> Unity 2: Why is This Still a Thing?
>  by Admiral Biscuit
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Somewhere in the wilds of Equestria
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 1: Somewhere in the wilds of Equestria

Deep in the wildlands of Equestria, shadowed under a thick forest canopy, a plain-looking earth pony dressed in light armor studied an artifact with some interest.

KatKat was a mare who had seen some st. She was also a mare who knew how to deal with that st.

What lay in front of her, casually discarded on the forest floor, was something she’d never seen before. An artifact or a magical item, perhaps; something cunningly crafted for certain. But what it was and how it was meant to function was beyond her ken.

Given the diversity of sapient and semi-sapient creatures in Equestria (as well as things not so easily classified such as the Tree of Harmony, Twilicane, Timberwolves, or Tympani) it would seem to a layperson that artifacts not built for ponies would be more common than—or at least as common as—artifacts built for ponies. And yet, the opposite was the case; despite the vast diversity of pawed and handed creatures in Equestria, most things were built to be hoof-friendly or horn-friendly or both.

That isn’t to say that their world was without diversity when it came to objects which couldn’t—or shouldn’t—be used by ponies. Somecreatures had needs and didn’t have a significant someothercreature to attend to those needs. Take KitKat, for example. She had needs; she loved the feeling of thrusting her axe deep into some deserving creature, of working fetlock-deep in the entrails of her enemies, of feeling the bones of her foes crunching under her hooves, the hot coppery smell of blood—

Eh, let’s make this more PG. Some ponies (and other creatures) created and used various adult toys for when they were

What do you mean that’s less PG?

<takes a deep breath>

Anyway, what was in front of her wasn’t a phallus although it can certainly symbolize one in storytelling or visual media. It was a gun, but not just any gun. For those of you who haven’t already guessed what kind of gun it was, it was an Aperture Science Portable Quantum Tunneling Device, or in common parlance a portal gun.

Her first instinct was to leave it there, but it wouldn’t be much of a story if she had. KitKat bent down and picked it up with her mouth.

While it was not intended to be operated with hooves, it was also not safed in a such a manner to prevent a hooved creature from operating it accidentally. After all, Derpy accidentally a portal gun several times previously (and also intentionally a portal gun), and as I just said there was nothing to prevent KitKat from accidentally a portal gun herself.

KitKat knew a thing or two about weapon safety (actually more than just two things), but she didn’t know squat about gun safety ‘cause guns aren’t canon. The designers of the Portal Gun had assumed that anybody who used it would know to point it away from themselves*, especially since it was meant to be operated while clamped over a forearm. Which KitKat didn’t have.

As she was strapping it to a saddle string on her barding, she accidentally triggered it and got a blue portal delivered directly to the forehead, right about where her horn would have been if she were a unicorn. One involuntary twitch later, the orange portal got her right in the muzzle, and one millisecond after that there was nothing left of KitKat but blurange flames flickering out and then the forest fell silent again.


•••


Meanwhile in Ponyville, Amethyst Star (AKA Amey the Hoof) was regarding the calendar in dread. 

Well, maybe ‘dread’ is too strong an emotion; much like KitKat, Amethyst had seen some st and she’d dealt with it.

Mercilessly.

Generally in a hail of gunfire, although she wasn’t above using explosives or improvised weapons as the need arose.

Nopony had ever dared tell her that guns weren’t canon. She had quite the collection and they solved a lot of problems, such as being randomly portalized or even worse having a slavering mass of humans portalized into Equestria. Chell was cool, but all the rest of them . . . well, a bullet or a full mag to make sure they went down and stayed down was a mercy.

There’d been a time when every poisson d’avril, every april vis brought a new crop of them but that tradition had died out for a while and then come back with a vengeance.** Which was a shame; she’d much rather celebrate Anne McCaffery’s birthday in peace.

After all, what better way to celebrate Edible Book Day than eat a book? McCaffery had published plenty of them, even a cookbook which looked particularly tasty.

Alas, Cooking Out of This World was more prophetic than even Amethyst could have known. In the dark recesses of the closet, wrapped in several layers of hoofmade Equestrian Science Material Emancipation Grilles and pointed well away from any sapient creatures ponies cared about (i.e., pointed straight down, since if it were pointed up it might portalize a passing pegasus), a certain marzipan portal gun (also hoofmade) tumbled off its mount and fell into a pile of plot convenience which of course triggered it and it was, of course, aimed directly at Sparkler when it happened.

Unlike KitKat who had no inkling of what the portal gun portended, Amethyst was very aware and she had enough presence of mind to not only start cursing the moment she heard the very distinctive sound of the portal gun being activated, but to also finish her cursing as she arrived in a very unexpected new location.

She also had the presence of mind to grab a gun or two or maybe a dozen as well as sixty-six feet of black nylon rope, before she was gone.

Unbidden behind her, Cooking Out of This World tumbled open to the recipe for Cosmic-Minded Roast Beef Sandwiches which was appropriate enough considering the cosmic-sized beef Amethyst currently had with the cosmos.***


•••


It’s often said that when a pony is portalized she’ll wind up somewhere else, which is not exactly a pithy proverb, but it’s true nonetheless, and indeed Amethyst Star ended up somewhere else.

To nobody’s surprise (except for Mark, who wasn’t really paying attention and thus is not only shocked at how things have suddenly taken a turn but also that he was specifically called out), Amethyst Star wound up in exactly the same place that KitKat was. And now that Mark’s paying attention, also to nobody’s surprise, KitKat wound up in exactly the same place Amethyst Star was.

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•••


While KitKat had never experienced being on the receiving end of a portal gun before, she had experienced being on the receiving end of an unintentionally-cast[dubious] Wizard’s spell which turned her bipedal.

This time, instead of turning her into a full frontal nudity human Playboy model, it had turned her into an anthro. She still had hind hooves (or hoof-feet, if you prefer), but she did have hands. A bipedal stance (obviously) and a full coat of fur, marked here and there by scars—a consequence of her career choice.

She wasn’t suddenly cold, because not only did she still have fur, she was still wearing her gambeson and armor, conveniently reshaped for her new form—this isn’t that kind of story.

Also she didn’t have gigantic boobs because this isn’t that kind of story. While the Wizard might have turned her into something she was not, the portal gun and whatever residual magic/technology put her where she was now had transformed her barding into appropriate pleather armor, soft and supple.

Granted, she was taller now than when she’d been a pony, or when she’d been a Playboy model. Six-ish feet of muscle and barely-contained rage. She was probably taller than the Wizard, although mercifully he wasn’t here to compare herself with.

Amethyst was there, and her portal gun (hers to differentiate it from KitKat’s; neither of them actually claimed ownership of said portal guns) had given her a similar treatment. Given that she was a unicorn, she was smaller and slenderer and considerably more feminine.  She even had fossa lumbalis lateralis—back dimples to the laypony.  (If KitKat had lifted her armor to check, she’d have found out she didn’t have them.)

 It had even transformed her clothes, or would have if she’d been wearing any.

The fur pretty much covered everything, though. Besides the little bit of pubic fluff. Also she did have huge boobs because it is that kind of story after all. 

“Well, this is some bullshit,” Amethyst muttered as she regarded her new form. “I’ve turned into a whatever the hell Capper is.”

“It’s not so bad,” KitKat said. “At least we still have fur.”

“You’ve been through this before?”

KitKat nodded. “Last time I got transformed full human with soft feet and big tits and no fur. It sucked. This is . . . better.”

“Speak for yourself, these udders are absurd. My back hurts already and whenever I move I jiggle. I—wait a minute.” She lit her horn and a moment later her breasts were reasonably sized. Floating on either side of her torso were two jellyfish-like (minus the tentacles) sacks of silicone. “That’s a relief.” She unlit her horn and they jiggled away towards somebody who’d appreciate them more.

Maybe Pamela Anderson.

They didn’t make it very far; Sparkler was still holding her Sig Sauer and she vaporized both of them with two speedy shots.

