Whir Click

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaC0vNLdLvY

I loved poking around places I didn't belong—it was not just my favorite pastime, I was also good at it. That finding and appropriating things at such places as I frequented also paid my rent and bills meant I could spend all my days focused on what I loved.

It wasn't illegal, kinda. The places I visited were always run-down, abandoned, and ignored. Like the building I was at right now. I looked at the door of the factory and laughed. "Master Lock? Practically holding the door open for me."

There were so many ways of attacking the entrance—picking the lock, using my breaker-bar on the chain, kicking the door in, but I liked the silly (and fast) methods. Taking two light hammers from my bag, I tapped the lock rapidly on both sides and it fell open. "Pieces of crap." Putting away my tools (and dumping lock and chain into my bag), I stepped inside.

"Freakin'—jackpot." The factory still had all its machinery in place. I could spend months going over this and taking it apart bit by bit for sale on Ebay. Rolling my shoulders, I pulled out my head-lamp and turned it to a medium-wide beam.

Most places like this had their machinery sold off to recover cash, but even in those there were still treasures. Here? Here was a feast for my pockets. First thing to check was power.

It wasn't hard to locate the switchboards on a place like this. You trace back the huge cables coming off the machines to junction boxes, then trace those back to the main power cabinets. The oddest thing was there seemed to be two sets of conduits coming off everything—one looked like regular cabling, whereas the other looked almost like small steam pipes. Ignoring the latter, I traced the cables along until I found the main breaker cabinet.

Factories don't use little circuit breakers like a house. Heavy-duty fuses that looked like solid steel cans sat in a line at the bottom of the cabinet, and I had to throw the heavy switches to isolate the circuit before I could open the final casing to put them in. Yeah, I'd done my research on this stuff.

One. Two. Three big fuses shoved back in and the mini cabinet closed. The lockouts on the supply switches would now be released. Input power switch on. Output power switch—

I swore out loud. Normally the machines in these kinds of setups are all powered down. I'd been hoping for lights, I got freaking Disney Land. The machines slowly shifted and clunked, and that odd extra piping seemed to tremble in place—definitely steam.

So this equipment was likely all so out of tolerance it was useless as is, but I wanted to get an idea for what I was looking at. Looking around, I spotted the power switches for the lights and a ladder that went up to an overlooking platform. Flicking all the switches, I was disappointed to find that only one or two of the big overhead lamps started.

Climbing the ladder anyway, I looked down. "Okay, normally whatever gets processed comes through on some kind of conveyor, chain, or something continuous. The end of the line nearest to me had some kind of fenced-off area with its own special lamp above it that didn't seem to be working. On one side of the area was a chain-drive with cuffs attached to it about every twenty feet.

Back down the ladder I went, and when I reached the bottom I turned for the dim part of the factory where that fenced area was. There was a marked safety area around the pen, but whatever was the reason for it I couldn't tell. Was it the old, busted light? I stepped right up to the bars at the edge of the pen—well within the warning area—and leaned forward while looking up.

*flash*

The light wasn't just broken, it was flickering.

*flash*

I squinted up at it and reached my hand forward—trying to touch the globe.

*flash*

Toppling, I felt a little silly as I tumbled over the safety railing and into the pen.

*flash*

There was something so fascinating about the pulses of light. They came about every second, and it was like—

*flash*

There was something so fascinating about the pulses of light. They came—

*flash*

There was something so fascinating—

*flash*

Clack clack!

That was odd. I'd been holding my hands out to one side of the pen when two cuffs came down on them and—

*flash*

I was lifted off my feet by my wrists and jerked forward. The light that had been flashing stopped, and my thoughts slowly started to stop swirling. "What the fuck is this? Let go of me!"

Struggling to pull my wrists apart, I guess I didn't notice where the cuffs had carried me until I was sprayed down with something that felt kinda prickly. The stuff, to my horror, went to work fast.

The soft fabric of my shirt literally began to fall apart. I gasped in shock, and the horror of my shirt literally melting off my body—exposing my bra—gave me the impetus I needed to seriously start struggling.

Swinging, I had to pivot at my wrists to get any kind of momentum, and in the process swung past the jets again as they fogged me with more of the stuff. My bra fell apart under that assult, and my pants started to weaken too (the denim literally falling apart at the seams).

That's when I saw the first glob of my hair fall to the ground. "Grr!" I didn't exactly have long hair, but the few inches I'd had were now melting and falling free.

More determined to get off this ride than ever, I swung as hard as I could and hooked my legs up and onto the chain that held the cuffs. "Ha! Got it!"

