> Taming Rainbow Dash > by Pegasub > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Chapter One: Rounding Her Up > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rainbow Dash trotted west towards the sunset: west towards the hotel and DaringCon. Adventure wasn’t out there: it was behind them, and for once, Rainbow Dash was glad about that. If she and Quibble Pants kept going, they might be able to make it back for some of the evening programming. “…what if each puzzle that was solved, uh, unlocked a new karate move?” he said, trotting behind her as they brushed past some vines. “Think of it that way, right? And I mean I'm kind of a "Yearlite" myself, so I'm sure she'd be open to—” “Uh... Quibble?” she said, stopping and turning around to look at him. “Sorry!” he said, holding up a hoof. She knew she couldn’t shut Quibble down for long. She didn’t even want to anymore. It was just his way of letting everypony know he was the best, because he was. She got that. It was cool with her, because he wasn’t trying to be the best at something she was best at, so she didn’t have to destroy him. They made a pretty good team. She hadn’t caught the last few minutes of his monologue and tuned in just in time to hear him say, “… cool adventure. And you were totally getting into being tied up back there, am I right? Which, that’s kind of unrealistic too, but I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it.” She halted abruptly. “What?” He snorted. “Oh, come on, now. It was obvious. You had loops and loops of rope around you when Cabelleron ambushed us. You still had rope on when the Cipactli attacked. You kept it on until Daring Do took it off you, and then you got harnessed up again right away…” “To save your flank again!” “I know that already. Thanks. And when I wasn’t screaming my head off because you and Daring Do are adrenaline junkies and have to do everything the hard way, I appreciated the view. Practically the only times when you weren’t tied up was when you were chained up. Face it, Rainbow,” he said, turning and putting a hoof on her shoulder. “At some point you have to admit to yourself, ‘Rainbow Dash, you are really into rope.’” She shook his hoof off. “They tied you up, too!” Quibble rolled his eyes. “Shyeah, they put a pathetic noose on for, like, five minutes,” he said. “They’re such amateurs. I hope Caballeron doesn’t pay them in real money. If they didn’t tie a slip knot, they tied a big roll, like thread on a spool, with an overhoof knot a foal could have gotten out of. Which I did, and you didn’t. So the logical conclusion,” he continued, sitting down, “is that you stayed tied up because you like being tied up.” Rainbow Dash felt her face heating up. “Hey!” she shouted. “They tried harder to tie me up and barely bothered with you because you’re out of shape!” She poked him in the barrel with one of her hooves. He shrugged. “I’m big-boned and I have a sedentary job. That’s irrelevant. Don’t change the subject.” She leaned in so they were muzzle to muzzle. “I’m not changing the subject! I’m just telling you you’re wrong!” But maybe—maybe there were things she still didn’t know about herself, like the way she’d fallen in love with the Daring Do books. She’d sworn that she so didn’t read, that reading was undeniably, unquestionably uncool. She’d had to be flat on her back, completely trapped and in pain, with her wing tied up, when an egghead pony had given her a copy of Daring Do and The Quest For The Sapphire Stone and said “I think you’ll like it.” She didn’t know she loved reading, but she did. Twilight had been right about her after all. And now another egghead pony was telling her that there was another thing about herself she didn’t know. And even though he wasn’t patient and nice like Twilight, and even though he was sort of a jerky know-it-all who she wanted to wrestle down into the ball pit again to show him what was what, Quibble was right about a lot of things, and maybe this was one of them. Agh! What was she thinking? He had to be wrong. And she was going to tell him so until he got that into his thick skull. “Just say it,” he was saying now. “Say ‘hi, I’m Rainbow Dash, and I have this thing about being tied up.’ Go ahead. You’ll feel better.” “I don’t!” she insisted, and shot up off the ground. She hovered so that she was above him, still meeting him eye to eye. “You know what your problem is? You’re scared. You’ve got a …a…” What was that word Twilight used? “A phobia! A rope phobia! That’s why you’re in such a hurry to get it off you!” He shook his head. “I don’t have an irrational fear of rope,” he said, in that irritatingly superior voice of his. “I like rope. A lot, in fact. I just don’t like being tied up with it, and you do.” That was enough. She reared up with her hooves in fighting position. “Prove it!” she yelled, making little jabs at him, but he didn’t seem impressed. “Is that a challenge?” he asked, lifting one eyebrow. “Yeah!” she shot back. “And just so you know: I always win challenges. I’m, like, the winningest pony in Equestria.” “Fine,” he said, and rolled his eyes again, “I’ll prove it.” He trotted over to a nearby tree and reached his hoof towards some vines. “Those are snakes,” she pointed out, as she touched down on the ground. “Eurgh,” he said, gagging and hurriedly withdrawing his hoof. “Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?” He moved away and tested the next set of vines by carefully poking them with a stick first. Nothing moved. Then he yanked down a liana that yielded, broke, and fell down from the rainforest canopy far above. He carefully measured it by pacing it out, and broke it short with a sharp blow of his hoof when it was about eight pony lengths long. Her eyes widened. “Sheesh, Quibble, how many ponies are you planning to tie up with that thing?” “Just one,” he answered. “Put your forelegs behind you.” She couldn’t see what he was doing. “Hmm,” he mused, “never done this on a pegasus before. You’d better fold your wings flat. I don’t want to catch a feather in the knots by mistake.” She folded her wings as closely to her body as possible and felt him place two loops on her, one around each shoulder. He pulled the loops together so that they were snugly but not tightly fitted around her front legs, holding them together behind her, and then she felt him make a knot. He worked quickly and smoothly, working his way down her back, and finished with several coils around the last two loops on each side after securing both sides to the middle, just above the hock. “There,” he said, trotting back in front of her and sitting down, folding his front legs, “see what you make of that.” She pulled against the bonds experimentally. They didn’t seem too bad. They certainly didn’t hurt. They were evenly spaced so that the pressure was well distributed, and none of the loops went around a joint or impinged on a nerve. As an athlete, she appreciated that. And they were much, much less uncomfortable than the sort of thing Caballeron’s goons usually tied on—no bulges or bumps, no squeezing