF placed onto my pony face that mirrored Twilight’s confusion.

We three little ponies and one human winced when Tia turned around to glare at us with eyes that looked to be made from flame. “I said I quit,” the goddess replied in a voice so full of magic that it reverberated in my freaking horn. “I’m done. Finished! For one thousand years I have dealt with this kind of…foalishness from the nobility! And for a thousand years, I have ignored it, tolerated it, parlayed with it to maintain…harmony. To keep from causing too much of an upset in Equestria, to avoid hurting the very ponies that make me want to SCREAM! But despite everything I have sacrificed, suffered, and done for all of Equestria in this past thousand years, THIS is their response? Well, they want me gone, then so be it. I’ll leave them to Luna.”

With that, Celestia turned around and stomped towards the doors. Twilight immediately followed, carefully moving around the burning wake that she left. “Princess wait! Y-You can’t just-just quit!” the little alicorn said in a pleading voice while she chased after the goddess.

Celestia stopped and looked back to the smaller, non-combusting alicorn. “In the past year, I have once again hurt my sister in the worse way I ever could, pushed the problems involving the mare I have made my daughter onto another, and…ignored my own needs. All for the sake of Equestria. Of whom THEY are supposed to be the best of! And what do they do? They whine and complain as have generations before them. But never before have I had to suffer such insolence.

“So…I’m done,” she said before looking over to Luna. “Congratulations Sister, you are now the High Princess of Equestria. If you would accept some parting advice, do not be as gentle with these little ponies as I was. While some weeds in your garden can be put to good use, it isn’t worth the trouble the others give when they become too brazen.”

And with that, Celestia stormed out of the throne room while the rest of us watched.

From her place behind us all, Sunset looked back to the throne, and then the door, and then to us. “Um, I’m going to go try and talk to her,” she said before glancing over to Rainbow and me. “You two coming?”

“Uh…” Rainbow managed before she got back into the air with a few flaps of her wings. But even in her element, the hesitation didn’t vanish. “Should we? I mean, Twilight’s kind of got this, right?”

Sunset frowned back at the pegasus. “The last time Celestia got angry enough to make snap decisions, she kicked me out of the palace before assigning a pair of pegasi to do it, and I ended up on two legs for the next thirty moons,” she said with a bit of resignation. “And do you really think Twilight of all people is going to argue with Princess fucking Celestia for more than thirty seconds before caving in to anything my mom wants her to?”

I had to admit, Sunset had a point. If Tia really was telling everyone to take her job and shove it, then Twilight would be helping her pack by the time they got to Tia’s room. Despite Tia’s attempts to make Twilight argue with her whenever she had a bad idea, the little purple pony still had her lips firmly planted on Celestia’s ass.

After a few seconds of thoughtful frowning, Rainbow nodded. “Good point. Let’s go.”

I took a look at the trail of blackened hoof prints in Celestia’s wake. While I wasn’t really afraid of Celestia no matter how combustible she had gotten, her little stunt kind of made me want to stick around for a few more seconds. So I glanced over to Tia’s kid and our shared girlfriend, then to the biggest mare in the room before addressing my girls. “Uh, I’ll stay here with Princess Luna if you guys don’t mind. Plenty of ponies to talk to her already and…I kind of want to see what Lulu does to these idiots.”

Luna turned her head towards me with a raised eyebrow. “Lulu? Really?” she asked in an almost bored tone, even if she still Smelled pretty miffed. “You address your new High Princess in such a manner?”

“Y-You are not a princess anymore!”

Blueblood’s squeak of a demand made both me and Luna look back at the dickhead sitting on Tia’s throne with about an equal amount of anger between us. He flinched, and then held up the old document in his magic between him and the dark goddess as if it were a shield. “The Equestrian Accords-urk!”

Luna’s magic clamped down on the stallion’s muzzle, and then quickly lashed out to ensnare the rest of his friends before the Princess of the Night yanked Blueblood from where he was sitting and forced him to the ground in front of the goddess with a painful landing. “Now that I have removed your unworthy plot from my sister’s seat, let me explain something to you nephew,” the goddess began with gritted teeth.

“Back when Equestria was first founded, the unicorns were much as you are now. And with time, they actually got a bit worse. You see, once the three tribes were united, a unicorn would come along every now and then with a talent for growing things at an impossible rate, or managing the weather as well as any pegasus could. This of course caused several of them to get stupid, and think they didn’t need the other tribes. Over time this sentiment grew to corrupt the minds of the most powerful nobles below the crown itself, and eventually Princess Platinum was actually forced to add on an amendment to the Accords. This amendment would allow for the oldest pony of the royal family within the unicorn tribe to remove Celly and myself from power should it be decided we were unfit to rule. The two of us even agreed to it since no one pony should have unlimited power in a nation, no matter how benevolent a ruler she is. There needed to be a check in place if ever something happened to prove the two of us unfit to rule.

“And with that, the unicorn houses grumbling about their innate superiority finally shut up. After all it was a unicorn who had the real say about who ruled Equestria.” Then Luna’s smile turned to pure venom as she knelt down to look Blueblood eye to eye. “And then my little pony, a year later…once Celly and I had gone about destroying any sort of political, economic, and military power those unicorn houses had, my best friend Princess Platinum adopted us.”

I watched, colored impressed as Blueblood’s eyes widened. “Wrrmpth?”

Luna reached down with a shoed hoof to roughly pat the unicorn on the head while still wearing her dark smile. “Haven’t you ever wondered how in the hay you could possibly be related to either of us? You are certainly no alicorn after all. I would have thought it obvious even to the most peanut-brained fool that we do not share a blood kinship.

“As for your stupid little law that you thought would allow you to kick Celly and myself out of Canterlot,” she continued as her grin slowly dissolved. “It applies to her, not you! Celestia is the oldest member of the unicorn royal line by decree of our adopted mother! And that makes what you, your friends, and what I’m betting is a few members of the royal guard like the one who opened the door for us have done a rather serious offense. So…”

Luna’s horn flared even brighter, and I averted my eyes a second before the telltale sound of teleportation was followed by hooves on marble. As the light vanished half a dozen bat ponies, or ‘lunar pegasi’ as I had found Luna preferred to call them, had been magically summoned to the throne room. “My loyal guardsponies, take these infidels and my erroneous nephew to the palace dungeons! I will deal with him in an official manner after I have shared some thoughts with my sister.”

Me and Luna found a small mob of ponies outside Tia’s royal apartments. Not the torch and pitchfork kind of mob, this one was way too well dressed to even know what a real farming implement looked like. What stood outside Celestia’s rooms was a bunch of gussied up ponies next to several more wearing a mix of white and gold uniforms that marked them as palace servants.

As to why they were there. It was probably because of the golden half-dome that surrounded Tia’s door, preventing access.

And they weren’t rabble-rousing like a normal mob either…

“Okay, fine your stuff is packed. Now would you please tell me what the hay this is all about?”

…not with Twilight going on as she was.

“M-Mom, if this is because of me-”

“Of course it’s because of you!” Celestia shouted from behind the shield. I noticed that her voice had lost the twang of power that cam with her fiery rage mode, and internally sighed. “And you, and you!”

Which was followed by a rather tense silence that was only broken by Luna’s loud sigh. “Stand back everypony,” the princess commanded. As the crowd parted, she trotted up to the door, and touched her horn to the glowing barrier.

As far as defenses went, the one Celestia threw up didn’t look all that strong. But, I doubted anyone aside from Luna would have even thought to try braking through one of the Solar Princess’s barriers. When Luna did her thing, the magical wall had all the resistance of a soap bubble.

“And her! And him!” the white alicorn went on as soon as we entered, pointing a hoof at each of us. As per my theory, Celestia had stopped with the spontaneous combustion, and was looking like her usual sexy self. Angry, but still sexy.

Then there was the state of her quarters. I saw a large crate big enough to fit a pair of ponies in. The small tingle in my horn told me it was magical in nature, but not which spell was cast on it. Although, the nearly empty bookshelves, missing coffee table, and various other little knickknacks that I had seen in Tia’s apartment were a big enough clue to tell me what was going on.

Celestia was actually getting ready to leave Canterlot.

I took in a deep breath and sighed while Luna restored the barrier behind us. Unlike her sister’s version, the one she threw up wasn’t transparent, nor did it allow sound through. The area outside the door simply ended in a wall of dark blue. “Sister, what are you doing?”

I got a whiff of annoyance from Celestia. “I would have thought that was made clear. I’m abdicating the throne and leaving Canterlot.” She looked over to the purple alicorn. “Twilight, I’ll be staying at my old castle for the foreseeable future with the three of you,” she said before tapping a hoof to her lips. “You’ll probably need to get a bigger bed.”

“Uh Tia…maybe it would be a good idea to calm down and think this through,” I spoke up while feeling more than a bit of nervousness. I seen and Smelled that Celestia had calmed down quite a bit, but she also seemed ready to flare back up at a moment’s notice as well. “Don’t wanna make any rash decisions here, right?”

The look Celestia shot me with would have probably killed me if she still be in super sayian form. “Just because I am making a decision quickly does not mean it isn’t the right one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sunset mumbled.

For the briefest instant I saw Celestia tense as the result of her last big rash decision asked her a question. But, it didn’t seem to slow her down for long. If anything, her Scent became even more…indignant than it had been before Sunset asked the question. “How much time have we spent together since you returned to Equestria?”

Sunset pulled her head back as the angry princess spun to face her. Then she looked down to her hands and counted with the help of those helpful human phalanges. “Um…well…there were those two nights in Canterlot, and that time in the Crystal Empire before the uh…coronation, when I…got hurt.”

The reason for Sunset’s hesitation with that last one became obvious when I saw Celestia’s anger slip into emotional pain for a brief instant. Then, she just used it as more rage fuel.

“Weeks since your return, and I barely make a few hours in a day for you outside of a hospital visit!” Celestia exclaimed, back to her angry tone. “When you were a filly, I made sure to spend time with you. To have lunch with you, to take you to the Canterlot Fair, or the rodeo, or whatever the buck else I could find in town that I knew you would enjoy. But as you grew older, I stopped! I just…picked my duties to Equestria over you. Time and time again I went to a meeting rather than take you to a circus, or dealt with an annoying noble instead of doing what I should have been doing, loving you!”

As Celestia’s verbal assault on Sunset abated, the human held up her hands in a stopping gesture. “Oh come on, that’s not the way things were at all! You made plenty of time for me. It was my fault I turned into a brat, not yours.”

Celestia didn’t seem all that convinced. “And will you excuse my actions of the past few weeks too?” she said. “I am the most powerful and experienced enchanter in Equestria! Twilight sends me a friendship report with some worries about Rainbow’s ability to keep a pet turtle, and I spend half a day enchanting a child’s toy with enough magic to keep it flying for the next eighty years!

“But what do I do with the key to turning you back into a unicorn? Of putting you back the way you’re supposed to be? I bucking pass it off to another because I have…royal duties to attend to.”

After Tia spit out the two words like a curse, Sunset backed away.

Then, Luna stepped up to her older sister. “Sister-”

“And don’t you start on me about how I should remain here Luna!” Celestia said with a frown before the other goddess could even begin. “You were right in the Crystal Empire. You have run Equestria before all on your own, even if it was just in my name. The fact that I gave the responsibility to Twilight when I needed to deal with a friendship problem makes me ashamed to call myself your sister.” She took in a deep breath, and let out a sigh before continuing on in a gentler tone. “I love you Luna. More importantly, I trust you. I know you will…clean up the mess I have made of things when it comes to the nobility.”

Luna stood silent at Tia’s words for a few seconds, and then… “Yes well…as gladdened as I am at your faith in me Celly, just hoofing over everything like this…”

When Luna didn’t continue, that actually managed to make Celestia pause for a moment. “Luna, you mean you don’t think you can-”

“Whoa Sister!” Luna said as she raised her hoof to stop Celestia before she could really start. “I did not say I could not carry the burden of the crown. I just…think that we could provide a more stable transition than you simply storming out. I could use some preparation time, a bit of insight into the minds of the court…some bucking advice on how not to impale half these idiots for the sake of the heavens!”

Celestia’s face slowly became filled with doubt for a moment before she forced it away with a shake of her head. “If you need advice, I would be glad to give all the years of my expertise with the current generation Luna,” she assured the smaller alicorn. “But…no, I can’t do this anymore when Sunset needs me. Even after we restore her, I’ll still have to help her on the path to ascension. There’s no bucking way I’m going to neglect her again because of some stupid Princess duties Luna.”

I didn’t know whether to be disappointed on how she was choosing a single pony over a country, or impressed Celestia was finally going with those she really cared about rather than the faceless masses. It was the old quality VS quantity argument. Sure, one life weighed against many might not have seemed like much, but the quality of that life was a definite, while the nameless masses were an unknown. And considering one of those masses was Blueblood…

One of Luna’s eyebrows raised, and she shook her head. “Celly, please. Don’t try and hide your own anger at the situation with your altruism. We all know you are a wonderful pony, but we all have our limits. I do not blame you for…exploding as you did. I’ve seen your dreams and knew this was coming for some time. If you need a rest, then by all means take one.

“It’s just…this is all rather sudden,” she went on. “I love the weekly swarays that Ms Pie throws us. They are a wonderful distraction. But then you let your fancy for the changeling slip out before introducing a completely new type of marriage. And now you want to run off with these ponies to…stable with them? Celly, are you running away from your guilt? Or are you also trying to find something that has been denied you for so long like when you ran through that mirror for your long lost love not too long ago?”

After the two alicorns locked gazes, with Luna’s loving concern meeting Tia’s indignation, Celestia looked away after a moment. “Fine! Sunset, you, and my beloved ones aren’t the only reason I’m doing this. But between searching for a cure to Sunset’s condition as well as comforting Omnifarious with his latest gender crisis or dealing with ponies like Blueblood, I’m picking my family! My real family!” she admitted before she glanced over to Twilight for a moment. “And after your showing as a princess a few weeks ago Twilight, I can see that I haven’t covered nearly enough about government during your education. We can take some time to rectify that as well.”

The little alicorn actually frowned just a bit at that semi-insult to her education. “Well pardon me Prin-Celestia, but I thought I would be your next Master of Magic like Starswirl was! Lessons on how to run the country seemed pretty redundant when you had an extra alicorn like Cadence around, and then there was how Luna came back.”

Celestia seemed to completely ignore the rebuttal, and looked over to me. “And you could use some training as well, Princess Omnifarious.”

The mental images that came to mind at that… I didn’t know what was worse, the ideas I got that involved dresses…or riding crops and halters. The later of which only came to mind thanks to an encounter I had with Rarity’s storage room for her more…risqué clientele.

Princess Luna looked over to the pegasus hovering in one of the room’s top corners with a frown. “And you Dame Dash? Any thoughts on the matter?”

Put on the spot, Rainbow looked more like a deer caught in the headlights than a pony. She took a moment to move her eyes across everyone else in the room, and reached up to scratch the back of her head. “Uh…yeah, I’m not really a princess, or a future candidate for one so…really don’t think I should be weighing in on this one.”

“Rainbow,” Celestia spoke up as she looked up to the pegasus with a hurt expression. “I don’t care if you’re a princess or not. Your opinion matters nonetheless. Speak your mind.”

With her avenue of escape cut off, Rainbow gulped and slowly started lowering herself to the ground. “Uh yeah well…I say…buck’em.”

Luna frowned. “Pardon?”

A nervous laugh escaped from Rainbow’s mouth. “Well, it’s one thing to be something for Equestria that you like, but…if it’s something you hate then…I say buck it. Luna can finally be big princess in the kingdom, and you can…get some rest,” she said after a few pauses that, knowing Rainbow, were needed to make sure her brain was moving at the same speed of her mouth to avoid saying something stupid. “You’ve helped Equestria for so long, got us through so many tough times...maybe it’s time somepony helped you Princess.

“So if you want to come crash at our place to get away from the plotholes? I say go for it.”

With one of us actually agreeing with Celestia’s decision to turn tail and run from her responsibilities, the goddess visibly relaxed. “Thank you for your honesty Rainbow Dash,” she said before looking over to Luna. “And perhaps you are right sister. Maybe I am rushing to these mares and our stallion to compensate for what has become an unbearable labor, but…that does not make me any less sure of my decision, or its correctness.

“But… we do need to prepare for a more stable transition than me simply walking out,” Celestia admitted as she hung her head. “So, let’s converse on what we need to tell our little ponies as to make this transition go as smoothly as possible.”

The first thing Luna and Tia did was call in a pair of the gathered ponies to get the whole story about what had happened in their absence. Celestia’s scheduling aide, Kibitz, and one of her many secretaries, Raven, informed us that Blueblood had shown up with this entourage and several royal guards this morning. Then he made some big announcement that he had decided that the sisters were no longer allowed to rule Canterlot, and all the ponies needed to swear fealty to him. After all the laughter and indignation on the parts of the palace staff subsided, Blueblood started demanding arrests at the hands of his royal guards.

Of course since the vast majority of the palace guard were still loyal to Celestia, violence nearly erupted. That is until Kibitz had all the ponies that were going to toss Blueblood into the dungeon bow out for the day and go to their homes, palace apartments, or wherever they lived rather than make things descend into violence.

Celestia verbally patted the old pony on the head while Luna grumbled about him being too soft, and said that Blueblood and his conspirators should have been put in stocks to greet them at the gate. But the disagreement on what to do what short-lived, and then we all got down to the important stuff.

By the time Luna and Celestia had worked out how they were going to pull everything off behind our protective shield with some input from the rest of us, I was pretty certain that the press conference Luna had called for wasn’t all that necessary. Being Rarity’s best friend, I knew that gossip traveled faster than Rainbow Dash when it came to ponies of the upper class.

After some talk, Rainbow agreed to stay in Celestia’s quarters and pack the few things that were left with help from Sunset. I didn’t blame the human for not wanting to go outside with what was waiting for her. Walking around Ponyville was one thing, Canterlot was another.

As for what had Sunset wanting to become a temporary shut-in, the crowd outside the room we had been hiding in tripled in just the time it took the sisters to work out what they were going to do and order their servants to make the preparations. Judging by all the palace staff that we passed in the hallway, plus all the ponies that were poking their heads out around corners as we passed, it was a pretty good bet word of Celestia’s blowup had made it outside the palace walls, and probably halfway to Ponyville.

And of course, there were all the mutterings that came with our passing. Most of it was just the ponies asking about what was happening, but several had some…theories. A few of which had me looking around for a tin-foil hat cutie mark.

“What’s going on?”

“Did Princess Celestia really banish Prince Blueblood to Tartarus?”

“We’re dooooooomed!”

“I heard she’s abdicating the throne to him!”

“The royal guard revolted!”

“It turned out that the Princess Celestia that’s been ruling Canterlot for the past two weeks was really an alien, and Prince Blueblood managed to expose her!”

“Princess Celestia put Blueblood in the dungeon for sitting in her chair!”

“Princess Celestia got pregnant with Prince Blueblood’s love-child!”

By the time we actually got to the assembly, I was wondering how the hell ponies managed to get through the various monster problems Equestria faced from time to time without becoming a mass of panic…stricken… Oh right, they don’t, I realized.

At least not on average. Some of them did join the EUP. Sure, they got their butts kicked more often than not, but…they at least ran towards the danger rather than away from it in every direction.

Lacking television, I had also spent most of my time going through the halls of the palace kind of wondered just that the hell a press conference would have involved. When I saw the dozens of ponies wearing something that the cliché reporter would with a classic fedora and another group with their cameras hanging around their necks, I felt like facehoofing.

Newspapers…right, I thought to myself while kicking myself for my monetary lack of common sense.

Not that I ever bothered reading the stupid things myself. The Equestrian distribution of information was about equal of that of…well, there really wasn’t an Earth historical equivalent to that of how information got from place to place in Equestria. While pegasi were an option for mostly-speedy deliveries, they didn’t have any instant communication ability outside that of the…changelings… Note to self, create nationwide newspaper for important national events.

Each little town had their own little rag like the Ponyville Gazette, while bigger cities had more choices, everything was still pretty local. For the important stuff like my unintentional invention of herding, Tia sent out announcements by wing and train. However, each of the big city newspapers had a reporter or two in Canterlot in case Celestia just wasn’t feeling up to making a grand change to the social order, but still needed to get the word out about something important.

Not that what she was about to announce wasn’t going to shake Equestria to its core…

All four of…us…princesses (Oh God, I was really going to have to start thinking of myself like that, wasn’t I?) walked up onto an impromptu stage while all of Equestria’s regurgitating reporters, the guys that just got handed news stories to repeat rather than actually hunt for them, waited for us. With me and Twilight just being eye candy, we flanked the two big princesses that would be handling everything and took a moment to smile and wave.

“My little ponies,” Celestia announced in an amplified voice that wasn’t quite as eardrum rupturing as the RCV, but still pretty loud. “I am sure that word has reached several of you by now that I have made a rather loud announcement while inside the throne room.”

As she paused for a little breath, ponies actually started talking.

“You mean it’s true?”

“But who will raise the sun?”

“YOU REALLY ARE PREGNANT WITH BLUBLOOD’S BABY?”

The last one actually made Celestia lose her composure, and give the mare who shouted the question an angry glare. “Oh for crying out loud,” she mumbled before glancing back at Twilight as if to say ‘do you see that I have to fucking deal with?’ and scowling at the reporter. “Even if I HAD laid with that stallion, a unicorn making a foal with me is impossible!”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t these idiots know alicorns can’t get pregnant?”

“Hm?” Luna spoke up before looking back to me. “Who told you that?”

I looked over to Luna, kind of thrown off a bit by the question. “Uh…Cadence. When I was with her in the Crystal Empire.”

After another second of watching her scowl in confusion, Luna nodded in understanding. “Ah yes, I would suppose that is true from an ascended alicorn’s point of view. She is right, in a way. The magical change to a mare’s body from their previous type of pony to that of an alicorn removes their ability to enter heat. It’s an unfortunate side effect that neither Celly or myself, not to mention a few of our students were ever able to correct.”

“Are you two quite finished?”

The irate words from my solar-powered pony princess made me flinch and Luna look back to her sister with a nervous blush. “Apologies.”

Celestia cleared her throat, and went back to addressing the crowd. “Please hold all questions until I have finished my announcement my little ponies,” the princess told them with more of that irritation Scent on her. “Obviously there have been many rumors about what transpired and a few as to the cause of it what happened, so I will start at the beginning.

“Several days ago, Prince Blueblood came into court and demanded several actions be taken on his behalf because of a wounded pride,” Celestia told everyone while I caught a whiff of anger coming from her. Most likely from her reliving the incident in her mind. “In doing so, he not only insulted two creatures that are very dear to me, but demanded I take reprehensible actions against them.

“I will not throw insults, but many of you who have reported or even interviewed Prince Blood know what kind of a pony he can be. Being born in the lap of luxury and developing such a sense of entitlement as he had was becoming more and more of a burden to Equestria. The only reason that I had not taken action to try and sort him out sooner was out of a…misplaced debt to his progenitor. So, I decided to take action to curb his nature and assigned him a task with an ultimatum. Either he would learn to help Equestria, or be removed from his position of authority.

“Instead of doing as instructed Blueblood dug up an archaic law made near Equestria’s founding that was meant to be a check against my sister and I, should we prove incapable of leading the young nation. After proving that we were, steps were taken to render this law unusable. However, Blueblood failed to realize this, and attempted a coup de at to try and take control of Canterlot for himself. The fact that he took these actions and threatened violence to anypony who did not follow his commands left my sister no choice but to have our nephew and his conspirators confined to the palace dungeons.

“It was also during this time that I made a…personal revelation,” Celestia went on, much more hesitantly than before. “When my sister was brought back to me, I told her that we were meant to rule together. The need for this has never been made more clear to me than today. A single ruler, no matter how old or wise, has faults. And after a thousand years, my faults have taken their toll on Equestria. As such, I am…”

Celestia stopped for a moment and looked at the three of us with an annoyed glare. “…taking some time to attend to matters that require my personal attention,” she said, avoiding the Q-word like it was dirty.

After an hour of talking to the goddess and helping her shove one thousand of years of knickknacks into a box that apparently had no bottom, we had managed to talk Tia into phrasing the announcement of her resignation very carefully. This was mostly thanks to Sunset, who had spent a good time in high school learning just what to say to manipulate people.

When Celestia turned back to face her ponies, I saw her mask go back on a second before she met their faces. “As such, Princess Luna will have full control of Equestria during my absence. And through her leadership, Equestria will correct the mistakes of the past, and be led into a brighter future for all our little ponies!”

A few seconds passed, and as the ponies gathered around the platform finally realized that Tia was done speaking, they began to look at each other nervously. However, one unicorn managed to find enough courage to raise his hoof. “Uh, Princess Celestia…can we ask questions now?”

The goddess cleared her throat. “During this time, I have officially put aside my title as a princess. So it is simply Celestia,” she corrected the pony. “And yes, you may ask questions.”

Upon hearing Tia had abandoned her duties, even without saying the A-word, the crowd of ponies broke out into worried muttering. Scents of fear reached my psychic nostrils, and I glanced over to Twilight with my own worried expression.

We had guessed that Tia announcing what was pretty much going to be her retirement would cause a panic. But talking about it and actually seeing the beginnings of it were another. My sensibilities hated causing any sort of discomfort among the non-dick ponies, and I knew I was going to need a major dose of Tia’s love to help me deal with my conscience afterwards. The kind of dose to knock me on my ass.

“What about the sun? Who will raise the sun?” a female unicorn with a brown coat asked.

I could Smell Tia’s annoyance build, even as she kept her face calm. “When Luna and I were given stewardship of Equestria by Starswirl and the first generation of leaders, we did not give rise to the sun and moon, but only acted as guardians of all the ponies and a symbol of unity. Raising the sun was never part of my duties as a princess, and I will continue to do so even without a crown upon my head.”

Some of the ponies calmed down at hearing Celestia’s words. And the numbers increased as she continued speaking. “Nor is a crown required for me to rush to Equestria’s defense should the need arise,” she told them with a voice that became more and more gentle the longer she talked. “So I will protect you. I will light the sky for you. But I will no longer rule over you. It is time that duty be passed to another.”

“B-But where will you be Princess?”

Tia’s wings twitched. However, no signs of her irritation showed on her face. Whether the annoyance was from the use of her title, or the obvious imaging of hundreds of ponies camped out on her front lawn to annoy the hell out of her, I wasn’t sure. “I shall be residing within Everfree Castle along with Princess Twilight Sparkle and Princess Omnifarious,” she announced. “Part of what I hope to accomplish during my absence from Canterlot is to prepare them to rule a larger portion of Equestria than they currently control. Princess Cadence went through a similar education as the one I am planning for them, however she was able to balance it with a regular one since she became an alicorn before adulthood.”

There were more mutterings of questions from the crowd, but Tia raised a hoof. “Unfortunately my little ponies, there is still much to do before my departure. So I leave you all in my sister’s capable hooves,” Celestia told the reporters before she motioned for the three of us to beat a hasty, yet dignified, retreat.

I hate to admit it, but…teleporting under Tia’s power always had me a bit jealous. My middle finger to the space-time continuum usually left my passengers wanting to puke. But when I was swept up in Celestia’s warm and gentle magic, I might as well have been flying first class for all the comfort it afforded the three of us.

We popped back into the main room of Celestia’s apartment to find Rainbow and Sunset having a conversation. Dash was in the air looking at her wings, and Sunset was scribbling something down in her little science journal.

“-dunno how to describe it really,” Rainbow said. “I mean, it’s just flying. I never really thought about it except when it comes to doing tricks.”