Residue of the sprays was working a number on my panties and my socks and shoes picked then to melt off me too, but the biggest worry was when my backpack lost its integrity and fell from my shoulders to the ground with a hearty clank.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. C'mon. What are you bastards made of? Where's the hinge-pin?" I was trying to get the cuffs to part when the chain slipped back into gear and pulled me forward. In the back of my mind, I counted how long the first ordeal had taken—being a factory, that was likely the longest timing of all the machines.

I found the hinge-pin, but without so much as my finest lock pick, I was not going to be getting it out. Not just wanting to give up and let whatever this messed up place do whatever it wanted to me, I angled my head to the side and tried to catch the end of the pin in my teeth.

The chain stopped, and I did my best to keep pressed against the chain. Turning my head back to look at the machine, I saw it was the first to have the steam pipe going to it as well as electricity. Movement caught my attention, and I looked down in time to see two long tentacle-things approaching me. "Oh hell n—"

Well, on the plus side they weren't some kind of Japanese cartoon maker's wet dream. They did however sink their needles into my thighs and inject something into each. Something that felt hot.

What else was this one going to do to me? Injecting hell-knows what into me—probably poisonous after all this time shut down—was hopefully the extent of it. The drug that was bubbling in my thighs didn't seem to be rushing through my veins toward my heart, however. The heat was focused just there. I tried to get a look at one hip, but my ankles twisted too far and I swung back vertical.

But, I saw my hip. There was something—like a tattoo—forming. Whatever was in the drugs they shot me with, either I was hallucinating or they had the best way ever to get a tattoo. On my hip, slowly becoming more and more distinct, was some kind of thundercloud with a bolt of yellow lightning coming out of it. It was huge!

"Look, I like tattoos as much as the next girl, but that's just about enough fo—" The chain began to haul me forward again, and in the back of my head my counting confirmed it was a timer. One minute per machine. Yay, small victories.

The chain turned a corner and jerked me right. I tried to grab for a passing supporting pole with my feet, but just missed it. The next machine looked ominous. It was mostly empty except for my upper body and head. I tried to judge it, but near as I could tell there were grippers on each side that would hold my—Sure enough, when the chain reached the machine, a pair of arms swung out and clamped down on each side of my head. I tried to twist and pull free, but all I did was pivot about by my neck.

A pair of further, smaller arms swung out and came toward my face. Each had a little cone with the pointed end aimed right at my eyes. I might not be a little girl, but damn did I scream like one, even after they stopped far too close to my eyeballs for comfort.

The end of the cones had a pinhole in them, and suddenly there was light pouring out of those pinholes. Rainbows of color seemed to melt through my eyes and sink deep into my brain. I felt myself go limp in the restraints and just stare into the lights.

Panicked thoughts were the first to go. What was this thing do—How was it inside m—Why'd this have to ha—One by one the light seemed to break up those worrying thoughts until I was smiling, calm. Whatever it was doing was better than any drug or relaxation technique I'd ever tried. Fears, worries, even minor annoyances just slipped out of my head. All my life I'd been terrified of spiders—not anymore. When I was a kid, I'd accidentally touched the hotplate on my dad's barbecue, but now it wasn't a traumatic experience—heck, I couldn't even remember it anymore.

I'd lost count, I realized, of how long the machine had paused. I racked my mind as the cuffs carried me forward, trying to remember how long I'd worked out each machine should take. An hour? A day? I smiled and breathed a happy sigh as the chain hauled me into the next machine. To my surprise, the cuffs let go once I was over it, and I fell into a hopper and down into some liquid.

Well, through some liquid. It was like there was some kind of film of liquid—like blowing a soap bubble—and when I fell out I was coated in the stuff from my toes to the top of my bald head. I landed on something soft, a kind of rubber mat.

Holding up one arm, I looked at it and watched as the film turned dark gray. Lifting my other hand, I tried to wipe the matt gray stuff off, but to my horror my skin felt perfectly dry. Dry and dark gray. "What the—" I cut short as the rubber under me started to move. Something in my head tried to urge me to get off, now that I wasn't clamped in place, but I couldn't think of a good enough reason.

As the conveyor carried me to the next machine, I felt my body start to—well—shift. Bones moved around, and my muscles seemed to writhe and squirm about under my skin. Anyone else would be horrified by the changes, but I could only watch as my fingers pulled together and my arm reshaped itself into a long, thin limb.

The next machine was more liquid. This time I was rained on, like a summer storm. It felt good. I lifted my head up and opened my eyes, staring into the droplets of rainbow-hued water as they fell down over me.