“Well, that’s dealt with.”

KitKat walked over and poked one of the dead implants with the butt of her tabarzin. “That’s a new kind of parasite. I wonder if I had those when I was a human?” Then she turned back to Amethyst. “So what now?”

“Well, it’s been my experience that we’re both in for quite a bit of unpleasantness and then we’ll portal our way back somehow or another and that’ll be that. You have much experience with portals?”

KitKat sighed. “More than I’d like.”

“Yeah, me too. Welp, let’s see what kind of dystopian hellscape we’re in today.”

The two of them opened the door and stepped out of the room.
> Chapter 2: The Unpleasantness
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 2: The Unpleasantness

It turned out that their first proper look at the new dystopian hellscape in which they now found themselves was a rather mundane office.* The only thing that wasn’t mundane about the office was the gray wolf sitting in the office chair, hunched over some paperwork on his desk.

At the sound of the door—or maybe it was the sound of hooves clacking on the industrial tile floor—he spun his chair around.

Before he had even turned, both KitKat and Amethyst Star had their weapons drawn. Neither of them cared for wolves, although unlike some little defenseless filly in the woods, they were both perfectly capable of dispatching one and had full confidence in their ability to do so.

As the chair turned and he was revealed to them, it was obvious he wasn’t a threat. His fur was grey with age, not just as a result of species. He seemed too small for his suit, as if he’d shrunk and it hadn’t.

He’d also miscalculated the amount of angular momentum he should have imparted into his office chair; he swung fully around and both of them had their weapons sheathed before he came around again.

Once he was finally facing them again, he squinted and then frowned as he got his first real look at them. Perhaps it was in surprise that they were equine. Perhaps it was the fact that one of them looked like she’d just walked out of the pages of a high fantasy novel, while the other more resembled a nude Lara Croft, albeit with more guns, more fur, and a unicorn horn jutting out of her forehead.

Or maybe his eyesight wasn’t that great, and he didn’t really notice any of those things. “Right,” he said, steepling his paws. “You might be wondering why I summoned you here, my dear furries. We have a very important mission for you two.”

At the word ‘mission’ KitKat’s ears perked up. She was currently between gigs** and could stand to earn a few bits, especially since her quarterly horse tax bill was due.***

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The wolf continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it—”

KitKat raised a hand. “Do I have to sign an NDA?”

“My dear.” The grey wolf slid open a desk drawer and pulled out a manila folder. “You already have.”

“Goddammit.”

The wolf cleared his throat and started again. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to retrieve this Sacred Heart of Turing, stolen from us by the cyber-dragon, Code Slyther.”

“I only know half those words,” KitKat said. “What’s a ‘sacred?’ And—”

“We accept,” Amethyst said.

He pawed the folder across to Amethyst, since she’d been the one who accepted. She ignored that he was leering at KitKat’s big bracers, which had formerly been hock guards (she’d paid a craftsmare extra for the toolwork, and that fine toolwork had come through both their shift in shape and in purpose).

The first thing Amethyst noted on the folder was that the tab simply said “The Silicone Heist,” bringing to mind the two jellyfish-like silicone filled bags she’d recently ruthlessly dispatched.

When she opened the folder the cover page said “This mission is brought to you by Bing AI.”****

Alarm bells should have been ringing, but neither Amethyst nor KitKat knew what Bing was. Or AI. Or manila.

“Hmm, let’s see here. Go to the Binary Bazaar and get the Mystical Malware Musket, then travel to the Forest of Forgotten Files; after we’ve hacked our way through there we’ll find the Labyrinth of Logic Gates, and finally the lair of CodeSlyther. Seems simple enough.” She snapped the file back shut.


•••


“Yeah, even after your ten-second summary of the plot mission, I still only know half those words,” KitKat lamented as the two of them walked out of the office and in the general direction of the streets of the city which would hopefully lead them to the binary bazaar.

Amethyst shrugged. “I’m not fully cognizant of all the words and their nuance, either. There is one thing that I know from experience, though: you get portalized, you gotta play by the rules of the ‘verse. Well, generally anyway, there tends to be some latitude for creativity and whatnot. I figure that the portal guns summoned us here for a reason.”

“Plot convenience?”

“Or an author totally out of ideas and so uncreative or horny that he settled on anthro just to give me gigantic anime boobs, pubic fluff and dimples of Venus. Oh, and a general disdain for clothing.” Both KitKat and Sparkler turned towards the fourth wall for a moment. “Look, you’ll do fine. We need to get to the marketplace and I can pick up the magical musket, and then we’ll go from there.”

“We need to find it first.”

“That’s why pull-down maps equipped in the quick menu are so great.” Sparkler made a motion with her horn, and a map just appeared in front of them. “We’re here, and it’s across town. Easy.”

“I don’t trust things when they’re too easy.”

“Fair enough.” She pushed open the front door of the building, which—like most secret government buildings (as this one clearly was) managed to be both indubitably institutional and yet at the same time so painfully plain that it would be nearly impossible to describe it to anyone.

As the duo of anthropomorphized ponies stepped into the streets, it was obvious on one hoof—or hand, now (or I suppose possibly still a hoof because they still each had two of those)—that they were not out of place in this world, since everycreature was an anthro.

On the other hand (or hoof), they were very much out of place because KitKat was dressed in steel plate armor with a tabarzin strapped across her back and Amethyst Star was holding a manila folder and also stark naked.

The duo got their fair share of stares even before they did anything other than look around at the hellscape bustling town that surrounded the building. Things didn’t improve significantly when they actually walked into the bustling crowd of NPCs.*****

Amethyst’s eyes roved the crowd, analyzing them all with machine-like precision. Like that scene in the first Terminator movie when he first arrives and realizes that in order to blend in, he needs clothes.

KitKat had never tried to blend in on an alien world—when she’d been at the Kum & Go, she’d still been a little horse.

The unicorn locked on a woman about her size, and her hand went for her gun. “I require your clothes,” she said simply as the gun came up.
> Chapter 3: The Binary Bazaar
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 3: The Binary Bazaar*

Some of you might be thinking that Amethyst was suffering from moral turpitude, that she’d just gun down an innocent bystander on the street to get her clothes (and probably her wallet and credit cards, because the opportunity was there). Amethyst wasn’t that kind of pony; she knew full well if she gunned down an innocent bystander the clothes would almost certainly have blood on them, and who wants to wear bloody clothes? Have you ever had to wash blood out of fur?

Amethyst had.

So had KitKat—they at least had that in common.

“I don’t know much about guns,” KitKat said. “In fact, until just recently I’d never heard of them since they’re not canon.”

“I can already guess where this conversation is going,” Amethyst replied, shifting her newly-acquired cowboy hat to a more rakish angle. “Look, I’ve got lots of guns and I can afford to part with one and still be feared.”

“What if she uses it on somebody?”

“I keep the chamber empty for safety, and I slid out the magazine before I gave it to her. Besides, it’s a Taurus PT-138; it’d be a miracle if it worked.”

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The walk to the binary bazaar (which they would discover, to their sorrow, was not nearly as fabulous as the non-binary bazaar) passed entirely without incident.

The only incident was that the pair of them were stopped by a judgmental Karen. She was built like a troll, with a helmet-style bottle-blonde haircut, a spray-on tan, oversized sunglasses perched over her bangs, giant fake fingernails painted fire-engine red and a poorly-done boobjob, all highlighted by a blouse and tights sourced from a MLM.

She spotted KitKat first, and her eyes narrowed at the sight of a six foot tall well-muscled barbarian woman just walking down the street like she owned it in armor while carrying an axe and not conforming to proper feminine roles (for example, her fetlocks—which were fully on display—were feathered rather than being shaved smooth).

Karen opened her mouth to speak just as Amethyst came into view, five feet and some inches of curves in all the right places and leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination (except what little was covered by her recently-acquired cowboy hat) and whatever she was about to have said to KitKat was lost in a moment of lust or longing immediately followed by a proper puritanical pique.