Sunset let out a groan and shut her book before sticking the pencil she was using into the spine. “Thank you ever so much for your expert breakdown of pegasus magic,” she monotoned before looking over to us. “Hey Pri-er, Mom. Um…there’s a lot of ponies waiting for you outside.”

“Thank you Sunset,” the goddess said with a nod. When the girl got up to move for Tia’s bedroom, Celestia took a step after her. “Oh you don’t have to go. What I have to tell my aides will hardly be a state secret. Not that I would keep anything like that from you. Once we fix this human condition of yours, it will only be a matter of time before you’ll be needing to attend princess summits.” The hardness of Celestia’s voice made me wonder if she really believed that, or was just trying to convince herself.

Whatever her thoughts on the matter, Sunset wasn’t too agreeable with the idea of her sticking around. “No I’m good. I need to make sure we packed everything anyway.”

Celestia’s face fell at the rejection, and she lowered her head as Sunset made her way out. “Rainbow my dear, would you open the door and show my assistants in?”

“Uh…sure,” she said before doing just that as a dozen unicorns with coats of various colors dressed up in finery made their way into the room. Of course one of them was giving off a smell that just screamed ‘NOT REALLY A PONY’ and I had to force myself not to stare at the black unicorn that didn’t have a cutie mark.

I recognized a few of the ponies, including the two from earlier that Celestia had used to get a feel for the atmosphere around the palace. The fact they were all unicorns was something I found a little disturbing. But as I was pretty sure Celestia wasn’t a racist bitch, I just chalked it up to the law of averages of how many unicorns lived in Canterlot, or maybe she had some soft of internship program going on with her unicorns-only school.

A school that was unicorns only because it was a magic academy mind you, not because of some unicorn master race thing going on.

…Even if they did kind of run the country…

“Greetings everypony, by now I take it that you have received word that I will be taking a leave of absence for the foreseeable future,” Celestia began, much the same way she had started her speech.

She even paused to wait for the first wave of panic to get over with.

“Oh no!” Celestia’s aide involving foreign matters said as she put her hooves to her cheeks.

“Oh no!” the goddess’s financial aide shouted while he backed away.

“Oh no!” Tia’s aide that changeling intelligence said dealt with the school system cried.

My obligatory eye roll was cut off when the wall suddenly exploded to admit a large red pony I actually mistook to be Big Macintosh for a moment before he stood up on his hind legs to shout, “OH YEAH!”

I…untensed from what had become my pony combat stance and folded my wings back down to…blink at the sight. Then I looked up to Celestia and pointed towards the newcomer. “What the hay is that?”

The goddess returned my look of confusion with a giggle. “Oh, that’s my cool aide,” she explained before I groaned and raised a hoof to cover my face. “I’ve tasked him with defusing tense situations during any of these meetings.” A second later, Tia looked over to the wall and lit up her horn. “Now, give me a moment while I fix this.”

While the fucking goddess of the sun went to do the work of a simple house repair pony, I just looked up at whatever invisible force caused Equestria to keep shitting out these things. I mean sure, living in a magical land of ponies that could break out into song on command and pretty much ran on references had helped me save the Crystal Empire when I figured out how to use it for my advantage but…there were just some days that I just wanted to find Fausticorn and knock her upside the head.

On the other hand…the sudden appearance of the big red pony did shock the others out of their little panic attack so… No, I wasn’t going to admit that he had an actual purpose in life. Not. At. All.

Once Celestia was finished, she turned back to her aides. “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way. I want to inform the lot of you about my plans,” Tia said before her expression turned deadly serious. “What I am about to say will not leave this room under any circumstances unless Luna commands you otherwise, understood?”

Some of the ponies in the room got a little nervous again and showed it with a bit of brow sweat and gulps, but none of the argued with their goddess before Celestia started speaking again. “While I have informed the press that I am leaving the duties of High Princess to my sister for awhile, what I avoided mentioning was that I doubt that I will retake the throne of Equestria within your lifetimes.”

A deep silence settled over the room at Celestia’s words, and all the ponies looked like they were about to go into a state of shock. “As such, you will treat my sister with the respect and level of devotion you have shown to me. If there is some kind of problem, and if, only if Luna is unable to handle it, will you contact me through Number Four’s telepathic link to Princess Omnifarious. There will be no letters, mystical sending, or any kind of communication between us that leaves a trace. Is that clear?”

When the ponies finally managed a reply in the affirmative, Tia looked over to the aide that wasn’t like the others. “And my little changeling, I want daily reports of my sister’s activities delivered to Omnifarious. You are to become her main advisor, and not to leave her side for more than the few seconds it takes to send the information into your mental network.”

#4 looked over to me, and I just shot him a glare. “Don’t ask me for confirmation. I told you when Celestia decided to keep you around that as far as you were concerned, her orders were my orders. And now that goes for Luna too.”

Celestia looked over her minions for another second, and then turned her head back to the non-peons in the room. “So Twilight, shall we finish getting ready to go back to Ponyville? We still need to visit my storage to get the rest of my things that I want to set up in the old castle and…well, I don’t suppose it will take too much trouble to craft a cloud bed for my first few nights before we can make something a bit more stable. Spike is probably hoping you’ll hurry back to Ponyville too.”

A tiny jolt seemed to run through Twilight’s body at the announcement. She hit the ground with her ass, and reached up to scratch the back of her head. “Um, about that…Celestia,” the little goddess said, the pause she needed to leave out her idol’s title obvious. “I was planning to have dinner with my parents as soon as they got back. I told them in the Crystal Empire I would give them some time to get to know my…uh…Rainbow.”

Twilight glanced over to Celestia’s servants.

Tia did the same, and then looked back to her purple girlfriend a moment before addressing her aides. “We are done here. From this moment on, Luna’s orders are what will concern you all. Go now, and serve her as faithfully as you have me.”

Kibitz, the old unicorn with a rather large gray mustache and fancy coat that did nothing to hide his pocket watch cutie mark stepped forward. “As you command milady,” he said before sweeping into a bow. “It was the greatest honor of my life to be allowed to assist you, Princess Celestia.”

We waited for everyone to give their princess one last bow and call her the P-word, which she didn’t correct them on before nodding her head to send the ponies on their way. Then, when the regal scene was finished and Tia closed the door with her magic, she spun around with a grin that gave me shivers. “So Twilight, we’re going to meet your parents?”

The question actually looked like it forced Twilight to recline even further on her butt. “Um…my…parents?”

Tia shrugged. “Well, with you taking Rainbow to meet them, and Omnifarious as well?” she asked before glancing over to me. When I just moved my head in the affirmative, Tia went back to steamrolling her way into our date. “I just assumed you didn’t want to mention our relationship in front of the servants and were going to include me in tonight’s introduction to your family.”

“I-Introduce…you?” the pretty purple pony princess squaked.

To which Tia gasped in what was obviously an overly-dramatic manner to anyone with two braincells to rub together. “Oh, I see,” she said before looking away from Twilight. “The only alicorn who is not a princess. To be associated with me must be the height of embarrassment for you now.”

Tia’s half-assed acting actually shook Twilight out of her shock. “What? NO!” the little alicorn shouted before she rushed over to Celestia and got on her back legs to put her front ones halfway around the bigger goddess and look at her eye. “I would never be embarrassed by you! You’re the most amazing pony ever! I love you!”

Even Celestia was a little taken back by the fierce declaration, and that left her open for Twilight’s attack, Purple lips met white, and the smaller goddess let out a moan as I saw the slight motion of Celestia’s lips that allowed Twilight’s tongue inside her mouth.

As the two had their lovers wrestling match, Celestia glanced over to me.

I glared back at her to sent a non-verbal message through the air. ‘See what you did? Now she’s worried! Don’t make my perfectly pretty purple pony princess all panicky’. Honesty! Tia just took things way too far sometimes.

Celestia grabbed Twilight in her big pony-arms, and I decided to find something else to do before Tia’s sitting room became the scene from a pony porn video. I mean sure, with it being Twilight and Celestia, I knew I was more than welcome to join in, but…the three of us doing it without Rainbow Dash around kind of felt like cheating.

Two of four ponies doing the private mambo? That was just some personal us time a relationship like ours was probably going to have from time to time. But three out of four ponies banging each other? That was just leaving the fourth member of our little herd high and dry. No way in hell I was going to do that to Dash, or Tia, or Twilight when the option presented itself.

And…we probably needed to make that a rule to make sure no one’s feeling were hurt in the future. Foursome’s were fine and twosomes were good for some super intimacy, but the number three was forbidden in a four pony relationship.

So, not wanting to get involved in the coming clop, I headed to the one place I knew the two randy alicorns weren’t about to get down and dirty at: Celestia’s bedroom.

The four of us quadrupeds and the biped spent the day in Canterlot doing various things together. Needing to get a better explanation of the whole flight thing worked beyond Rainbow’s explanation of ‘I dunno, I just flap my wings’ Sunset spent most of the day talking science with Twilight and doodling in her little book while Rainbow gave her the expertise of a real flyer on how she dealt with various aerial conditions; which were apparently a big problem so near the Everfree.

Honestly, I think Sunset was jumping the gun with all the alicorn-flight preparation stuff, but…I sure as hell wasn’t going to try and kill her buzz.

Tia and me ended up going to her storage closet for the rest of her stuff and… Well, Celestia was using a 6x8ft crate that she had magicked to fit every book, dress, knickknack and piece of furniture that would go through the opening inside the damn thing. Her entire room, shoved into a medium wooden box. So, you can imagine what a creature that was thousands of years old could do using the same spell on a walk-in closet.

And...Look, I wouldn’t really call her a hoarder since…you know, the amount of junk healthy people collect is relative to the amount of memories they’ve collected over their lives. Considering Celestia was…too old for me to ask her age thanks to basic sensibilities, I had to consider her infinite hallway of pictures, statues, what looked like homemade gifts, and jewelry healthy.

…At least I hoped it was healthy.

I mean, people would have a personal treasure trove of useless junk that made the little mermaid’s underwater vault of crap look like a little display cabinet in sheer volume if they had been around for over 1,000 years too, right?

On the upside, I did get a little look into Celestia’s pony past. As I looked around for some old painting she told me about that featured her and Luna when they were happy, I did see a few things that were worth noticing. Like a painting of a slender pony with a bright red coat, a horn, and some wings. You know, an alicorn.

An alicorn that I hadn’t seen before.

As in not Luna, Tia, Twilight, or Cadence.

She looked…kind of familiar, but I knew for damn sure I had never actually met the mare. “Uh Tia…who’s that?” I asked while pointing a hoof at the picture when the goddess walked by after returning to her closet from a dropoff.

“Oh, one of my former students,” she said before letting out a sigh. “Poor Loving Heart. A stallion named Iron Hoof snuck a love potion into her tea one day and…well…let’s just say it didn’t end well for them.”

I took a few more seconds to look at the picture with Tia behind me. Of course, the mention of mind-altering drugs served as a reminder of some of my own darker fantasies involving my friends, some slave collars, and a whole lot of green eyes. After living with them for so long I didn’t really dread being tempted into making the whole lot of them a bunch of green-eyed sex slaves. Considering that I had avoided mind-raping Twilight when I was terrified of her running off with Tia, I felt pretty sure of my self-control.

But…it’s not like the memories of those thoughts had disappeared either.

Although I was starting to feel a little shame for even considering the possibility of that choice path’s existence in the first place.

To try and take my mind off the whole thing, I looked to a new picture…that had another female alicorn in it. This one had a light blue coloring to her coat with a blonde mane and a cutie mark of a…burning rainbow?

“Ah yes, Star Butterfly…I’d rather not talk about her,” Celestia told me in a tone that screamed ‘NOT ONE WORD’ to me.

It took me a good five minutes of following Tia around and helping her collect her junk before I could get another word out. Of course, my mind was still on the thing that every brony would have been thinking about by that point. “So uh…Twilight and Cadence…they aren’t the only ponies you’ve turned into alicorns over the years?”

Celestia shook her head. “Not by a long shot. Luna and I created the spell several millennia go,” she replied before becoming a little confused. “I had thought that would have been obvious to you by now. I hid the fact it was possible for me to ascend ponies if they have the potential but…all the evidence there for anypony who looks hard enough. Twilight told me you had an interest in history and you never asked me about it, so I had thought it was a discovery you had already made.”

I winced as the obvious follow-up question to the existence of several alicorns entered my mind. That question being: Just where the fuck was this army of princesses now?

Which of course was instantly answered by my own brilliant intellect. Considering Luna had a hand in making some of them into princesses, some of the alicorns depicted in Celestia’s closet had to have become princesses one thousand years ago. And with them not being around anymore…they were obviously dead.

While I could buy a few alicorns falling prey to the forces of evil…all of them getting bumped off by the bad guys except for Tia and Lulu just…didn’t add up. Sure, the sisters were more powerful than the average alicorn, but not so much that they were invincible.

Which meant…all those mortal mares that had gotten a horn, wings and stamina were just that: Mortal. Even if a pony went through alicornication, old age would eventually catch up to them, and lay them low. One day, Twilight was going to die. Dash was too, even if I did manage to talk Tia into sticking a horn on her head. Not to mention the rest of the girls.

And being from a genetically engineered race that cheated the laws of science with magic, I would linger for as long as there was food for me to eat.

GAH! Stupid brain, why the fuck do you have to bring that up again? I demanded of my forward-thinking mind. Sure it was nice for planning, but when I saw a catastrophe on the horizon, it was all I could think about. No matter how ridiculous it was. Like how I thought Tia was just going to snatch Twilight up and run off with her.

But my newest fear wasn’t some impossibly ridiculous thing that had no chance of happening whatsoever! My friends were mortal. They. Were. Going. To. Die!

And I would be there to watch.

Sure, it was many, many years down the road…unless a monster ended up getting lucky or something, but it was still going to happen! And if Tia’s attitude towards Scootaloo was any indication, there wasn’t a single fucking thing she could do about it.

…

Or was there?

“So um, Celestia?” I began rather pathetically. “Um, I’m looking at all these princesses, and I can’t help but wonder…is Twilight going to be around as long as you…and me?”

The alicorn didn’t blink at the question, or the reminder of my little problem. After Celestia had ended up in my head and got the changelings on the side of Equestria, a lot of hours during our earlier days were spent with me explaining things to her after the movie was over. When she got tired of talking about human stuff, and I got as much Equestrian info as she would give me for the night, Celestia picked my brain about changelings.

It only took a handful of nights to go through all the information I had on them. The stuff she was interested in anyway.

“What brought this on?” she asked me gently. There was no question in my mind that the goddess was really asking.

I hung my head and sighed. “I’d thought you’d figured me out by now. Always gotta find something to worry about.” I think it went hand and hand with my morbid curiosity.

A tiny smirk made its way onto Celestia’s face. “You do seem to be high maintenance,” she told me before her eyes became serious again and the little smile faded. “And no, when I turned Twilight into an alicorn, she might have gained a couple extra decades from her earth pony addition to her body, but it did not stop her aging completely.”

Then the big question. I tried to push it out of my head and let Celestia continue her work but…there was no sense in stopping things now. “Is there a way to…make them…like us.”

“Twilight and Rain-”

“All of them!” I said with as much force as I could manage before Celestia could finish. It was a bit harsher than my normal tone, but not nearly the commanding one that I was going for. And…my nerve got used up at that. The rest of it just came out as pleading. “The six of them. They’ve done so much for Equestria, and-and besides, they’re the only ponies who can use the Elements of Harmony! You…you can’t just let them die! What’ll happen if they do? And-and-”

A gentle hoof on my shoulder made me stop talking and fight to get in some normal breaths.

Celestia reached down with a wing and gave me a quick hug. “Calm yourself my love.”

The all encompassing presence of the alicorn’s wing let me put a little bit of sense back into my thoughts. From there, I managed to slow my breathing, taking in air through my nose and pushing it out my mouth. After a trio of in and out breaths, I looked back up to the pony goddess. “Thanks.”

“Somepony’s been picking up Twilight’s bad habits,” Celestia said with a small smile.

I could practically feel my cheeks turn red. “Uh no…this is…just me,” I admitted. “I mean, I’m not as bad as Twilight but…well, I do have my moments.”

Celestia’s lips pressed against my forehead, and that blush I might have had may have gotten a little worse. “Well then let me tell you what I would say if you were her,” she told me. “Stop worrying about something that’s so far away we quite literally have decades to find the perfect solution to it.”

With my brain working at mostly full power again, I managed to catch something in Tia’s little assurance and frowned. “Find the perfect-wait!” I mumbled before looking up to her. “You mean…you’ve already thought about this?”

A single ‘heh’ got past Celestia’s lips and she smiled for a few seconds. “Even before you convinced me to open up to them, I was considering extending their life spans,” she told me evenly. “As much as it sickens me to think of things in this manner, they wielded the most powerful defense we had. I had lost my connection to them, and the Elements remade themselves in the image of her friends’ cutie marks. Nopony else would ever be able to use them.”

I frowned. “What’s with all the past tense?”

Celestia sighed. “With the Elements, I had a solid reason to force them to stay. And now…” she shook her head. “You said you were of a mortal race before coming here, and look at what the prospect of being around forever is doing to you. Do you want me to do the same to them?”

The question made me frown in thought. Considering who I was talking to, I couldn’t help but deconstruct my options.

I could have gone after the way she was projecting again. I knew Celestia had been lonely during Luna’s absence, facing God only knew what, seeing ponies she had probably watch grow up in one way or another fade and die without someone to share her pain with. Talking her into expanding that little circle of confidants would probably be doable no matter how many years she had on me.

Then there was the reward route. I’ll admit, I would need to do some definite selling to go at it from that angle at the moment. She was viewing her immortality as an eternal curse rather than a blessing.

Which...it kind of was without someone to share it with.

And then there was the- “Would you please stop doing that?”

I looked up at Celestia in confusion. “Doing what?”

“You get this look on your face whenever you're deep in thought. I know whatever it is your thinking about, it’s this whole immortality thing. So I’m telling you to stop.” Once again, Celestia reached out with a wing and placed it on my back again. “Stop thinking about it. Stop worrying about it. Just...stop. If the problem needs to be dealt with, then we will deal with it when we need to. Putting yourself into a panic over you do not need to worry about will only cause you pain. So please my love, stop worrying yourself over it. For me?”

I walked up to the goddess and leaned into her chest in the universal body language of getting emotional support from another. What with her being twice as big as me, it was the best I could do. Stupid giant pony and her freakish height. How come the most reliable of my girlfriends had to be the hardest to physically lean on?

I wanted to keep going, to tell her more…

But…I was so tired of worrying about everything.

I worried about Twilight finding out I was a changeling when I first showed up, what would happen between the two of us when I became a girl, pretty much everything about Rainbow Dash, and Celestia’s relationship with Twilight. And just because I was good at finding stuff to worry about didn’t mean I liked it.

Using a rather cliché relaxation technique, I took in a deep breath while imagining it revitalizing my body, and then let out a long breath that I imagined contained all my worries. Then, I did my best to focus on the moment

I looked up at my giant girlfriend and breathed in the physical scent of her chest. She still had the smell of Twilight’s shampoo on her coat that I let fill my senses as I buried my face into her body below the neck. I concentrated on how her feathers felt on my back, the feeling of her fetlock moving around on my neck, the cool golden slipper of a horseshoe that was touching my coat.

I reminded myself that Celestia was the most perfect pony princess in the world, and if I let her handle things, everything would be just fine.

She kissed me on the head, above my horn this time. “Feeling better?”

“A little,” I replied softly. My memory was quick to remind me of what happened to the last time I had just tried to push my problems to the back of my mind. I told my logic to tell my memory that letting Tia deal with the problem was different than not dealing with it at all.

Celestia stepped away, withdrawing her lovely scent, gentle touch, and wonderful presence. “Good. Because now that we have that little problem solved, there’s a much more serious matter to take care of.”

All of my tension quickly returned at Celestia’s words. “What’s that?”

“Ugh, I can’t believe I’m wearing this thing two nights in a row.”

I looked over to Rainbow Dash as the girl clip clopped in place on the street while she worked to adjust the fancy vest she had worn to the public presentation of my coronation. With the little green at on her head to boot, I had to fight not to comment on her adorableness.

“Technically Rainbow, Fae’s coronation was during the day. We were naked by the time Luna raised the moon, so this is the first night you’ve actually worn that outfit since Rarity made it,” Twilight corrected her while she adjusted her own outfit. Like Rainbow, Twilight had reused the dress from her coronation.

My tail rebelled against being pushed up against my butt by my own outfit, and I swished it around a little, which made the restrained feeling that much worse. Like the rest of the girls, I was in way too many clothes for a pony. Dress clothes. As in the actual dress I had worn just yesterday and told myself I would never wear again.

Damn my love for purple ponies, I thought to myself before glancing over to Twilight. One little word from her, and I was back in a full gown with sequins.

Yeah, Twilight knew it made me uncomfortable as hell in more way than one. But since this was another introduction, she said it was going to be super formal and wanted everyone to look their best. I swore to myself when this whole thing was done, I was going to commission Rarity to crank out a whole wardrobe of the tomboy kind of stuff that Rainbow Dash was sporting for the next time Twilight wanted me to dress up.

I looked to my left where the two girls were standing. “Wait, Twilight didn’t have a coronation party?”

Twilight flinched a little before she froze in place. A light blush covered her cheeks. Beside her, Rainbow Dash let out a laugh. “Oh no, we had a party, it’s just that everypony had to get naked for it,” she said with a little chuckle.

To make my confusion completely obvious, I added some vocalization to my lost facial expression. “Huh?”

Twilight cleared her throat. “Yes well...after I became a princess, we had a little parade. At the very end of it, I leaped into the air to glide on a prepared wind stream that should have taken me around Canterlot before putting me back onto a balcony overlooking everypony,” she said before her blush increased and she looked away from me. “Only uh…I learned too much to side and ended up spiraling out of control. Then I crashed into a tree on the ground. Rainbow had to come and get me out.”

The pegasus put a wing around Twilight’s back and nuzzled her. “Yeah well, saving princesses is part of the whole hero thing.”

I also vaguely remembered hearing the story before from Twilight, and knew she was leaving a part out. The part about her getting tangled in some sort of vast-moving vines that wrapped around her horn and prevented her from using magic before Rainbow showed up to grab and yank her out. From the way Twilight had been blushing when she told me about it, I was pretty sure if anyone had come across her and Rainbow at that moment, the two of them would have died from embarrassment.

Hell, my mind was already conjuring up a picture of the pegasus pulling at the alicorn from behind and not getting anywhere. Sure it sounded innocent enough, but…with my dirty mind, Rainbow’s failed attempts to wrench Twilight free seemed more like she was humping the tied up alicorn.

Actually…considering I was in Equestria…and what happened between Dash and Celestia…my little lewd fantasy was probably a good bet for what really happened.

Rainbow’s injection of brashness got a giggle from Twilight, and she kissed the pegasus on the cheek before remembering about the rest of her party and how I was waiting for the story to finish. “Anyway…after we got back up to Canterlot, neither of our clothes looked good enough for a fancy party, so we just went naked.”

“Which made everypony else get naked too,” Rainbow added. “It was Twilight party so, if the Princess here wasn’t going to obey a dress code, then nopony else could either. Coolest party in Canterlot I’ve been to.”

Before I could point out the only other party in Canterlot I had seen Rainbow go to was the Gala, the door to the modest house in front of us opened with a glow of magic. Twilight’s mom was standing there without a bit of clothing on. “Oh Twilight, welcome home! And Rainbow Dash, it’s good to see you again, I look forward to having a few words with you tonight. Omnifar-reee…us,” she got out before freezing up when her head turned to look at me.

In Velvet’s defense, it wasn’t my presence that was probably making her freeze up. We had met up at the coronation after party and talked in a way that was more than just amicable. It seemed she and Nightlight had gotten over their changeling phobia. Although, the fact they had just met the mare their son was banging on the side when Cadence wasn’t eating her out might have helped mute their fear.

No, what had TV all silent was the giant white pony standing beside me in a dark orange toga-dress…thing she had pulled out of her infinite storage space closet for our date.

“P-Princess Celestia…why are you here? Is something wrong” Velvet asked while looking the goddess up and down, then sweeping her gaze across the rest of us as if to ask what was going on.

The goddess picked the evening edition of the Canterlot Times that had been left of Velvet’s lawn in her magic and unfolded it. “Well there is this, but I doubt that is what you’re asking about.”

I didn’t need to look at the paper. I’d seen the headline hours ago when we passed a newsstand on the street.

Princess Celestia Retires After Failed Coup.

The whole thing just went over the basics of what I had been there for, plus a little extra about what Luna said after we left. Most of which were assurances that she would be available during daylight hours, as well as some politician-ish promises to clean up Equestria, increase the effectiveness of the military, and bring it out of the nanny state status that Celestia had let Equestria turn into with the way she always responded to requests for assistance on too many matters that ponies should have been able to deal with themselves in Luna’s opinion. There were also some vague comments about her plans for the former Prince Blueblood and his cronies that only amounted to how she was going to make an example out of them, as well as a brief mention that Fancy Pants was the pony she was considering to replace Blueblood as the Duke of Canterlot at Celestia’s recommendation.

In the ensuing silence I heard the muffled clip clop of hooves on carpet a few seconds before Nightlight’s voice came from the house. “Twilight dear, what’s going on? You’ve been standing at the door for…Princess Celestia,” she stallion said as he appeared in the doorway to look around.

Twilight cleared her throat to get the attention of both parents. “Um…Mom? Dad? You remember how I said I was going to officially introduce you and dad to my other special somepony as soon as we got back?” she asked before raised a hoof towards the pegasus that had removed her wing from Twilight when the door open. “Well this is Dame Rainbow Dash, the Bearer of Loyalty, my best friend, flight instructor, and my fillyfriend.”

Then she pointed to the giant pony, whom I made sure to step back from just to make absolutely sure there was no confusion in the matter. “And that’s Celestia, former High Princess of Equestria, Alicorn of the Sun, Star of the Morning, Guardian of the Realm, Defender of Harmony, She Who Brightens the World, and…my newest…lover,” my little alicorn finished with the cutest blush on her cheeks before Twilight dropped a hoof to play with the road beneath her.

Nightlight stood in the door with his mouth agape.

Velvet was a bit more composed than her husband. She went, “Bwa?”

I…just kind of stood there, unsure how to come to my princess’s rescue.

Dash looked about the same as me.

Celestia… The goddess looked at the three of us for a moment, and then Twilight’s parents. “Well, it would seem that we’re a bit overdressed for the occasion. Might we come in and dine? I know you must have a great many questions, and I am more than willing to have a discussion about this to put whatever fears or objections that are running through your minds at ease.

“But first, we should probably get inside and make ourselves more comfortable.”

Velvet nodded, and then both the ponies backed their way inside the house.

And then the four of us all went and got naked with Twilight’s parents.

Chapter 49: The Incredibly Emotional Night of Pegasi and Pony Princesses

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Here’s a question, what would you do if your daughter brought home your deity one day?

What if she did that, and just happened to mention during the introduction that she and said divine being were sleeping together?

It was this strange conundrum that Twilight’s parents now faced with their daughter. After all, Celestia had made up the moral bedrock of pony society for years. It wasn’t exactly like they could say she was a bad choice for Twilight considering who she was. And playing the status card wasn’t much of an option either, since Celestia had run their government without constraint not a day gone. So any real opposition they had to try and break the sun goddess and the little goddess of whatever the hell deific portfolio Twilight held up was pretty much non-existent.