Stretching my arms out, I cycled them up and down a few times—it just felt right. When prickly fur started to sprout all over me, I actually let out a pent up laugh. "Just like my skin. This is pretty cool." But while the fur grew over almost all of me, it was the two parts that it didn't that got all my attention.

My arms no longer looked anything like human arms, and as feathers began to sprout, I realized what they looked like. "Chicken wings!" I fell forward and started laughing my head off when the water shut off and the conveyor moved on.

The fur continued to grow, and so did feathers, but it was two new growths that had my attention. Two rounded limbs sprouted from my shoulders and aimed forward. I looked at them, then my eyes traced upward to my torso. "Where did my boobs go?"

The conveyor split three ways, and just as I reached that intersection a pair of paddles pushed me down the middle rout.

I rolled onto my back and looked down my body. Joints and muscles seemed to move differently now, and it just made it all the more odd to look down my body and see a penis. "Fuck. I'm hung like a horse!"

Peals of laughter caught me up as the belt stopped again. More rain hit me, but there was something different about this one—it tingled. Then it tingled a lot more, and finally I realized there was some kind of electrical fault.

That's when the yellow spark of electricity arced down from a silver ball above me, through me, and into the belt under me. I shivered as the electricity buzzed in my body, but it didn't hurt like it should. Another jolt, and this time I just giggled. I reached up to the silver ball with my wing so that when the third came, it ran through me completely.

Plasma danced between the feathers of my wing, but I was perfectly fine. I laughed a bit more because it felt good.

The belt moved again, and this time I braced myself on those new limb-things and then stood up with my legs—back legs now. "Huh. This is kinda cool. Hey, what's that flashing…"

The flashing light, as I neared it, cleared away more thoughts than ever. I felt myself relaxing and calming down more.

"Thunderlane."

I didn't say the word. It just appeared in my head.

"Virile. Pegasus. Wonderbolt."

I tried to turn my head, but the flashing was coming from everywhere. Spreading my wings, I tried to climb out of the machine, but more flashing made my wings heavy, hard to lift.

"Strong. Brave. Masculine."

Well duh. I was a freakin' stud. Of course I was all those things. I struck a pose and lifted my chin. "Hey, when did I get a muzzle?" The muzzle in between my eyes moved with my words. "You're an idiot sometimes, Thunderlane. Of course your muzzle moves when you talk, it's your muzzle!"

Damn it was fun to be a sarcastic bastard, even to myself.

"Loyal. Weatherpony. Big brother."

Where was Rumble, anyway? I stepped out of the strange machine and looked around. There was a door in front of me with a note pinned to it.

Turn off all the machinery before you leave. Take this door to get home.

Huh? Well, that was easy enough. Trotting over to where I vaguely remembered the breakers were, I ran through the procedure of shutting down power in the factory and set the breakers down. "Damn, I better head home." Trotting back to the door, I opened it and stepped out into Ponyville.

Buzz Thump

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The young man slipped through the open door, taking note that whatever had locked it was gone—a sure sign to him that his girlfriend had been by. "So help me, Debs, if you're in here swimming in a pool full of padlocks, I'll fuckin' scream."

His Find my Phone app, paired to his girlfriend's device, had located the last place her phone had been before it stopped responding. This address. Looking about inside the factory, the whole place was dark and unlit.

"Debbie, I swear to hell and back that if you're not injured or in trouble, you'll—" He cut himself short and bit his tongue to forestall the uttering of bad luck. His girlfriend had often shared her experiences with him, not that it was his thing, which is how he knew to look for the light switches.

Locating light switches in the dark was hard enough in a house, but in the factory it was almost impossible. In the end he stumbled on the fusebox before reaching the lights. "Oh, duh, she always says they pull the fuses on these places before locking them up. I guess she didn't get this far."

"Now, how's this go. Switches are off on both sides. Open fuse casing and shove these monsters in. Close the casing. Switch on and switch on—Fuck!" Startled as some lights came on, the young man looked around him as the silence was torn to shreds by the industrial noises of machinery starting up. Big electric motors whined, chain-drives clacked, and the soft thrum of a lot of electricity doing what it did best assaulted his ears.

"Now I know why Debs was here. This place is full of working stuff. Kinda freaky, though." Walking around, he noticed a sign stuck on a door at the back of the factory and walked around the machinery to reach it.

Turn off all the machinery before you leave. Take this door to get home.

He shrugged his shoulders and turned away from the door. "What the heck is this place? I've never seen machinery like this before." His mind distracted briefly from finding his girlfriend, the young man walked around, tracing the production line. "Three different products at the end?" He reached out to the scoops that would shunt things along from the belt in one of three directions.