“Hide your shame!” she shrilly shrieked.

KitKat pinned her ears at the sudden aural assault; Amethyst crossed her arms, which had the added effect of squozing her boobs together and giving her cleavage to die for. “I got nothing to hide.”

“Nothing to hide!” A vein in the Karen’s forehead began to pulse dangerously. “You slattern!  Yourr tits are flopping out on display for everyone to see, and don’t even get me started about your—your . . . “

“My vulva?”

“Officer! She swore at me!”

Both KitKat and Amethyst looked around. There was no officer, and nopony had swore at her, although both of them were considering doing so.

“Manager!”

KitKat reached back for her tabarzin, while Amethyst rolled her eyes and selected a gun. Karen’s demon transformation was nearly complete.

“She’s got a gun!”

“I believe the words you’re looking for are ‘symbolic penis’,” Amethyst informed her and then shot her once between the eyes and twice in the center of mass with her .357 Magnum.

As the Karen burst into flames and then dissolved back into the abyss from whence she’d come, Sparkler reholstered her gun to the sound of applause from the crowd that had gathered.


•••


It took some convincing by KitKat to be let into the binary bazaar. Specifically, the gigantic and rather handsome anthropomorphic hound who guarded the entrance—and who looked exactly like Vortex from Helluva Boss (but was legally distinct)—was skeptical of her claims of not being non-binary.

(It was the armor; in this land women weren’t generally warriors.)

(Also her height kind of threw him for a loop; he wasn’t used to women who could look him in the eye.)

He was a chill dude just doing his job and he didn’t have a cosmic-minded roast beef against her; after she explained that she was just fitting in with her society’s role of being a proper mare, and that earth ponies were naturally taller and bulkier than the other two major tribes as well as most of the close pony adjacent species [i.e., kirins, zebras, snowponies, batponies, mules, donkeys, minikelpies]  he let her in, thus thwarting the obvious plot element that was designed to separate the two of them.

Even if KitKat hadn’t known what a binary bazaar was, it turned out to be quite familiar. Dozens and dozens of stalls all lined up along the street, with anthros of every stripe or spot or just plain fur hawking their wares (in the sense that at least one of them was an anthro hawk, and also the other definition of that word). The only bizarre thing at the bazaar was that each booth only had two items on offer, although that should have been obvious from the name of the bazaar.

Yet another reason why the non-binary bazaar is so much better.

On the plus side, it didn’t take the two too long to find what they were looking for. Consider: if a bazaar is truly binary, and if they’re looking for a mystical malware musket, it’s plainly obvious that everything for sale is either a mystical malware musket or not a mystical malware musket, which means that mathematically they only needed to check one booth to find what they needed.

Hey, I don’t make the rules.

But of course it couldn’t be that easy; such an item could only come at a terrible price.

“Fifteen million rupees?”

The anthro hawk nodded his head. [Are hawks binary to an average person?] “Do the ladies find themselves short?”

“I’m taller than usual,” KitKat remarked. “I didn’t know this when I first appeared since I had no other anthos with which to compare myself, but now that I’ve seen a likely representative sample of male and female anthros, I can say that I am above average in height, shoulder width, and musculature (for females) while being below-average in bust, thank Celestia.”

“I’m not sure we’ve yet seen a representative sample,” Amethyst admitted. “So I can’t say if I’m short or average. I can say that I don’t have fifteen million rupees.”

“And now I know when Cheryl’s birthday is,” the hawk said, then shook his head as if to clear out a reference that came from nowhere. “You could break some pots or trim some grass. You might find some that way.”

“If every pot has a blue rupee in it, that’s still three million pots to break. Even with a montage, we’d be here all day.”

“I’ve got a better offer,” KitKat said. Both she and Amethyst were well-acquainted with open-air markets and bartering, but Amethyst had gotten hung up on the math and not realized that the solution was quite mathematical. “You sell us the gun for the three dozen bits I’ve got AND a small jar of honey, XOR we take it, kill you, AND walk away.”

“What kind of honey is it?”

“Forbidden honey.”

Logically, the hawk couldn’t argue with his logic, and he was a sucker for honey.  His jizz*** got even better after he ate honey, and all the birders loved it.


•••


“Would you really have killed him?” Amethyst asked as they walked out of the marketplace, the Mystical Malware Musket slung over her shoulder.

“It’s a morally grey area,” KitKat admitted. “I’m opposed to killing without cause, but he didn’t know that. Let’s just say that I played by the rules of the binary bazaar: either kill him or don’t. It’s simple logic.”

“I just got caught up in the math.” The two of them stopped at a booth selling cookies: they had both Oreos and NOT Oreos, and between the two of them (the ponies, not the cookies) they had enough change left in the bottom of KitKat’s saddlebags and Amethyst’s the usual place to buy a tube of cream-filled sandwich cookies.

The two of them split the tube and when they were done, brushed their muzzles clean, dusted the crumbs off their hands, and then disposed of the empty wrapper in a convenient trash receptacle. As they left the bazaar, unhindered by an exit guard, KitKat turned to her unicorn companion. “Well, that was easier than I expected. What’s next?”

Amethyst Star called up the map again. “Looks like the Forest of Forgotten Files.”

“That’s the part where the AI mission brief says I do all the fighting?”

Sparkler nodded.

“And how do we get there?”

“I dunno, it only says ‘cutscene/montage.’

“Oh crackers.”
> Chapter 4: Montage
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 4: Montage

As the dropdown map and the script both indicated, the Forbidden Forest Forest of Forgotten Files was far, far away. Far enough away to require a montage; far enough that neither KitKat nor Amethyst wanted to get there by shank’s pony.*

Luckily, on the very edge of town there was a used conveyance sales lot. Given the nature of the story, it had all sorts of conveyances for sale, from blimps to balloons, from airships to Zeppelins and everything in between. 

Despite that description, they also had lots of ground-based transportation for sale.

Crazy Eddie had low low prices, low enough that the two mares could afford to buy a conveyance if they so chose, and since I’m making a point of mentioning it it’s obvious that they did. After all, I didn’t mention the flower shop that they passed without making a purchase, or the brickmaker’s (brickery?) that was also on the edge of town. Neither of them were tempted by the fishmonger offering fresh fish at bargain prices (there was a Yakutian pony hiding in the shadows waiting for the fishmonger to get distracted long enough to snag a fresh feesh, but they didn’t see her).

KitKat wasn’t the kind of pony who enjoyed trying new things unless she was forced to, so her eye was naturally drawn to something familiar. Something that had four legs and white socks and a white mane and a blaze on its nose and which resembled Sgt. Reckless if she’d had one fewer sock and an appetite for beer and poker chips.

In short, KitKat chose a horse for her mount, and Crazy Eddy not only threw in a saddle free of charge, but also the first hoof-polishing. Since horses don’t require ignition keys, KitKat got an ocarina instead.

Besides her familiarity with equines (being one herself), a horse was a good environmental choice: it ran on a renewable resource and also came equipped with self-driving technology that put Tesla to shame.**

Amethyst had been spoiled by her time on Earth in the one city that had actually had its water supply poisoned by the villain*** and also a video game where she had access to all sorts of machines, flying or not. She also enjoyed playing the piano (which is a detail that hasn’t come up in any previous fics, deal with it), so a motorcycle was a logical choice.

A Yamaha, since if they made good pianos it stood to reason that they’d also make good motorcycles.

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After finishing their deals, the two mounted up on their mounts of choice.

“Does it feel weird to be riding an equine?” Amethyst asked. “To have a warm stallion between your legs?”

“Not the first time I’ve straddled one,” KitKat admitted. “How’s your motorcycle?”

“Vibrations might be a problem the longer we travel,” she admitted. “Last time I had something like this ‘twixt my nethers I—hold on a minute. How come this script is so laden with innuendo?”

“What do you mean? I thought they were always like this.”