Which was why once the four of us had adopted the same dress code as our hosts and joined Twilight’s parents at the dinner table as Velvet brought out some salads, an uncomfortable silence settled over the room. Both of the parents stole a few glances at the creature that had been around before either of their grandparents every now and then, but said nothing while everyone in the room but me slowly ate their dinner.

As for our party, both me and Rainbow sat closer to Twilight than what was the norm for ponies in an attempt to offer some emotional support, or just throw our pony-arms around her if she started to lose it. With the rectangular table only meant for six, Celestia sat at its head and picked at the salad I gave her instead of eating. I wasn’t sure if this put the pony parents more on edge since...well, pony-God didn’t seem to like the choice of food she was given.

Rainbow had some sparkling cider while Twilight had chosen grape juice after some hesitant glances at her parents and their ‘alcoholic’ drinks; or whatever the hell ponies called the stuff that made them drunk. Whatever it was, the end result was the same. Like always, I settled for water.

They ate.

I drank.

No one talked.

And I Smelled Twilight’s nervousness ever so slowly change from a uneasy fear, to a simmering anger as she stole glances at her parents. Don’t ask me what caused it though. I smelled emotions, I didn’t read minds.

On about the tenth minute of nothing happening, Celestia looked up from her food and over to the two unicorns sitting across from Twilight. “So the way I see it, there are two ways we can proceed,” she told them after pausing a second when the two of them flinched. “You can either ignore my presence in favor to talking to Rainbow Dash with questions that you’ve probably already prepared, or you can ask me all those questions that are no doubt running through your minds at the moment. But one way or another, we will speak and sort this all out tonight. You will get all your questions about my little pegasus and myself answered. Agreed?”

Sitting closer to Celestia than her husband, Velvet slowly looked over to the goddess and gulped. “Why?”

Celestia directed her hoof towards us. “Because I love those three as much as any mare can. And I see what this is doing to Twilight,” she said before looking back to the others. “If I had waited for her to make introductions according to her own schedule, she would have worried, and panicked, and stressed herself out with nights of lost sleep. I didn’t want to see her in such pain, so I preempted it.”

When Twilight gave Celestia a confused look, I giggled and wrapped my foreleg around hers before leaning in to whisper in my purple pony’s ear. “So Tia’s got a method to her madness.”

Silence fell over the table again, and I just darted my eyes back and forth between Celestia and Twilight’s parents to observe the odd dynamic that was being displayed. Usually when a daughter brought the person that was fucking her home, mom and dads got all judgmental, scolding, and about a million other things that basically turned their first meeting into an interrogation. Sure ponies were different, but...I had to answer some questions when I got around to my dinner with them. But in this case, it was the girl Twilight brought home that was looking down at the cowed parents like the larger than life figure that she was.

The two unicorns took another bite of their food. Although it looked more like they were chewing over their thoughts than what was in their mouths. When Nightlight swallowed his greenery, he looked up to Celestia. “How did it happen?” he asked without any enthusiasm or authority in his voice.

Then Celestia frowned ever so slightly, and he glanced over to Rainbow Dash at the last second. “W-With both of you, I mean.”

I didn’t know if Nightlight was genuinely curious about just how Rainbow had hooked up with the rest of us, if he was just sticking to this list that Celestia had talked about, or just placating his goddess by feigning interest in the woman both Tia and Twilight loved. But, I supposed it also didn’t matter that much either.

Celestia looked over to Dash and put on a little smile. “Rainbow, would you like to go first?” she asked in her usual gentle voice. “You were with them before I was after all.”

Rainbow let out a nervous laugh as everyone’s attention shifted to her. “Well uh…sure,” she said before taking a few seconds to take a deep breath. “Um, after Celestia’s announcer pony came through town and told everypony about herding, and I mean like, the day after, Twilight and Fae just showed up where I was practicing and asked me out on a date.”

Being the responsible, courageous, and all around heroic pony that I was, I quickly added my two cents to the discussion. “Which was completely Twilight’s idea.”

Twilight’s Scent became a whiff of some emotional discomfort through my nose, and looked over to her in confusion. Before I could ask what was wrong, Rainbow opened her big mouth. “Course, I turned them down.”

“Yes,” Celestia added. “Omnifarious was quite broken up over that. I held him for most of the night to try and console him.” I slunk down on the floor just a little bit when she finished. That…really hadn’t been one of my proudest moments.

Another few seconds of supremely awkward silence followed. White waiting for everything to get going again, I tested the air. Twilight’s annoyance had gone up, Tia Smelled…worried, and Dash seemed to be a little confused. Velvet and her stallion were a long way from happy too.

Twilight Velvet was the one to start talking again. “So, Twilight…what made you go after this…interesting young mare?”

When the Scent Princess Twilight was giving off more than doubled, I started to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Well, Cadence had said that she and I needed to show the ponies of Equestria herding was a good idea, so it was a requirement for me. And when it came to my options, well…we were already best friends…and uh, Rainbow had been such a wonderful teacher to me, and…Omnifarious really seemed to like her…and…she…I...I...”

The little alicorn began to tremble, and Rainbow reached over with a wing and a hoof to gentle touch the purple pony. “Twilight?”

In response to her name, the princess lowered her head and held her eyes closed as tightly as they would go. “I did it because I was afraid of her!”

…

“…what?” I was pretty sure I had spoken the words, but they sounded like they had come from Rainbow Dash too.

And then Twilight looked over at me with a frown. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! After Chrysalis, the only reason we were together is because Cadence made you stay with me! And then we got back to Ponyville, and I tried to pretend everything was great. But then you started pulling away from me because you were a mare and-and you started spending more and more time with Rainbow, and less time with me. And then I r-remembered how you acted around her when you first came to Ponyville and you started practicing for the Equestria games, and…and I just. I thought it was the only way to keep you!”

I stared at Twilight for a few seconds as my ears slowly dropped and…I just… I didn’t know what to do.

“W-Whoa, that’s not-”

Twilight spun around before the pegasus could get another word out. “Don’t pretend you didn’t notice Rainbow!” she insisted. “From the moment Omnifarious got to Ponyville, he’s been crazy about you! All you had to do was clap your hooves, and he would have come galloping to you. I was terrified that you could have taken him from me anytime you wanted!”

I…had to admit…Twilight had a point. Not that I would have ever broken up with her. On that she was wrong, but…for a good long while, I had paid more attention to Rainbow Dash than I did her. Okay, it was because I was finally free to fan boy over her stories and everything else she did, but…

Yeah, that was no excuse. I left Twilight out in the cold. If she had been a human instead of a pony, I’m pretty sure I would have come home one night to find the real Flash Sentry pounding her into the bed. And deserved it.

For her part, Rainbow looked just about as hurt and Twilight was remorseful. “Twilight…I…I would have never…and if Fairy had even tried…no, not in a million years,” she whispered.

And with Rainbow’s words came a spark of anger from within me. Anger at Twilight. I mean, just because I was buddies with Rainbow didn’t mean I was about to get rid of the purple pony! How in the hell could she even consider something like that?

It was just like when I…thought she was going to run off with Princess Celestia.

“I-I know,” Twilight said before she hiccupped and blinked away a few tears before she nodded up to her parents. “But they asked!” Then she looked at Rainbow, and me when she scooted back on the floor a little bit to get us both in view. “And you both deserve the truth. And the truth is, I didn’t bring you into this relationship because of my duty to Equestria, or even because I thought it would work out between us. I knew it was a possibility, but…I did it because I was afraid! I did it because I thought it was the only way I could keep a hold on my stallion.” She let out a sniffle, and started to shake. “And I am ashamed of it!”

And just like that, the anger vanished before it could light a fire.

I reached to grab onto Twilight, and froze when I felt a hoof. After looking up to see Rainbow doing the same thing I was, we readjusted ourselves and wrapped the alicorn in a double embrace with our legs and wings.

Then Dash patted her on the back with a wing and whispered into the alicorn’s ear. “Oh come on Twilight, it’s not that big a deal, right?”

“H-How can you say that?” she whispered back.

Rainbow released Twilight from her hug and sat up before she took a deep breath. “Because it was the same with me.”

My body moved away from the huddle hug like Twilight had been set on fire, and I looked over to Rainbow in confusion. “Wait, what?” I mean, I knew she had been nervous as hell that first week, but that had been because she had been afraid of us having a friendship problem moment and the three of us causing too much damage to fix.

“Look,” Rainbow began after she broke the hold with Twilight to get some distance so she could move her eyes back and forth between the two of us. “You guys went on and on about no pressure but…do you have any idea how much pressure you put me under anyway!?”

The agitated way Rainbow spoke made we wince. Not to mention feel like a total idiot. “Then…why didn’t you break it off? I…I would have understood,” I mumbled. Cried like a baby to Tia at night and maybe latched onto Rainbow while crying for her not to leave me, but…it would have been an understanding kind of pathetic pleading at least.

Rainbow broke eye contact to look away from us. “You remember when we woke up together for the first time?”

I had to think for a few seconds to bring up the memory of the first time the three of us shared a bed. Thanks to the reputation as sluts Twilight and I had developed among the residents of Ponyville, Rainbow had been expecting to get eaten out the night after our first date. What we did instead was a simple sharing of a princess-sized bed, making a pegasus sandwich with alicorn bread. There was a little bit of innocent fooling around going on before we went to sleep and in the morning, but…all in all the whole thing was harmless.

Me and Twilight took a second to share a confused look. “Well…yes,” Twilight said after a few moments. “I was in the big spoon position and you were facing Fae. Then you woke up and she told you good morning before kissing you on the nose. Then I rolled you onto your back so I could give you a kiss, and we spent the morning cuddling with some light kissing. But we do that just about every morning.”

“Yeah but…look Twilight, you’ve always had somepony to wake up to, and Fae doesn’t even go to sleep, really,” she said softly before letting out a sigh. “Ever since I moved to Ponyville when I turned eighteen, I’ve lived alone. Going to sleep by myself and waking up alone. It’s just about as far from awesome as you can get. So when we started going to sleep together, and the two of you woke me up, and we did all our…ya know, stuff…I-I didn’t want it to end.”

Then she looked over to me with a smile. “And then you told me that all you wanted was for me to be happy and I realized that my happiness was with the two of you.” It was the adorable smile she shot me with that helped end my worries more than her words though.

And then…

Well, people who are in love will tell you that there are moments when you’re so enamored with someone that nothing else matters. Everything else just fades away, and all you seem to notice is the person in front of you. In my case, it was the two distressed ponies in front of me as we shared one of those moment…things.

Then that little moment we were having was shattered into a thousand pieces when someone across the table from us coughed in that way people do to get attention, and I was reminded that we had an audience. “Yes well, that’s very…interesting,” Nightlight said in an even tone before looking over to the biggest pony in the room and speaking with a voice that cracked when he met the goddess’s unhappy gaze . “And Princess Celestia? How did you um, fall for my daughter?”

Apparently, Celestia didn’t like seeing her three waifus getting our emotional time cut short. Because as soon as the question was asked, her attitude turn a turn for the worse. “Thanks to an unintended side effect of saving Omnifarious’s life, he and I share a dreamscape every night,” she began. “Because of this, I opened up to him like no other pony before save for my sister. And from that, I fell in love with him as well as developed feelings for Twilight and her friends.”

Twilight cocked her head to the side for a second, and I could almost see the exclamation point form above her head as something occurred to the alicorn. “Wait a minute! You said friends, as in plural? But-but the only one of my friends I’m in a relationship with is Rainbow! Who else did you fall in love with?”

Celestia let out a little laugh. “Oh Twilight,” she soothed the smaller alicorn. “I said developed feelings for, not fell in love with. I’m old enough that I don’t go head over hooves for a mare at the drop of a hat.” A devilish smile creeped its way across Celestia’s mouth at that, and she leaned down to look at her purple lover in the eye. “But if you really want to know, I consider all of your friends more than suitable candidates for our herd.”

“All…my…friends?”

As Twilight started to have an aneurism, Rainbow looked over to Celestia with a careful frown. “Is this that choose to fall in love stuff that you told me about outside the Crystal Empire?” she asked. Which got a nod from Tia in response.

The goddess laughed. “Yes Rainbow. Just because I like somepony doesn’t mean I’m going to pursue them. Especially if the three of you wish us to remain as we are.”

“Uh no offense Tia, but I had enough of a nervous breakdown when I ended up with the three of you,” I added right on top of Rainbow’s question. “Really don’t think I could survive six.” Especially after learning just why Rainbow had decided to join our little group. Every time I thought about that, the guilt just kind of welled up inside of me.

Okay, even if it wasn’t mind control. It was pretty much the next thing to it, which was still pretty bad. Still, the real question was: just what the hell could I do about it? We were already sleeping with Rainbow!

And… This is how Twilight must have felt, I realized before reaching over to hold fetlocks with the alicorn. After all, she had said that the only reason I stayed with her was because of Cadence.

So my little herd consisted of a guy that was threatened into staying with his girlfriend, another girlfriend that me and my first girlfriend forced into the relationship, and a third girlfriend that had a roaming eye that wandered towards four other girls; one of whom was taken. Considering all of that, I had to wonder just what the hell we were even doing together.

“Then I am perfectly fine having three ponies that I love very much return my romantic affections, and four more that will simply love as good friends,” Celestia assured me, cutting my thoughts short before she leaned in towards the three of us again. “Does that ease your worries, you two?”

While Twilight brightened considerably at the prospect of not filling the bed up anymore, I…managed to fake it. Truth be told, I already knew Tia wasn’t going to be chasing any more tail. She had told all of us that in the Crystal Empire after all, and Rainbow got the message twice. It was the beginnings of our relationship with Rainbow that I was hung up on.

Another minute of silence followed, and then Velvet looked over to Rainbow. “So Ms Dash, what is it that you do exactly?” she asked. Considering her quick recovery, or maybe apathy at what was going on in front of her. I was pretty sure the mare had some kind of list. “I bet a pony that was chosen to be an Element of Harmony like our Twilight must have quite the impressive educational and occupational background!”

That’s when the warning sirens started going off in my head. Okay sure, I hadn’t really gotten to know Twilight’s parents outside of a single private dinner and public meeting, but judging about how Twilight talked about them at lunch, Velvet and Nightlight were…well, I couldn’t really call them super judgmental, but… They seemed the kind of parents that only wanted their child to get the best, and not in a good way.

“Nah,” Rainbow said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “I dropped out of flight school and got a job kicking clouds in Ponyville when I was eighteen.”

Needless to say, the whole thing kind of went downhill from there…

Whether it was because she was too angry to use magic, or just wanted the satisfaction that came with the feeling of hitting something, Twilight didn’t bother to use her powers as she opened the door to the outside. She simply smacked the thing as hard as she could, and let it swing around to bang against the front of the house. Then the little alicorn moved forward with an angry stride, as if she was trying to smash the cobblestones that made the path through her parents’ front yard.

The rest of us followed her lead at a much less destructive walk, but kept our distance at Celestia’s urging. I kept myself close to Rainbow despite a few halfhearted attempts to distance herself from us, and managed to drag her back to where Celestia and I were as she folded up our dresses into neatly packed squares.

I threw a wing around my little pegasus’s back. “It’s okay Rainbow. We don’t-”

Then, the reason for Twilight’s indignation ran past me and the other two winged ponies on the block with its own anger evident on her face. “Twilight Sparkle you get back here this instant! Storming out like a filly throwing a tantrum. I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my life!”

To which Twilight responded by freezing in place, and spinning around to glare at her mother. “YOU’VE never been embarrassed? YOU? You-you have the…gall to be embarrassed after what you just said?” she shrieked.

Velvet got a little stiff and drew herself up to her full height that still fell short of Twilight’s, even with the extra little centimeter she had gained from straining. “Well if throw away everything I’ve done to make you a success by choosing to be with that-that delinquent? Then YES, I’M EMBARRASSED!”

As the argument between Twilight and her mother continued to devolve into more of a verbal brawl, I looked up at the big alicorn standing next to me. “Hey Tia, remember how you can tell the future and stuff?” I asked.

“What you’ve done for me?” Twilight demanded. “You haven’t done anything for me since I was ten years old!”

Celestia let out a loud hmmm, and met me eye to eye. “Well it’s not as simple as you make it sound-”

“If it weren’t for me, you would have never even gotten into Celestia’s school, or gotten the grades to stay there!” she yelled back. “If it wasn’t for me shipping your brother off to military school, all you would have done is played with Shining Armor and throw fits about how I wouldn’t let Cadence come foal-sit you anymore because she was too distracting! If it wasn’t for me locking you in your room to help achieve good study habits, you would have flunked out of Celestia’s school in the first week! So I’m just trying to understand why you think it’s alright to throw away everything I ever gave you to be with that-that podunk pegasus!”

“-dearest,” the goddess finished. “I’ll admit, I still get blindsided from time to time. Like when Blueblood attempted to take the throne. That was…extremely unexpected.”

The fighting went on with Twilight’s reply that was consisted of a plethora of words starting with the letter a. Then Velvet yelled back in response.

I nodded, and glanced back to the mother/daughter battle as Twilight glared at her mother for a moment before their arguing resumed. Then I turned my attentions back to Tia. “So uh…did you see this one coming?”

The alicorn cowered at the question ever so slightly. “Well…”

“SEX TOY?” Twilight screeched at the top of her lungs. “HOW IN THE PIT OF TARTARUS COULD YOU POSSIBLY EVEN THINK SOMETHING LIKE THAT?”

“What am I supposed to think when you bring home an empty-headed pegasus that couldn’t even finish flight school and has more muscles than most stallions?” Velvet demanded. “As disturbing as it is, at least the Princess and your bug fillyfriend are a pair of ponies befitting of your station! So you must keep her around for something! You know, Shining at least managed to get a respectable mare to get me some grandfoals!”

“…more or less,” she finished before walking past me and taking a breath.

Twilight spread her wings and snarled at her mother. “You, you, you! Ever since I came here tonight, all I’ve heard is how much I’ve ruined your life by dating a stupid PEGASUS!”

I felt some movement beneath my wing, and caught so many Scents coming from Rainbow that I couldn’t make them out thanks to all the yelling distracting me. Still, it was pretty obvious what a pony like Dash would do when some old hag insults her. “Calm down Rainbow. Just ignore her.”

The last thing we needed tonight was Rainbow Dash KOing both of Twilight’s parents.

Velvet gave Twilight a distasteful humph. “Don’t try and turn this into something it’s not Twilight!” she told her daughter before poking her with a hoof. “You know that one of my best friends is a pegasus! It’s just unlike your jock friend, she managed to complete her basic education and went on to study at the Academy before becoming a well-respected author! What has your little feathered friend done besides follow you around on your adventures?”

My pretty little pony retreated a step at the accusation, and went into her computational mode a second later. I caught sight of her eyes moving the slightest bit, as if she were quickly reading through report after report. However, before Twilight had compiled enough evidence to floor Velvet, another member of our party intervened.

“THAT’S ENOUGH!”

The roar from Celestia’s mouth, and it was a roar, left my ears ringing and dogs barking for what had to be several blocks. Lights were starting to turn on all around us, and Celestia didn’t seem to care a bit about any of it. All she had eyes for were the pair of ponies standing in front of her.

Twilight looked up at the bigger alicorn with wide eyes, and then blushed before she turned her attention to the floor with a red face and a Smell I could only call shame. “I-I’m sorry Princess Celestia. I should have kept my temper in check,” she apologized.

Across from Twilight, Velvet sniffed indignantly. “You should be. Talking that way to your own mother and acting like a filly throwing a tantrum.”

Although I had mostly been preoccupied with keeping Dash under control during the fight instead of jumping in, and down Velvet’s throat for her actions, the sudden change in Twilight demeanor from raging anger to fully cowed made me bristle. “Are you kidding me?”

Instead of giving me a direct reply, Celestia threw out a wing to block my view of the unicorn. “Ms Velvet. I thank you for your hospitality, and feel the four of us need to depart before things degrade any further.”

For the first time since Twilight and Velvet’s shouting match began, it seemed the off-white unicorn noticed the goddess. She had the decency to cringe at the flat tone of Celestia’s voice, and gulped. If I had to bet, the numerous roundabout insults she had thrown at Rainbow were coming back to haunt her. “Yes, ah-he…t-thank you for coming by Princess.”

“Oh, And in response to your question on my side of things…I never even attended a school in all the years my long life. In fact, my position was simply given the title of princess because of my heritage. A position I no longer have I remind you,” she said before her expression darkened. “So, factoring that into some of your previous statements that gave a summarization to my fillyfriend’s status, you are in fact wrong. I happen to be the most uneducated, featherbrained, stupid pony with the loudest mouth you have ever met. Not Rainbow.”

Velvet gulped as Celestia inched her neck just a little forward and went to looming over the unicorn. “Uh…”

If Celestia took notice of the unicorn’s unease, which I know she did, she didn’t comment on it, or even acknowledge its existence. “So, thank you for the meal. I am sure your husband will be fine once he comes to,” she said before turning around so sharply Velvet had to back away to avoid being smacked in the face by Tia’s ass. “Come along you three, it’s time we headed to Ponyville.”

I didn’t know why Celestia insisted on the four of us flying home. The air was so thick with tension that we probably could have walked instead.

Twilight took the lead. But I could Smell her mix of anger and fear from over ten feet back. Even nearly half an hour of flying hadn’t let her clear her head from the lingering emotions. Not that I could blame her for that, or how she acted at the house.

The argument between Twilight and her parents had started as most such things do. Unlike when I first met the alicorn’s mom and dad. Parents disapprove of daughter’s actions, daughter…wilts under their disapproval, giant pony princess gives me signal to keep quiet, girlfriend defends daughter, father insults girlfriend, father uses magic to wave knife around like a scolding finger, girlfriend throws salad bowl at father and knocks him out, mother insults and threatens girlfriend, daughter explodes at mother, and…then they moved the argument outside. Add other love interests to keep ponies in their respective corners and ring the bell when it's time to stop. All in all, a bad situation for everyone involved.

Something told me Twilight had a real problem defying not just Celestia, but any authority figure she had grown up with. Which kind of made me wonder if that was the reason Celestia kept us out of it.

Then there was Rainbow. Unlike what was usual for her, she lagged behind us without going so slow we needed to decrease the pace. Unlike Twilight, the only thing I could get from her was…despondence. Rainbow was extremely upset about something, and I found the whole thing much more troubling than Twilight’s more logical reaction.

Tia and me were in the middle and…the alicorn seemed as stoic as ever on the surface. Beneath, I could Smell that she was upset over the turn of events. However, I didn’t have much sympathy for the pony that sat there instead of defending her so-called girlfriend.

…not that I was much better.

The actions of the dinner ran through my head again, and I…felt ashamed. When I had first come to Equestria, any insult to the rainbow pony would have set me off like a nuclear bomb. But not even an hour ago, I had sat there and let another pony berate her whole fucking life because…what?

Because Tia told me to? I’ll admit the alicorn knew better than me about pretty much everything, but…not standing up for someone you love didn’t seem like all that smart a move to me. But I had just sat down like a good little pony and did as she said.

Well, okay…I might have had another reason. I could remember the first time I had met Twilight’s parents and…the memory still played in my head. If I had stepped in to do something, Rainbow’s first meal with Twilight’s parents might have very well been a repeat of mine.

The realization of that made me want to throw up. I picked my own comfort over that of hers…and it sickened me.

I opened my mouth to ask which one of the girls Celestia wanted to talk to, and then clicked it shut without saying a word. Then I took a second to gather myself. “I’ll talk to Rainbow. You handle the purple one.”

After I cut back to come up beside Rainbow’s position, I felt my heart lurch. Up close, the pegasus looked even more pathetic. Dash was actually slumped down on both sides of her body as she was flying, making it look like what was really holding the pegasus up were some kind of invisible wires attached to her back where her wings met body.

I had to gulp down my self-hatred at letting things get like this, and opened my mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

The words coming from Rainbow’s mouth right on top of mine made my brain stop working for a second. I actually had to flap my wings harder to keep from falling out of the sky and catch up with Dash. By the time I did, she had already started talking before I could stop her with the confused question of ‘what?’.

“I can’t believe I bucked things up so bad,” she went on before I Smelled the sadness in her well up and tears actually start to form in her eyes. “I just…they started talking that way to Twilight and I got so mad, then Twilight’s dad started waving that butter knife around and-and, ragging on me and her and I just…I-I lost it!”

As Rainbow’s face twisted in pain so much she couldn’t even speak, I reached out to grab her foreleg in a hug. I would have gone for more, but…well, part of me knew pegasi could remain flying as long as their wings could flap no matter what, but a greater part of me also ‘knew’ giving someone a hug while they were flying was a good way to crash.

I put my lips up near her ear to whisper. “Oh Dashie no,” I told her while kissing the back of the pegasus’s organic hearing implement. “No, you have nothing to apologize for.”

Although I didn’t want to move, and all my instincts were telling me to smother the pegasus with light kisses to reassure her of my affection, I flew around her and pumped my wings a little hard to fly backwards and look at her eye to eye before I locked both of her fetlocks in my own. “I’m the one that needs to apologize Dash. Those two ponies were saying such awful things about you, and I just sat there.”

“Hey! I can fight my own battles!” Rainbow exclaimed with a frown as she started to pull away from me.

The way Dash reacted to my words made we wince. After all the insults Velvet had thrown, her pride was probably aching just a bit. And my number one rule when dealing with Rainbow was to never do anything to damage that self-image of hers.

“I know Dash, I know,” I assured her gently while I gripped onto her tighter. “I just…don’t like you to do it alone. I’m here, and so are Twilight and Celestia.”

Something I said must have been wrong, because Rainbow’s apprehension only went up after hearing that. “Yeah, you three handle everything,” she mumbled just barely loud enough for me to hear.

Unsure of what to do, I glanced behind me to see Twilight’s talk with Tia might have been winding down. Then I just broke out with my standby tactic for when a girl was mad at me. I leaned forward and gave Rainbow a quick peck on the nose. “Rainbow, please don’t be angry with me. I love you.”

Rainbow flinched as if stung, and looked away from me. “N-No, it’s not…I’m not angry with anypony,” she mumbled.

With Dash clamming up, I sighed in defeat and gave her one last kiss on the cheek before I unlocked our forelegs and swing around to fly beside her. I gave the flying horse a look of concern, and felt the need to remind her of one little thing about changelings. “Rainbow, I know what you’re feeling, I can sense your emotions, remember?” I asked before quickly adding on something so she couldn’t snap at me for invading her privacy. “But if you’re not ready to open up about it, that’s okay. Just…when you are, we’ll be here, alright?”

We flew on in silence for a few more minutes, just watching the two ponies ahead of us. As much as I’d like to say I spent the time checking out Tia’s divine ass, my baser instincts were shoved aside in favor of my concern for Twilight.

When it seemed the two of them finally finished, Rainbow took a deep breath. “Welp, time to face the music.”

I blinked at her words, and then watched as Rainbow’s ears went flat before she picked up speed. Without much choice, I followed her until we caught up to the real alicorns. Rainbow pulled up alongside Twilight, and let out a long sigh, and braced herself. “Okay…lay it on me.”

“You threw a bowl at my dad and knocked him out,” Twilight growled.

“…I know,” Rainbow mumbled before she slumped back down to the ‘held up by strings’ position.

Seeing the sight in front of me, I looked past the pegasus to frown at the purple princess. “And your dad was waving a knife around barely an inch from Rainbow’s bucking eyes!”

Celestia shot me a look. “Omnifarious!”