One machine he reached had a constant spray of what seemed to be water within it. Reaching a hand toward it, he jerked back when some of the stuff landed on his palm. "Wonder what that stuff was? My fingers are tingling…"

At last he reached the start of the line and noticed the pen, the lamp above it, and the chain that carried cuffs at regular intervals that led toward the machinery. "Must be some kind of animal processing. Or maybe mannequins." His feet were well behind the safety line. "Is that some kind of heat-lamp? Man, this place is freaky."

*flash*

Reeling a little at the flash of the mind-number lamp, the man shook his head as his thoughts were scattered under the strobe of the carefully calibrated magic light.

*flash*

A need to be nearer, to bask in the light of the mind-number grew as his conscious thoughts were suppressed. The effect was temporary, of course, lasting almost a full second—which was the exact timing of the lamp.

*flash*

Bracing his arms on the railing, the man leaned forward and swung first one leg, then the other over. Under the lamp now, he turned his gaze upward and smiled with a slack-jawed grin as the mind-number flashed away.

A new flash caught his attention—or rather the lack thereof. It was a faster flash, timed to come just after the mind-number. The attractor did its work perfectly, turning the man around and guiding him closer to the chains and the cuffs. He lifted his hands up toward the little flashing light of the attractor, and when he did the cuffs clamped around his wrists with a pair clacking sounds.

The auditory input jolted him from the stupor the lamps had imposed, and as he blinked away the effects of both the mind-number and the attractor, he realized the chain was pulling him forward and up. "Hey! What the hell?! Let go of me you stupid machine!"

Of course, when one of his arms slipped free, he wasn't going to complain—until he saw that it was because he lacked a hand for the cuff to clamp behind. As he neared the first machine, he stared as what used to be his hand finished forming into a rounded off stump that ended with a little hard almost-loop of nail that was identifiable as a hoof.

Just staring at the limb in shock, the man didn't even notice he was entering the first machine until the jets sprayed him with the fabric-eating acid. It wasted no time eating through the fabric of his cotton shirt and began attacking the thread seams of his jeans.

His shirt and hair began to turn to mush and flow off his body, which went mostly unnoticed as he wrestled with the fact that more of his arm was changing. His wrist and elbow seemed to become more rigid in what ways they would twist and lost any resemblance to a human limb apart from the skin tone.

When the seams of his jeans let go—starting at his waist—they fell into strips of cloth that were themselves slowly getting eaten. Only his belt kept a few in place, and even that started to lose its strength as the stitching holding it together began to melt.

One more spray and his belt let go and the acid made quick work of his boxer shorts. With a startled gasp as that last vestige of modesty melted away. He watched the remains of his socks and shoes fall from his feet into a hopper below him, and then he saw them. "Debs' stuff!"

Her phone and breaker-bar were too big to fit down the grate into whatever was meant to catch the gunk that remained of clothing and hair. His boots and belt, too, were slowly melting away. The chain above jerked, and he felt himself being pulled—naked and hairless—from the first machine to the second.

Looking forward, he saw there were two waiting tentacle-things with what he thought looked like needles on their tips. More alarmed, he started shouting for help. "Please! If anyone can hear me?! Please help!"

Magically propelled and guided, the two injectors delivered the first magic-imbued serum directly into the man's thighs. Almost immediately it went to work finding and inflicting his destiny upon him. Flaring heat radiated from the tissue the injectors had delivered their loads into as a pair of patterns started to form an hourglass on each hip.

He didn't notice the patterns until he reached down with his free hoof and rubbed at one. The tingle of magic that his body interpreted as heat made him jerk his hoof back in surprise. "What the hell is this place?!"

At the end of the first row of machinery, the chain jerked him along at a hard right turn toward the next—the programmer. Like his girlfriend before him, the next machine grabbed his head between two arms and locked it in place to prevent movement.

Magic-focusing prisms embedded in a pair of arms swung out and lined up with the optic nerve at the back of his eyeballs. Focusing a twin pair of magic beams, they fired the changes directly through his nerves and into his brain.

Staring in bliss, the man went slack as his thoughts were completely scattered. All the terror and panic drained out of him, there was no room for that and the developing pony-part of his mind. New connections weren't just made, they were forced into being by the power of magic. Slowly, a smile spread across his lips and a little giggle left his throat before the magic was shut off.

The magical infection in his arm—now a foreleg—spread into his shoulder and out. Slowed by the sheer extent of the work ahead of it, it began to weaken his bones and prepare them to be reknit into their new shape.