Amethyst shook her head. “Nah, all mine mostly revolved around killing with only occasional innuendo. Seems like we’re going out of our way this time.”

“Really? You’re lucky, I got stuck with a wizard who shoots spells with his ‘wand.’”

Amethyst fingered her gun thoughtfully. “Is that another penis euphemism?”

KitKat nodded while saying: “I can’t tell you, I signed a NDA.”

“I see.” 

The two mares fell silent for a minute, the only sounds being the clopping of hooves on the gravel path that led out of the market and into the forest, and the crunch of tires across that same gravel. Oh, and also the sound of a barely-muffled Ducati V-twin low in its RPM range.

Finally, Amethyst broke the silence. “You ever think of finding the one who authored this misery and making him pay for it?”

“Yes.”

“Or her, I guess. Could be a her.”

“It’s a him, nobody else would have given you anime boobs.” KitKat blew out a breath and her horse—who looked suspiciously like Epona—snorted. “I tried, cut him from guggle to zatch with my saddle axe. I guess it didn’t stick.”

“Maybe you got the AU version.”

“Yeah.”

“Or maybe the timeline’s wonky, and you haven’t got him yet. That’s very possible.” Sparkler straddled her Suzuki and the two mares set out from the used conveyance salesman in the direction of the Forest of Forgotten Files. “This whole thing’s riddled with continuity errors.”

“I’ve noticed that,” KitKat said as she dismounted Epona her horse at the edge of the Forbidden Files Forest. “Well, looks like we’ve arrived at our next challenge.”
> Chapter 5: The Forest of Forgotten Files
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 5: The Forbidden Forest

Both KitKat and Amethyst knew forests. KitKat had more experience with proper forgotten (and sometimes forbidden) forests, since a large part of her job involved delving into them. But it would be remiss to not mention that Amethyst lived within spitting distance of the Everfree Forest which was creepy in its own right.

And of course besides the kind of forest that was a vague outline on a map, maybe with ‘Here there be monsters’ penned inside the margins, there were plenty of other forests, more normal, more appealing to travelers and adventurers alike.

So in that regard, the fact that at the entrance of this forest*—as much as a forest can be said to have an entrance, since one can enter it wherever she wants**—there was a sign helpfully stating that this was the Forest of Forgotten Files was rather insulting.

While in some cases, signs are quite helpful at informing one where one is, especially in a world that hasn’t invented GPS and Google Maps, the fact was that instead of the forest floor being littered with leaves as one would expect, it was littered with leaves of paper.

Which was just as well, because neither mare would have fully understood if instead of leaves of paper meant to symbolize a file, it had instead been littered with ones and zeros which would have been a more accurate representation. Or, if we’re really going down that rabbit hole, it could have been scraps of magnetic charge on magnetic media, or else differing pits on optical media.

Then again, since ‘forgotten files’ sort of implies ‘old,’ it could have also been punch cards. Those are made up of material similar to the manila folder that Amethyst was still carrying, and if either mare had lived in a more modern Equestria, would have borne a passing resemblance to Scantrons used in testing at school. It’s the same tech, but kids can’t be trusted with hole punches, only #2 pencils.

Anyway, the sign informed them that they were at the Forest of Forgotten Files rather than the Timberland of Trash or the Greenwood of Garbage or the Stand of Scantrons.

KitKat tucked her horse into her Horse Pocket, and Amethyst did the same with her motorcycle. While the Department of Transportation could have made better inroads into the forest, they hadn’t. Likely because it had been forgotten, as its name implies.

“Right, I’ll take the lead,” KitKat offered, unslinging her tabarzin. “While I of course don’t know what threats await us in these woods, I’m familiar with forests.”

“I’ll cover your . . . tail.” Amethyst averted her eyes from KitKat’s well-muscled derriere (which she couldn’t see under KitKat’s armor, but she could imagine it. Sometimes imagination is better than reality).

Amethyst drew a gun, a Desert Eagle point five-0 (favored by Bullet-Tooth Tony). With no way of knowing what threats the forest might present, she didn’t know yet which gun would be most appropriate for the situation. The Deagle was good for close- and medium-range work and had fantastic stopping power.

As the situation evolved, she could switch to a different weapon, if needed. But the fact that KitKat had picked her axe implied close-in work.

Although, now that Amethyst really thought about it, KitKat only had one weapon that she’d seen so far. That did raise some questions, and they were ones that she couldn’t easily answer. Was KitKat a one-trick pony? Or did she have yet-unseen depths of character and martial skill?

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The question that Amethyst couldn’t really answer came down to philosophical differences between the two ponies. The unicorn preferred dispatching her enemies quickly and efficiently, ideally from the longest range possible. KitKat preferred getting in close, getting her hooves dirty in her work.

It could be debated which philosophy was better, and it probably will be in the comments if anybody’s brave enough to admit they’re actually reading this. Suffice to say that Sparkler’s style revolved around never being overrun, while KitKat was at home hacking her way out of a pile of enemies, and had the scars to prove it.

And this naturally made them a good pair; combined, they had skills in ranged combat and melee combat. Especially since guns never run out of ammo unless it’s vital to the plot—heroes don’t shoot blanks out of their symbolic phalluses.


•••


It’s impossible to say how many threats there were in the forest. How many fell creatures lurked in the shadows, how many crept across limbs or through the fallen leaves. Every now and then, Sparkler’s gun would bark and something would tumble out of a tree or be sprayed across the leaves litter, forever spoiling the file. Her head was on a swivel and if anything gave the slightest hint of suspicious movement, she dispatched it with fifty calibers of prejudice, swiftly and the opposite of silently.

In fact, instead of birdsong the only sound in the forest was rapid gunshots and an occasional silence as she reloaded, thus setting up that at a critical point later on she might run out of ammo.

As for KitKat, midway through the forest she sheathed her tabarzin, since there was little likelihood that she’d get a chance to use it. She was going to have to speak with Amethyst about that after they got out of the forest; this was supposed to be her turf.

But then she remembered that at the Binary Bazaar, she had been the one who’d negotiated for the Mystical Malware Musket, even though when it came to guns those were more properly in Sparkler’s wheelhouse.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Sparkler remarked, breaking the brief quiescencebetween gunshots.

“I was thinking of how weird it is that our roles are being reversed,” KitKat commented. “Seems like that’s a setup for later.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same.” The unicorn unleashed a flurry of gunshots, putting paid to another cluster of monsters—or maybe they were just shadows. “Someone wise once told me that the battle plan only lasts until contact with the enemy.”

“Contact . . .” KitKat sighed wistfully. “I need contact. What’s the point of living if I’m not gonna get my hooves dirty in close-range combat?”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

KitKat’s eyes flashed. “Don’t patronize me. I’m not some shrinking violet. You holster your gun and let them come to us and I’ll show you what I can do.”

“I think—” Sparkler thought, and then spoke again. “We’re better off getting as efficiently as possible to Cypher-Dragon’s cave (I assume) and then combining our resources and skills for the final battle, which implies we ought to get through this forest with as little damage as we can. In fact, given the nature of the world we find ourselves in (here she regarded her nude form) it’s possible one of us will wind up saving the other in an unexpected way. And maybe we’ll even fall in love by the end.”

“I’ve already got a stallionfriend,” KitKat said. “And he’s probably looking for me already. He’s a portal specialist.”

“It’s not cheating if it’s with a mare,” Amethyst reminded her. “That’s straight out of the bro code.”***


•••


While they were distracted, the Fire Nation attacked. 

Did I say the fire nation? I meant the mole ponies. They may be beneath you, but nothing’s beneath them.

And it was all because Sparkler had her portal gun pointed muzzle-down.****

For all her skills at identifying distant enemies and dispatching them with ruthless efficiency, a collection of creatures who burrowed hadn’t yet crossed her sights (both in the metaphorical sense and the literal sense). They boiled up out of the ground like so much bad molasses and molepiled the duo.