To which I growled back at her. “I am not taking the sidelines this time! I just had to watch Twilight’s mom basically call Rainbow trash right in front of me, while you made us sit on our plots! We tried playing it your do nothing way Tia. So you know what? Buck that!”

“Fairy just, just stop, okay?” Rainbow said as she raised a hoof to block me.

“No!” I exclaimed. “I may have had some sympathy for your parents when they were afraid of me, Twilight. But going from fearful to insulting is another thing altogether. And if you’re going to actually defend your dad threatening Rainbow with a weapon-”

“I AM NOT DEFENDING HIM!” Twilight shouted at me while she looked across Rainbow’s back before turning her attention towards the direction we were all going. “But you weren’t exactly in the right either Rainbow.”

I snorted and found a nice spot of empty sky to talk to in the opposite direction of Twilight Sparkle. “Well maybe she wouldn’t of had to be if you had stood up for yourself.”

“Are you saying all of this was my fault?” she demanded.

The accusation made me roll my eyes. “You’re the one that promised your parents they’d be allowed to get all judgmental with Rainbow. You’re the one that brought us into their house where nopony would see any scenes that got caused. You’re the one, well okay, we all sat there while they pretty much looked down on Rainbow before she even opened her mouth so-”

“OH STOP IT!” Rainbow shouted right in my face, bringing an end to my list of things Twilight done did wrong. Tears were in her eyes again, and those shut me up more than my little pegasus’s temper. “Stop fighting! Just because I gotta go doesn’t mean you have to buck up your relationship too!”

I opened my mouth as I tried to make sense of what Rainbow had just said. Because it kind of sounded like…

“WHAT?” both of our alicorns shouted at the same time.

Twilight apparently forgot to keep flapping and actually dropped a foot out of the air before Tia’s glowing horn put an end to her descent and hauled her back up long enough for the purple princess to regain her senses. “Rainbow, what the buck are you talking about?!”

The almost-panic I could Smell from Twilight matched her voice, and was starting to show on her face by the time Rainbow formulated an answer to the question. “Oh come on Twilight, that whole thing with your mom-”

“Huh?” the little alicorn managed again before she dropped from the sky.

This time, Celestia didn’t catch her. Instead, the alicorn’s horn glowed for a few moments, and the around us swirled in a brief miniature tornado before I could hear the telltale thud of pony impacting clouds. Once a place to stand was formed, she motioned for us to head land.

When Rainbow touched down in front of her, Twilight sprang into action. The mare grabbed onto the pegasus’s shoulders and looked into her eyes while forcing words out between hyperventilating breaths. “Okay-okay, they’re right Rainbow. I should have done something sooner. I should have jumped in and taken that knife away and told my father to settle down. But I didn’t, and you got backed into a corner, and-and I was wrong to be angry at you. You-you were just reacting to a threat. And-”

“Twilight, stop it okay?” Rainbow told her while raising a hoof to touch the alicorn’s hoof.

To which the alicorn shook her head. “No! I’m sorry Rainbow. I love you. I don’t want you to go. Please, please, please don’t do this.” She probably would have said more, but Twilight quickly broke down into sobs a second later when Rainbow stepped away from her and she slumped forward onto her front hooves.

For her part, Rainbow gulped, and started to tear up as well. “Twilight, it’s not like we’re not going to see each other just about every day.”

I stepped forward to ask just what the hell had made Rainbow decide something like that, but got shoved off course by Celestia when she walked past me to glare down at Rainbow. “Explain.”

“Uh, well…” Rainbow said before looking away from the amazonian pony goddess. “W-When we started going out, we all promised we’d stay friends if this thing didn’t work out, so that’s what I meant when-”

After getting airborne, I looked down at Rainbow from an even higher vantage point than Tia. “Not that!” I shouted while moving around to the pegasus‘s right. “Why the buck are you walking out on us?”

Rainbow cringed, and then looked up at me with a frown. “BECAUSE TWILIGHT’S MOM WAS RIGHT!”

And I quickly joined Twilight on the cloud in paralysis. “Huh?”

Celestia’s scowl deepened. “What are you talking about Rainbow?”

“Oh come on!” Rainbow shouted before she threw her hooves out towards Celestia. “You’re like the most awesome pony ever!” Then she pointed a hoof at me. “Omnifarious saved the entire bucking Crystal Empire all by himself, TWICE!” And then gestured to the purple alicorn laying in a depressed heap behind her. “And do I really need to go over the bazillion things Twilight has done in just the past year?”

She let out a little sniffle, and slumped before furiously shaking her head. “Let’s stop messing around and just admit it. The three of you are so far out of my league it’s a joke I ever even thought I could hope to hang with you. Heh, no wonder she called me a sex toy.”

I grit my teeth and had to repress a growl. After hearing my little Dashie say something like that… An image of Twilight Velvet appeared in my head to accompany a few private thoughts. I’m going to murder that pony.

“THAT’S A LOAD OF HORSE APPLES!” Twilight shrieked as she got to her feet in a rage and stormed up to Rainbow. “How could you…HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK THAT ABOUT YOURSELF AFTER EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE?”

The demand made Rainbow back away from Twilight, and run butt first into Celestia. When the big pony princess cut off her escape, the little one continued to dress down the idiocy of Rainbow’s logic. “You performed a Sonic Rainboom before you were ten years old! You’re the fastest pony in Equestria! You won the Best Fliers Competition and saved the lives of four ponies single hoofly! You’ve gone up against Nightmare Moon, and Discord, and saved me from crippling injuries and death more than half a dozen times! Not to mention all the other adventures we’ve been on that you’ve done more than any pegasus should have been able to!”

Rainbow let out a long sigh. “Yeah, adventures you were there for too. Adventures you led everypony on Twilight. You beat Nightmare Moon while the rest of us just stood around and…buck, that whole thing with Discord…I ended up needing to be saved by everypony. And my Rainboom.” Rainbow waved her hoof at the biggest pony on the cloud. “Celestia’s done that. Plus about a million other things. It took me nearly fifteen years to do it again.”

“Celestia’s like a million years old!” I told the pegasus. “You can’t count all the stuff she’s done like that!”

Right on top of me, Twilight added her two cents. “Life isn’t a competition Rainbow!”

Rainbow glared at her. “Says the one that’s so far in the lead she’s already lapped everypony else!” Dash countered before spreading her forelegs wide. “Come on Twilight, your mom spelled it out for you. You’re a year younger than me with all kinds of fancy education and a crown on your head. I’m a flight school dropout with a job that anypony with a pair of wings can do! The whole idea of you being into me is such a big joke, I’m surprised Pinkie Pie didn’t laugh for days when we told her!”

And all of a sudden, I wanted to smack the smart mouth of a pegasus across her face.

“That doesn’t-” Twilight shut her mouth and drew in a sharp breath through her teeth. “Okay, your education is something that needs to be addressed, I’ll agree with that,” she grumbled. “But that doesn’t affect the kind of pony you are. THE PONY I FELL IN LOVE WITH!”

Rainbow shook her head in fury. “It matters plenty Twilight!” she replied in a near-shout. “What do you think other ponies are going to say when they see three alicorns palling around with somepony like me?”

Despite the feelings I had towards Rainbow for belittling herself and wanting to dump us, after hearing the reasoning behind it… I couldn’t hold any of her actions against her. There was still the fact I needed to get her to see herself in a good light again, sure. But I couldn’t be mad at her for that. My anger evaporated, and I walked up to Dash with a curious frown on my face. “Wait, Dash…you’re worried about what other ponies are going to say about us, because we’re dating you?”

“Who in the hay cares about something like that?” Twilight yelled.

“I CARE!” Rainbow replied. “I care about what other ponies think of you. I care about the fact that I’m dragging you three down!”

Celestia sat down, her big butt causing even the cloud to project a thump. “Aright Rainbow, that’s enough.”

I frowned. “Oh the Divine Empress of Ponykind finally decides to chip in. We’re saved.”

The sarcastic comment got a frown from both of the alicorns. But while Twilight continued to give me the stink-eye, Tia went right back to looking down at and talking to Dash. “While I won’t stop you if you truly want to leave us, no matter the pain it may cause me. I ask that you listen to me, and make your decision only after you think on it. Please don’t jump into a decision we will all regret.”

Whether it was the fact that Celestia was telling her this, the gentle voice she was using, or the hoof she placed on Dash’s shoulder, or a combination of all three, Rainbow calmed down ever so slightly and took a seat. “Okay.”

Celestia let out a little sigh, and smiled down at her. “The first thing you need to do is realize something Rainbow. You’re putting the three of us on pedestals that are so high, you can’t seem to realize just how amazing you are…or that we don’t deserve to be on them ourselves.”

“Wait…what?” Rainbow asked as her face got all cute and scrunched up.

Reduced to the role of a translator, I let out a sigh and addressed the lost pegasus. “She’s saying we’re not as cool as you think we are.”

“But-”

“Since we already know your accomplishments,” Celestia spoke before Rainbow could get going some more. “Let’s go over ours in the proper light. The one you seem to be judging yourself and Twilight in, but not Omnifarious or myself. And even Twilight’s are a bit…slanted.”

Rainbow looked up at the goddess and tilted her head. “What’s that supposed to mean.”

This time, instead of me relaying the information, Celestia just kept going. “How old were you when you performed your Sonic Rainbooms?”

“Uh, seven for the first one, and twenty for the others,” Rainbow replied. “Why?”

Celestia smiled, and nodded her head. “Well then, my performance of the Sonic Rainboom doesn’t count. Or maybe it's better to say that you beat me with your achievements in both quality and quantity. Now, onto our education and occupational rankings.”

“What? Whoa, hold on a second!” Rainbow exclaimed. “What the hay do you mean yours don’t count?”

The question made put on a confused look that I was pretty certain Celestia was faking. “Well if you’re factoring in Twilight’s age for her princess accomplishment, then you need to factor in mine as well for everything we’ve all done. And since I was in my forties when I rain boomed once, it doesn’t count. Nor does anything else I did when I was over twenty for that matter.”

“But-”

Celestia silenced the persnickety pegasus with a hoof to her mouth. “Now, moving on to education. How old were you when you dropped out of school?”

After Tia removed her hoof, Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Eighteen.”

“And became a member of the Ponyville weather team despite your lack of a basic diploma or university training?” the goddess went on.

“Eighteen too.”

Celestia nodded. “And you rose to head weathermare in…two years?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay fine. But that’s-”

“Extremely impressive,” Tia told her. “Especially considering that Twilight didn’t get her first job until after she had finished her studies with me, and I’m the one that to arrange it for her.”

“Hey!” the purple princess cried out in indignation. At least until both me and Tia shot her a glare. Then her eyes widened, and she gave all of us a little ‘oh’ before lightly knocking herself on the top of the head. “But I’ll have to admit, without any social skills, my hireability really was sub-par. Yep! There’s no way I would have been able to get actually employment without Celestia’s intervention.”

I rolled my eyes at the pathetic acting job my little princess performed, and looked over to Rainbow. “I beat up a pony with the help of a mob and stole his identity for my first job,” I explained evenly.

“While my own position as princess was given to me by the ponies of Equestria when I was in my thirties,” Celestia added with a nonchalant shrug. “Given to me simply because I was an alicorn. Up until then, Luna and I didn’t really interact that much with other ponies beyond uh…chasing some tail.”

As I snickered and Twilight blushed, Celestia went on. “So, while you went and made a life for yourself in these twenty past years, rising to the top weather position in Ponyville, creating a name for yourself as an amazing flier with no official training beyond the basics, and helping to save the world.”

Rainbow let out a snort. “That was all Twilight.”

“Are you talking about the time when the ground collapsed out from under me and Applejack had to let go so we both didn’t get pulled down for your to catch me before I fell to my death while we were on the trail of Nightmare Moon?” Twilight immediately asked. “Or that time you created a super condensed cloud that sprang us back up into the air? Then there were those spears you deflected away from me in the Valley of the Sun that probably would have put a few holes in be from behind because I was too angry to think straight, not to mention Ahuizotl’s magical protection you removed before he could dig his way out.”

Then both of the alicorns looked at me along with Rainbow. I frowned back at her. “You are aware of the fact I lost the battle against Chrysalis for the Crystal Empire, right?” I asked. It was a valid question, to be honest, I didn’t really know what Twilight’s friends knew when it came to the truth of those events. “And the second time was just…well, that was just a hay of a lot of dumb luck. The truth this, I’m a total screw-up.”

Celestia snorted. “My love please. I am the most pathetic pony in this relationship.”

When we both looked over to Twilight, she was quick to catch on. The pretty purple pony princess snapped into character, and rolled her eyes in false annoyance. “Pfft! You ruled all of Equestria for over a thousand years. I passed off my duties involving a single town as soon as Omnifarious showed up, and barely managed Equestria with a checklist to help me cope! Not to mention I run a library that barely anypony uses!”

Rainbow flew into the air in irritation. “Okay! Okay I get it! We’re all a bunch of losers!”

A second later, a golden glow surrounded the pegasus and pulled her back down to within grabbing range of Celestia. Which the goddess quickly took advantage of by pulling her into a hug with her forelegs. “My little Rainbow, there is so much more to this than that,” she told the pegasus gently. “But…the perception of yourself can be influenced by so many things, and if you do nothing but find your value in the perception of others, then your self-worth is at the mercy of those that can tear it down on a whim. And there will always be ponies like that. Don’t let them-don’t let the negative define who you are.”

I looked around for a moment, waiting for some music to start or something, and sighed in relief when Celestia didn’t start singing about how haters were gonna hate.

Then I noticed Tia motioning us over as she held Dash tighter. Twilight and me shared a look, and then the purple alicorn moved in to latch onto Rainbow first. “Rainbow, I…” She paused before taking adept breath. “I can accept if you want to leave because you don’t think we’re going to work out, or if you think I’m a…bad fillyfriend. But please don’t go because somepony else doesn’t like us being together.”

“But your mom-”

“Yeah well,” Twilight cut her off before pausing for a moment and taking a breath. “Maybe I’ve tried living up to the expectations of others for so long, I sideline my own desires in order to make other ponies happy. I’m sorry that stopped me from doing what I should have done from the get go.”

Then…I blinked when Celestia frowned at me. “What?”

Tia rolled her eyes as if to say, “Your turn dumbass.”

I glared back at her with a “You’re the one who told me to keep out of it,” look.

And when the glare intensified, I…joined the group. “Yeah. I should have been there for you too Dash,” I mumbled. “To be honest, I think I’ve been running away from that kind of stuff off way too much as of late. Sorry Rainbow.”

Then Celestia’s wings wrapped us all up, and Rainbow let out a little laugh. “It’s okay everypony. I love you too.”

I sighed in contentment as Celestia wrapped her arms and legs around my smaller human form while I just enjoyed the feel of her impossibly soft skin up against mine. “Well, that all worked out pretty well.”

Tia giggled softly, and I felt her finger caress my ear. “I’ll admit, it was quite a bit more enjoyable than the first time. I should let you be the leader in the bed more often.” Then she stopped with her almost-scratching that had me wondering just what she and Sunset did when they were alone, and reached down to grab my butt.

As she fondled my ass, I replayed the events of the day in my mind, and remembered something that had brought a disturbing question to mind. “Hey Tia, about what happened with Twilight’s mom…did you know things were going to turn out that way? I mean, how exactly does that future vision of yours work?”

The hands stopped their playing. “Oh…that,” she mumbled before letting out a sigh. “It’s a bit…complicated.”

“We’ve got a good three hours,” I deadpanned.

Celestia moaned in annoyance, and actually put on a little pouty face for a few seconds before she let out a long breath. “Okay, but no interrupting me until I’m done, and if you don’t follow then I’m sorry. I can’t dumb it down any further.”

“When I look at a pony, I can she the roads their life can take. Some are more clear than others and a few are so impossible that they can barely be seen at all. What it all comes down to is choice. What path that pony chooses to take determines her future. Although…I will be the first to admit that my vision is not perfect. It is harmonic magic, just like every other pony has. Disharmony…muddles it. It’s one of the reasons why I was not able to see what was happening with Luna or Sunset before it was too late.”

I felt Tia’s unease, and stretched forward a bit to kiss her on the cheek. “So when Twilight and her mom started fighting, you lost sight of what could happen?”

Tia looked over at me, and rolled around until we were on our sides. Her hands slid up my back, and she pulled me in close for another kiss. This time on the lips. “No. From what I could tell, if Twilight…handed her decision-making to another. And when I looked at Rainbow, I knew something bad was going to happen. So I intervened, despite the risks.”

“What risks?”

Celestia licked her lips in hesitation, and broke eye contact. “Another problem is that my own path is…hidden from me. Because of that, the more I interact with a pony, the less of their future I can see,” she explained before her fear welled up. “It’s one of the reasons I have kept as far away from Twilight and her friends as I dared for so long. They’re too important for me to lose sight of.”

It was then I understood her fear of telling me about what was going on. Now that she was palling around with the Bearers, sleeping with two of them, and living in Ponyville, her future vision must have been turned to crap. I…couldn’t be angry at her though. “Well you know what they say. When love and duty duke it out, love always wins.”

Relief flooded through the goddess for a moment before I winced at the emotional pain that quickly followed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that had reminded her of. “Not all the time. Sometimes duty is the victor…although the cost is always high.”

I raised my hand to run my fingers through her multi-colored hair. “Sorry for the reminder Tia.”

“Do not apologize my love,” she whispered before kissing me again. “Because of your urging, I will be able to watch my sister shine like never before. I will be able to treat Sunset as I should have when she got older and I finally have others to share my life and burdens with.”

Another movement put Celestia on top of us, and my vision became nothing but the face of an impossible beautiful woman and curtains of hair made from an aurora. “By the way, did you learn anything today along with the others?”

I raised an eyebrow. “What? Didn’t you hear what I said to Rainbow?”

“Yeah but that lesson was stupid,” she told me with a smirk. “To be honest, I was hoping you would learn to stop being such a pussy and put that fire back inside of you that I loved so much.”

I…gapped at Princess Potty Mouth for a few seconds before I brought my arms up to wrap around her neck. “Okay, how bout this then. Dear former-Princess Celestia,” I began before rolling us back around until I was on top. Or at least…letting her know that’s the position I wanted so Tia let me do it. “Today I learned to stop blindly following oversized horse women with asses so big they’d break my back if they sat on me, and do things my own way.”

Celestia smiled. “Good to see some of that confidence of yours returning.”

“Although…what’re we going to do about Velvet and Nightlight when they come back?” I asked. As much as I wanted to go with the violent solution, Twilight would probably get pretty mad if her parents ended up in the hospital from a brutal beating. And…I couldn’t help but feeling bad that Rainbow’s relationship had come between her parents and the little alicorn. Even if they were super-controlling assholes, they were still Twilight’s family.

The question darkened Tia mood just a little. “Well, they’re going to either have to accept Twilight is her own woman now, or learn to duck faster. Either way, the hold they had on her has been broken. So let’s just chalk this up as a win. Let them decide if they want to try patching things up, or ruin their relationship with Twilight completely. But it will be their decision my love, not ours,” she told me before moving her legs a bit. “Now enough about those two. We still have a few hours to kill, and I’m wanting some more of my man’s attention.”

Chapter 50: The Incredibly Abnormal Morning of an Everfree Household

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The first week following Celestia’s move in was…pretty uneventful. Not that anything didn’t happen. I mean, we had Twilight’s birthday party at the castle and Summer Wrap-Up along with a lot of the usual couple stuff doubled since we were technically a pair of couples. It was just that after having to deal with everything I usually, getting a few extra roommates settled in was all that big a deal, even with everything that happened afterwards.

Spike took a few days to really get used to the changelings running around the castle, although I think the CMC helped him deal with that. They all had started coming over more and thanks to one of my other house guests needing some feedback on her work. But after he did, well…I think going from Twilight’s personal slave to head slave of the household made him happy. Now, he didn’t sweep floors, he told others to do it for him.

I also ended up with another empty room of the castle filled…by Trixie. The show mare had followed Sunset home after the Crystal Empire thing and…well, I was one of those people that couldn’t say to letting strays into the house. It wasn’t really that big a deal. I mean, she was already housebroken, and Sunset even taught her some new tricks!

As for the bacon-haired one, she went on like always. Celestia finally finished a little ruby necklace that would translate her English into Equish so she didn’t have to wear that garish belt all the time, but…even a week after Tia joined the mirror project, Sunset was still a biped. But the magiclessness seemed to be affecting her less and less as time went on. Or maybe it was just the social interaction helped her cope. Whatever it was, as long as Sunset didn’t spend her nights crying into her pillow, I was happy.

Twilight went back to her parents house during our weekly trip to Canterlot for class along with Spike. When they demanded she apologize for her actions at dinner, she slammed the door in their faces and told Spike he wouldn’t be coming back to see them until they apologized to the dragon’s ‘father’.

Yeah, Rainbow never really dropped the whole parental responsibilities thing with Spike, and after a few days…Twilight actually started acting more like a mother to him than a best friend. It was subtle, but…instead of asking him for help, she started assigning chores. Phrases like ‘I want/need you to do X’ became simply ‘You need to do X’, and Rainbow checked up on him when she came home from work.

As for the pegasus herself. Rainbow went back to busting clouds and bringing the rain after Summer Wrap-Up, saying that Fall involved some pretty harsh weather that she wasn’t willing to trust to a changeling. I didn’t know whether to be insulted, or admire her work ethic. Hell, the fact she had one at all was kind of news to me. The other major event in Rainbow’s life was that she had decided to move her stuff in with us, completing her migration into the Everfree. Dash’s trophies populated several bookshelves in our royal apartment’s sitting room, and a few of her special ones rested above the fireplace.

That was another thing that changed too. With Celestia sleeping with us, Twilight and me moved us all in to Celestia’s old bedroom, which was more than just a single room for her bed.

As for Summer Warp-up…I was extremely disappointed.

Okay, there was this giant fair where ponies all across Equestria came to party. It was like…well, an outdoor pony convention. We had food, drinks, games, and tons of celebrities. I got to meet Babs and Sapphire Shores before the pop star took part in the Summer Parade that was missing its Mare Do Well float after some holes ‘mysteriously’ appeared in it. There was even a ‘royal’s only’ sort of competition for certain ponies to keep Luna from winning everything like she did last year and…well, poor Shining Armor ended up being a little outclassed by all us princesses.

But...look, Winter Wrap-Up was this giant musical number in which all the ponies pitched in to do numerous jobs and clean up Winter because everything was manual in Equestria. In contrast, Summer Wrap-up was…picking up after the End of Summer Festival.

We didn’t paint leaves, tell the animals to get ready for Winter, or do anything beyond pick up trash. There was a song and all, but…it just wasn’t the same. Me and Luna used our whole ‘We’re royals and have more important shit to do than push brooms around’ to get out of working.

Then Tia dragged us both back and set us to picking up trash with those little poker things people use to spear junk by the side of the road because…Ponyville was an earth pony town and it was traditional.

As for the new High Princess of Equestria, we got to bond over community service. In the first week of her rule she managed to cut down on a lot of the useless shit that took up most of Tia’s day and tossed out several things that just made me scratch my head. Guardsponies were no longer given medals for rescuing cats from trees because it had been a ‘slow century’ when it came to military action. Idiot officials who brought stuff to court that was a waste of time, like the Duke of Hollow Shades that wanted to know if it was okay to sell their swamp-water taffy in Appleloosa, got thrown out on their butts.

After Luna complained about the whole thing to me, Twilight and I helped her set up a messaging system like the one I used in Ponyville to sort through all the stupid requests. By the end of next week, changelings will start delivering audience requests to Luna that she can have time to prepare for, deny, or solve with a simple command that she can give remotely.

The changelings couldn’t be more happy about this since it meant we basically controlled the information network in Equestria and…well…that was pretty much tantamount to taking everything over if we decided to start feeding everyone misinformation. Luna also got around to ridding us of Celestia’s old decree about changelings needing to always go around in specific disguises, and now all the love vampires can be seen roaming around Equestrian cities in all their insectoid glory.

As for Celestia…well…

I opened my eyes a few minutes after Celestia awoke from our special time together and wanted for my body to catch up with the activation of my mind. The pony goddess was already gone of course. Thanks to our cloud bed, she could just sink right through it and leave the rest of us undisturbed at will. It also let us take a sleeping position that would have been impossible otherwise, with Celestia sunk down enough in it that the girls and I could cuddle up with each other and still have her encompassing us all.

But even with that added bonus that allowed her to get away without waking the others, Rainbow Dash and Twilight still didn’t get to keep their sleep because…

Look, ever since moving in with us, minus a few moments here and there…or whenever she was working on that stubborn mirror, Tia was freakishly happy. More than I had ever Smelled her before. So much so that she wanted to start every day with a song.

And with this being Equestria, I mean that literally.

So I nudged Rainbow and Twilight when I started to hear the telltale sound of hoof meeting stone, and looked down at us with a smile. “So, are you three awake?”

“No,” I told her.

“Technically…yes,” Twilight replied in a groggy voice.

Rainbow just moaned and pulled the sheets over.

“Well then,” Celestia said as background music from all around me began to assault my ears with a gentle melody.

Come and watch the sunrise
See the beginning of the daaaaaay

Magic enveloped the blanket we were using and yanked it away before Tia wrapped us up in her warm glow.

Get out of bed, you sleepyheads
Stop wasting the day awaaaaaaaay

A second later, she yanked the three of us along for her little trot down the hallway.

We need to do this daily
And if you don’t
Well I won’t actually cryyyy

Then she used her hind hoof to knock on the entrance to her daughter’s apartment.

Come on and watch the sun rise
Hurry up and open your eyes

The only human in Equestria spoke from the other end of the door. “Yeah, yeah, give me a second.”

Unfortunately Sunset’s early response time meant she hadn’t bothered to get decent, and a door open enough to see her head also revealed the fact that the former Equestrian still kept several of her old sleeping habits. Like not wearing pajamas.

“GAH! Sunset! Put some clothes on!”

But before I could scold her properly for giving me very bad thoughts, we were off again to gather up Trixie and Spike.

Come let’s all watch the sun rise
We’ll fly outside around the wall

It can’t be overdue, I’m telling you
Pony society would faaaaaaall

With that you see
My responsibility
The most important thing to dooooo

We all made it outside onto the balcony that faced west, and just waited for Tia to do her thing.

So come and watch the sun rise

ZZZZZzzzzzzz”

We all looked over to the slumbering pegasus simply floating there in Celestia‘s magic.

While Twilight got annoyed and I rolled my eyes along with the rest of our entourage, Tia gave a good natured smiled and tickled Rainbow’s nose with her wing to wake the blue pony up as the moon started to go down and Tia’s horn li up to bring the first light of dawn over the horizon.

Hurry up and open your eyes.

With the morning musical number over, we all did what had become routine since Tia and everyone else had moved into the castle. The group said a quick morning to each other before they started to get ready for the day.

“A bit lovelier than the last one,” the blue unicorn commented before she turned and started to trot away from the rest of us. “Now, Trixie is off to take her morning bath.”

Twilight’s head twisted around to glare at the departing pony. “Oh no you don’t Trixie! There are other ponies in this castle that actually have to go into town today, and we don’t have time to wait for that. Not to mention you use up a whole rain cloud when you do. If you need to get cleaned up, take a shower!”

Trixie let out an overdramatic gasp that would have been worthy of Rarity. “A rain cloud shower? Those are cold! The Great and Powerful Trixie can only cleanse herself with a properly heated source of water!”

“Then stay at the Ponyville inn!” Twilight yelled at her as they continued to get further away.