He barely even noticed the new machine as he reached it. Looking around, he was caught by surprise when the cuffs snapped open and he fell through the magic-enhanced fluid that would stain his skin a perfect cornflower blue as he landed on the conveyor belt under it.

Looking over his arm and foreleg, the young man felt confusion and mirth in equal measure. His mind had been fertile ground for the magic to work in, and it still unrolled new connections and careful programming that would leave his free will intact, but leave him with a decidedly pony outlook.

His body now started to change in earnest. Bones shifting and adjusting, muscles twisting and reshaping while he giggled and poked at himself with his changed foreleg—the only part of him that didn't seem to be changing.

His arm became a second foreleg, his legs became pony back legs, and a little dock of a tail extended from his spine. With the main structural changes completing with his whole body adjusted for quadrupedal motion, the magic delved into softer tissue and began changing more of him.

Into her.

The loss of his penis caused some consternation in the former human. When she landed in the fur-generation machine, she rubbed down her belly and gasped when her hoof met her teats. "What the buck?!" Searching around for a penis that wasn't there, she reached further and further back until she found herself. "That's—that's not possible. I'm a girl?!"

As the rain fell on her, the growing mare felt prickling sensations all over her body, and watched a coat of fur that matched her skin grow. The patterns on her thighs translated into her fur and a blue rush of hair poured from her head and dock in a pair of waterfalls that had a lighter blue highlight.

Moving again, the belt shunted her onward while she struggled to find her bearings. As she reached the three-way split, the paddles moved and jerked, shoving her to the right belt.

"Hey, what's this? What are those arms do—Oh!" Like with the third machine, this one grabbed and held her head steady while two wide-focused prisms lined up with her eyes, and a third extended to aim just above the center of her forehead.

This magic wasn't a focused and precise beam like with the third machine, however. Instead of a careful tight line of magic, she got a torrent of power pouring into her head and making it feel ten sizes too small.

The magic served several purposes: it fueled the last of the body changes (her face and snout), it saturated her mind with raw potential, and it carried the knowledge she'd need to carry out her destiny.

As the third crystal started, it bored a hole through her forehead with magic and began building her horn. Layer upon layer of pure magic calcified and grew into a spire that linked directly with her brain underneath it.

New ideas and thoughts buzzed through her head. Magic theory and practice, years of lessons compacted into a tight brick of information. Her head still felt sloshing-full of magic—which it was—and when the machine released her she was mostly complete. "Okay, this is the weirdest stuff ever."

A flash appeared in her vision as she recovered from having her horn grow, and when she turned toward the final programming light, the magic of destiny resounded in her ears.

"Minuette"

Shaking her head, but never losing eye-contact with the light, Minuette tried to work out what had been happening before all this craziness.

"Clever. Smart. Unicorn."

A knowing smile creased her lips, and Minuette had to agree with the summation of herself.

"Caring. Loving. Powerful."

The voice Minuette heard knew her better than she knew her. She tried to nod now. She recognized the machine she was in, knew what its purpose was, but was struggling to sort out why she was in it. Of course, this was because her formerly human mind was still struggling to adapt to twenty years of unicorn schooling that had been shoved into her head.

"Friend. Trustworthy. Loyal."

"Well, duh." Minuette shook her head as the strobe turned off. "Well that was weird. Why was I looking at a class six data-programmer? Oh!" She turned and looked at the factory as a whole. "I get it! Making creatures into ponies!" She trotted around the factory, her magic reaching out to the machines and adjusting them, repairing the little damage a few pieces had taken, and bringing them all back into tolerances.

"This place is so awesome…" She was back at the rear of the factory and spotted the note. "Oh, right. Turn the power back off and head home. Seems like a good idea."

Removing the fuses was trivial for a smart unicorn. Minuette turned the switches off and teleported the fuses out. Trotting back through the dark factory, she let out a sigh and ran a hoof along the machinery. "Hopefully somepony else will stumble in soon. Be patient."

Stumbling a few steps as she appeared out a doorway that sealed behind her, Minuette let out a happy sigh as she opened her eyes. Ponyville! She went to take a step when she heard a pony clear their throat.

"Hey, babe, want me to show you around? It's kinda how things are meant to roll once you arrive." Thunderlane looked the mare up and down and liked what he saw.

When Minuette's eyes fell upon the pegasus stallion, her heart wavered and she was seeing him through love-struck goggles. "Well, I'm kinda new, yeah. How about you show me everything."

Thunderlane stuck out his chest and reached a wing over the mare's back. "Exactly what I was thinking. I'm Thunderlane."

"Minuette."

Made In Equestria

by Damaged

Whir Click

Buzz Thump