As the Mythbusters once proved, an axe was a more effective weapon against hordes of zombies enemies, at least if you had the endurance to swing it. Better yet, every swing counted, it never jammed, and the backswing could cause damage, too.

Every one of Sparkler’s shots was perfection; every one of Sparkler’s shots sent blood and gore spraying out in a fatal fountain, sent one more molepony to the promised land.*****

But there were only so many she could target, pull the trigger, and dispatch.

KitKat operated with no such handicap, and her tabarzin was only an accent to the delicate dance of combat. She struck with her hooves, kicking enemies back. She open-handed shoved as the need arose, or shoulder-checked, everything in service of giving her axe room to work. Big, two-handed swings when she had room, the axe coming down with a fatal finality. Short jabs when they were crowded in close, slashing with the blade, always aiming for a weak spot, a chink in the armor they weren’t wearing.

She blocked with the handle and she blocked with her bracers; she ignored foes scrabbling at her armor trying to get in, trying to get past the hard exterior to the nugat-y center.

Amethyst winced back as a very close-range shot left her in range of the aftermath; KitKat relished being coated with the blood and entrails of her enemies. She kicked away a molepony who’d just spilled his guts across her hooves, and leaned in with her axe, briefly bathing in the hot fresh jugular blood of an opponent who’d just met one of its blades.

There was a ring of bodies around Amethyst, one full mag’s worth (and when the Deagle went dry, she switched to a shotgun for its devastating close-in work), while KitKat was starting to stand on a pile of bodies.

Both styles of fighting were perfectly cromulent, but KitKat’s method was more cromulent in the current situation.


•••


After what seemed like forever but was really only twelve paragraphs, the mis-portalized moleponies were all defeated and left for dead where they lay. Some of them required a mercy stroke or just a ‘to make sure’ gunshot.

Plot-wise, the Forest of Forgotten Files had been a good bonding exercise for the two protagonists. Both of them had a particular set of skills, and both of them had been at least somewhat skeptical of the other’s abilities, but this skirmish had put paid to the doubts: both sets of skills were equally valid, and as Harmony has taught us, combining their differences into one cohesive unit enabled them to bypass an obstacle on their path to success.

One thing they hadn’t noticed in the Forest of Forgotten Files was that some of the scattered leaves were sapient enough to try and attack our plucky heroes. Since they were only sheets of paper, or maybe thicker sheets of manila, there wasn’t a lot they could do, but anybody who’s ever had a paper cut—especially in the web of a finger—knows what paper can do if it has a mind to do it. And the forgotten papers in the shadowy realms of the forest certainly had a mind to do it, make no mistake.

Unfortunately (for them, not for KitKat and Amethyst), they could only attack from ground level, and from there there was naught they could do but ineffectually strike against hard hooves. Oh, sure, they scratched up Amethyst’s hoof polish enough she’d be embarrassed to go to a gala without a touch-up, but that was it. KitKat was even less affected; she never used hoof polish, and small cuts and scrapes were a consequence of her job and not even worth mention.


•••


After defeating the moleponies and also after pointedly ignoring the presumably perilous paper cuts, Amethyst and Sparkler exited the forest****** and they took a moment to gather themselves before venturing on. KitKat opened her Pouch of Holding Emergency Cheese and extracted a wedge of emergency cheese and the two of them munched on that and then both summoned their mounts back for the next leg of their journey, and that’s the end of this chapter.
> Chapter 6: The Labyrinth of Logic Gates
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 6: The Labyrinth of Logic Gates

“It’s the Labyrinth of Logic Gates,” Amethyst observed, having read that from the map and also remembering it from the mission briefing. It was also the chapter of the title, which was another clue. Also there was a sign on the door which labeled it as such.

“Are you sure?” KitKat asked, observing that the chapter wasn’t actually titled.

Amethyst took a second look at it and realized that it was not, in fact, named. "Huh, that's weird. I wonder what went wrong?" Then she blinked, for all of a sudden it was named. Apparently the auto-naming took a while to take effect.

Unlike most labyrinths which would have featured a hedge or stone walls or maybe wooden walls if it was a discount labyrinth (or cardboard if it were a Dollar General labyrinth), this one was simply a tiled pattern on the floor, a pattern of lines and symbols. There wasn’t even a cardboard cutout of David Bowie.*

KitKat had not a clue what logic gates were, nor did she understand circuit diagrams. However, she was an adventurer through and through, and had seen her fair share of traps like this. Step on the wrong thing and you’d fall into a pit and be impaled by spikes, or get blown up by an explosion or shot by a bolt from a ballista concealed behind the wall.

Just to be sure she dismounted her horse (it wouldn’t fit inside the room anyway) and picked up a rock, then tossed it towards a spot on the floor she judged to be a wrong path.

It landed and tumbled and nothing happened to it.

“I either got lucky or else—” Her thought was interrupted by a brilliant blue white flash of artificial lightning, suffusing the entire room in a brilliant arc glow, and when the adventurer’s vision cleared the rock was gone.

As it turned out, her little experiment had provided an unexpected result. Not unexpected to her; but unexpected to the designers of the trap. You weren’t supposed to know what the results of triggering the trap were, and since they’d known that most adventurers worth their salt would chuck a rock in to see what happens, rocks weren’t supposed to trigger it. Rocks weren’t all that conductive.

KitKat had picked up the one rock that was loaded with copper and iron simply because it was shiny and a good size to toss, and the results spoke for themselves.

“That smells like electricity,” Amethyst observed. She turned her attention to a sign on the wall, directly next to the door. It was a yellow warning triangle with an anthro silhouette being pierced by a zig-zaggy lightning bolt. “And this just confirms it.”**

Amethyst picked up a very dry stick and tossed it into the room. Not much happened, a few fitful arcs along its lengths and it finally, reluctantly, started smoldering.

“Right, that’s that then. We’ve got to figure out what this pattern means and how to get through without triggering it, and if we do we’ll get fried. Unless we ride back to the market and see if anybody’s got Faraday suits for sale.”

“I don’t know much about wires,” KitKat said. “Or electricity except in the form of lightning bolts and various magical spells sorcerers and such can cast. And the kind you get when you rub a cat on a balloon.”

“I know if you’re insulated from it you can be safe, but you’ve got to be careful. We could try and lay down something non-conductive on the floor and just walk across it, but we have to be careful that the electricity doesn’t arc to our weapons.”

“At least I’m wearing hide armor,” KitKat remarked. “That’s not very conductive. I think.”

“Weird how bare skin is but after it’s been dried and cured it isn’t any more.” 

KitKat grabbed one of her spare belt daggers, one that she’d picked up off a dead yale some missions back, and chucked it into the room. A second later the entire room lit up in a bright flash, and the flashing continued until the dagger had finally melted to nothing.

“If they get many adventurers, their electric bill must be insane,” Sparkler remarked. “Did you notice how it took a second before the arcing started?”

“Yeah.”

“I have an idea. We’ll just—”


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KitKat sent not-Epona off around the labyrinth (or back to not-Lon Lon Ranch; she actually wasn’t sure where the horse would go. Or for that matter, where it had come from) and swung her leg across the seat of the motorcycle.

It took a moment for the two to settle in to a comfortable position. KitKat accidentally sat on Amethyst’s tail and got her axe handle stuck on the sissy bars. She shifted her weight, pulled Amethyst’s tail out from under her rump, rearranged her axe, and then slid forward, wrapping her arms tightly around Amethyst’s waist.

Amethyst not only had the problem of her tail being sat on, but then there was the hot harridan who pressed up against her back, awaking unexpected feelings, such as the fact that the armor was warmer than she’d anticipated it would be.

In hindsight, it made sense that it would be; it had been sun-warmed on the outside for most of the day (except when they were in the Forest of Forgotten Files) and body-temp warmed on the inside from KitKat all day (even in they were in the Forest of Forgotten Files).