“Trixie wouldn’t dream of hurting her dear friend Sunset Shimmer’s feelings with such an act!” the unicorn cried out.

“Mooch!” Twilight accused.

“Princess of Stinginess!” Trixie shot back.

As the two of them went out of hearing range, I turned back to the group as everyone else finished contemplating their morning plans.

“Well, time to make breakfast,” the dragon mumbled before he started to head back inside.

Rainbow let out a loud yawn and stretched. “Sounds to me like I got time for a quick nap.”

Behind the pegasus, Celestia lit her horn and forced the Dash to stay in place with a magical aura that surrounded her. “Oh no Rainbow. You need to get ready for work,” she told our girlfriend gently. “Come to the kitchens. We’ll get some coffee in you and you can help with the meal.”

After hearing Tia’s plan, Rainbow gave her thoughts on the whole thing by letting out a long groan. To which the goddess just giggled at as she set the pegasus on her back and released her from the telekinetic grip. “Now Darling, isn’t it the father’s duty to make sure her son is doing everything correctly?”

“Ugh. Fine,” she relented before lazily stretching out on Celestia’s back. “But don’t ask me to cook anything. Spike’s way better at that stuff anyway.”

On her way back in, Celestia paused to look at me. “Omnifarious would you go and check on Sunset, she never made it out of her room.”

I blinked, and looked around to see that she was right. Only ponies and a few changelings that I used to patrol the halls had been present to watch Celestia’s musical number. The human hadn’t shown up. “Sure thing Tia.”

After waiting for the alicorn to head out, I motioned for my changelings to get back to work and trotted inside. Taking my time to walk through the hallways and admire them, I had to admit that the castle had become a lot more decorative once Tia had moved back in with all her old stuff.

Which was a lot. I had apparently been wrong about her just up and abandoning the castle after Luna was banished. The ancient alicorn had stored tons and tons of crap in her dimensional closet. Admittedly, it was all sentimental stuff like pictures, vases, and other decorating things, but most of the magical junk stored in the castle had been hidden behind traps so…maybe she had thought it was safe?

After retracing my steps back through the castle, I reached up and knocked on Sunset’s dark blue doors. The rooms had apparently been Luna’s old place back when she had lived here, and since Celestia talked the three of us into retaking the sun room, Sunset got the one for night.

When no one answered, I tried again and added a verbal element to my attempt in gaining permission for entrance. “Hey Sunset, you decent? It’s time for breakfast.”

The lack of a response continued, and I found myself with a bit of a problem. I had been a teenager once upon a time. While Sunset wasn’t really in her teens, I couldn’t help but think of her that way. And a teenager’s room was sacred ground.

So, mustering up all the courage that allowed me to stare down monsters and challenge armies, I…very carefully cracked opened the large double doors to look around. I wasn’t trespassing, I was just looking. “Sunset, are you in here?”

Another lack of a response said it was safe to come in and look around. So, that’s what I did. Like me and the girls, Sunset had moved across the castle at Celestia’s urging. While both of our old bedrooms had been just about that, bedrooms with a little closet and a bathroom, Sunset’s new accommodations were an apartment unto themselves inside the castle. She had four rooms all to herself: the sitting room, the bedroom, bathroom, and a spare room Celestia had said was supposed to be an office, but Sunset had turned it more into a nerdvana with chalkboards full of math.

“Sunset?” I called out. “Did you go back to sleep?” If Rainbow could do it, why not her?

And then, Sunset appeared!

Or rather, she walked in from the bathroom with a toothbrush still in her mouth. But, the result was the same. Sunset had shown up…dressed in some extremely short shorts that landed someplace between clothes and underwear, and…that was kind of it.

In other words, she still didn’t have a shirt on.

Or a bra.

And…okay, it had been awhile since I had seen human nudity. But by my estimation, Sunset was a very healthy young adult female homo sapien with a body that was ready to bear children and nurture them with the grapefruit-sized mounds on her chest. All in all, not something I should be looking at. If not for the age thing.

“Sunset!” I shrieked before I spun around and looked at the very interesting carpet depicting a red and yellow yin-yang-ish sun on the floor that Celestia had made for her daughter. I think the red in it matched the color of my cheeks. “Clothes! What’d I say about clothes?”

The human groaned, and I heard her spit into the bathroom sink a few seconds later. “Okay Dad, geeze,” the human said before she marched back through her room. “Excuse me for being as naked as every other thing in this fucking world inside my own room.”

At that point, the world shifted, the air became thick, darkness flooded in and I had to fight to keep my footing. Thankfully, my disguise was part pegasus, and I was able to fan my face a little bit to get some air. Then I blinked several times to clear my vision. And looked up when Sunset came back into the room with a hot pink tank top on.

Despite the fact that it was Fall, the weather was apparently still warm enough for Sunset to go running around in skimpy clothing. Having a permanent coat kind of made it hard for me to judge these things anymore.

Sunset was talking, but that wasn’t what really held my attention at the moment. “Sunset…w-what did you just say?”

She held up the straps of her skimpy outfit. “I asked if this was okay Mr Fashion Pol-uh, are you okay?” she asked as her snark was replaced by concern when she looked at me.

I quickly shook my head, and she was crouching down over me in an instant. “No no, that’s not,” I flinched away from her hand as it came near my head. “Sunset!” After concern turned to confusion and the human stopped moving, I was able to gather my thoughts. “I meant, before you went to put your top on.”

Sunset’s eyes became half-lidded with annoyance. “Well you are telling me how to dress in my own room on a planet where barely anything wear cloths. So excuse me for being a little indignant,” she grumbled at me.

“Not that!” I told her. “The other thing!”

“What other thing?”

I opened my mouth to explain to her and…stopped. Maybe I had just misheard and it was all just in my head. I mean, Sunset had been living with me for a few weeks, and as the only human in Equestria, I did kind of have a special connection with her. She was the only person I could talk television with…even if she did get all the names wrong thanks to Earthquestria being the fucked up land of pony-named humans. Not to mention how protective I was of her.

So, oddity explained away, I just let out a sigh and shook my head. “It’s nothing. I probably just misheard something.”

“Okay Dad.”

And there it was again. This time it appeared so quickly and without warning I let out a shriek and had to put a hoof behind me to stay upright. And yes, I admitted to shrieking. I was a guy in the body of a girl pony princess that had sex. If I wasn’t secure in my masculinity, I wouldn’t have been able to stay sane.

Or return to my sanity after my…relationship issues.

So, propped up as I was with one hoof, I was able to point an accusation with the other. “There! That! You did it again!”

Sunset frowned, but not in anger. She just looked at me like I was a difficult math problem or something. “Did what?”

I didn’t know if she was getting off on baiting me, but…I took it anyway. After I calmed down and maybe got just the tiniest bit fearful. “You…called me your dad.” Hell, if I really wasn’t just imagining it…

“Well…yeah,” Sunset replied before she studied me for a moment and got a little hesitant herself. “Um, you’re dating my mom, and Luna talked to me at the party on Thursday about some stuff. There’s no way Mom’s gonna break up what you guys have, and um…is that…okay? If I call you…that, I mean.”

All of a sudden my heart was hammering in my chest again. “You…do you want me to be your father?” I asked in my all too female voice. Sure it was a little deeper than what the rest of the girls had, but that just made it sound…sexy. Even in pony.

I ignored the oddity in favor of what was really important.

Sunset blushed just a little bit, and looked away from me. “Look, uh…I never really knew my parents and um… Celestia, she told me a few days ago that she probably never would have admitted how she feels about me to herself without you laying into her. And ever since I met you, all you’ve ever done is help me, and…you actually asked me for permission to go on a date with Mom, and…well…

“Look, I never really had a dad, but…well…” she let out a sigh. “Everything I know says it would be somebody like you.”

That weird ‘world is moving’ feeling came back, and it became a little hard for my one hoof to hold me up. “…oh,” I said between breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths we good. Oxygen was nice. Oxygen was life.

“Ah…that’s a no, then?” Sunset asked with a voice that kind of sounded…crushed.

“What?” I looked up at her with wide eyes and quickly rebalanced on my haunches to hold up both hooves in a stopping motion. “No no, no! That’s not…I…” I took a deep breath to calm down, and looked at Sunset in the eyes. “Sunset, the fact you consider me anywhere near…that, for you…I don’t know what to say.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Really that big a deal for you, huh?”

I gulped, and nodded. “Yeah,” I replied before licking my lips. Mostly because they were too dry. Not for…nervous reasons. “Yeah it is.”

“Why?” she asked with a frown.

The question made me pause and look down at the rug in front of me so I could think a little bit clearer. Just why was this whole ‘dad’ thing hitting me so hard? It wasn’t like Sunset was my long lost child or anything. And hell, I was already more or less taking care of her. The only thing that would change would be the fact that she called me Dad instead of ‘hey you’ ‘bug’ or the new one that had been invented thanks to my coronation. You know, ‘Princess’.

“I guess it’s because…” I said why trying to think of a reason. “It means I’ve got a real hard act to follow.”

Sunset let out a snort. “Yeah well, Celestia’s racked up some pretty big numbers in my screw up column according to her, so it’s not that hard to beat her parenting score.”

I gulped and shook my head at that little comment. When I thought about it, Celestia wasn’t the one I was comparing myself to as far as parenting went. No, when it came to measuring my own abilities to act like a role model for Sunset, I couldn’t help but think of my own father.

Having played the field when it came to subbing at schools in order to get my foot in the door, I had gotten a pretty large sample size of the American family. Unfortunately, a good many of the children I had encountered over the course of my teaching had been left behind by their paternal parent without even the child support to take care of them. Then there were the real scum that had done this with multiple women, multiple times.

Sure, we humans had racists, rapists, murderers, thieves and all that other trash running around in the world…but it took a special kind of sorry excuse for a human being to abandon their own child. The fact that about one out of four children grew up in a single parent household when I left Earth because the father didn’t stick around made me sick to my stomach.

My father was not one of these people. In fact, he was the exact opposite. When he married my mother and she brought in a child from her first marriage, he had apparently told my eldest brother’s father that if the man couldn’t do what he was supposed to do, then he had no business dealing with my eldest brother whatsoever. As I had never met my mother’s first husband or even knew his name, I had a pretty good idea how that all worked out.

But what my father did went beyond simply being there for his kids. He provided me with all the basic amenities of course, encouraged me to try my best in life without forcing me into anything I really didn’t want to do, and made sure I knew there were consequences for breaking the rules when I was too young to see the fallout of my actions when it didn’t affect me personally. And he also knew that being a parent didn’t stop after the children left the nest, or when he fell on hard times in his old age while the rest of us gained success. It was only during his final years, when cancer took him that he allowed us to help support him. I think that was on of the hardest things for him to do though. After all, it was the parent’s duty to support the child, not the other way around, and becoming a burden was even worse.

We never got to be pals, friends or anything like that even after I grew up. He was my father, and I was his son. It was that simple.

Even after everything I had done, I knew I wasn’t anywhere near as strong as my father had been. It was probably one of the reasons I had never wanted kids. My inability to live up to that example of what a father needed to be for his child had ended so many relationships that wanted children for me over the years.

And now I had a girl in front of me, asking if I would be that for her.

The weight that left on my shoulders made everything I had done up until then feel like nothing. Sure, I had more responsibilities with a bunch of other crap, but…it wasn’t nearly as personal as what was sitting in front of me.

What Sunset was asking, I knew it didn’t mean as much to her as it did to me. Not in the same way at least. She wasn’t some little kid asking for a daddy. And by the way she spoke to me, I knew that she had already put me in the position of father.

So I could either run away from it like so many others, half-ass it like I usually did things…or take up the responsibility like I was supposed to. Like I had been shown to do with my own father.

I took a breath, and looked at her in the eyes. “Sunset, you have no idea how honored I am that you would think of me like this,” I told her while doing my best to keep my act together. “And if you want me to be here for you…like that” I got tense but still managed to keep things together. Turning my attention to the floor helped. “Then I accept.”

Looking down as I was, I barely saw her arms come forward before Sunset pulled me into a hug, which I awkwardly returned before draping my neck across her shoulders. Then moved my wings around her body.

Sure, it wasn’t really official or anything. Celestia and I hadn’t even been together all that long in a couple capacity, but…pony relationships didn’t really work the way human ones did. They didn’t sleep together unless they loved each other, they worked through their problems instead of breaking up at the drop of a hat, and accepted responsibility for the lives that they created. So even though we’d only known each other for a couple of months, and been together for a few weeks, it was a pretty safe bet that things would continue on the way they were going now that the bumps had been worked out and the four of us were hitting our stride.

The opening of Sunset’s big double doors and the clopping of hooves on stone made the two of us break our hug to see who had interrupted our little premature-daddy pseudo-daughter moment. The ponies that stuck their heads in killed my anger before it began, and I blinked at my three girlfriends. “Hey girls. What’s going on?”

Rainbow let out a groan and zoomed up to hover over the two of us to give a stern frown. “What the hay are you two doing in here? Breakfast has been ready since forever ago.”

But that description was in Rainbow-time. To us normal people, it was more like ten minutes.

I smirked back at her and disconnected from Sunset. “Just working something out.”

“So, what’s for breakfast?” Sunset asked as she stood up and I became eye-level with her waistline.

“Spike had the changelings make build it yourself breakfast burritos,” Twilight replied as we left the room as a group. We joined up with the others, forming a wall of ponies that started with Twilight and ended with Rainbow on the other end as she flapped her wings to carry her down the hallway.

A few steps into our little journey, Celestia gave me the once over with her eyes, and then turned her attention to Sunset. “So, I take it by the hug that he said yes.”

The girl blushed. “Yeah. I know it’s not on paper or anything, but…”

Considering where I saw this going, I got a little nervous when Rainbow and Twilight started to chime in. “Eh who cares. Not like anything’s really official with me and Spike either.”

I had a bit of a misstep, but recovered before anyone noticed.

Twilight giggled, and then got into the air to look at the human next to her eye to eye with a smile I would have called devious on anything else. “Of course you know when we do become a herd…you’ll have to start calling me Mom too.”

This time, it was Sunset’s turn to nearly stumble. When she didn’t fall, the human frowned and stuck her finger under Twilight’s chin. “I don’t care how much freaky temporal crap screwed up my timeline. I’m still older than you. So no parental title.”

As Twilight continued to smirk at her and Sunset gave the alicorn a glare that held little heat, Rainbow looked down at me in confusion. “But you call Fairy dad and...aren’t you only like…going on half a year old now?”

With Rainbow basically calling my three girls pedofils...I quickly chose to ignore the question and pretend it never happened.

I still hadn’t managed to adjust to that new giant weight on my back that read ‘PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY’ by the time we got to the dinning room. But as no one seemed to notice my struggling with something that even Atlas would have been crushed under, I suffered in silence as everyone took their seats.

Breakfast was the usual mess of chomping, gulping, talking and other stuff that occurred at a small table with a large family, plus guests. Zecora said something nonsensical as she joined us. As the words doom, death, lawyer, or supercalafragalisticexpialadoshus, did appear I didn’t bother to try and make sense of it and just nodded my head in greeting.

Trixie came in later with only slightly damp hair and took a sat across from Sunset. A week of seeing Celestia all morning and afternoon probably helped her deal with the goddess sitting on the other side of the human better than me. It might have also helped that the last time Trixie met with Sunny Skies, the ‘special aide’ went on and on about how wonderful Celestia was on a personal level, and preferred to be treated like every other pony in private.

I think it also helped that she had completely shed all her royal regalia and was just as naked as everyone else.

Dash and Twilight ate with their usual amount of manners. Sure, Rainbow was going overboard when she had been in the hospital, but when the pegasus was being sincere…it was kind of hard to tell which one of them was worse. Although…I’ll admit that I had been pretty bad during my stint as a pegasus too.

With nothing to really eat, I signaled for one of my changelings to bring me the morning paper and set it down in front of me. Thanks to Tia’s wakeup calls, I never really had time to review info in the hive mind anymore beyond a basic sense of how the changelings were doing.

Which was great by the way. Aside from that whole lack of a new generation thing. But we had really started mitigating our losses from Everfree attacks by mind-slaving manticores and other stupid beats to do all the fighting.

As for the newspaper…

Although it had only been a couple of days since it got off the ground, my newest little venture was working out well enough in Ponyville. It would take time to expand beyond that though, and maybe a few adaptations. Since the info on events was just taken from other newspapers, I doubted any ponies wanted to read rehashed stories.

Sunset looked over my shoulder and I waited with a moody frown while she finished reading whatever it was that caught her attention. “So…I got a question.”

I sighed and looked over to Sunset. “No, I’m not turning the page.” Not that I could blame her for being curious. The front page story was announcing that Luna had finally decided on a punishment for Blueblood and his cronies after a week of deliberation, and would be gathering several of the dukes from around Equestria before the sentencing phase was carried out for all to see. “If you want to read what’s going you can at least wait until I’m done, or get your own paper.”

“I’m just wondering…why that for the title of the paper?”

I looked down at the printed ink at the top of the page done up in the flowing script that was the main language of Equestria. I could have gone with the logical reply about how there would be an issue for ever day of the week, told her it was just based on a fan project back home, or just made something up, but…I decided to stick with a more pony believable response.

“Well, for a big bunch of information about all things pony…it’s traditional,” I said before opening my copy of Equestria Daily and seeing what was going on in Manehattan.

After everyone had all gotten halfway through our meals, Trixie cleared her throat and jumped off the chair she was sitting on. We had lower tables to eat at, but necessity made us change after Celestia moved in. Sunset also liked the fact she didn’t have to park her butt on the floor like the rest of us. Now the only one whose ass got cold was the pony with enough padding to insulate it.

“Trixie would like to make an announcement,” she…well…announced. Everyone stopped shoving food in their mouths for a moment to look at her and waited for the show mare to continue. “She is going to be leaving Ponyville after lunch to continue on her journey to find fame and fortune.”

Celestia actually slumped down a little bit. “Oh…well, I’ll be sad to see you go Trixie. But, I do wish you the best in your endeavors.” Her Scent matched her words and, I could understand Celestia’s hesitation. As the girls had gone back to Canterlot for their DADA class, Trixie and Celestia (as Sunny Skies) had spent a good six hours in a scenario that involved trying to get out of an impossible maze with the others. Although they had lost to a different team, it had allowed for plenty of bonding time. “If you want, I could put in a good word for you to the owners of Carneighie Hall. They’re always on the lookout for good shows.”

The unicorn looked up at the goddess for a few moments with wide eyes, and then…put on her usual smirk and turned up her nose as she let out a laugh. “Ha! As if the Great and Powerful Trixie would accept such a hoofout from anypony,” she said.

Down the table from me, Twilight snorted. “Yeah, you just take our food, a room, materials to reconstruct your cart twice, my shower, and let’s not forget how many changelings you got my stallion to have wait on your horn and hoof,” she said before showing the jab to be all in good fun with a smirk of her own. “But a job offer? Celestia forbid!”

The alicorn next to Twilight put on a perplexed frown. “No I don’t.”

Trixie coughed into her hoof. “Yes well…let us not forget that Trixie would have been gone days ago if you and your friends had not convinced her to try and show those fillies how to perform on stage,” Trixie said before she rubbed her chin. “Trixie still does not know how they managed to make every single firework in that display turn around and strike her wagon.”

As talk of Trixie’s departure turned to other things, I had to admit…I was a little sad to see the light blue unicorn go. Like the others, I had learned to take her boasting with the same level of amused incredulity that Twilight now did with Rainbow’s. Except I didn’t put on that little smile like Twilight did that pretty much said ‘that’s the girl I have sex with’ and just settled for a normal smirk.

Plus, Trixie had learned to get along with the rest of the girls well enough in her own way. Twilight and Trixie may have argued about everything under the sun that they could, but I could tell it was more out of habit than anything else. Being a changeling let me do stuff like that. She actually sucked up to Rainbow a little bit, as my pegasus’s best trick would literally attract ponies from miles around to come to a show. Rarity and the unicorn had managed to bond over discussions of showmanship, while free food and Pinkie being Pinkie cemented Trixie’s friendship with the earth pony. The only sort-of holdout was Applejack, who simply considered her another Rainbow Dash with a horn that didn’t participate in physical contests to bond over. But she still liked the unicorn well enough. Fluttershy was probably closest to her among the Mane 6 though, mainly because of the fact Trixie was Rainbow Dash with a horn and didn’t try to get Fluttershy off the ground as much as the pegasus did. That, and Trixie expressed plenty of interest in animals like Sunset did. Even went to feed them every morning with the human and talked a little about using some of them in her act.

Then there was Sunset…who Trixie was actually nervous around despite all the time they had spent together. Seriously, the human and unicorn had spent more time together than all the other girls had with Trixie combined. Sunset helped Trixie with her act using several illusions Equestrians had never even tried, and taught her things about magic despite the handicap she possessed.

As for me. I liked her because she was good with kids. Not just Snips and Snails either. The show mare had managed to save me from the dreaded CMC babysitting detail twice during her week in Ponyville. It was something she would have my eternal gratitude for.

“So, what does everypony have planned for today?” Celestia asked as breakfast began to wind down and she looked around expectantly.

I hated to even think it but…Tia seemed to be getting housewife syndrome. You know, that disease that working women get when they have to quit their jobs to take care of a baby or something? The one that drives them crazy unless they fill at last 70% of the day with some kind of activity?

That one.

Sure, she was working on how to reopen the portal and fix Sunset with a quick hop, skip and a jump back to Equestria as a unicorn. But as her efforts so far had hit a wall, rather than scream at the mirror loud enough to shatter glass or chunk it off of the highest tower in sheer frustration, Celestia took a break every now and then to get her mind off the main problem and let her subconscious deal with it by focusing on something else.

At first Pinkie Pie had brought her to Sugar Cube Corner to help with the lunchtime rush. But every pony that came in just stood there with their mouths open while Celestia waited behind the cash register for their orders. It had been the most unprofitable lunchtime rush in the history of ever.

So, since the goddess being a part-timer didn’t work out, she mostly stuck to working in private. That meant she either bucked apples in AJ’s orchard, organized the books in the library, catalogued the magic vault under the castle, or volunteered her healing magic at the hospital.

But despite this, she was still hungry to hear everyone’s plans for the day.

I sighed, and went first. “Well, barring a monster attack or friendship problem that takes more than half an hour to fix, I’ll be holding court until lunch, and then I’ve got a meeting with the Ponyville Business Council,” I grumbled. If Ponyville was going to become a long-term town instead of a place where they just met to hook up, we needed to increase employment opportunities. Which probably meant having to okay Filthy Rich’s mining operation.

“I’ll be looking over those books Cadence found for me at the Crystal Empire concerning crystal magic and crystal constructs at the library until it closes. Then it’s back to the mirror for me,” Twilight told everyone at the table.

Celestia let out a very mortal moan, and slumped on the table. “Please don’t remind me about that stupid thing so early in the morning. I’ve done almost nothing but examine it for a week now, and I can’t figure it out at all.”

A hand touched Celestia on the shoulder, and then moved to massage her between the wing joints. “It’s okay Mom.”

The human’s words got a groan from Celestia, and she sat up to look down at Sunset. “No it’s not! I’m the greatest enchanter in all of Equestria! I rebuilt Starswirl’s first mirror from the million shards it was it, and even forced it open when he tried to seal it away from me! I’ve been working on that bucking thing for a week, and all I can tell you is that it’s magical! Every other bit of Spellcraft I use on it just fizzles out, like it just stops existing halfway through completion of the spell!”

I shared Celestia’s annoyance at the mirror problem, but I’ll admit that having to listen to her complain about it was getting on my nerves. As the goddess’s night partner, I wasn’t just wet dream fuel. I also listened to her problems and did my best to make things better for her, or at least take Tia’s mind off things for a time. And part of that meant listening to her bitch.

And moan.

And gripe.

And about a million other things that girls did with guys when they needed to get something off their chest.

“Same old same old for me,” Sunset spoke up as she continued to pet Celestia on the back. Sure, it looked like she was giving her mom a light massage, but…I knew what the crafty monkey was really up to. “By the way Twilight, there’s some designs I want you to take a look at when you come home today.”

The alicorn looked over to Sunset with a little frown. “Designs for what?”

“Dual enchanted necklace,” Sunset explained as Celestia let out a pleasurable moan and slumped forward towards the table a little. “I think everything balanced, but I need someone to double check my math before I hire a pony to cast the spells for me.”

Sunset’s words dispelled whatever enchantment that she had put Celestia under in a flash, and the alicorn raised her head up to look over to her daughter with a frown. “Excuse me?”

“What?” Sunset asked, looking over to Celestia in confusion.

“I just said I was the greatest enchanter in all of Equestria, and you’re going on about Twilight helping you with math before you hire somepony to do an enchanting job,” the goddess deadpanned. Then, she let out a sigh and looked away from the human. “Although, I suppose my time would be better spent working on your solution, if you need help with a project I’d be more than happy to lend a hoof. But you know I’m always here for you, right my little sunshine?”

Sunset blushed as Tia leaned over to nuzzle her, although whether it was from what Celestia said or just the attention she was giving the girl, I wasn’t sure. The alicorn had turned into quite the doting mother since she and Sunset ended up living together. “Y-Yeah Mom. If you want to help, that’s okay too.”

Everyone at the table either found something else to look at, or smiled at the little showing of affection. I also decided to rescue my pseudo-daughter from her predicament by getting the conversation moving a bit more. So I turned to Rainbow Dash. “What about you Rainbow? Got any plans?”

The pegasus groaned and slumped in her seat just a bit. “No. We’ve got to set up a big rain storm for later tonight.”

I looked over to Rainbow. “I thought weather was part of your special talent.” Weren’t all ponies supposed to love what they did for a living? At least when it was related to their special talent, I mean.

“Yeah, but building storms is so slow and I can’t really get a good workout,” she grumbled before crossing her forelegs. “How am I supposed to keep in shape and beat the beat the bucking Wonderbolts if I get flabby over the next couple of months?”

Twilight crewed through and swallowed the last bit of her food before looking over to Rainbow. “I could look into creating you an exercise routine that fits your work schedule if you want,” she said before smirking. “Of course, that means you won’t be able to nap half the day away if you want to stick with it.”

After hearing the possibility of losing her naps, Rainbow tensed and sighed. “Well if I gotta make sacrifices for the gold, so be it.”

I rolled my eyes at the situation. “You know, giving up going to sleep in the middle of the day isn’t that big a sacrifice.”

“Huh,” Twilight said as she blinked and looked over to me. “I thought you’d be more upset.”

The oddity of Twilight’s statement hit me like a bus. And trust me, I know what getting hit with a bus feels like. It completely discombobulates you and makes you wonder what the fuck’s going on. No thinking about stuff, no working things out in your head. You just go, “huh?” and know something bad just happened.

A large slurping sound announced the end to Zecora’s tea, and she stood up. “And with that I know, it is time for the guests to go.”

“Eh?” Trixie replied as the zebra gave her a pointed look, and motioned to the door with her head. “What?”

Meanwhile, my purple alicorn blinked at my question. “You know, no naps means no pre-nap activities that made the naps actually necessary in the first place, right? At least with Rainbow anyway.”

And then I came to a realization. A terrible, horrible realization. A realization that shook my world and made me become full of fear. “Y-You mean, no more…” I took notice Trixie was still in the room. “Uh, lunches with Rainbow?”

“YOU MEAN NO MORE AFTERNOON SEX?” the pegasus cried out in horror a few seconds after I spoke my thoughts.

Across the table from us, Trixie let out a sound of revelation. “Ah, private family discussion stuff. Trixie understands now.”