against her stomach. This oughtta be easy. Then she’d show him. That was before she figured out that she wasn’t going anywhere. The improvised ropes were too unyielding, and the knots were too secure. Try as she might, she couldn’t fight her way free, and she was fighting as hard as she knew how. She couldn’t use her wings for balance or bracing, and that was unfair. Maybe Applejack could have wrestled free. Applejack was stronger than her, though she hated to admit that. And Quibble was an Earth Pony. Maybe it was some kind of Earth Pony thing. “It—feels like the harder I struggle, the tighter the ropes get!” she gasped. “Book One, rrrright?” he said smugly. “And they’re not getting tighter. They’re completely stable. The ropes just feel as though they’re getting tighter because you keep thrashing around.” “Nnngh!” She threw out her chest and shoulders, but Quibble was right: it just made the ropes feel tighter, even painful. She lashed out with her hind legs, but instead, she toppled over onto her side. If only her wings weren’t tied down—but they were. “I’ll—wait till—argh!—you wait!” she snarled between gritted teeth. She kicked out with her unbound rear legs, but as she pushed and struggled and flopped like a fish, she realized that the ropes weren’t going anywhere and neither was she. And instead of fighting harder, she started to relax. She wasn’t moving because she couldn’t, and that meant she didn’t have to. She wasn’t responsible for kicking flank and saving the world. The ropes felt like tight, warm blankets. She could let go… She lay on the ground, panting hard, with her mane falling lankly against her neck and her coat stained dark blue with sweat. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, Quibble was standing next to her with his face dropped down near hers. He was panting hard, too, but that made no sense, because all he’d done was sit there. “All right,” she said wearily. “Take them off.” He went behind her, untied a few knots, and pulled. To her surprise, the knots popped themselves, one by one, and everything slid off smoothly. He helped her up, and she shook herself until the dirt matting her coat had fallen off. “Well?” he said with a smirk. “I don’t know,” she said, wobbling a bit. “It’s weird. Is this like that pillowcase back at the vendor room? Is that even a thing?” His face froze, and then went absolutely blank. “Yeah,” he said flatly. “Yeah. It’s a thing.” He dropped the long vine, which coiled itself into a neat pile, and started walking in the direction of the convention center. “Hey,” she said. “What’s your problem?” He turned back and looked her straight in the eye. “Dash, we just stopped fighting about Daring Do. We just decided that it’s cool and we’re friends. I don’t want to talk about it if this is going to end in ‘eewww, Quibble, that’s disgusting.’ I saw how you were acting with the ropes and the chains, and I thought, ‘hey, maybe this is something else we have in common, aside from Daring Do.’ Obviously, I blew it, so let’s drop it. Forget I said anything. Come on, let’s get out of here. I have a fanfic reading I’m supposed to go to.” He trotted away before Dash had a chance to do anything. She could hear his monologue fading into the distance: “…of course, Farrier’s Law, almost all of it is going to be horrible, but I think some scathing but honest criticism is just what some writers need to…” She took off, jetted past, and swooped in front of him in a matter of seconds, landing and blocking his path with her wings. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said, cutting him off. “I never said anything about anything being disgusting or not being your friend. Some of my friends build shrines to other ponies, have things for furless bipeds, and give massages to bears. On the weirdness scale,” she said, ruffling her feathers and folding her wings up, “I’d say you’re right in the middle. I just never heard of this before. And that was kinda fun back there. And—well, anyway, I still want us to be friends.” Quibble scrubbed one hoof through his gray mane and sighed. “Ok. You saved my life twice this afternoon. The least I can do is buy you dinner. I think that’s some kind of a rule.” > Chapter Two: Leading Her Out > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Are you kidding?” said Quibble, waving one hoof in front of him as he talked. “The Daring Do novels are loaded with kinky subtext!” They were now on their second tray of appetizers. The hotel restaurant had decided to honor DaringCon by creating special menu items, each of which had a volcano in the middle that you dipped the food in or cooked the food over: volcano and daisies, volcano and vegetables, volcano n’ chips. The drinks were all fruit drinks with a lot of fruit in them, and they came in statue-shaped glasses with fake gems on the outside. The food might have been sort of meh, and it was really expensive, but at least it had a theme. “The crops? The whips? The fire play where her coat almost gets singed? Do you know how many times Daring Do gets tied up in Griffin’s Goblet alone?” Dash knitted her brows as she ran through the book in her head. “Uh, fourteen?” “Fourtee——yeah, that’s right. Fourteen times,” he said, and shook his head. “You really do know these books, don’t you? The lianas when she’s captured by Caballeron? The ropes in the cave of Ahuizotl? The chains when she’s hanging over the lava? It’s like one outrageous predicament bondage scenario after another! Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “that’s before I knew all of that was real. You think A.K. Yearling embellishes those stories and adds that stuff in just to be interesting? Or does she get into those situations deliberately just because she’s into it? I’m guessing the latter.” He stopped and slurped up more of the themed tropical drink in front of him. “You just think that because you’re a great big pervert,” Rainbow Dash retorted. “Why, thank you,” Quibble replied, holding a hoof to his chest. “Likewise, I’m pretty sure.” “But they’re foaldren’s books!” she protested. “I read ‘em to my almost-kid almost sister!” “They’re not just for fillies and colts,” he replied, riffling through a copy of the convention program. “Hey, we’re here, and we’re adults. Look.” He turned the program around so she could see the convention rules. “You can’t even get in without having your cutie mark, and even then, young ponies have to have a parent or a guardian and aren’t permitted in to certain events. The books are incredibly smart and well-written, with complex literary references dating back at least to pre-Celestian times. They’re a pop culture phenomenon possibly on a level with Colt of the Rings! “Yeah, I don’t know,” said Dash, rubbing the back of her head with one hoof. “I started reading them because a friend gave me a copy of the first one.” She looked down and poked the program. “And…and because they’re easy to read. Reading’s kinda ha- I mean, I didn’t used to like reading. Reading was for eggheads.” When she looked back up, he was staring at something over her head. “A.K. Yearling’s received awards for encouraging literacy, y’know.” “I just think they’re fun and cool,” she mumbled. “They are fun and cool!” he agreed, slamming his hoof down on the table and knocking over his drink. She grabbed the program with her teeth and pulled it away just in time. “Oops. And they’re also full of stuff for adult ponies, especially kinky ponies. Daring Do’s always ‘pressing her limits,’” he continued, making air quotes with his hooves, “ ‘pushing herself through the pain’…I mean, ‘another day, another dungeon?’ Heh. Come on,” he said, rolling his eyes. Their waiter came back, mopped up the small sea of fruit drink, deposited two more drinks and a Volcano N’Veggies, and trotted off to look after other patrons. Dash dropped some carrots and a stalk of celery into the volcano and watched it go “WHOOM.” It looked as though you weren’t supposed to do that. “So, uh…how do you find out more about this stuff?” she said, scraping the carbonized vegetables out of the crater. “I mean, I’m not saying I wanna, but just in case I wanted to know.” Quibble chomped on a long stick of volcano-roasted vegetables. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “you could talk to other ponies about it. Kind of like we’re doing now. Only you want to make sure they’re into it, or at least interested. You can make a lot of embarrassing mistakes that way, and I mean a lot.” “How do you know if they’re interested?” she asked, her mouth bulging with slightly burned celery. “You could do it the smart way. There are bookstores and newsletters where you can meet ponies. I mean for dinner,” he added hastily, “or lunch. You just sit and talk and find out that kinky ponies aren’t that weird. Well,” he added, “mostly not that weird. We aren’t all hard-core Daring Do nerds, for a start.” That didn’t sound too bad. There were other ponies who liked tying and chaining other ponies up, like Quibble, and obviously, there must be other ponies who liked being tied and chained up, like…She put the rest of that thought aside for the moment. Something else was worrying her. “What if you ran into other ponies you already know? What if my friends were there?” What if Pinkie Pie was bringing the cupcakes and I forgot to tell her not to tell anypony about it?, she thought. “They won’t tell about you, so you won’t tell about them,” he said reassuringly. “It’d be mutual social suicide. You’re both carrying a dice bag.” At her blank expression, he added, “You know. Like Ogres and Oubliettes.” “Sorry,” she said, shrugging. “My dorky friend’s even dorkier brother plays that, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” That still sounded risky. What would happen if Soarin or Spitfire were to show up and see her with a lot of other ponies who were into whips and crops? That wouldn’t be good. “But what if one of the other Wonderbolts were there? I’m a Wonderbolt, y’know,” she bragged. “Really,” he said without enthusiasm, his eyes glazing over. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t follow sports.” Her jaw dropped and he went on, “Anyway, it’s the same thing. Everypony agrees that what ponies say there, stays there.” “So that’s the smart way?” she said, still recovering. Somepony who didn’t know who the Wonderbolts were? Was he kidding? “What’s the stupid way?” Quibble mumbled something around another stick of vegetables. “What?” “You could,” he muttered, not meeting her eye, “hint. Like I just did. And that’s risky, but sometimes it’s worth the risk, because… I really, really think you’re awesome.” She couldn’t tell whether it was the glow from the table volcano or the darkness of the restaurant, but his face was beginning to look red. Was he gonna get all mushy? She hated mushy. “Hey, you’re awesome, too!” she replied, hoofing him hard in the shoulder. “Ow!” He scowled at her. “If I hadn’t made it clear, I am not into receiving pain, so stop it.” “Ok,” she agreed. “So, how else would a pony find out more?” “Um, you could… read about it?” he suggested. “Like Pony BDSM by Neigh Wisepony, or The Ultimate Guide to Pony Kink by Pranstan Palomino. I mean, that last one has some really wild stuff in it and you might want to skip the bit about Griffon puncture art, but at least it gives you an overview of…” “Ok, ok,” she said, holding up a hoof, “I don’t have the patience for that. No offense, Quibble, but if I wanted to read, I’d be reading Daring Do. I don’t want to learn about things. I’m—my friend Twilight called it—I’m multi….” She furrowed her brow as she thought. “Multifaceted?” he interjected. “Multilayered? You learn by multiple choice?” “Multitasking! Twilight says I learn by multitasking. Yeah. So I sorta have to be doing something else while I’m learning about things.” “Something else? Like what?” Quibble took a long sip at his drink, hardly paying attention to what he was doing. “Well, flying, mostly, but definitely something physical. And I don’t like waiting around for stuff. I just want to jump in and do it right away.” A lot of tropical drink went down the wrong way and Quibble had to cough it up. “How physical?” he asked cautiously, eyes still streaming. “How right away?” “I once flew straight into a huge pile of rocks on purpose because I said I would.” “Ooo-kay.” It turned out that if learning about Pony BDSM meant doing a lot of reading, actually doing it meant writing a lot of stuff down. Quibble had gotten hold of a pencil somewhere and was jotting down lists on a paper napkin. It reminded her of the piles and piles of paper the Wonderbolts had made her sign before she even arrived at Wonderbolts Academy. “What is this, some kind of contract?” He looked up, momentarily confused. “What? No! Give me a second. I’m still thinking.” He’d been doing it forever, or what seemed like forever, and she’d started to rock back and forth on her chair and hum the Daring Do theme song. “Do we hafta?” she whined. “Yes, we have to!” he said, slamming his hoof down on the table. “This is important! This is like a flyer’s checklist. You’ve got ponies doing potentially very dangerous stuff together—you’ve got to go over the guidelines first or somepony could get seriously hurt!” “You sound like you know a lot more about formation flying than you said you did,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Who? Me? No! I never pay attention to anything to do with sports. Anyway, this won’t take all that long.” He glanced down at his list. “We know you like bondage.” The waiter coughed. “Uh—your dessert?” “Oh, thanks,” said Quibble, without looking up. “Put it down there. You’re into ropes and chains,” he continued, as though they hadn’t been interrupted, “because we already tried them out this afternoon.” The waiter set down the volcano with chocolate and marshmallows and fled back into the kitchen. “That’s where you are in luck, Rainbow Dash,” he added, smirking, “because I am a rope top, and I am, excuse me, an expert, which is why I really, really hate those stupid, precarious rope bridges. How do you feel about pain?” “Pain?” she