“You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s do this.” Amethyst revved the throttle on the motorcycle to make sure that the engine was running well, and then dumped the clutch, gripping the handlebars tight as the rear wheel bit into the gravel.

She felt KitKat’s arms tighten around her waist and the two of them bent over into the slipstream as the motorcycle accelerated.

It crossed the threshold into the labyrinth at sixty miles an hour (about 100km/hour [about 52 knots]) and roared across the arcane symbols on the floor faster than they could even react to all being lit up simultaneously.

Part of their plan depended on the exit door being weak enough that it couldn’t withstand a motorcycle with two mares on it, traveling at speed. They had no way to test that, short of trying it.


•••


The door was not strong enough to withstand the collision. It tore off its hinges, briefly hung up on the front of the motorcycle, and then flew into flinders. Just then, the entire room lit up in the brightest electrical flash yet as every single wrong panel’s delay timer triggered simultaneously.

In hindsight, it might have been wiser to have the armored one in front, but KitKat didn’t know how to drive a motorcycle.

Also, Amethyst might not have had the reflexes to grab her cowboy hat out of the air as they cleared the doorframe, but KitKat did, and she placed the hat back on Amethyst’s head right before they rode down a flight of stairs, through a kitchen, and finally came to a stop right inside the service entrance.

The two mares looked back at the lightshow behind them, still going on even though they’d long since departed. If the room had any sort of sentience (and it might have) it was obviously angry at having been foiled by two mares on a motorcycle.*** In retaliation, it chucked the entire contents of its knife block at them, which they dodged.****

Amethyst shut off the engine and the two of them unstraddled the motorcycle, giving them an opportunity to breathe and also giving KitKat an opportunity to pull a vicious splinter out of Amethyst’s shoulder and bandage it. Not wearing clothes was cool, but riding a motorcycle with no protective gear was uncool. Amethyst had seen the offer of riding leathers and a helmet as an unnecessary upsale by Crazy Eddie, although in hindsight he was looking out for her best interests.

His, as well; she could hardly buy another conveyance from him if the first one killed her.

Once Sparkler was bandaged, KitKat whistled for her horse, but that accomplished nothing. Then she got out her ocarina and played a little tune, and all of a sudden the horse came around the corner of the building with a cheerful whinny.

Behind them, the motorcycle fell apart. Harley’s build quality isn’t what it was.
> Interlude: The Last Wayhouse Before the Cyber Dragon
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interlude 1: the last wayhouse before the Cyber Dragon

Mounting a horse was much like mounting a motorcycle, although KitKat and Amethyst’s positions were reversed. With the benefit of hindsight, it might have been better to have not reversed their positions; Amethyst was shorter than KitKat (even when seated), and KitKat could have seen over her head.

However, just as KitKat didn’t know how to operate a motorcycle, Amethyst did not know how to operate a horse. Kind of weird, since a few chapters ago Amethyst was a horse.

Maybe if KitKat had bought a unicorn from Crazy Eddy, Amethyst would have done okay.

Anyway, that meant that instead of KitKat cuddling up against her bare back—armor and all—, Amethyst had to instead cuddle her bare front against KitKat’s back. Armor and all.

not-Epona also didn’t have footpegs (or in this case, hoofpegs) and I just now realize that stirrups would be useless for an anthro equine, so we’ll just have to imagine that they somehow work, or else spoil every anthro fic you read going forward that has a traditional saddle.

You’re welcome.

And speaking of saddles, traditional saddles (Western or that other kind that I don’t like) aren’t built for two, so Amethyst was stuck riding bareback. While bareback.

The good news was that the back of KitKat’s armor was just as warm as the front of her armor for the same reason, and although it wasn’t quite the same for Amethyst to wrap her bare arms around KitKat’s nauga hide armored torso, it was good enough.


•••


The path on the other side of the forest was exactly the same as the path on the other other side of the forest. The first side of the forest. Well, at least the way that KitKat and Amethyst had approached; it stands to reason that if they’d come from the other direction the outlet would have been the inlet and vice-versa.

Unlike in the forest where the path was narrow and ill-kempt, almost like it had been forgotten.

Neither KitKat nor Amethyst wondered too much about the employees who kept the road, or why they might groom it all the way up to the forest and then stop.

They did wonder—after an indeterminate time of travel—just how far it was to the Cyber Dragon’s lair. The dropdown map wasn’t much help; it obviously wasn’t to scale.

It also wasn’t very detailed, a fact which both of them noticed as the sun was setting and they saw a big billboard advertising ‘The Inn’ which was ‘The Last Stop Before the Cyber Dragon’s Lair.’

It had a pointing-finger logo on it, as if they needed to know what direction to go to find it. They’d not passed it yet, therefore it must still be in front of them. Although for all the help that the dropdown map gave them, it could have been anywhere. Except for indicated on the map, that is.

“I hope they’ve got a hot shower,” KitKat said. “Or a bathhouse. You can’t imagine how grubby I am.”

“I can imagine; I can smell you.”

“My gambeson is just about soaked through.” KitKat sighed. “You know, when I first decided I wanted to go out adventuring I didn’t even think of wet armor and how uncomfortable that would be.”

Amethyst, who had long since loosened her deathgrip on KitKat, nodded. Pressing her bare torso against the armor had given her a similar result to wearing it, heating her up to an uncomfortable degree. That, combined with the body heat radiating off the horse.

As the sun settled towards the horizon, those sources of warmth suddenly became welcome, even with all the fur Amethyst had to keep her heat in.

“You don’t think it would be a trap, do you?”

KitKat nodded. “Of course I think it might be a trap. I think everything might be a trap. Except for Mareiott hotels—I’ve got a loyalty card with them, so they wouldn’t dare.”


•••


The inn didn’t look like a trap, which further supported the hypothesis that it might be. Nevertheless, KitKat parked her horse right in front, just alongside the sputtering neon “Vacancy” sign.

She hopped off the saddle first and then helped Amethyst down, cupping her hands for a hoof support and her shoulder for a hand support. The unicorn used those and the saddle horn to get off—three-point contact is important for safety, and that applies to humans, equines, and anthros.

Both of them stretched out to ease the stiffness caused by hours of riding, and both of them walked in bow-legged, sort of like cowboys after a long day in the saddle.

Amethyst even had an appropriate hat.

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From the outside, it looked like you’d imagine a medieval high fantasy inn to look, and the theme carried on in the inside, even down to the buxom bartender (who they couldn’t see from the lobby) and the grumpy pot-bellied man who was at the guest counter and who was also her uncle.

He knew damn well that one day she’d be carried off by some adventurer.

He eyed the two newcomers with dispassionate disapproval. KitKat thought that might be because she was taking on a role generally reserved for stallions; Amethyst thought that might be due to her nudity. Neither of them knew that it was actually because the innkeeper really wanted to be a balloon bookkeeper but the inn had been passed down through generations and you just can’t throw away tradition that easily.

“We’d like rooms, please.” Even if the innkeeper was being gruff, there was no need for KitKat to be rude in return.

“Only got one,” he said. Gruffly.

KitKat frowned. There hadn’t been any other horses parked out front, and it was awfully quiet for a hotel that was nearly sold out.

“It doesn’t look busy,” Amethyst observed. She wasn’t afraid to say what everyone was thinking.

“It’s not.”

“Oh.”

“Only got one room.”

“Why?”

“Don’t get many travelers on the road. One room’s plenty.”

Amethyst narrowed her eyes. “There are a bunch of dormers, implying a bunch of rooms.”

“It’s a big room.”

“Really?”

“No.” He turned his attention back to KitKat, who was sorting through her various purses and belt-sacks for her Mareiott Loyalty Card, just in case the innkeeper accepted it.

Spoiler: he didn’t

“We’ll take it,” KitKat said, thus paying Amethyst back for accepting this job in the first place. “You got a bath?”

“Yeah.”

“And a bar?”

“Also yeah. And a fitness center, so long as you consider ‘fitness’ chopping wood. Ten percent discount for each cord of wood you chop and stack, up to three.”