“But I like my afternoon quickies!” Rainbow went on as she looked around in a panic reminiscent of when Applejack told her they had to halt cider production in order to use the last harvest to build up some Winter food stores. “Quick, Celestia! We can still do it during my lunch break though, right?”

The alicorn gave Rainbow a reassuring smile. “I would be happy to see all of my ponies if you’re having that kind of itch.”

As the unicorn departed, Sunset groaned and leaned forward to collapse onto the table. “Great. Giving me mental images that make me want to throw up just after I got breakfast. Thanks Mom.”

Celestia rolled her eyes. “You’ve been living among those prudish humans for too long dear.”

After breakfast, we continued on with what had become the usual in the royal household. While Sunset set off for Fluttershy’s cottage with Trixie following along, the rest of us went to go get cleaned up for the day.

Thanks to the rotating schedule that Twilight had made, Rainbow and Tia got the bathroom to themselves while the pegasus washed, brushed, and preened for the day with the alicorn’s help. Thanks to it being Tia’s old rooms that we were using, the modification to bring everything up to date hadn’t also needed a size expansion to fit her, but that didn’t mean we hadn’t cannibalized the old rain clouds to use in our newer showers.

So while Tia and Rainbow were having fun in the shower, I was sitting on the bed with Twilight. The purple alicorn laid down on her stomach while a bush held aloft by purple magic ran through her hair, and I carefully examined her out folded wings for any feathers that were out of alignment or in need of pulling. Although I hadn’t known jack about preening up until a week ago, several changelings reading ten books on the subject and then dumping the knowledge in my head had helped me get a handle on it.

Of course with the two of us being in bed together, I couldn’t help but plant a few kisses on the alicorn’s back as I moved my eyes back and forth from wing to wing.

After my fifth round of spine tingling pecks, Twilight let out a weird sigh that didn’t sound all that content, and looked back at me with annoyed expression . Which was weird, because I could Smell the lust on her. “We’re supposed to be getting ready for work.”

“Oh, when do things ever go like they’re supposed around here?” I asked as I moved down towards the start of Twilight’s tail and showered that area with kisses.

I could just about feel Twilight’s glare on me, so I didn’t look up and meet her eye to eye as she started talking. “Plenty of times! In fact, the majority of the time, things go exactly as I plan them to go. It’s just everypony thinks things go wrong around here so much because when they do its always a huge disaster, and the abnormal is always more memorable than the expected! But six days out of seven, Ponyville is as normal as any other place in Equestria.”

As Twilight finished her rant, I had to check that our bed hadn’t magically turned into a soapbox. I also refrained from snarking on the normality of a planet full of magical talking horses that covered all the colors of the rainbow and then some. Instead, I put on my super serious face to make sure Twilight understood the weight of my incoming words and looked her in the eyes.

“Okay, roll over, now.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Why? You know we can’t have sex this late in the morning and still get cleaned up in time. Even if I used magic to get off all the stickiness, the smell would still be there.”

I held my super serious face and even tone as I talked to Twilight. “Because I love you and want to continue with the body worship. But with me being down here, it’s going to mean I start kissing your plot. Now roll over so I can suck your teats.”

“Oh sweet Celestia,” she mumbled before readjusting to do just that. “Why you like to do this so much, I’ll never understand.”

A kiss to Twilight’s pony-nipples didn’t get any reaction whatsoever from her, and I looked up from between her legs with a smile. “Well my goddess, I’m afraid you’d just have to spend some time with my hairless monkey species to really understand,” I told her before moving to kiss a few more of spaces of bare skin between Twilight’s legs, taking my time to remove my mouth after contact this time around.

Although I had gotten used to the feeling of my lips on ponies not too long after I started dating Twilight, my many nights with Celestia might have spoiled me a bit. I missed touching my lips to something without a coat of hair surrounding her.

Twilight fidgeted. “You shouldn’t do that.”

I detached myself from Twilight’s dark purple skin with an audible smack. “What? They’re just hickeys. I give them to Rainbow all the time.” I think she actually showed them off at work or something…which was kind of weird considering it was pretty much the same as a girl pulling up her shirt at the office when pony anatomy was taken into account.

The Scent I was getting from Twilight changed to one of embarrassment, and she looked away. “No, I mean you shouldn’t talk about me like that. Celestia’s the only one of us who has a religious following. I may be an alicorn, but I’m not…well…her.”

My brain latched onto the middle of Twilight’s little reveal, and refused to let go. “Wait, timeout…religion?” I asked before crawling up into Twilight until we were face to face. “You. Explain. Now.”

Okay, I had heard ponies use her name like, well we people used God, Allah, Buda and Satan…admittedly the last one wasn’t as popular as the first three but…anyway… I knew for sure there was no Church of Celestia of any sort, anywhere in Equestria. It had been one of the first things I had looked into when I got to Pony Land.

Twilight got an uneasy look in her eyes, and moved around just slightly so she was obviously starting at the wall behind me. “Well, I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it. Celestia had the majority of all that stuff shut down after Luna became Nightmare Moon, but there’s still a few…sects around if somepony knows where to look.”

I…laughed. I couldn’t help it. The way Twilight just mentioned the existence of Tia’s little sun cult just made me burst out in guffaws before I flapped my wings to get away before she could bop me was just…so telling. “Oh…Holy Celestia! You were a sun worshipper?”

And dear God, the images that little phrase brought to mind…

Yeah, I couldn’t help but laugh at the porno imagery that filled my head… And maybe get a little turned on by it too.

“No!” Twilight flushed. “I-I just went to a few of their meetings to try and figure out why they insist on being a religion when their deity tells them that she’s not some all-knowing divine being!”

Although I had managed to calm down a bit after images of Twilight sticking her head between Tia’s cheeks while she shouted ‘praise the sun!’ cleared from my head, I had to snicker at her extremely filament protest of not worshiping Celestia when she was younger. “Okay…and what is their reason for being in a religion that their goddess doesn’t want to exist?”

Twilight rolled her eyes to give her opinion of the situation before she even started speaking. “They say it’s a time of tribulation and Princess Celestia is just testing them and their faithfulness.”

All in all, it wasn’t the most crazy of religious reasonings that I had heard over the years. Although I’ll admit, if the deity I acknowledged as existing ever showed up and told me to cut it out, I would be at a loss of what to do since I hadn’t actually participated in the institutionalized religion part of my religion for over fifteen years.

“Well that doesn’t sound too bad,” I admitted. Plus, ponies that were bowing to Celestia as their Lady and Savior couldn’t have been all that out of touch with reality.

Twilight snorted. “Yeah, tell that to the ponies that wanted me to wander around in the hot summer sun until I got heat stroke to await a vision from our goddess if I wanted to keep coming to the meetings,” she grumbled. “Honestly, I think High Priest Sunburn was just tired of me taking so many of the cookies during the gatherings when they met in his mother’s basement every Sunday.”

Huh…so much for a secret religious order sworn to Celestia that protects Equestria from the shadows, I thought to myself.

“Oh and Omnifarious?” Twilight spoke up, drawing my attention. She gave me a little blush, and looked away from my eyes while still keeping me in her field of vision. “Can you go back to uh…worshiping me now? Please?”

I smiled, and took the purple alicorn’s hoof to kiss it. “Of course, my goddess.”

This time, Twilight just blushed.

“You two sure you didn’t do anything?” Rainbow asked as she flew around to loom over me and Twilight while we walked on both sides of Celestia with a couple of changelings trailing behind us. We made it to the castle’s main doors before Twilight gave her answer.

“Yes, I’m sure Rainbow. Fae just kissed my body a few times.”

I really didn’t see what the big deal was. In the week since we’d moved to Ponyville, all four of us had some private moments with each other. Twilight and I had finally spent some alone time together for the first time since this whole herding debacle began, me and Tia had flown to Cloudsdale with Rainbow on another date while Twilight and Sunset spent some time working on some magical design thingy the redhead was interested in, and the two alicorns had spent several days together alone in the library. Sure they were supposed to be working on the puzzle box, the mirror, or my female problem, but I could smell the sex on them when they came home each time.

Our conversation was cut short when I walked out the door and looked up into the sky, then sat down to clap my hooves to signal the changeling carrying a tray of muffins to come forward.

About half a minute later, my honored herald, court announcer and personal courier landed in front of me, panting heavily. I paid it little mind and called out the name of the one mare in Ponyville that could fulfill such important tasks before giving her a hug, followed by a kiss on each one of her cheeks. “Derpy!”

“Puh-Princess!” Derpy breathed as I lifted her off the ground and did my best to crush the life out of her adorable little body that was dressed in the most precious dark blue outfit I could have Rarity design that still spoke of authority. The orange barrette on her head was my idea though.

And on the kisses thing, well…I sure as hell wasn’t looking to add pony #5 to the list of women crawling into my bed, but…it was Derpy! Not hugging the gray pegasus was almost a crime! In fact, the only reason it wasn’t was because Twilight and Luna had outvoted me when I tried to make it one last Thursday.

As for what she was doing all dressed up, I had of course followed through with my promise/threat the morning I returned to Ponyville, forcing Derpy into my service through royal decree. Technically, she was part of the Equestrian armed forces because of that, but if a war ever did break out, I’d order her to guard the inside of a bank vault or something. Nothing was ever going to hurt my Derpy.

Until then though, she just stood by me in court and announced whichever pony was next in line, shouted ‘NEXT’ a lot, and repeated by judgments at the top of her lungs. All of which was more than worth the six-figure salary with three months of paid vacation I was giving her.

I put my perfect little pegasus down and ended our morning greeting with the usual offering. “Muffin?” I asked as the changeling took his cue and raised the platter.

“Well…maybe one before…” Derpy paused in mid-step and shook herself out of her muffin lust, which to be quite honest…frightened me. Derpy never turned down muffins. Ever!

“No!” she said to me. “There’s no time!”

I let out a long sigh and gave my gray little mare a smile. The work ethic was nice, but I wasn’t about to be angry with her. “Oh come on Derpy, I know you’re my special aide and all, but there’s always time for muffins. Especially when I’m your boss, I make the schedule, and my fillyfriend over their determines how long the day is going to be. So, take a quick breather, have a snack, and rest for a few seconds.”

Once again, I led my little mare into temptation, and I could see the hunger in her eyes for her most desired of snacks. But then, she just closed her bright eyes and looked away. “No! I can’t! Not when Ponyville’s in danger!”

I…blinked… “Say what?”

“Ponyville’s in danger?” Rainbow repeated from behind me. Judging by how the position of her voice elevated halfway through the question, it sounded like she went back to being airborne.

“What’s going on?” Twilight questioned right on top of her.

Celestia…reminded silent like always when a crisis reared its ugly head.

I waved the muffin changeling away, and looked back to the pegasus. “You’re okay, right Derpy?” I asked carefully.

The pegasus nodded. “Yeah-huh. I came flying over this way right after I got Dinky and Sparkler in the basement. Oh, I hope they’re still alright.”

With that little worry, I had one of my own: Sunset. If something was attacking Ponyville, there was a chance she could be in danger. I had left her with a pair of changelings to help her get around, but they weren’t really there for her protection. If that were the case, I would have sent one of the single digits to look after my newfound child.

“I can assure you they are Ms Derpy,” Celestia’s calm voice cut in. “Now, take a moment to calm down, and tell us everything you know about what’s going on.”

The sight of what was in every way but on paper an official goddess of Equestria did a lot to help Derpy relax. Not that her nerves disappeared completely, but I could Smell it helped a lot. “Okay…well, it started out a morning like any other I guess,” she began.

“I woke up the girls and started making breakfast while Dinky got ready for school and Sparkler got ready for work. But when we went outside, I saw there were these strange cocoons all over town that weren’t there the night before. At first, everypony just thought they were something the changelings made. There must have been over a hundred of them!”

“Uh…Fairy?” Rainbow asked as she flew up over me. “Did doing…well, you make you start making foals or something? Because, you said you couldn’t do that.”

I got a little annoyed at the question. “You mean eggs Dash, not cocoons. Cocoons are made when one type of already moving around animal. If I was going to make bobbies, I’d lay eggs.” Which I wasn’t, ever.

It wasn’t a manly pride thing. It had more to do with the fact the changelings were a sadistic race of monsters that needed to die. Even if I did mature and start making more, they would just be turned evil by the influence of all the others. The only reason I had resisted was because I had knowledge that said ponies weren’t to be used as food.

Twilight stepped forward. “How big were the cocoons?”

Derpy paused to think. “Uh, about as big as a pony.”

When Twilight looked over to me, I might have started to get just the least bit annoyed with the accusation that was coming. “Okay…I know it's not your changelings Fae,” she told me, disproving my assumption. “But…is possible there’s another changeling hive out there?”

“Oh! They’re not changeling cocoons princess!” Derpy explained with a happy face.

“And there is no other hive or anything like that,” I added. “Chrysalis was the only pony changeling ever made, and she made all the others.”

Apparently ignoring m, Twilight looked back to Derpy. “What makes you say that?”

“Because of what was inside,” Derpy answered.

We all shared a look at the non-answer. “Which was?” Rainbow finally prompted when we were done.

“Ponies!” Derpy told us with just a little bit of happiness, or maybe it was just her normal tone. It was kind of hard to tell with her being so fucking adorable I wanted to snatch her up in a hug and never let her go. “Oh, and dragons, and diamond dogs, and a bunch of other things I thought only existed in those stories I read to Dinkie during her bedtime.”

That sounds an awful lot like changeling cocoons, actually. I admitted to myself. Except for the dragons I mean. Those guys didn’t have enough love in their entire race to fill up a matchbox. “Okay so…something carried a bunch of cocoons into Ponyville with a bunch of captured dragons, grabbed some ponies in the night, and…what? Left them alone for other ponies to just let them out?” Call me crazy, but that didn’t seem all that malicious. Certainly not something worth Derpy flying to my castle to report a code red.

“No we didn’t let anything out, they all just started hatching!” Derpy explained.

Once again, I had a hard time seeing just how in the hell this was an emergency. “Oh-kay. Still not seeing why this is so bad then Derpy.”

“Because a lot of them were mean!” she explained with a frown. “I mean, a few of the ponies that popped out were heroes like Daring Do and Lancelot, but there were way more bad ponies like Maleficent, the Maneiac, Dr Doom, Low Key, Bad Horse, and Caballeron!”

I frowned at the list of names that Derpy just dropped as it tingled some old memories of mine. Not just the stuff I got when I became a quadruped either, but the ones before that. And…okay, I had found out long before showing Tia the Game of Thrones show that Equestria had a lot of pony persons of human stories, especially the older ones like Snow White. But from the list that Derpy was rattling off…

Before I could piece together my thought’s Rainbow Dash cut in. “Wait, you’re saying Daring Do brought some sort of freaky artifact to town that made all these storybook characters come to life or something?”

“Uh Rainbow,” Twilight spoke up, her sick stomach showing on her slightly green face. “I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Remember what happened when we last saw Cabalaron?”

My own memory brought me back to that moment at Twilight’s urging. The temple. The flooding room. The piranha. And the little baby pony that was thrown to his death. If I had a working stomach, I probably would have felt sick.

The pegasus flinched. “Oh yeah.”

As the three of us wrestled with the memory of when Equestria turned dark for me. Celestia stepped forward with an intense look in her eyes. “Tell me Ms Derpy, is it simply characters from fictional books that are coming to life, or are the creatures emerging from these pods also historical in nature?”

“Uh…what do you mean Princess?”

If Celestia cared about the slip on Derpy’s part, she didn’t let it show. “Are there any real ponies that have things written about them coming to life as well? Such as...Starswirl the Bearded, for example.”

Twilight let out a gasp. “Oh my gosh! Celestia that’s-”

“Hey, Daring Do is real,” Rainbow Dash spoke up.

“-amazing! I never even considered that! Do you think we’ll be able to meet him? What was he like? Do you think I can get his autograph?”

I would have told Twilight to calm down. But as I had a picture with Rainbow’s hoof print on it stored away in my man cave next to the shit loads of pony figures, my coronation dress, and a bunch of other girly shit really made me wonder how my special room manage to keep its manly title, anything I said would carry the taint of hypocrisy.

“Starswirl is not the pony I was worried about meeting Twilight,” Celestia said as I caught a whiff of her fear bubbling to the surface before she started looking to the sky with a frown.

The smaller alicorn blinked. “Worried? What pony would possibly worry you?”

“That one,” Celestia replied as she motioned her head up.

I turned around, and squinted my eyes at the tiny dot on the horizon. “I don’t see what-”

My complaint about not understand why Tia was so worried about ended when the speck disappeared in a flash of magic, and then reappeared over fifty feet away to come in for a sliding landing so quickly she skidded to a stop, tearing up the courtyard to do so.

In all honesty, the artists of MLP really didn’t do the alicorn I was looking at very much justice.

The full-sized horse in front of us stood equal in stature with Celestia, with a dark blue helmet covering most of her features and matching regalia. Her coat was actually blacker than the night I was used to, and seemed to make the air around her just a little bit darker from its very presence. Her wings were spread wide, and there was definite contrast between her sleek plumage that was obviously designed for speed, and Celestia’s thick layers of feathers that promised warmth and comfort to those she brought under them. Slit eyes that belonged to a predator capable of moving through the darkness as easily as it was daylight frowned at the lot of us, while a horn that looked more like a spiral seashell than the thinning cylinder with indentions Celestia sported topped her head. The final difference was the hair. While Celestia’s aurora spread out like a curtain promising warmth, protection, and safety to all it covered, the black alicorn’s moved around like a wild animal getting ready to pounce on its prey.

“Oh…horse apples,” I squeaked as I looked upon Nightmare Moon in all her glory.

The dark alicorn of a slow and painful freezing death in the coldness of eternal night stepped forward and smiled. Sharp teeth that looked like they belonged in the mouth of a shark rather than a pony shone in her open mouth as she spoke. “Hello sister.”

Chapter 51: The Incredibly Dangerous Danger of Too Many Books

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I had experienced a long of odd things in my life. Since coming to Equestria those things had increased in intensity and raised the bar with what I considered weird. Hell, considering one of my best friends was a talking pink pony that could violate even Equestria’s laws of nature on a regular basis, wierd had pretty much become common for me.

What I was experiencing now was a new…

Well…I wouldn’t call it a new record. But it was certainly something. Not just in evil villain rehash weird, or inexplicable return from the grave weird either. There was something…off about the situation that I couldn’t put my finger on about the scene of Celestia battling Nightmare Moon.

As I watched the two alicorns go at it in a rather dazzling display of close combat aerial acrobatics that involved the two of them swiping at each other with horns, wings and hooves while circling each other just a foot from the ground, I had to admit Tia was pretty impressive. The reason that Celestia was choosing close quarters combat rather than slinging spells around was obvious to anyone who had read the book How to be a Villain. Long-ranged attacks were best used by the bad guys to threaten the local populace and force the hero to surrender. With the two of them locked in a melee, every time Moony’s horn lit up, Celestia would attempt a high stab her with her own pointy object, and Nightmare would need to use her horn to deflect it. This in turn disrupted Moon's attack, and forced them to fight hoof-to-hoof.

That was the one big weakness about magic, even with alicorns. While the horns themselves were nearly unbreakable and could be used in combat to stab and parry, sending mana through them made the things sensitive enough to be used as erogenous zones. So every time Nightmare Moon tried to cast a spell, Celestia did the equivalent of trying to kick her in the crotch. If she were a guy, I mean.

Aside from that, I could see one more reason that Celestia wanted to beat the shit out of Nightmare Moon with her own two hooves...

“You are not my sister! My sister is loved! My sister is respected! My sister is needed! MY SISTER IS HAPPY, AND SHE WANTS NOTHING MORE TO DO. WITH. YOU!” the Alicorn of the Sun screeched as she attempted to smash the other alicorn’s head in.

...Celestia was pissed.

Meanwhile on the sidelines, the rest of us just stood there behind a purple wall of energy in case Nightmare Moon did manage to get away and take a potshot. Unlike the last time she was watching a battle with one of her heroes, Twilight absolutely reeked of worry. Rainbow’s wings twitched irritably, and she kept moving her eyes back and forth between the fight and Twilight. I…considering my options.

Although I had spent quite a lot of time learning how to blow shit up with my magic and been in plenty of fights, precision targeting had never made it into my list of skills. I was more of a fire indiscriminately kind of guy.

“Twilight!” Rainbow complained. “Let us out so we can do something!”

Hesitation entered the purple alicorn’s face, and she glanced back at Rainbow for a few moments before turning her attention back to Celestia. “No. Celestia’s here, she can handle this. We’d probably just…get in the way.”

I hid my cringe at Twilight latest incarnation of Celestial worship. Although the way she crumbled at suggestions from the goddess (and despite what Tia or Twi said, anything that moved a fucking sun WAS a goddess in my book) and want Celestia’s attention more than me or Rainbow’s was more than understandable as well as forgivable considering my own tendency to favor Dash on a few things, the inactivity of the purple alicorn because Celestia was having trouble with NM2 actually got to me.

But with Tia doing the dance of death with…whatever the black alicorn that looked like Evil Luna was, I really didn’t have time to argue with my little purple alicorn. Plus, while I didn’t really agree with Twilight’s holding action when it came to myself, I wasn’t about to let her drop her force field with the ditzy gray mare taking cover behind my muffin delivery changeling that had orders to serve as Derpy’s body shield or Rainbow Dash, should either pegasus require it.

However, jumping into the fight myself wasn’t my only option thanks to the several hundred changeling currently inhabiting my castle. Several of which were undoubtedly watching from the sidelines. Thanks to standing orders and the average intelligence of my minions being equal to that of those…well, Despicable Me minions, none of them would attack a pony unless the little horse tried to enter the magical item vault.

Not unless I told them to anyway.

So I pointed my hoof at the two battling alicorns and shouted. “MINIONS! GET THE BLACK ONE!”

Either my words actually brought a temporary end to the duel as both alicorns touched down, or they got tired of trying to beat each other to death after the minute of melee. Whichever it was, both Tia and Moony stopped fighting to land and the black one looked at the three approaching bugs before her horn lit up.

The blast she managed to fire scattered the changelings without hitting any of them. But in the intern, Celestia’s magic also became charged, and she unleashed her own magical attack. A shield went up around Nightmare Moon…and Tia’s magic tore right through it in short order to knock the other alicorn on her ass. And she didn’t let up, even with her opponent down.

“Put pressure on her horn so she can’t cast!” Tia ordered before looking over at my group. “Twilight, bind her legs. I’ll hold her wings down.”

A second later, the black pony struggled in glowing purple chains that Twilight had conjured to wrap around her forelegs and back ones, my trio of changelings actually chomped down on Nightmare Moon’s horn, and Celestia stood over the downed monster with all her weight pressed down on the doppelganger’s outstretched wings.

“Well, I guess that proves you aren’t really Luna,” the goddess told the imposter evenly.

As the alicorn continued to struggle, Rainbow flew over to shove her hoof in pseudo-Moon’s face. “Yeah, take that phony!” she taunted before looking over to the white alicorn. “But uh…how does you spanking your not-sister over there prove she’s a fake?”

The second Celestia took her eyes off Nightmare Moon, her hard expression turned to a smile. “That’s easily explained my darling Rainbow. As you’ve no doubt noticed, I am far above Twilight Sparkle in raw power, despite us both being alicorns. Why do you think that is?”

“Uh…cause you’re old?” Rainbow answered, and asked.

Both me and Twilight groaned. Celestia giggled. “I preferred the term experienced. But no. It is because my special talent gives me a connection with the sun through the magic of harmony that I am able to draw on an outside source of power to increase my magic’s potency,” she said before turning her attention back to the struggling Nightmare Moon. “This…thing’s magic crumbled like a cheap wall. And with the sun’s power flowing through my limbs, I can easily restrain its wings.”

With Rainbow’s question done with, I walked up with one of my own. “So…what is it then?” Considering Celestia’s experience, it was a pretty safe bet my big fat pony goddess had seen something like this.

“Let’s find out together, shall we?” she replied as Fake Moon stopped struggling. Fully subdued, Celestia glared down at the alicorn and moved her face inches from the creature’s muzzle. “What are you?”

Moony struggled in Celestia’s hold for a few moments, then matched the goddess glare for glare. “I am the rightful ruler of Equestria! Nightmare-OW!” the pseudo-demon said yelled as I blasted her in the cutie mark with a burst of pain inducing magic.

“Don’t toy with me creature,” Tia growled. “I find hitting a thing that resembles the monster that took my sister from me without actually hurting Luna to be a wonderful experience. So if you truly wish to cause me distress, don’t give me a reason to continue with our interrogation.”

Down on the ground, Nightmare Moon snorted. “Yes, you so enjoyed holding us down for all these years, didn’t you, sister?”

The jab did its work, and Celestia’s anger rose as she spoke through gritted teeth while her body started to heat the surrounding air. “Speak of such things again, and I shall find a much weaker foe to ask questions of after I cook you alive.”

I turned my attention on Nightmare Moon and Sniffed her to get a read on how close she was to breaking. However, with my attention focused on it, I finally realized what had been bothering me about Moony since she showed up.

She didn’t have a Scent.

I had only had the ability to Smell emotions for a few months, but it had kind of become second nature to me by then. Especially now that I was dealing with so many changelings on a daily basis. Our species communicated with clicks, screeches, and scents of the physical kind, all of it at the same general volume. Detecting emotions was how we read the tone of the conversation.

To find something that my senses didn’t work on was…weird. Even the damn mirror clones had a limited pool of emotional responses to draw from.

“Hey Tia, I’m not sensing any emotions from this thing,” I told her.

Celestia glanced at me for a moment, then looked back at Nightmare Moon. “Tell me what I want to know! Who created you? Where did you come from?”

“Are you so forgetful Sister? We did descend from the moon, born from the same mother as you,” the nightmare replied with a sneer.

Twilight walked forward and looked at the creature for a moment, then up to our big girlfriend. “Is it possible that she doesn’t know?” the little goddess asked. “If the theory we’ve deduced from Derpy’s description of events is correct, and this really is some Nightmare Moon made from a book’s information, then it’s completely possible that she doesn’t know anything beyond what’s printed about her in the book.”

Rainbow cleared her throat and floated over to the alicorn. “Uh Twilight, I heard the story of the Mare in the Moon when I was a filly, and it never mentioned anything about her being Celly’s sister. Just that she ate foals and caused bad dreams.”

Once again, MLP trivia creeped its way up from the back of my head while I wondered just how the hell Celestia had let them paint even the evil incarnation of her sister as a cannibal. “The book Twilight read in episode one-uh, I mean…the day of the Summer Sun Celebration did.”

“A book I brought with me to Ponyville to help with my research on Nightmare Moon and…never sent back to the Canterlot Archives,” Twilight said, blushing at the end.

“That was like what? A year ago?” Rainbow Dash asked before she started snickering. “Wow Twilight, and they made you a librarian?”

The alicorn rolled her eyes and ignored Dash in favor of Celestia. “Quick! Ask her something only the real Luna would know, that was never written in any book, ever. If she doesn’t know it, it’ll prove her knowledge base is limited and we can’t get anything out of her.”

Celestia glanced back down at the other alicorn. “Like what?”

A blue hoof came up from behind me to point at the black alicorn. “When was the last time Celly wet the bed?” Rainbow demanded.

Not-Luna’s face scrunched up at the question, and Twilight’s voice rang in my ears. “RAINBOW!”

One of Celestia’s wings shot out in Twilight’s direction in a stopping gesture. “Actually…that’ll work,” Celestia replied before she turned back to glare at Nightmare Fake.