said, throwing out her chest. “I’m great with pain. I can put up with nearly anything!” “ ‘Put up with’?” he said, his eyebrows disappearing into his bangs. “This isn’t about ‘putting up with’ things. This isn’t like, I don’t know, fighting changelings. You don’t do it because you have to; you do it because you like it. OK,” he said, “no pain,” and he picked up the pencil in his mouth. “Wait! No!” She grabbed his hoof to get his attention just before he struck it out. “That’s not what I meant! It’s like…I mean…when I fly hard and fast, it’s good, y’know? Even when I slam into a wall or into the ground, it’s a good kind of pain, ‘cause it shows how much I can take and how tough I am. It’s awesome. You know what I mean?” She wasn’t sure he did, because she was doing such a bad job of explaining it, but he grinned. “Ok, now we’re getting somewhere,” he said around the pencil, and wrote something down. “I like your thinking.” “What about a safe word?” she said, vaguely remembering something. “Do I need a safe word?” She knew all about safe words. Well, Rarity and Twilight knew all about them, and she knew about them because both Rarity and Twilight had been reading a book called Fifty Shades of Neigh. They both hated it. Twilight said it was poorly written, and Rarity said it was unrealistic. They talked about it a lot. Like, practically every time they met. It was beginning to get old. “Huh, good point,” said Quibble, who had put down the pencil and was now holding a marshmallow over the baby volcano. “I mean, you keep fighting back and saying things like, ‘you wait till I get out of this: just wait!’ and ‘cut it out!’ and ‘stop!’ It would probably be a good idea to know whether you meant ‘stop,’ or whether you were just saying ‘stop,’ but really you wanted me to keep doing whatever it was.” Her brain was racing with the possibilities of what it was that Quibble might be doing that she didn’t want him to stop doing, but instead she said, ‘uh…how about ‘marshmallow?’” He snorted. “Pfft. You’ll never remember something like ‘marshmallow.’ Too long. Too complicated. Too many syllables. Your brain will be too mushy.” “Mushy how?” “Mushy,” he murmured, his voice dropping, “the way you’ll be when I’ve got my hooves on you and really worked you over.” This was ridiculous. All right, Quibble was a friend and a huge fan of Daring Do, but he didn’t like sports, was a total egghead, wasn’t her physical type at all, and kept trying to boss her around. “You’re drooling,” he pointed out. “I was not,” she denied hotly, while wiping away the goo. “I was, uh, I still had marshmallow in my mouth. So if ‘marshmallow’ isn’t any good, what is?” “Pick something that comes naturally to you,” he suggested. “Something you use all the time that isn’t ‘stop’ or ‘don’t.’ ” “How about ‘whoa’?” “Sure,’ he agreed. ‘Whoa’ is good.” Now she was getting the hang of this! “Maybe ‘easy’ for if I want you to slow down?” “That’s fine.” “And what if I want you to do more?” His eyes went wide. “Ponies don’t…new players don’t usually…” “Well, I’m not most ponies!” she said, putting both hooves on the table. “I need something for ‘more.’ If I want more, I’ll just say ‘come on.’ How about that?” “Um…ok?” He picked up the pencil again. “Is there anything you really don’t like?” “I don’t like ponies touching my hooves.” “Okay, good to know,” Quibble muttered around the pencil. He glanced up. “Uh—when you say ‘I don’t like ponies touching my hooves,’ do you mean you really don’t like ponies touching your hooves, or do you mean you don’t like it so much that it’s something a play pony should definitely do?” “Tell you what,” Rainbow Dash said conversationally, her cheek pillowed on one hoof, “why don’t you try touching my hooves sometime and find out?” “Uh-huh. No touching the hooves. Got it.” He made a note and put the pencil down. “Oh, just one more thing. I usually don’t sleep with stallions.” “I see,” said Quibble, after a pause. “Well, I prefer sleeping with mares I tie up and consensually abuse, to be honest, although I suppose I could just tie you up and give you some kind of idea of bondage and maybe some impact play if it turns out you’re into it and it’s not strictly speaking necessary to include genital stimulation, it’s just a bonus from my point of view …” Dash jammed her hoof over his mouth. “Uh, Quibble?” “Mwf?” “I said I usually don’t. I didn’t say I never did.” She dropped her hoof. There was another pause. “So, uh, so uh… that’s a soft limit?” “I’m saying,” Dash said, and hesitated, “I’m saying I’d be up for it.” Quibble met her eye. “Oh! Oh.” He rested his whole foreleg on the table and leaned in until his muzzle was inches away from hers. She could feel his breath on her own muzzle as a whiff of chocolate, marshmallow, and artificial smoke ghosted past her nose and down her cheek. She swallowed. “Well,” he purred, arching an eyebrow as his blue eyes met hers. “Well, alrighty then.” There was yet another, even longer pause. “There’s still one marshmallow left,” he said, indicating it with a tilt of his head. “Go ahead and eat it up.” “I don’t have to—” she protested. “Eat it up,” he repeated, his eyes still meeting hers Slowly, half unwillingly, Dash lowered her head and ate the marshmallow directly off the serving plate, as though it were a trough. “That’s a good filly,” he murmured. > Chapter Three: Breaking Her In > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Royal Suite occupied the entire top floor of the convention hotel. Dash liked the high ceilings, but the fanciness was more Rarity than her. When she and Twilight had planned to come to the convention, the hotel manager had insisted on giving them the Royal Suite, saying that he couldn’t possibly consider anything else. Then, when Twilight had to cancel at the last minute, they left Dash in the room anyway, but the staff had come around and taken the heavy purple curtains with the large pink star off the canopy bed. They had a thing about making the suite match the princess in occupancy, which Dash thought was stupid, but she enjoyed the view, the airiness, and the room to stretch her wings. It was almost as good as being at home. Now she was wearing a track in the expensive carpet, waiting for Quibble. She’d come back and taken a nice warm bath, and her nerves were getting to her. Just a little. “C’mon, Dash,” she said aloud, giving herself the pep talk she often gave to others, “ this isn’t like the Best Young Flyer competition. You’ve done royal performances, for pony’s sake! No one’ll be watching if you screw up!” “How bad can it be, anyway?” she continued, stretching all her limbs out one by one in an attempt to relax. “I’m up to anything he can dish out! Yeah!” She danced back and forth, jabbing at an imaginary opponent. “I am Rainbow Dash, and I am gonna do this thing! I am gonna let some stallion I barely know tie me up and maybe smack my butt and fuck me and…oh, geez.” She put both hooves to her face. She knew in her gut that this was different, but she wasn’t going to let it get to her. In fact, she was so not gonna