“That’s not a bad deal,” KitKat said. “We’ll take it.”

“You already said that,” the innkeeper gruffly said as he handed a key across the counter.


•••


The Bar

Most of the bars in inns that KitKat had frequented had been bustling places, with tables crowded with adventurers of every stripe shoulder-to-shoulder, bragging about their last mission or hoping for their next. Or maybe angling for a quick hook-up. They’d had a buxom bartender with smoky eyes who flashed a little too much in front of handsome stallions or cute mares. They had wooden mugs and a wooden floor lined with straw for ease in cleanup, a cheery fire burning in the fireplace all year long; sometimes they even had a minstrel over in a corner strumming away at a lute or cranking his hurdy-gurdy—it was the kind of atmosphere she longed for after a long day or week or month adventuring.

Amethyst didn’t really go to bars anymore, since she’d been banned. She assumed they hadn’t changed much in her absence, but had no evidence one way or another.

This bar was like every other bar, except that it was smaller and quieter (they were the only two guests) and there wasn’t a bar bard to play with his instrument or sing, and there wasn’t a fireplace—burning or not—and the buxom bartender was none other than Kukka the skunk.

“You again,” both Kukka and KitKat said simultaneously. Neither of them knew each other’s names, and neither of them had been anthro the last time they’d met, but neither of them was one (two?) to forget a face.

Going back a moment, Kukka the skunk in anthro form was hawt. Smoking hawt, in fact, in an outfit that could have been painted on, and was cut both too low and too short at the same time. Paradoxically, it was even more enticing than Amethyst’s complete lack of clothing, since sometimes what’s left to the imagination is more sexier than just seeing it all laid bare.

Besides her ‘technically they’re clothes,’, she had curves in all the right places and also stripes in all the right places; it was enough to make a man or mare completely overlook the delicate eau du skunk that she couldn’t help but effuse.

She was what she was, but then aren’t we all?

“I’ll have your strongest house ale,” KitKat said. She was willing to let bygones be bygones; she had bigger fish to fry (metaphorically) and a raging thirst.

“And for you?” Kukka was also willing to let bygones be bygones, even though the last time she’d been near KitKat, she’d been launched by an explosion and had landed right on a scorpion’s nest.

Amethyst, who was sharp enough to sense that there was a history between KitKat and Kukka and who was also wise enough to know that unpacking that history would take more than one round of drinks, simply said: “Something fruity and loaded with alcohol.”

“Devilfruit cocktail, got it.” Kukka flounced off and both mares couldn’t help but watch her ass . . . there was something compelling about something so sexy and yet so potentially destructive.


•••


There was one thing in the world that could overpower a skunk’s odor, and that was a durian. Kukka pinched her nose shut with one hand as she thunked it on the bar counter and cut into it, opening a small hole in the top to pour alcohol in.

She emptied most of a bottle of rotgut into the durian (you wouldn’t be able to taste the alcohol at all) and then dumped in some sugar to make it sweet. She thought about adding a scorpion, but then remembered that ponies didn’t like the taste.

While durian cocktails were unusual—especially since durains and alcohol probably shouldn’t be mixed—the only fresh fruit the inn could get was durians, since the one fruitmonger who traveled the road didn’t sell anything else.*

It was also the only kind of cocktail that Kukka knew how to make.

They also only had one kind of ale, but there was a changeable sign on the front of the butt so it could be whatever the customer ordered. Kukka put up the ‘dark ale’ sign and poured a glass, then dumped in some squid ink to make it darker and give it a deeper flavor profile. She thought about adding a scorpion, but then remembered that ponies didn’t like the taste.

After their drinks were delivered, they ordered their food. KitKat got a bowl of roasted butternut squash with curry leaves, potato and celery root biscuits, a seventeen-ounce carrot steak, and a wild mushroom galette; Amethyst ordered a cucumber sandwich and a beet and arugula salad. Using a firearm didn’t burn as many calories as swinging an axe.

They were two more drinks in by the time their food was prepared; besides serving drinks, Kukka was also the chef. She even had a chef’s apron, which completely covered the frontside of her minimal dress and was part of the reason she wore such a revealing dress.**

She had a lot of extra scorpions (ponies didn’t like eating them), so she snacked on them while she was cooking. She loved scorpions.

Once the meal was cooked and plated, Kukka took off her apron and flounced out into the dining room with the food, then she stood back behind the bar watching in wonder as KitKat ate all her food, while Amethyst had leftovers which she boxed up for later.
> Interlewd 2: Because the First Interlude Went on Longer than I Anticipated
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interlude 2: Because the first interlude went on longer than I anticipated

“That shook some of the dust off,” KitKat said, as the two of them walked down the hallway towards the bathhouse, refreshed by both their drinks and their meal and their postprandial cordials (which I might have forgotten to mention in the last chapter, sorry!) and relieved by the fact that they got through the entire dining experience without Kukka ever going off. That’s kind of a departure for the franchise, if we’re being honest. Maybe I’m going soft in my old age.

“I never thought I’d enjoy a durian cocktail,” Amethyst said. “Once you get past the horrific odor, it’s almost pleasant. Especially the second one.”

“I’d imagine that’s because there was so much alcohol in it, it singed my eyebrows.”

“Probably.”


•••


The bathhouse wasn’t attached to the inn; it was safer to have it in a separate building to limit water damage in case of flooding. That was what the innkeeper’s insurance agent had said, anyway.

It was semi-conveniently attached to their room down a rickety staircase, then across a flagstone path with landscaping on either side to put one in a wilderness state of mind. Neat enough that one’s mind wouldn’t go too feral, though; after all, the inn preyed on attracted a clientele who had been adventuring and wanted a touch of normality before wading back out into the wild, wild world.

Inside it was all one room, although partitioned off to make two: a changing room and the room with the bath. It smelled of steam and lavender and automatically granted one hit point of healing simply by entering the room. Such was the ambiance.

Of the two mares, only one really needed a changing room, but it would be churlish for the other one to lower herself into the bath without waiting for the other.

It would also be unhygienic which was why there was a large shower cubicle so that guests could bathe before bathing.

As soon as they’d entered the changing room, KitKat started stripping off her armor, a process ironically made more difficult by her anthro transformation. Every fastener was in a new place and a new design.

She unlaced her bracers, slid them off her arms, and set them on the bench, then sat down beside them and lifted one leg at a time so she could get her greaves off.

Amethyst removed her hat.

KitKat reached behind her neck and loosened the tie on her gorget, setting that on top of her growing pile of armor, while Amethyst started piling guns up on her bench.

Both of them had picked a seat where they could watch each other and also watch the door. Just in case of trouble.

KitKat put down her tabarzin, then unfastened her belt, leaving all the pouches and purses attached to it, then started working on the ties on either side of her breastplate, eventually separating the two lower halves. It opened up like a clamshell and came off over her head, revealing a stained gambeson below that.

Amethyst was still piling up guns.

Now that she could bend over better, KitKat stood up again and untied her cuisses, setting them next to the empty turtle shell that was her breastplate.

Her gambeson came off next, and of course it snagged and fought on the way off—it always did, even when she was in her normal form.

And then she was nude, save for a light ramie shift that she wore as a long undershirt. That extended to mid-thigh, same as the mail on the bottom of her breastplate, providing modesty.

It was soaked with sweat under the arms, the entire back, and most of the front as well, lessening the modesty it provided as well as any sexiness it might have imparted.

As KittyKat lifted her shift up and up and placed it on the bench, it was the first time either of them had seen KitKat nude.* Her clumped-up sweaty fur was criss-crossed with scars (she hadn’t always had armor) and there were plenty of bruises that couldn’t be seen underneath.

KitKat ran a hand down her coat, smoothing out some of the tangles across her breasts and down her stomach, then stretched her arms out behind her back and jutted out her chest before twisting to loosen all the kinks in her back.