Twilight actually flapped her wings to get over Celestia’s wall of white and in the face of the pegasus. “Say what? How in the hay is that a question you ask anypony, EVER?”

“There are no written records of myself or Luna before we became princesses whatsoever,” Celestia told her. “If this creature is indeed a copy of my sister from the book detailing her fall, none of its information should go back that far. If it has any information at all, that is.” Then, Celestia turned her attention back to the fake, and glared. “Well? I know for a fact that my sister never forget anything embarrassing about me. So, what is the answer to the question?”

Fake Moony glared at Celestia for a few seconds before relying. “We refuse to answer such foolish-”

“I’ll take that as an I don’t know,” Celestia replied before her horn alit with a golden light that brightened to an almost blinding intensity before she dropped her head and blasted the creature’s chest with her solarbeam.

My eyes widened as I watched the monster take the attack and completely freeze. Nightmare Moon’s body lost its color and became nothing more than a mass of black. Then, whatever magic was holding the thing together finally gave out, and the black mass just poofed away in a cloud of smoke.

As the black gas cleared, I managed to see that Celestia had something in her magic. “What the hay is that?”

“What is it?” Twilight asked almost at the same time as she descended to get eye level with Celestia and froze with eyes that widened in horror at what came next.

To answer Twilight’s question, Celestia raised a book for the alicorn to see. And…it was something from Twilight’s worst nightmare. The book’s pages were torn, there was a hole in the center, and it looked as if something had actually eaten some of the pages. “It would appear to be Predictions and Prophecies, or what’s left of it. Apparently, the construct was indeed drawing on it for everything from its knowledge base as well as using it like a mold to shape itself,” she said before letting out a relieved sigh. “At least it wasn’t a full self-aware construct, just something acting out a script with limited ability to improvise.”

Twilight gasped, breaking out of her stunned silence, and might have gotten a little creeped out. “Celestia. You thought that thing might have actually been alive?”

As the big goddess turned to look at the smaller one, Celestia’s face became a little apologetic. “After Omnifarious told me he could feel no emotions coming from it and our interrogation, I was almost certain it was not truly alive my dearest,” she assured Twilight. “Still…I’ve lived long enough to know that sometimes life doesn’t turn out the way you expected it to.”

Celestia took one last look around, with her gaze lingering on Rainbow Dash for a few seconds that I could Smell her worry go up before she took a deep breath. “Now come along all of you, we need to get to Ponyville and assess the situation,” she told us before glancing to the changelings. “And Omnifarious, bring your changelings. If your emotional senses can tell which is a construct and which is a real pony, it will help with target identification. While I’m sure we can pick out the epic ones, if slice of life and murder mystery villains are also in the mix, I’d rather not need a detective sort of hero to sort things out. They always take forever to get the job done.”

The first stop on our trip into town was of course, Fluttershy's house. But, in the few seconds it took for us to get there, we did have a few theories about what could cause a bunch of fictional characters to come to life and run amuck.

“My money’s on Discord,” I theorized. It fit his style. I bet he would even try and get out of scaring the crap out of everyone and burning down half the town by saying ‘oops my bad’ and promising not to do it again. While I was all for forgiving the reformed criminals like Sunset, they actually had to do some reforming first. Discord didn’t even seem to be trying.

Celestia looked over to me with a frown. “Omnifarious, you shouldn’t let your grudge against Discord influence you so. He’s getting better,” she chided me.

I resisted the urge to smack Celestia, and simply settled for a little glare. “Yeah, his last attempt to ‘annoy’ every pony nearly wracked up a body count in the way of Rainbow and Twilight. Next time, he might actually manage to kill one of them,” I replied in a dark tone.

“Okay Fairy, tone it down a notch,” Rainbow told me.

“It did seem like the appearance of the worm was an accident Fae,” Twilight added. “He did get sick because of it after all.”

Which in turn lead to him being carried back by Twilight, not cleaning up Ponyville, and getting pampered by Fluttershy for twenty-four hours. All the while one of the ponies under my protection had lost her house and sense of security. I had checked up on Berry after my coronation and offered to fund any relocation she wanted, but by then she had decided to stick around the town like I had predicted.

I made a mental note to look in on her again after everything was done. Single moms that actually cared for their children like her and Derpy needed all the help they could get.

Once we got to Fluttershy’s cozy cottage and headed inside we found the news was both good and bad.

The good: AJ, Rarity, Fluttershy, Sunset and Trixie were all there to greet us. Thankfully, a purple alicorn had come up with several emergency procedures back in the days when she had been a unicorn. One of which was to quickly gather at Fluttershy’s house if the town was under attack by wild animals, dragons, or unidentified creatures. As Ponyville was currently under siege by all three, Twilight’s plan had more than met its criteria.

The bad: the cause of the problem was also at Fluttershy’s house.

“Hey!” Discord said as I glared at him very accusingly while he sat on Fluttershy’s couch as if nothing was going on outside. “I didn’t do this!”

The fact that he was already trying to defend himself before I even started pointing fingers at him was just further proof of his guilt. Beyond that, there was also the fact that he was in town the same time as this crap.

“I just came here for Tuesday Tea,” he said, trapping himself in a lie that put the last nail in the coffin.

With that, I pointed my hoof at the monster. “It’s Monday you idiot!”

Discord sniffed and jerked his head away from me. “As if I would stick to a planned schedule like the Princess.”

“Alright that’s enough,” Celestia said as she stepped forward. “But as long as you’re here Discord, you can lend us a claw in cleaning up this mess. Considering the fact that we are under assault by so many fictional and historical characters, it’s safe to assume that whatever is causing the disturbance is at the town library. We should-”

“What? Oh, nononononono!” Discord said before held up his freakish hand in front of Tia’s face. “I make chaos. What’s going on out there is causing chaos. Ergo, I can’t fix it. Sorry, but it’s against my religion.”

I seethed at the bastard. “You piece of-! Ponies could get KILLED out there!”

Discord frowned at me for a moment, and nodded. “Well, okay…I see your point. I should do something about that.”

For a moment, for the tiniest fraction of a second, a nearly infinitesimal measure of time, I actually thought Discord was going to do something halfway decent. Then he reached down to pick up the yellow pegasus standing next to him and smirked. “Come on Fluttershy, let’s have our tea somewhere else.” And with a snap of his fingers, Discord was gone.

“Has he done anything for Equestria since you let him out?” I asked Tia with a frown.

The alicorn sighed and shook her head. “Change takes time Omnifarious. He’s…learning.”

I rolled my eyes. “Considering the lesson is ‘don’t let bad things happen to good ponies’ Discord must be the biggest idiot in all creation,” I grumbled.

Celestia cleared her throat. “Well, standing here talking isn’t going to help anypony. Let’s get moving,” she said before relaying instructions and leading us out into the town.

The plan was a simple one. After we exited out of the house, the twenty five changelings I brought with us spread out around the town with orders to deal with any normal-looking ponies that didn’t have an emotional Scent. The rest of us would make a B-line to the library to find out just what was causing all this weird shit and put an end to it.

Sure, we could have just teleported there, but just stopping everything at the source was only really half a solution. With all the crap that was already running around Ponyville, certain things had to be done to mitigate the damage…

“I. AM. DEATH!”

…like stopping the giant talking lizard that breathed fire from turning everything in the town to ash.

As we raced through the streets, Rarity looked up with a frown. “Oh great! Somepony just had to return the Princess of the Horseshoes prequel the day before a monster that makes literature come to life appears in Ponyville.”

I looked over to the marshmallow unicorn running beside me. “So who the hay is that thing?”

Rarity turned her head to face me for a moment. “And here I thought you were into such books. You know, Smog, Greatest of all Calamities? He’s got a few other titles, but…well, I haven’t really read it since I got out of school.”

“Lord of the Rings,” Sunset translated for me from her spot on Celestia’s back. Apparently, the alicorn figured things were safer with her rather than at a house that lacked most of the security measures that nearly every other home in Ponyville had. “Don’t ask me how you humans got that from our version.”

Despite the fact that I was pretty sure Tolkien pre-dated MLP, I kept my mouth shut and kept going toward the town while making sure to call the big nasty monster when it came time to assigning targets. But since our main concern was the populace, we had to deal with the smaller things that ponies had a harder time running from than the really big stuff that got all the attention.

For instance, after we broke into pairs to deal with some of the smaller stuff on the way there, Lyra got zapped by some skinny unicorn in a robe with a crooked-looking horn and fell over paralyzed while she was gazing up at a fiery mass of rock shooting up from a cocoon that slowly formed into a centaur version of Peter Jackson’s interpretation of a balrog.

I glared at the thing that attacked my favorite minty unicorn with some sort of paralyzation spell…even if she had been following Sunset around WAY too much over the past week for my liking, and addressed our resident expert on fictional characters. “Hey Twilight, just who the hay is that?”

“Oh, judging by the horn…I’d say it’s He Who Shall Not Be Named,” she mumbled.

With that means of identification, my smartass-ness took over. “Oh, so any pony with a messed up horn is a bad guy now, huh?” Although my sense of propriety stopped me from shouting about how Twilight was being racist.

Unfortunately, that was all the time a unicorn needed to point his horn at us and start casting a spell. “Avada Keda-ulk!”

But on the other hand, as we were facing a fictional unicorn that thought magic worked the same way in the real world as it did in his book, the bad guy took an extra few seconds to yell and open his mouth. Which turned out to be a fatal mistake for him, as a tiny ball I thought had come from a silenced musket or something flew past me and the purple alicorn to land somewhere in his throat.

“Gulk! Ulk! Gurk!”

And from the sound of things, block his windpipe.

Then, there was a feral scream of rage from behind us before a tan earth pony sporting a pink and blue mane with a tail that matched practically flew past us to crash into pony-Voldemort using some kind of pony karate, judging by how her hind hoof rearranged his face anyway.

As soon as the dark overlord was laying on the ground, Bon-Bon went to work completing his de-facial by using her front hoof to hold down Voldy’s head by his horn, and another to do the work while adding a verbal assault to the mix. “TEACH YOU NOT TO HURT MY LYRA!” she shouted while continuously socking the fictional character in the face. “Not so tough when an earth pony’s got your horn, are you?”

Finally, Bon-bon slammed her hoof into Voldy’s face one last time, and he disappeared in a poof of smoke, leaving behind a half-eaten book.

Twilight let out a scream and landed next to the destroyed mass of paper. “T-That was my first edition of Hairy Trotter and the Half-Breed Prince!” she cried before looking up into the sky. “Whatever's causing this, YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS YOU MONSTER!”

“Ah, excellent work Ms Sweetie Drops,” Celestia spoke as she landed beside us a second later, making Bon-Bon freeze solid with a look of fear on her face, and me frown in confusion. “Now, while I think you would be an asset at this time of crisis, perhaps you had best take your friend to your house’s emergency shelter and wait for us to deal with everything.”

Bon-Bon unfroze and went into a nervous bow. “Um…it, uh…y-yes Princess Celestia,” she said before standing on two legs long enough to toss Lyra up onto her back.

“Bon-Bon,” Lyra managed to say despite a paralyzed jaw. Her words came out a bit muted. “Why did she call you Sweetie Drops?”

Instead of answering, the earth pony just let out a loud sigh and shook her head. “I am so sleeping on the couch tonight if the house doesn’t burn down.”

After we watched the earth pony open the door to her nearby house, then not bother closing it after she opened a trap door in the middle of the living room that led to the usual kind of fallout shelter that everyone in Ponyville possessed, Rainbow cocked her head to the side. “Uh…wait, I thought they were just good friends.”

Rarity giggled. “They are darling, just like you, and Celestia, and Twilight and Omnifarious are. Really good friends.”

Although we made our way to the library as quickly as possible, I couldn’t help but take notice of a few things. Like the bearded unicorn who wasn’t wearing any bells facing off against the balrog-centaur. “YOU. SHALL NOT. PASS!”

And then there was another unicorn dressed in a long leather trench coat and hat that never appeared in the stories with a pentangle for his cutie mark leaping towards a bald earth pony whose shadow was moving on its own. “PARKOUR!”

Still, the weirdest sight was a fictional changeling that had a pair of scimitars floating above his head battling a pegasus assassin armed with a long sword that had a hilt made of bone and jeweled dagger… Those two didn’t actually talk as they tried to kill each other.

But even with the battlefield that was Ponyville, we made it to the front of library in short order.

“Okay girls, we just need to head inside and-” The rest of Twilight’s comment was cut off when she got ten feet from the door, and an oversized black pegasus zoomed down from the sky to land in front of her, with several small branches that had been neatly sliced from the tree falling to the ground in her wake.

“Not one more step mortals!” the new threat challenged.

“Consardit! How many of these critters are gonna keep poppin’ up?” Applejack demanded. “And just who in the hay is that anyway?”

I was wondering that before the question was even asked. The pony in front of us was much larger than the average pegasus, almost as big as Luna. But what was even more odd were her wings, which rivaled Celestia’s in size despite the fact that they were way too big for her.

“Um…I think it’s Maleficent,” Sunset spoke up from her place atop Celestia.

I frowned at the new pony. Pony versions of classic heroes I could get, maybe even a few contemporary ones, but…the creature in front of me just didn’t fly. Pun intended. “Since when does Maleficent have wings?” If anything, I would have expected another Nightmare Moon kind of villain, just as a unicorn.

“It’s the rewrite version of Sleeping Beauty that paints her as a tragic anti-hero,” Twilight explained. “We got it last Tuesday.”

Celestia let out a disgruntled sound. “Ugh. I hate these rewrites of the classics. What was wrong with the character originally?”

“Whatever it’s supposed to be, I’ll take her,” Rainbow Dash said before she zoomed forward at her usual breakneck speed.

A second before impact, the mystery pony let out a martial cry and twisted slightly as she swept out one of her wings towards the head of the smaller pegasus. I heard Celestia call Rainbow’s name, and then Dash disappeared in a flash of light before Maleficent's turned so her wing sliced into the ground like her feathers were miniature blades as the blue pegasus reappeared in the air next to Celestia.

“Wha-Hey!” Rainbow yelled before she looked over at the big alicorn. “What gives?”

“While I am more than willing to let you fight your own battles Rainbow Dash, getting killed in them is another matter,” Celestia told her simply, shutting Rainbow up as she indicated where the fictional character’s wings had almost took off Rainbow’s head. “Now, somepony restrain that thing.”

Then, the other blue mare of our little group stepped forward. “Trixie shall deal with this villain. Behold the results of Trixie’s magical training on how to deal with the dark arts!”

I raised my eyebrow and was about on how her magical study at CSGU hadn’t really been all that useful before she blasted pony-Maleficent head on with her magic. The fake pegasus looked just about as confused when the attack didn’t seem to do anything. At least until she was obscured by an explosion of smoke.

When it cleared, two large globs of glue held the fictional pony’s wings down on the ground, making her struggle to try and get free. As for Trixie, she let out a mocking laugh. “HA! That is what happens when you go up against the Great and Powerful Trixie! You may now all begin the beat downs of retribution for her attempts to harm one of our number.”

Without even wasting a second, Pinkie launched herself forward, with Applejack coming up from behind to back her up. “Here’s some Pie in your eye!” the pink party pony cried out before she nailed the fictional pegasus in that particular spot a second before the orange farmer followed it up with a buck from the other side of Maleficent's head.

The inside of the library was a mess that had Twilight clutching her chest as she worked to breathe evenly. Rainbow stood beside the alicorn, holding a bag that Trixie had conjured to help Twilight with her hyperventilation. As for me, I simply looked around, staring at the devastation.

Violated and abused books, missing pages, pieces of pages, spines, covers, with their interiors destroyed lay everywhere. In some places, there were simply pages that had been so mutilated they couldn’t even stay in the books and had fallen to the floor.

Then, one of the books began to glow. The strange occurrence actually made Twilight get her act together, and the ten of us watched as the level of brightness increased to the point where nothing behind it could be seen before it shot out the window like a comet to crash into the house across the way. When it did, there was a flash, and a cocoon had appeared at the landing site.

“Huh…so that’s how it works,” Rarity mumbled before she looked back to all the rest of the books. “But, just what’s causing them to do that?”

Rainbow picked up one of the books and closely examined the pages. “Well, from the looks of the pages, I think something may be eating them,” she said drawing everyone’s attention. When she noticed everyone looking to her, she held up the book and pointed her hoof to where chunks of the edge were missing. “See? These look like bite marks. I’m no Fluttershy, but…if I had to guess, it looks like something close in size to a caterpillar.”

Behind the pegasus, Pinkie actually looked through one of the holes in the books. “Wow, talk about your voracious reader.”

Sunset groaned and picked up another totaled tome of knowledge and entertainment. “Pinkie, please tone it down on the puns when we’re having a life-threatening predicament,” she asked before flipping through the pages. A second later, the human’s face twisted in revulsion. “What the hell?”

“What is it Sunset?” Celestia asked.

“Hey Twilight, come take a look. I think it’s what’s been causing all of this,” she replied.

That comment was all Twilight needed to complete her recovery. The young alicorn tensed, and then zoomed forward at a speed that would have made Rainbow Dash proud before she snatched the book away from Sunset. The alicorn started at her ruined book for a few seconds, then threw it’s open pages onto the ground and surrounded it with a containment field. “Alright you book destroying monster, PREPARE TO FEEL MY WRATH!”

I blinked at the sight as Twilight floated up into the air and began to gather enough magic to level half of Ponyville. As I in the half she was fixing to blow up, I quickly flew up to her and placed my hoof on her shoulder. “Uh, Twilight. I think you need to calm down. It’s just a…” I paused and looked back down at the book to see…

The sight made me pause, and brace myself for the pun I knew was coming.

Although Rarity, being the kind and gentle soul that she was, walked up to look at the book behind the small purple shield and saved me from saying it. “Huh…it appears to be a bookworm,” she said while looking down at the fat green worm gobbling up bite after little bite of paper.

“It’d say it looks more like a caterpillar,” Pinkie Pie commented as she pressed her muzzle on the edge of Twilight’s magical field.

Up in the air, Twilight gave out her correction as her eyes that blazed with power. “No! It's COOKED MEAT!”

I tensed and looked over to my maddened girlfriend. “Twilight stop! You’re going to-”

The light in her horn flew outwards despite my attempts to tell her to stop. I could only watch in horror as Twilight’s blast of miniature nuclear atomization flew past her shield to explode inside the dome, and cause a flash so bright that I had to look away while dropping my disguise so that my armor could soak up some of the damage.

Only, Twilight’s blast didn’t do anything other than cause a bright flash. And when that died down, I was looking around in confusion. “Uh…what just happened?”

Twilight let out a sighing growl. “Hey, you’ve killed things much less deserving than that thing since we came to Ponyville,” she grumbled barely loud enough for me to hear. “So don’t start lecturing me about morality. I’m going to hear enough of it from Celestia and Fluttershy later today.”

“I think Omnifarious was referring to the fact your attack was contained within the confines of your shield my dearest,” Celestia informed her. “And if you’re worried about the moral ramifications, don’t be. The creature has yet to expire.”

My comments about not putting her friends in danger was put on hold by that info, and I just looked down at the book that was still intact, as well as the little green pest that was running around on it. It really contrasted with the blacken splotch of tree that the floor had been turned into by Twilight’s attack. “Huh…the book didn’t blow up either?”

Applejack scratched her head. “How in the hay does that work?”

Back down on the floor, I saw the worm suddenly disappear into an orb of green light that flew out of Twilight’s shield like it wasn’t even there to land in another book on the shelf that looked untouched. A few seconds after he did, the book that was left on the ground began glowing, and left through the window before generating another cocoon.

“Ah crap, it’s quasi-ethereal,” Sunset mumbled as she crossed her arms.

Celestia nodded. “Yes, that is my thought as well.”

With everyone else just looking at the two of them in confusion, I manned up and asked the obvious question. “And that means…what?”

The book on the shelf we had seen the worm fly into was picked up in Celestia’s magic, and brought over in front of us. A second later, she flicked through the pages to find the miniature monster and gestured for us to gather around her. “It means the worm isn’t really here. What we’re seeing is something akin to a shadow, with colors. More than likely, as it eats the book, it creates a pocket dimension based off whatever book its reading and then sends a construct based on the creature from literature inside the book. Much like what we do on Friday in class Twilight.”

The alicorn looked up from the book and at Celestia with a confused frown. “Wait…we?”

Just then, Pinkie jumped in to save Celestia from having to out herself. “Oh! Oh Oh!” she said while raising her hoof. “You mean, it’s like when we all went into that comic book and I brought out those cupcakes that just turned to paper when we bit into them?”

Celestia blinked, clearly not understanding the explanation. “Well…yes.”

A second later, Twilight shook off her confusion. “Okay so…all we have to do is cast a LARPing spell to follow the worm into the book, and then drag him out. That sounds simple enough.”

The other alicorn in the room gave her a cautious moan. “Careful Twilight. In all my years, I have never heard of a creature such as this one,” she told our shared girlfriend. “It may very well come from outside our realm.”

That one made me tense.

I had learned several weeks ago that the dimensional barriers between Equestria and whatever else was out there had gone into a thinning period, as they apparently did every five hundred years or so. While I hadn’t heard of anything big happening five-hundred years ago…as of yet anyway, the timing lined up to the unexplained appearance of a possessing entity that seduced Luna one-thousand years ago…as well as my own rebirth in Equestria this year. Not to mention the kidnapping of a bunch of children (with me among them since I was less technically less than a year old) by a demon who did it through pulling us into his own little sub-dimension.

“Okay then…who’s going where?” I asked while looking around the room, and then outside the door to Ponyville. Although we had only been in the library for about five minutes, and there were a good amount of fictional heroes running around to help deal with the villains, half the town looked ready to fall over. “Some of us will need to go after the worm, but a few of us will need to stay behind and help every pony get to safety.”

Celestia nodded in agreement. “Although I no longer wear a crown, I will not allow anypony within this town to come to harm. I will stay here and protect Ponyville,” she said before pausing for a moment to look out the window. “And with two gigantic creatures roaming around, Luna should be here with the guard in short order as well.”

“Guess that means I’ll be leading the worm hunting team,” Twilight mumbled.

A blue hoof was laid on Twilight’s shoulder. “Wherever Twilight goes, I go,” Rainbow added. Then she hesitantly looked up to the bigger alicorn. “Uh…no offense…Celly.”

“None taken Rainbow,” Celestia assured her before her smile became a little strained. “Just…please don’t go charging into dangerous situations on your own. Your friends are there to help you, as you are to help them. That is where the real strength lay for ponies.”

As Rainbow was left blushing in embarrassment, another blue pony stepped forward. “Trixie shall also venture into this fantasy land. It is what we have been training for after all.”

“Yeah,” Sunset reluctantly agreed. “This is what we’ve been doing every week. Makes sense that we’d be the ones to go.”

That made the sun goddess’s eyes widen. “What? No!” she cried out. “You need to remain here Sunset. Go down into Twilight’s lab where the defensive wards can protect you, and-”

Sunset shot Celestia a glare that shut the alicorn up before the human even started speaking. “So now you’re treating me like your sister?” she asked. “Just going to lock me up here I can’t do anything?”

The question made Celestia wilt faster than any flower. “No, that’s not…Sunset…I just don’t want to see you get hurt again,” she explained in a pathetic voice. “I don’t think I could take it. And I can’t protect both you and everypony else in town if you’re riding around on my back.”

“Then I’ll go with them,” Sunset told her mother while pointing to Twilight’s group.

As Celestia paused, her face showing the obvious battle of wills that was going on inside of her, Twilight stepped forward. “Celestia…I promise, I won’t let anything happen to her,” she told the bigger alicorn before clearing her throat. “And…Sunset apparently knows a bit more about interdimensional creatures than I do.” Considering what had happened to her, it was a pretty obvious research topic that the girl would have been drawn to.

Finally, Celestia let out a sigh and nodded her head. “Take care of each other, all of you.”

“Well, Ah figure Ah’d best be stickin’ ‘round here,” Applejack said.

Rarity spoke up as well. “Indeed. What with all these monsters running around, I’m a little afraid Sweetie Belle might go after a heroic cutie mark.”

“Well, guess that just leaves you and me Fae-Fae,” Pinkie spoke up before sitting down and tapping her chin while she stared ahead. “Of course, if I pick here, you have to go there to keep everything even and our party down to a manageable size so…you pick! Journey Through Imagination Land…or the Battle of the References…what do you think it should be?”

Chapter 52: The Incredibly Lawful Side Kick Character

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Pinkie’s question had me blinking at her randomness.

Of course, there was that stupid voice inside my head that popped up whenever Pinkie was around because she had the strange power of diving me half-insane with her sheer presence. It went, “why not do both?” But I shut it up with a boot to the head and looked at the situation logically.

The ponies outside the library screaming for their lives were where the majority of my responsibility lay. Sure, Twilight was technically the Princess of Ponyville, but I was the one that actually ran the place most of the time, made those important royal decisions about which pony got the bigger slice of cake and how much a foal needed to be punished for spitting on the sidewalk, when I wasn’t goofing off anyway. That left her free to do all the important things like playing games with a few other mares to keep their bonds of friendship strong. And even if the Fruit of Friendship had been returned to the tree that spawned it, I wasn’t stupid enough to think that the girls keeping together wasn’t important.

But then there were the girls inside the library. To be more specific: my girlfriend Twilight, my other girlfriend Rainbow, a blue pony I guess you could technically call my student in Trixie, and my other, other girlfriend’s sort of daughter, Sunset.

That last one really made me feel the yolk on my shoulders. Sure, it hadn’t even been a day since she put this really heavy family title thing on me, but I had accepted the position and everything that went with it. And that wasn’t a job you could just half-ass or only do when you felt like doing it, unlike running a country/town/whatever.

So…three-hundred-plus ponies that were currently trying to flee or hide from danger, stacked against one human that was actually stupid enough to go running towards it.

That made me really, really, reeeeeeeeeally want to go with the group that would be going after the worm to stop this latest bit of craziness. Hell, it would even be helping Ponyville. I mean, the faster the source of the problem was dealt with, the faster the danger disappeared.

Right?

But...I knew I was just trying to lie to myself. I wanted to go with Dash, Twilight, Trixie, and Sunset because I was worried about their safety more than the hundreds of ponies who were still in danger from the monsters. Three ponies and one human versus three hundred ponies and one dragon, and I cared more about the lesser number.

As a leader...I couldn’t care as much about the smaller number that could possibly take care of itself when I had the larger group that was mostly helpless to take care of. Because judging by all the screaming, they sure as hell weren’t doing a good job looking after themselves.

So, I took a deep breath to help silence the voice in my head that was yelling for me to go with the group Sunset was in to help protect her and looked over to the pink pony. “Okay Pinkie. You go with Twilight, I’ll head into Ponyville with Tia to try and mitigate the damage.”

“Rodger Dodger!” Pinkie replied with a salute.

The usual quick goodbyes and good lucks followed, and I tensed when Celestia put her foreleg on the back of my neck and met the eyes of each of the ponies in front of his with an even gaze. “Look after each other,” she told them before her expression tightened. “Each one of you is just as precious to me as the next.”

Twilight let out a confused ‘ummm’ and I watched her give Trixie the once over after hearing Celestia’s words.

Hell, the show of affection even had Trixie blushing just a bit.

“Well, she is the best friend of Sunny Skies,” Celestia said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye that had both me and Sunset wincing. “And a princess’s head secretary is very important to her.”

Twilight let out a groan. “Okay everypony, let’s get moving before a certain blue pony’s annoying ego gets too big to fit in the book.”