let it get to her that she was gonna re-read the most recent Daring Do book while she waited. She’d only read it ten times, anyway. Before she could get halfway to the big comfy armchair and table with its stack of well-hooved Daring Do books, she heard a tentative knock at the door. When she opened it, Quibble was standing there. He wasn’t looking particularly threatening, even if he could be. He just looked like Quibble, except that he’d cleaned off the mud, was wearing a fresh Daring Do jacket with a neckerchief, and was carrying a small duffle bag. He took a step back. “Oh, um, hi,” he said. “You must be Rainbow Dash. I mean, of course you are, duh. So… here I am.” “Yep,” she said, and moved to let him come in. “Nice place,” he said, trotting into the room. She watched him look around and take in the wide space and high ceiling. His eyes lingered on the large canopy bed. “Yeah,” she replied, “the room’s ‘cause of Twilight and they let me have it anyway, only they took the curtains down.” “Just as well,” he said, circling the bed and inspecting the frame. “They’d only get in the way.” He dropped the bag, which went clank. “Whoa,” she said, her eyes widening. He followed her gaze to the duffle bag. “Oh, that,” he said. “I made a quick run to the hardware store. It’s nothing much—just some lengths of chain and a few more things that might come in useful. I stopped by the vendor room, too. I was going to get some things anyway, and I already had some stuff. I mean, you don’t want to have only one cosplay, so I brought some more accessories for the ‘Equestrian Botanical Society Ball’ tomorrow night.” “Oh, yeah,” Dash agreed, stalling, “the big society thing in Daring Do and the Eternal Flower!” They were on familiar territory now. “I almost had this friend of mine make an—” “Olive-green ball gown,” they chorused. “Right?” she agreed. “Just like Daring wears. Only I hate wearing dresses as much as she does, so I decided not to. Rarity had this design with lots of flowers, and Twilight wanted them all to be botanically accurate, so she was gonna wear the dress instead and I was gonna be comfortable and…” What am I talking about? she thought. Why am I talking about all my friends? It’s like I’m taking them along with me for backup or something! Oh. She was fearless, and her favorite dream was beating up a swarm of changelings, but something about being alone in this bedroom with this stallion was almost making her—not scared, of course—but kinda edgy. Don’t be dumb, she reminded herself. It’s just Quibble. It’s no big deal. “We can call it off,” he suggested, picking the bag back up again. “I mean, it’s just a trial run to see if you like it. There’s still probably time for me to make the fanfic reading. I understand DaringDaringDare17 was going to have open critiques from the floor for her Daring/Ahuizotl/Fluffy Kitten harem fic, and I wouldn’t want to miss a treat like that.” “No,” she insisted. “I said I was up for it. I want to see what you brought.” He nodded, trotted over to the sofa, and zipped the bag open. “Of course, I had to bring the whip,” he began, taking it out of the bag and dropping it on the sofa. It lay there in an almost perfectly circular coil: tobacco brown, oiled, and as mean-looking as the snakes Quibble had almost picked up that afternoon by mistake. “It’s practically iconic in the earlier books. It’s my theory that Daring is a switch who started out being more of a domme before discovering her subbie side. Hmm,” he said, frowning. “Maybe that’s why I like the earlier books? More I identify with. Anyway, it works like this.” He abruptly seized the handle in his mouth and snapped his head back. The whip made a sharp crack in the air, and even though it wasn’t anywhere near Dash, she let out a snort of alarm, which she then tried to cover with a cough. “It’s more for the cosplay and the look of the thing,” he continued, rolling it back up as though he hadn’t noticed. “I don’t think I’ll be using it, because of the limited space. I might be able to work with it, though. Do you want to?” “Sure!” she blustered, squaring her shoulders. “I’m up for anything!” “Oh, good,” he went on cheerfully, rubbing his hooves together. “One bullwhip, cleared to go. Most novices don’t want to be whipped. Oddly enough, they’re usually scared of it, but you’re not afraid of anything, so that’s ok.” “Yeah,” she agreed, and swallowed. “This one, we’ll probably be using.” He withdrew a crop from the bag. Some ponies had once used them to punish students, long, long ago, she knew, and even canes, but Celestia had put a stop to it as soon as she found out that schools were using them. Now they were illegal. “They’re still legal to use on adults,” he pointed out, as though he knew what she was thinking. “Which we both are. And just like the whip, we don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.” She nosed the crop and smelled the material. “Here,” he said, picking it up and holding it against her rump. He didn’t hit her with it, but she could feel it. She leaned back and found that she was rubbing herself on it. He didn’t say anything, but she caught a smirk as he placed it back on the sofa. “This is what I got in the vendor room,” he continued, pulling out a set of green bracelets with Daring Do’s compass cutie mark on them. “I saved up a little, because there’s stuff here you can’t get anywhere else.” She looked at them more closely. They were made of canvas, but it was stitched onto some tougher material. Two of them were larger than the other two. They all buckled, and they all had a metal ring on them. “They’re lined, too!” he said, with his head partway into the bag. He eagerly pulled out a matching collar and put it with the bracelets. “Can you believe it? They’re perfect!” “They sell this stuff in the vendor room?” she said, poking the pile in disbelief. “It’s all hiding in plain sight,” he said, shrugging. “Most ponies don’t think anything of it. Meanwhile, I can’t pass a towel rail without considering the possibilities. It’s just the way I am. That’s it,” he added apologetically, “that’s all I brought. I didn’t expect anything major to come up, and I left most of the complicated, heavy equipment at home. So what about you? Do you have anything you might want to, um, use?” She did, actually. One night, when they’d all been smashed, she, Rarity, and Applejack had been talking about their toy collections, and the next thing she knew, she’d gone zig-zagging back to her cloud house to pick hers up for a show-and-tell. From what she could remember the next morning, it had been pretty interesting. Rarity had very elegant toys. Some of them were gold-plated, and some of them were the latest thing she’d read about, although she never said where she’d read about them. The insertables were artistic, and they had brand names like “Principessa,” although Rarity gave them pet names, like “this lovely boy,” and “the stallion everypony really should know.” Applejack had a collection of more or less identical toys with different diameters, like a drill set: the right tool for the right job. And the one thing Dash’s toys had in common was that none of them, not a single one, looked like a pony’s dick. She just didn’t see the point. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the shape, the size, or that dildos, unlike cocks, never lost interest in being hard, but she usually didn’t show them off to the few stallions she’d banged because they got threatened and defensive and it tended to ruin the evening. “Go on,” Quibble urged. “If you’ve got anything, let me see it.” She opened a drawer, removed a small silk sack, and tumbled its contents onto the bed. There were things that were meant to be stuck in various places, a little one that buzzed, a big one that buzzed, and a couple that did both, and they were all tangled together in a whole lot of straps. Quibble tapped his hoof to his chin thoughtfully. “Hmm,” he said. “Okay. I’m assuming they’re all clean and good to go. If they’re not, go clean them, and then line them up.” “Huh?” said Dash. “Look,” he said, “honestly, I’m good for one and then the equipment needs a recharge, and any stallion who tells you differently is lying like a Saddle Arabian rug. These,” he continued, grinning, “give me options.” “Uh,” she said tentatively, “my favorite is the…” “I didn’t ask,” he replied. “Clean them and line them up. Do it now.” “Fine,” Dash muttered, as she scooped up her collection and took it into the bathroom. By the time she came back, Quibble had pushed the coffee table next to the bed and lined it with towels. On it, he’d re-arranged the wristlets, the chains, the crop, a whip, and a few things she didn’t recognize. He didn’t even look at her. “I want the dildos, the plugs, and the vibrators separated and organized by size from smallest to largest,” he said, as he looped lengths of rope around each bedpost. Dash watched as he swiftly tied knots above and below each attachment and then gave them a sharp tug or two to ensure that they would not move. She wasn’t exactly sure what he’d do with them, but her brain had shut off and her blood was rushing between her legs, making the whole area puff up like a stallion’s… “Why aren’t you organizing the toys the way I told you to?” His brows were furrowed, and he looked exactly as he had when they were arguing. She opened her mouth to argue back, but he’d already turned away again and she just didn’t feel like it, somehow, so she organized the toys according to his directions, muttering rebelliously as she did so. He slid off the bed, where he’d finished rigging things up. “Give me your hoof,” he said, and then, as she hesitated, “now.” She lifted up each hoof obediently, holding still as he buckled each wristlet on. It was like being back at the Academy—she wouldn’t think of doing anything else. He held up the collar and paused. “Whoa, easy, and come on? Say it, Rainbow Dash.” “Whoa, easy, and come on!” she said, standing at attention with her eyes focused straight forward. “ ‘Come on,’ ” he muttered, shaking his head. “Only you would want a word for ‘do it harder and faster.’ When this goes on,” he continued, holding out the collar, “things will be different. I’m not going to be my normal, agreeable, easy-going self.” She almost rolled her eyes to the ceiling, but thought better of it. It didn’t feel right. “No more Mr. Nice Quibble. You got that?” “I copy,” she replied, then, at his confused expression, she explained, “that means yes.” “Are you ready to have another adventure?” She nodded. “Good. Because we’re going to have one.” He leaned forward and kissed her, which she hadn’t been expecting, and as she recovered from the shock, she realized that he’d already buckled the collar on. For just a moment, she went weak at the knees and wobbled like a day-old foal. He placed a hoof on her ass. “Get up on the bed,” he ordered, and she made her way there, as revved as though she were about to race a new opponent, except that her pussy was puffing up again. She was used to being wet, but this felt as though if she were a stallion, she’d be getting hard. She lay face down as he directed. She hardly took in what he was saying as he latched chains to the wristlets and attached them to the ropes at each corner of the bed. He said something about taking pressure off her ankles as he wrapped cloths around her belly and chest and attached them to the bed rails. Good, she thought. I might want to use them later. He tied criss-crossing ropes up each front leg until they looked like splint boots and did something similar to the back legs, arranging them so that they were positioned exactly as though she were about to spring into the air. Then he winched her up so that her feet cleared the top of the bed, her hindquarters slightly raised. She was suspended and tied, but she was free, as free as she could only truly be in the air. He looked up at her from where he was securing one of the front legs a bit more, and met her eye. He got it. He got her. This Earth Pony stallion who was completely wrong for her in almost every possible way had figured out without her saying anything that this was exactly what she needed. What else did he know? “I’ve left your wings free,” he said, still looking at her. “You can balance better that way.” She extended them luxuriously, closing her eyes, glad of the extra space in the room, feeling her back and shoulder muscles stretch and lengthen. She had only her wings. She was Rainbow Dash, and her life was in her wings, and— “Ouch!” Something small and strong snapped and pinched the tip of one of her outstretched wings, painful enough to make her eyes water. She managed to swing herself around to see Quibble taking his teeth away from the end of her wing. He had left a nasty little metal thing there. “Clamps,” he explained, massaging the wing, “or in your case, temporary pinions. No flying away until I’m finished with you.” He kissed the clamp and circled around to her other side. “Your wings are absolutely beautiful,” he breathed, reaching out and running a hoof down it, stroking the bright blue feathers. “Even you have no idea. They’re better with clamps, of course,” he added, and snapped the other one on. “Oh, one more thing.” He must have moved behind her now. She felt one final loop of ropes. These were smaller and made of something softer: maybe silk. They lifted her tail, ran around her waist, and then through her rear legs on each side of her cunt. As he pulled them, she felt it spread just a little wider. “And one final knot,” he said, pulling it into place. The last knot was directly over the top of her exposed clit. She couldn’t help squirming, but fought to keep control. She was tougher than this. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him. He began to spank her with one hoof, very lightly, moving all over her rump so that he never hit two times in the same spot. She gritted her teeth against the sting in her wingtips and the constant tiny chafe against her button. “Is that all you’ve got?” she complained. “This is nothing.” He stopped spanking and came to face her, pulling her around so that she could see him. His eyebrows came down and his eyes narrowed into slits. He looked as though she were A. K. Yearling and he really was accusing her muzzle to muzzle about having sold out. “Oh, so you know everything now,” he said sarcastically. “You know exactly how this is done. Never mind that it’s your first scene and you didn’t even know bondage was a ‘thing’ until a few hours ago, you’re Rainbow Fucking Dash and you’re never, ever, wrong!” She tried to say something, but the motion was making that knot move and she was too distracted. “For your information, I am warming you up so you don’t have to spend the second day of the convention sitting on cushions and wandering around the vendor’s room with big purple bruises on that light blue flank and rump of yours. You want to advertise what I’ve been doing to you?” he said accusingly, looking her directly in the eye. Yes, said some entirely insane part of her. “Fine,” he said, pulling back and folding his front legs, “I’ll stop.” “No, no, don’t!” she squeaked. “Who’s running this fuck?” he snarled. “You are.” “ ‘You are,’ who?” he snarled again. “You are, Quibble.” “‘You are, Quibble,’ what?” “You are, Quibble, sir! You are, sir!” she gasped. “That’s right. No more questioning what I’m doing, or I stop and leave you hanging.” “Yes, sir!” she said, panting. “Understood, sir!” “That’s better,” he said, and resumed spanking her, his hoof coming down with more resounding thwacks than before. Calling him “sir” didn’t feel weird at all. It wasn’t any different from the way she spoke to Spitfire on the parade ground, was it? Spitfire was a friend off-duty, but on the field, Spitfire was in command and Rainbow obeyed. Right now, her new egghead friend was in command, and Rainbow obeyed. And this time, she had no choice. She was helpless to do anything else. She couldn’t get away. She stretched her wings, but she knew she couldn’t fly. She tried experimentally pulling against her bonds, first lightly, and then as hard as she could, but they were too expertly tied. All she managed to do was to swing gently back and forth, rubbing the knot across her button. Air currents brushed past her exposed ass crack and cunt, and she let out an involuntary moan. “I didn’t give you permission to do that,” Quibble snapped, halting her swinging. “If you can’t control yourself, I’ll have to put a bit in your mouth.” She folded her lips together. Control. Control. She needed self-control—and then she nearly lost it as he slid under her and licked the entire length of her slit in one long swipe. He nuzzled his nose into her pussy and teased her just long enough to leave her in no doubt that his tongue was not just for talking and that his cunnilingual skillset fully matched his lingual one and had similar staying power. She tried not to whimper as he withdrew, and failed. “Uh-uh,” he said, leaving one last kiss on her snatch, “I’m still really annoyed at you. You slapped me across the face with your tail, did you know that? That certainly felt deliberate to me. You hurt,” he continued, pushing the sling back and forth gently so that her pelvis swayed, “my feelings,” and he blew a breath past her exposed crack. The puff of air entirely failed to dry the juices that were overflowing by now. She felt droplets falling off her body and knew they must be hitting the bed. He moved over to the coffee table, and then behind her where she couldn’t see him at all. “So I don’t think you’re going to come until I’m good and ready to accept your apology, Miss Impressive As Fuck Wonderbolt. In fact, I order you not to. Is that understood?” “Understood,” she responded, and added, mumbling, “and being a Wonderbolt IS pretty fucking impressive. GAH!” The whip crack came out of nowhere. It didn’t land anywhere near her body, but the sound startled her, which jarred the ropes. Only her years of physical discipline overcame the mixture of pleasure and pain and helped her stave off the orgasm that threatened to rip through her. She screwed up her face against the reactive tears and trembled. “Ah,” she heard him say approvingly. “That was well done. I’m reluctantly impressed, and I want you to know that it’s very difficult for me to tell you that right now.” Shut up, she thought so loudly that he ought to have heard her. Shut up, shut up, shut up. He was going to talk until the Windigos came and everything froze solid and she was going to spend eternity not coming, which sucked. He trotted back to the coffee table and dropped the whip. “So here’s what I propose,” he continued cheerfully. “I propose a thorough, comprehensive literary quiz on the entire corpus of Daring Do novels.” He picked up the crop and moved closer, ghosting his hoof just past her. “If you get the answers wrong, you get the crop on your flank. Get them right, and you get the hoof on your pussy. Choose wisely.” He trotted behind her again. She could do it, she knew all the books by heart, but… “I, I don’t know if I can remember them right now, sir—oooo,” she gasped, and the crop dragged past her soaking slit. “You will if you’re a real fan, Rainbow Dash. Here’s where we find out.” He tapped the crop twice against her flank, and began to quote. ‘If only she could escape this oppressive atmosphere and fly up into the cool blue sky.’” “Sapph-Sapphire Stone,” she panted. “Good,” he said, and massaged her cunt. It was so wet that she could feel the sticky strings clinging to his hoof as he took it away. “ ‘Oh, Daring Do, I will so miss your amusing laughter-jokes.’” “Uh…Daring Do and the Trek to the Terrifying Tower! Ahh!” she yelped, as a wicked cut came down on her flank. “Uh, uh, uh, Daring Do and the Ring of Destiny! “That’s better,” he said, and she felt the massaging on her cunt again. She leaned into the caress, but it didn’t last long enough before he moved away. “‘To reach the island, travel the scales.’” It was getting easier now. “Daring Do and the Eternal Flower,” she answered. “Mmmm.” “Not going to come now, are you?” he questioned. “Mmmmm. No.” She was floating away on a cloud of erotic pleasure and Daring Do trivia. Bliss. “She was here to do a job, and nothing would stand in her way. Not even the deadliest tropical bird known to ponykind.” “Mmmmarked Thief of Marapore.’” Silence. He trotted back to the coffee table again and dropped the riding crop, and she stopped floating. “Whah? Why did you stop?” He frowned. “This is too easy,” he said. “GAH!” she screamed. “Stop being like that, you…you egghead!” She knew he’d make her regret that outburst, but part of her was beginning to look forward to that. “So, what do you think of Daring Do and the Forbidden City of Clouds?” he said casually. “It’s good! It’s really good! Can I come now?” “Oh, really?” he said, ignoring this. “Because I thought it was a shameless, blatant setup for a series of sequels that would run to at least twenty five more books.” “I liked it!” “Well, if you say so. See that chair?” He turned her gently, so that her whole body swung to the right, and she saw the armchair, an ottoman, a