“Hey!” Rainbow Dash cried out in indignation. “I haven’t even said anything in like, ten minutes!”

The comment got a roll of the eyes from Twilight. “Rainbow, I was talking about Trixie’s ego,” she said before giving our girlfriend an almost lecherous smile. “Do you honestly think I find your opinion of yourself anything but adorable these days anyway?”

“I’m not adorable!” Rainbow Dash protested as Twilight motioned for them all to get closer.

“Yes you are,” me, Twilight, Celestia, and Sunset Shimmer all said at the same time, the last of whom got a surprised look from the rest of us that made her frown before replying. “Hey, I lived on an alien world where small bright creatures with cute little designs on their bodies, big eyes and larger than normal heads where the perfect example of things that make humans go ‘daaaaaw’! So excuse me for soaking up some of the culture and finding my entire former species extremely adorable!”

The fact Sunset crossed her arms and put on the cutest little pout with some puffed out cheeks right as she finished saying that made me lump her in with the rest of the cutsie brigade.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Okay, on that note, it’s time we headed out. Everypony on my team…and Sunset,” she added after looking over to the human, “form a circle, and join hooves…or whatever manipulative appendages with opposable digits you may have instead.”

The girls did as instructed, with Rainbow locking up with Twi before Sunset grabbed her other hoof, and Trixie reached out for the redhead. As for Pinkie, she was...tying on a blue headband?

I raised an eyebrow at the odd action, and despite my better judgement, opened my dumb mouth. “Pinkie, what are you doing?”

Pinkie looked back as me as she finished making her knot to keep the headband on and rolled her eyes. “Getting infinite ammo, duh,” she said before reaching behind a nearby table and pulling out a party cannon that looked smaller than her usual model that I was pretty damn sure wouldn’t have just been laying around on the floor no matter how messy Twilight’s attack wrecked the library and slinging it across her back. “Ready for sortie!”

A second later, Twilight’s horn lit up, and I watched as the girls were surrounded by a purple glow before they were lifted into the air above the chewed up book. Fully grasped in Twilight’s magic, the party consisting of four quadrupeds and a biped quickly decreased in size until each of them could have walked through a hole on my leg without problem. And a moment later, they tell into the book.

Not on, into. I actually saw the tiny ponies and Sunset sink into the pages before completely disappearing in a flash of light.

“Alright then,” Celestia spoke before she looked back to the other two ponies in the room. “Applejack, Rarity. I want the two of you to remain here and watch over Twilight and the others. I’m not sure how the bookworm’s power will mesh with Twilight’s magic, but the spell she used is supposed to allow for outside manipulation of events going on inside the book by adding passages or pictures. Keep them updated on the status of Ponyville and try to help them if you can.”

The news that she wouldn’t just be standing on the sidelines seemed to cheer Applejack up a bit, or at least give her something to focus on besides the potential danger that her sister was in. As for Rarity, the unicorn was a little more vocal in her response.

“Well if that’s the case Your Highness, then I shall help them weave a grand tale that-”

“No!” Celestia nearly shouted as she cut the unicorn off and stepped forward to loom over the unicorn. “No fancy, no embellishment, no nothing! If you can completely control the events from outside the book, you take that quill on Twilight’s desk and you write a sentence saying that Sunset steps on that bucking bug two seconds after she landed in imagination land!”

As Rarity’s eyes widened and she back away from the big alicorn in fear, I walked up to Tia and put my hoof on her shoulder. The former princess calmed down a second later, and let out a sigh. “I’m sorry my friend,” Celestia apologized before she shook her head. “The magic probably won't even work to that extent, but…no, I-”

“It’s alright,” Rarity replied with a little smile before she also reached out to touch Tia. “And no matter how little assistance I can render to our friends, I promise that it shall be as speedy and beneficial as possible.”

Celestia nodded and looked over to me with a steely expression. I didn’t need to Smell her emotions to see it was just a facade though. Judging by that break in her demeanor, she was even more worried about the girls that I was.

Sunset was smart and still had enough self-preservation not to jump on a grenade, while the others had handled themselves well enough in the past, so...everything would be okay. I was in Equestria, where the good guys always won. With...well...an acceptable amount of losses.

I really wish I hadn’t thought of that last one.

After Celestia surrounded the interior of the library with a powerful force field, the two of us headed out into the mass of pandemonium that Ponyville had become. Everywhere I looked, a ponified version of something from my childhood was duking it out with another fictional character, or just wrecking shop.

It was...pretty overwhelming.

“Omnifarious,” Celestia said loudly, cutting through the confusion seeing the chaos going on in front of me had put me in. “Ignore the constructs and focus on the real ponies we need to help. Point us towards the real ones so we don’t waste time on the fiction damsel in distress types.”

I gulped and looked away from the giant flaming monster made of molten rock as it stomped through the town to nod at Celestia. “Okay.”

Which...turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. Although Ponyville only had a population of three-hundred, the whole ‘small town where everyone knew everyone else’ thing didn’t really count for the bug that lived half a mile outside of city limits.

Pinkie would have been a better choice for this, I told myself as I turned on my emotional senses and ‘sniffed’ around while scanning the area for endangered civilians that were real and absently noting some of the more...odd scenes playing out before me.

A trio of quadrupeds were standing in an alley to my far left.

“I want to be evil Daddy,” a unicorn pony in a black outfit that made him look like a cheap Darth Vader whined to a pegasus in a black vest as a yak with a crossbow aimed the weapon at him. “WHY WON’T YOU LET ME BE EVIL?”

The yak raised his crossbow at Darth Whiner. “VILLAIN NOT PERFECT!”

Directly in front of me, I blinked as a dragon landed on top of Sugar Cube Corner and bit into it. Apparently, pony-Smaug was hungry after his hundred or so years of just sitting around in a cave.

And to my right…

“The horror!”

“The inequinity!”

“Oh the horror!”

…were three mares that actually had a reason to be freaking out for once in their lives. As for what they actually looked to be afraid of, an oversized venus flytrap had sprouted from the flower stand Lilly used to hawk her wares. Vines attached to the stem had grown out to wrap around the girls, and the plant had its big red bulbous head open to show its...teeth.

Apparently, pony-eating plants had teeth in Equestrian fiction. If it even was fiction, that is. Considering the world I lived in had a plant that could change ponies in ways that violated every law of physics so she was tiny enough to hide in her little sister’s hair, I wasn’t about to second-guess the validity of a venus flytrap that could eat a whole horse.

“Over there!” I told Celestia while pointing with my hoof a second before we galloped towards the damsels in distress.

As the plant spotted us, despite a distinct lack of eyes, it drew in a deep breath...somehow, and then spit a blazing fireball at the two of us.

While I might have shrieked just the tiniest bit to lure my opponent into a false sense of security, Celestia took the fireball head on and completely ignored the flames as she ran through them to spear the villainous vine in the giant bud that was its head.

Right as she connected, the fake plant exploded in a mass of ink that left behind a ruined book and Celestia grabbed the three mares in her magic before teleporting them away from the mess before a drop of ink could touch any of them and reappearing next to me. I could Smell the girls were terrified, but my eyes said they were unharmed.

“Girls, do you know if the shelters your houses are still open or not?” the former princess asked the flower vendors.

Rose shook her head. “I live with my mom, so she’s probably sealed it by now.”

“Ours should still be open,” Lilly told us as the third flower girl I think was called Daisy nodded her head.

After taking a look towards the direction of Lilly’s house, Celestia looked back to the girls. “Alright then, follow me as close as you can my little ponies,” she said before glancing over to me. “I’ll clear the path, you take the rear.”

I nodded before Celestia began to gallop off towards the east side of town with the girls following behind her. I took to the sky, but didn’t get more than ten feet off the ground as I followed after them. It wasn’t that I had let Dash rub off on me a bit too much, but with insect wings holding me up instead of the usual pseudo-pegasus kind I usually used these days, dodging was a lot easier.

As we got to the group of buildings that looked like they were offering some shelter from the shitstorm, a large white pony that looked something like Bulk Biceps’s dead earth pony grandfather smashed through the wall, making Celestia turn her head away before she got kicked in the face thanks to the opening her looking away provided.

“ZOMBIE!” Rose shrieked as Celestia flew over their heads in a way that no way involved the use of wings before I flew up high enough to avoid the bigger pony from crashing into me.

“BORN ON A MONDAY!” The giant, muscle-bound pony shouted as he put all four hooves back on the ground.

Although I was more concerned for Tia’s well-being than that of the girls in front of me, the sun pony could take a punch from a fictional character that came from one of Spike’s comics, unless I really missed my guess. So, I narrowed my eyes and thought about how much I wanted the thing in front of me to die as I ignited my hooves with the green flames of a changeling and dove for the overgrown undead that had all of its attention on the three cowering ponies in front of it.

But even as pissed off at the grungy pony as I was for its treatment of Tia, I did have a sense of style that needed to be maintained.

“Charred on a Tuesday!” As I connected my flaming holy hooves with the undead’s face in an attempt to at least melt its eyes.

“Marred on a Wednesday!” I went on before landing in front of the creep to shoot him in the chest with a kinetic blast that made him stumble backwards.

“Taken down on a Thursday!” A blast to the knees turned the stumble into a fall.

Next came a bit of bile from the back of my throat as I hacked up three balls of changeling flim and used my magic to telekinetically wrap it around the monsters wrists and legs. “Got pinned on a Friday!”

I used my magic to mold the last bit of gunk I hacked up into a sharp blade, and spun it around in the air before slicking off the monster’s head at the neck. “Decapitated on a Saturday.”

“And booked on a Sunday,” I finished before the fictional monster exploded in a poof of smoke to reveal the remains of a graphic novel that made me frown. “Thought we moved all of Spike’s stuff to the castle.”

A second later, I shook off my confusion and looked back up at the trio of flower merchants. “Okay, all of you inside!” I told them while pointing at the building Lilly called home. “Go go go!”

The girls scampered off to safety, and looked back around in the general location where Celestia had been knocked down to see her battling a purple pony with wild green hair. “Ma’am please, if there is any way for you to return to your previous state of existence without me having to destroy a foal’s treasured possession, I would very much appreciate it.”

The manic pony that looked like a pony cross between the Joker and Medusa from the Inhumans laughed maniacally. “Oh I don’t think so Princess Celestia. The Power Ponies aren’t here to save you this time!” She said before her mane whipped out to grab Tia’s front legs and horn. “Your mane may be more mobile than most, but it is still no match for mine! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“True, but my horn is more than sufficient,” she replied calmly before the appendage in question lit up, and the maniac’s mane burst into flames.

“HAHAH-AAAAAAAH! MY MANE!” the villain shrieked after Celestia burnt her way free of the dancing hair and raised a hoof to smash the mare’s face in with a golden horseshoe.

As the green and purple pony disappeared in a cloud of smoke to leave another comic book behind, I came up on Celestia as she finished fluttering her wings about. “Honestly. Those picture books always seem to make the real guardians of the realm so incompetent that we can’t even deal with the simplest threats.”

Being a changeling, I felt really, really tempted to remind Tia what had happened the first time she had tangled with Chrysalis on national television, but...as Smog had just finished off the roof of Sugarcube Corner, and the pony balrog was making his way to the hospital, I really didn’t see a reason to bring up Tia’s track record. “Okay, so...what next?”

Celestia looked back at me for a second, then motioned to her back. “Get on.”

I looked at my girlfriends glorious backside and despite the danger of our situation, I couldn’t help but smirk. “Well I knew you were really into it Tia, but are you sure this is the right time for me to mount up?”

My joke actually got an eye roll from the alicorn. “Omnifarious, while I enjoy sexual innuendo more than most mares, I think we should concentrate on more important matters.”

The next hour was a bit of a blur for me as I literally rode my big alicorn girlfriend all over town, firing off as much as I could whenever we could find an opening on an opponent that Celestia couldn’t just barbecue right off. Which was a very limited number of foes.

Tia rammed our way through obstacles and trampled anything that looked even remotely non-pony while we searched high and low for any more citizens in trouble, which didn’t number very many. Ponyville had apparently experienced these sorts of things so much that everybody knew what they were supposed to do. The dragon and other big things we left alone. The hospital had its own shelter that would have taken all of the patients in the small town into its zone of safety when everything started, so the only thing about its burning wreckage that made me wince was how much the repair bill was going to be.

Of course, there weren’t just monsters running around what was fast becoming a fully fictional battlefield. I spotted plenty of ponies without a Scent trying to do the hero thing, but...well...several of them just weren’t cut out for it…

“Quick!” A brightly colored pony in an even brighter vest with matching helmet shouted as she struck a pose while five other ponies in similar garb joined in with the rather odd changes in stances. “There’s giant monsters attacking the town! We need to call in some more horse power!” She went on before changing her position as all the other ponies on her team shouted ‘RIGHT!’. “Super Ultra Cutie Power Princess Megaforce Squadron-” *CRUNCH*

I winced at the sound of breaking bones as the sentai team was crushed beneath the pony-balrogs flaming hoof without it even really noticing them. Then, as the monster walked off, the pink pony power ranger let out a groan. “I...I can’t feel my legs,” she said before poofing away like so many other fictional characters I had seen today.

Celestia bobbed and weaved between villains and buildings, shoving the live ponies I pointed out into the nearest building that didn’t reek of active protective magic while blasting whatever was in the way. I’d like to say we saved everyone but...well...there were some horribly hurt ponies that weren’t going poof when they got hit, and Tia didn’t have the time to do more than some basic healing magic to keep them from bleeding out before moving on.

One of the things that helped save a lot of the ponies was the complete inability the fictional villains had in terms of working together. For all the good guy vs bad guy fights that were going on, there were at least as many villain only death battles being waged. It seemed a quiet little town just within view of Canterlot wasn’t big enough for twenty-plus world conquering megalomanical maniacs to share.

Go figure.

And then there were the ponies we actually ended up meeting. Meeting and having the time to talk to, I mean. We actually came across a lot of ponies, although...the number of protagonists definitely declined as the day went on. Still, there were a few standouts that ended up getting my attention. One in particular was a light brown pegasus mare with a sandy blond mane and a badge for a cutie mark. We ran across her at the Barnyard Bargains building that was missing a good chunk of north wall as she was taking cover behind the checkout counter while a trio of diamond dogs in bright red prison outfits threw whatever was laying around at her, keeping the pegasus pinned down.

A quick glance from Celestia let me singal her that the pegasus wasn’t registering on my emotion-o-meter, and thus didn’t need to be saved. We had enough live ponies to worry about without the need to look after fictional ones on top of that.

“Last chance dirt shovelers! This is the Windy City Police!” She shouted in an authoritative voice that sounded strange coming from such a little pony. “Surrender now, and I promise to go easy on you.”

Celestia looked away from the hole in the wall and up to Canterlot with a frown. “For crying out loud. When just a single dragon attacked Ponyville, it took me all of ten minutes to dispatch the Wonderbolts,” the ex-princess grumbled. “What on Equestria is Luna doing?”

I snorted. “Yeah, like the Wonderbolts were really all that helpful. If you really wanted to take care of Spike, you should...have...uh oh,” I mumbled as something occurred to me. Something kind of terrifying that also completely destroyed our plan to just run around putting out the smaller fires while waiting for Luna to swoop in and save the day with a nice big army.

“You’ll never take us alive coppa!” one of the diamond dogs yelled before he reached behind his back to pull out some weird looking tommy gun crossbow hybrid.

“What?” Celestia asked in a worried tone as she looked around for whatever fictional monster that might have the power to give me pause. “What is it? What do you see?”

“Uh...it’s not a bad guy,” I told her. “It’s just...I might have realized that Luna may not be sending any help.”

“THAT’S THE OTHER GUY!” the fictional police pony shouted in the background before she ducked back behind the counter to avoid getting shot.

Celestia’s head whirled around to look at me. “WHAT?”

I winced at the big horse shouting right in my ear. “Um...well, it’s just...Ponyville has two real alicorns, me, five national heroes, and an army of changelings,” I said. “Considering the weird magical nature of the threat, why would Luna send more ponies into danger when we’re already equipped to handle the problem? I mean, you didn’t send any help when Trixie tried to take over Ponyville because Twilight was there, right?”

“Actually, I was in Saddle Arabia and had no idea about what was happening until after that incident was long over,” the goddess deadpanned before she sighed and shook her head at the ground. “But I can see your point.”

“MUHAHAHAHAHA! TOP OF THE WORLD MA!” the beagle diamond dog with the machine-bow let dozens of arrows fly into the police pony’s cover.

After taking a moment to collect herself, Celestia took in a deep breath and picked herself back up. “Alright, we need to come up with a new plan. Which we can’t really do in the middle of this chaos, so…” The Alicorn of the Sun spun around and shot a beam of celestial fire into the store, vaporizing the three criminal canines and leaving nothing but ashes in their wake. “I remember there being some back to school supplies in isle three the last time Twilight and I went shopping. Would you kindly fetch them while I work on repairing the wall so we have some privacy, my love?”

I got ready to get off, but was interrupted by the other occupant of the store poked her head out from behind the counter with wide eyes. “P...Princess Celestia?”

Said pony’s muscles tightened, and I felt a pang of sympathy. So far, pretty much every fictional character we had met had either been a villain that had written Celestia off as a non-threat, a pony that thought she was in need of saving, or even the occasional fantasy horse that didn’t even know about the god empress of ponykind. Considering that fiction was a reflection of society’s opinion of things as a whole, I felt a lot of sympathy towards the former-ruler that wasn’t getting any respect.

So, I tried to ride to my princess’s rescue. “Hey, you want me to deal with this one?”

As soon as I poked my head out from behind the big horse, the little pegasus let out a cry of surprise and raised her crossbow into firing position. “Princess Celestia, there’s a changeling on your back!”

Celestia sighed before her horn lit up to snatch the crossbow bolt out of the air. “No. I’ll deal with her,” she said. “At least this one recognizes me. Now, go get that paper and come back as soon as you can. We need to devise a strategy.”

I nodded, then got off my big fat equine girlfriend to do as instructed.

I’d like to say all I did was run down aisle five, barely take any time in getting the items, and then returned to Celestia before you could say pretty pseudo-pony princess. But in reality, which I was learning was a lot weirder than fantasy, things don’t go that smooth. Not that I ran into trouble on the way there or anything. In fact, nothing really stopped me from getting to the paper.

And it was a lot of paper. From wide to college-ruled, construction paper thick enough to double as cardboard, paper with lines, paper without lines, colored paper, paper without any color to it (although I don’t know if that made it black or white) and that really thin kind of paper you can easily trace stuff on.

So let’s see, what kind would Tia want? I asked myself as I looked through the pile.

Which is a PERFECTLY REASONABLE question when you live with Twilight Sparkle! Seriously, my first week in Ponyville as the pony who shall not be named, I got an hour lecture from the purple princess on just the right type of paper to use because my lack of anything to do had me running around her house as a fetch horse.

In the end, I settled on construction paper. While it lacked the mobility of a scroll, it was the type of paper Twilight used when adventuring. Able to hold up to the frantic scratching of a quill and durable enough to keep intact when Rainbow Dash inevitably snatched it away to look at Twilight’s plan for herself, it was probably the best choice given our current situation.

I also took the liberty of snagging some pencils so Tia could doodle some visual aids.

By I time I got back to Celestia and...whatever hell the fictional pony’s name was, the wall had been completely fixed by Tia’s magic and the little pegasus with the sandy mane was sitting on her ass, looking down at the ground with one of those expressions that just screamed her mind had been flooded with the heaviest of heavy ideas.

“Then I...I’m not...real,” she said in between breaths.

Despite the fact she was fictional and hadn’t really even been alive for a full afternoon, Celestia still put her hoof on the not-pony and gave her a sympathetic look. “I am sorry to place this burden of knowledge upon you little one. The fact that you react like this, it only underscores the cruelty of the creature causing this catastrophe. Now, Omnifarious and I must plan for Ponyville’s defense.”

“I...um...y-yeah...right,” the little pegasus said before looking over to me with a mix of fear and despair, then trotting over to the sales counter to sit down with a hopeless look on her face. If she hadn’t of been some sort of magical construct, I might have actually felt bad for the poor girl.

But, I had more important things to worry about. So I jogged over to the big white pony and levitated over her stuff. “Okay Tia, got the drawing stuff. Now, what’s the plan?”

With an inhuman grace that I knew I’d never be able to match with my magic, Tia took five pencils and sketched out a little drawing of Ponyville in about ten seconds flat. A pretty damn accurate one too that managed to be a little bit artistic as well. “Alright then, we’ve already made a circuit around the town and gotten as many ponies out of harm’s way as we could.”

I noticed she didn’t mention the few that we didn’t reach in time. But that was what you had to do when in the middle of a fight. After it was over though...well...let’s just say I really wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow and planned to drink my fill of the girls tonight so everything would be a nice big blur.

“Now that we’ve got all the citizens out of the way, we can begin our counterattack,” Celestia went on.

I took that as my cue. “Okay, so, we get back to the castle, grab some changelings, and start throwing them at the fictional stuff,” I said with a nod. It was simple and easy. We outnumbered them by several thousand after all, and a dragon wasn’t that big a deal, I had already killed the one in the Everfree a while ago. His head used to decorate Twilight’s castle, till Spike moved in at least.

But, my time to shine was quickly undone by Celestia shaking her head. “No.”

“What?” I demanded before frowning at the bigger quadruped. “Tia, there’s a big nasty army of monsters destroying Ponyville! Let’s get our own army of more controllable nasty monsters and smash them with it before things get out of hoof!”

Celestia looked up at me with one of her looks. You know that looks that says ‘I’m kind of disappointed in you but I’m too tired to actually get into a fight over it right now’ kind of looks that your mom gives you? It was one of those. “Omnifarious, we don’t need to risk the lives of the changelings needlessly like that.”

It was a point that I really wanted to argue. I mean, being a changeling myself, and thus an expert on the subject, I could most certainly say that Equestria could do with a lot less changelings. But, arguing on the value of a species I kind of wanted to see be put on the endangered list while I could hear explosions going on outside probably wasn’t a good idea. “So you’re saying we don’t use the big army of bugs that can ferret out a real pony from a fake because...why?”

“While you were looking for ponies to save, I was studying our enemies,” Celestia told me. “Right now, the fictional creatures are very confused and disorganized, if a large force masses to attack them, it is highly probable that they could join forces in order to survive and mount a counteroffensive. That is why I simply wanted you to send the few changelings patrolling the castle to take care of the outer perimeter of town. They will be able to escort ponies who made it out to safety and remove any of the villains that try to trickle out on their own.

“So, we will continue to hamper their movements and keep them focused on Ponyville,” she told me. “Remember, it’s Twilight and the others that are working to stop this. Our job is simply to keep the damage under control. Attacking with a large army would be detrimental to that.”

As much as I hated to lose an argument, Tia that have a point. Although, it didn’t much like what she was suggesting. “So what? We’re just supposed to run around town and have the bad guys try to capture the princess?” I asked with a raise eyebrow before looking at where her crown had been. “Tia, I know you’ve got bigger magical reserves that me, but even you have got to run dry sometime.”

Celestia gave me a little smirk. “At which point, they will capture the princess and hold her for ransom long enough for Twilight to finish her job.”

“Or kill you,” I pointed out. No need to sugarcoat it. Pony fiction might not have been violent, but there were some works about the super sick kind of characters that did that type of stuff. Hell, Rarity was an avid reader of murder mysteries. “If you’re not going to go for help and no pony’s coming here, then I say we find an empty shelter, hunker down, and wait for everything to blow over. Or go to the library! I’m sure AJ and Rarity would love having you around to protect them!”

Which Celestia had a counterargument for. Let me tell you, debating someone with more experience and intelligence than you when their life is on the line is not fun. “And bring all the villains that know of me down on our heads. Now come along, I’ve already mapped out the route we need to take to ensure maximum confusion, and being out of sight for too long gives our opponents time to rally.”

As Celestia stood back up, I found myself unsure and took a quick Sniff. While I couldn’t actually gauge how much gas she had left in the tank with my empathic senses, I did Smell that she was worried. Which could have easily been some worry for me, some of the other residents, or something else, but...well, I latched onto that self-preservation kind of worry that any sane person would have when walking into a warzone. Which meant…

“Princess,” the short fake pony spoke up before I could tell Tia no and do my best to guilt or drag her into a bomb shelter. Said pony had lost that look of hopelessness in her eyes and had flung her crossbow on her back. “Listen, everything you’ve told me...well, even if I’ll just fade away when everything’s over, I...well, I’m here now, Your Highness. And as a member of the police, it’s my duty to help ponies in distress. So please, let me help you.”

I blinked. That...wasn’t such a bad idea. Sure, the pony in question was a completely normal, if not less than normal, pegasus, which meant she would be totally pwned if she tried to gone one on one with some of the monsters running around outside. But, there had to be a few useful fictional ponies running around the place.

And when I told my idea to Celestia…

“Hmm, I suppose that could work,” she admitted as she rubbed a hoof beneath her chin. “I did see a small number of fictional heroes earlier, and they might be amicable to assisting us if approached in the proper way.”

“Great!” the police pony said as she smiled up at the Princess. “I even know where we can start. I know the best wizard in Windy City. If I’m really a fictional character from a police serial, there’s no way Copper Field didn’t get a mention. We hire him on as a mystical consultant from time to time. He’s a little snarky, but basically a good pony.”

The mention of the pony wizard made me frown as I realized something I should have earlier. So I looked over to the short pegasus with the blonde mane and blue eyes. “Hey, I didn’t get your name.”

“Hm?” she said before turning to me and blinking. “Oh! Right. I’m police Sergeant Murphy Law. Nice to meet you, Your Highness.”

I stared at the pony for a good ten seconds. Honestly, I should have realized it sooner. The whole thing was just right there in front of me. I mean, outnumbered about one hundred to one, me and Tia just come across some pony willing to help us out despite the impossible odds.

Of course there had to be something wrong with her.

“Omnifarious, get back up on me,” Celestia said. “Sergeant Murphy, I would suggest following behind us a safe distance. Call out if you see any fictional characters that might be of use to us, and we shall have them join our cause.”

Instead of voicing my concerns to Tia, I just did as instructed and climbed aboard while Murphy reloaded her crossbow. There was no reason to tell the pony upon whom all our hope lay how doomed we were. With any luck, an anvil would fall from the sky and poof away our police pony like a bad memory.

“Now, let’s get going!” Celestia shouted as she reared up, and blew away a good chunk of the wall in front of us before she galloped us out into the bedlam that was Ponyville.

And behind us followed the pony whose name literally meant that anything that could go wrong, would.

We were so doomed.

Author's Notes:

Hey look it's a new chapter (despite the serious problems still going on with Gdocs and the import button)

Don't worry, the fic isn't dead and has a layout for everything to come to an end and start yet another sequel when I can get around to it. Admittedly, it will be a little while since I have to finish editing a different story's chapter that is much longer so it won't come out as a garbled up mishmash and then finish that story up in 2 more chapters with about 3 little epilogues.

But at the moment, I need to be a litter serious a post a little thing down here because well...about 2 months ago, I posted in a blog because a former co-woker's uncle was sick and needed help with some medical bills for his cancer treatment and hey guess what? The donations he revived helped him get some cheap insurance for him to at least get started on his treatment.

Unfortunately, it was the cheap kind of insurance that barely pays for anything.

So, here I am, just posting the link to the guy's gofundme page with the picture he probably should have had a second thought about. https://www.gofundme.com/tommy-boothe-medical-funds.

If you've got $5 or $10 to spare, I ask that you take a moment to think about donating it and helping this family out.