reading lamp, and the pile of Daring Do books. “I’ll be over there, renewing my acquaintance with it. You,” he went on, allowing her to swing back, “will be right here. I’ll be over sooner, or maybe later. It depends on how bored I am. Oh, yes. I was forgetting something.” He pulled off his neckerchief, tied it around her forehead, and slid it down so that it covered her eyes. It was so thick that it completely shut out all light, and he made sure that not a single fold rode up to let the tiniest gleam in. “Now, you just settle in for a nice, restful wait.” She had no idea how long she swung there, but it was agony. Sometimes he ran a vibrator over her rump, or smacked it with the crop, and she never knew which was coming. He fucked her with the toys, both the ones that buzzed and the ones that didn’t. Once he twitched the wing clamps. Once he put the smallest vibrator directly on the knot so that she screamed. He never touched her with any part of his body, he always backed off before she came, and in between she hung, blind and seemingly forgotten. While he read a Daring Do book. That he said he hated. She was soaked with sweat and a steady rivulet of goo was drooling down from her onto the bed when finally, she heard him close the book. Once again, she knew that she’d regret this, but she said it anyway: “Well, I hope it was GOOD for you!” “Meh,” he said, tossing it aside with a thump. “It was just meh. Not as horrible as I remembered, but it was probably just the sideshow adding a touch of interest.” She heard some soft thuds and guessed it was his shirt hitting the floor. “One last test.” He trotted around to the front of the bed and placed her mouth on something warm and very hard: something that had a sheen of salty liquid. “Suck it,” he murmured. She was so greedy for physical contact that she practically gobbled it, and he withdrew in dismay. “No, no, no! Don’t just hork it down!” “Sorry,” she whispered. “No, that’s all right. You’re being very good. I’m very pleased with you. Try it again.” She slowly took him into her mouth. “Very, very…” He groaned. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, that’s good.” Hearing him and feeling him reduced to incoherent moaning was a kind of revenge, and she swirled her tongue around his cock and then flicked the tip of her tongue against the underside, just at his own tip. “Agh! Wait—don’t…” She took a deep breath and swallowed him all the way to the back of her throat. It was a point of pride with her that although she didn’t do this often, when she did, she was the best. She was a competitor, and right now, she was going to be the best fucking sub he had ever had. She had him where she wanted him. Until she didn’t. He withdrew, pulled off the blindfold, and darted out of reach, where she couldn’t see him. He withdrew! And he didn’t come! And he didn’t let her come! This was not fair! He circled around behind her and placed a hoof on her rump. She felt the ropes around her waist untying and the knot on her button dropping away. She was soaked. Her nerves were buzzing. She was too exhausted to beg for the release she needed so much. He pushed down gingerly, and the pinch in her wingtips made her gasp. “You’re almost there,” he said softly. “You’ve been very good. You’ve more than made up for slapping me.” She wanted to beg, but he’d broken her. She couldn’t even ask anymore. He pulled apart her cheeks and buried his cock into her cunt. She was so slick that it went in easily, but it filled her out in unexpected ways that even a really good toy can’t duplicate, and she yelped. Then he leaned over and bit into the crest of her neck. She felt the warm wetness of his mouth as his teeth sunk in. He rutted her brutally, and his sweat stung the sore places of her rump. His grunts were matched by her squealing inhales. Suddenly, he released her neck and she felt his breath against her ear. “Rainbow Dash?” “Uh-huh?” “You’ve been a very good little filly. Come for me.” And he bit her ear. The pain, pleasure, humiliation and pride hit her in a wave, and her body buckled. She heard herself howling and screaming in high pitches she didn’t even know she had. Her wings unfurled and extended to their full breadth… She was flying… And she couldn’t get away from him… How funny. A few hours later, when she woke from her first deep sleep, she idly wondered how Quibble didn’t just go to sleep himself at that point. He had to be exhausted, though not so much as she was. But he didn’t even talk. Silently, he lowered her down, and undid every one of the ropes. He slowly removed all the bracelets, rubbing the dark spots of sweat where they had been, and kissed the ache away. He slid off the collar and rubbed her neck. He took off the wing clamps and held the tips while the blood flowed back into them. He brought her water, rummaged in his duffle bag for some snacks, and massaged bruise lotion into her aching muscles and skin. “I don’t think that’s going to mark up,” he said, but she really didn’t care. Finally, he lay down beside her and said, “So, was that adventurous enough for you?” She wrinkled her nose. “I dunno. I thought most of it was pretty unrealistic.” He snorted. And he was just Quibble again. “That was awesome,” she said sleepily. “Yeah, it was,” he agreed. “You were—are—awesome, Rainbow Dash.” He turned over his shoulder to look at her. “Although I can’t believe you missed that quote from Daring Do and the Ring of Destiny. You’re on the cover.” “Wait, what?” she said, sitting up, and then said, “ow. Wait. You knew that?” He looked up at her and shook his gray mane. “Well, duh. I mean, once I knew Daring Do was real and that you knew her, it wasn’t that hard to figure out. You had to be the one on the cover with her. How many rainbow-colored ponies do you know?” Now that she looked at him, he really was kind of drab-colored. Twilight would probably have some clever theory about this, but she didn’t think she’d be talking to her about any of this anytime soon. “And, yes,” he admitted, “of course I put ‘Rainbow Dash, the mare on the cover’ together with ‘Rainbow Dash, who signed with a team I don’t even care about’ and ‘Rainbow Dash, part-time savior of Equestria.’ The stuff you and your friends do is pretty unrealistic, too. I can’t be the only pony who’s skeptical about that, but not after today.” He raised himself up. “You’re very high-profile. And way out of my league. Luckily, I also have a very, very big ego.” He subsided on the pillows again and yawned. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know it’s just a con thing. I’m really glad it’s an adventure that happened to me.” “To me, too,” she replied, lying down and sticking her nose into his mane. “I wasn’t expecting any of this when I got up this morning.” Deep down, she guessed what he meant by “it’s just a con thing,” and briefly, she felt a little sad for him. But not for long, because she was Rainbow Dash, and she didn’t live in the past. Not even the past five minutes. And tomorrow would be another day. And maybe even another dungeon.