“You ready?” she asked Amethyst.

“Sure am.” The unicorn wrinkled her muzzle. “No offense, but—”

“Believe me, I know. Cost of wearing armor.” She touched a scar that ran from her left shoulder towards her breastbone. “And that’s the cost of not.” She bent down and picked up her axe, then headed for the shower.

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Amethyst picked a gun and followed her. Showers were an excellent place for an ambush, as they both knew.

“Do you think that the spell, the portal, knows to put the scars in the right place?”

“What do you mean?” KitKat turned on the shower and stepped in before it could even begin to come up to temperature. She was quite used to bathing in ponds and streams, so a cold shower was no bother.

“Well, among other things, our teats had to move from here—” Amethyst motioned towards her crotch— “to here, so that much transformation is possible. Did your scars move to the appropriate location in your new form, or are they in the same place but across something new?”

“You mean, did I have a scar along the top of my breast?”

Amethyst nodded.

KitKat looked down at her boob, examining it for the first time. The last time she’d had tits, they’d been Playboy Model tits, probably enhanced with silicone jellyfish, and she’d hated them. This time, given her more appropriate bulk, they were smaller than average and not in her way at all, so she hadn’t paid them any mind.

“I probably do,” she concluded. “There was a time when I remembered where I’d gotten each scar, and some of those tales were epic . . . some less so. There’s one on my forehoof that I got when I stepped on a board with a nail in it.” She lifted up her hand and examined it; sure enough there was a faded scar running the length of her middle finger. “But the one above my breastbone, that’s where it belongs. I just got a boob added under it.”

Amethyst was still pondering things—or waiting for the shower to warm up—but KitKat was a mare of action, and she lifted a hoof and used a brush to start scraping off all the muck that had packed in around her horseshoe and frog.

She knew that good hoof hygiene was a foundation of healthiness—an apple a day kept the doctor away, and hoofpicking kept the farrier at bay.

Unlike Amethyst, who had the dainty hooves of a unicorn and light brass shoes that wouldn’t interfere with her magic, in her current form KitKat was gifted with hooves the size of dinner plates, no hoof polish (it would just chip off in combat anyway), and honest-to-goodness steel shoes with proper caulks. To put a more modern spin on it, Amethyst was wearing Converse All-Stars while KitKat had combat boots.

Once she’d cleaned the bottom of her hoof to her satisfaction, she went to work on the feathering on her ‘ankle’. Some earth pony mares marescaped their feathers, but she wasn’t a vain pony and left them alone, even if it meant brushing out mud and crud and blood after a day on the job.

As she worked, Amethyst finally set hoof in the shower, now that the water had come up to a civilized temperature. She took the lazier route of magicking off the majority of dirt which had accumulated in her dainty unicorn hooves and then holding each in turn under the shower spray, rinsing off what her magic missed.

Just when she’d set her second hoof down (she only had two right now), she felt warm hands and a bar of soap on her shoulders. It took her a moment to realize that KitKat was bathing her.

Amethyst wasn’t the kind of mare who was often at a loss for words, or if not words, action. She had, after all, seen some st.

She had also bathed herself as long as she could remember. Back in Equestria, that was one of the great things about being a unicorn; you could soap or shampoo or loofah wherever you pleased with one simple spell.

Obviously, that wasn’t true for all three tribes and there were social expectations built up around that fact; just the same it was a complete shock to her and she was still trying to figure out how she stood in regards to personal boundaries and an understanding of Equestrian culture at large up until KitKat started soaping her breasts, which suddenly caused new and conflicting feelings.

“Uh . . . we’ve both got hands now, we can wash ourselves.”

KitKat paused and looked at her hands as if this was a new discovery, despite the fact that she’d had them most of the day already and had also been primed to have hands from when the Wizard had turned her into a centerfold.

“I guess,” she said. “It’s not as good bonding to wash ourselves, though.”

Amethyst thought about that. And she thought about how it had felt to have KitKat cling onto her as she drove the motorcycle through the Labyrinth of Logic, or how it had felt to clutch onto KitKat as they rode not-Epona all the way here. She thought about how the other two tribes were very into social bathing and mutual grooming, and she thought about just a few minutes ago when she’d watched KitKat undress and how she could have helped her with some of the more difficult to access ties, and she’d instead sat and watched while she played with her guns.***

She grabbed a second bar of soap off the soap dish and started scrubbing KitKat. Not without incident; she faltered when KitKat reached her groin and that led to some awkwardness and a belated boundary establishment, which by mutual agreement might be temporary or might not be; that remained to be seen.

KitKat didn’t press her, nor did she complain when Amethyst pointedly avoided the danger zone as she worked her way down KitKat’s chiseled, well-muscled physique. 


•••


When they were both clean, KitKat shut off the shower and the two mares turned their attention to the bath. It was hot and fragrant, and promised to ease tension (muscular and sexual) with a good long soak.

By mutual silent agreement, the duo took opposite sides of the tub, both preventing any lingering awkwardness from the shower and more importantly to cover each other’s backs if the need arose.


•••


They stayed until well into the night, sometimes making Smalltalk and sometimes silently contemplating things, and then the two of them got out and dried off and Amethyst strapped on her guns while KitKat gathered up her armor in a big pile which was really too big and clumsy for just one trip so the unicorn carried some in her hands and some in her field and the pair made their way back to the inn and then up the stairs to their room which was the only room in the inn (this made it easy to find, and avoided the need for room numbers [although since the innkeeper was a proper host, he had tacked a number to the door of the room (and while ‘1’ would have been the logical number to put there, the number ‘3’ had been on sale, so that was what was on the door)]).

As one would expect, since it was an only room, it only had one bed, a California King which could fit no less than five adventurers at once, seven if they were friendly, nine if they were very friendly, ten if they were smaller than average and only slightly friendlier than average, and so on with various combinations of size and sociability.

“Well,” KitKat said as she regarded the luxurious—nay, decadent—bed. “It looks like our innkeeper is also a matchmaker.”

Indeed he was.

She set down her armload of armor and Amethyst added to the pile and then the two of them were standing in the room, both fully naked, regarding a gigantic luxurious hotel bed. You can guess where this is going.


•••


A pleasant night of sleep for both, of course.

After they’d tossed a coin to decide who got which side, and after they’d both tried to fall asleep on their side—separated by a gulf that was almost as wide as the Panamare Canal, eventually the two ponies had come together in the middle, and it’s here that we leave them for the night, spooning platonically to share in each other’s warmth.

It would have been a funny twist in the narrative if KitKat were the small spoon, but given her size and bulk that would not have been logical.
> Chapter 9: The Lair of the Cyber Dragon
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 9: The Lair of the Cyber Dragon

Neither mare was eager to rush out and confront the Cyber Dragon.

As the dawn broke and was then pieced back together by a skilled team of celestial mechanics, the two mares woke up. First KitKat, who was an earth pony and used to early days, and who could have gotten out of bed without waking Amethyst (despite her muscular bulk, she can move like a ballerina*) but instead stayed in bed, one arm loosely around the unicorn’s stomach, watching her bed-mate sleep the sleep of the just.

Watching as the rays of the new dawn painted her magenta coat and violet mane, feeling the gentle rise and fall of her breathing, smelling the scent of her freshly-washed hair. KitKat didn’t often have mornings where she could really relax, could really let her guard down.

And then when Sparkler did awaken, the two stayed in bed for just a little bit longer, sharing each other’s warmth, almost long enough to be mistaken for lovers rather than two star-crossed mares who happened to be sharing a bed because the innkeeper** loved his shipping.

After the usual yawns and stretches, after a barely-covered snicker at the state of KitKat’s fur—it was always extra fluffy after a bath—the two got up and began their morning routine.

The first order of business was breakfast, and despite a nagging feeling of concern KitKat elected to not put on her armor before going downstairs to avail herself.

Once again, Kukka the skunk was dressed down, this time in a long chemise that barely covered any points of interest; once again she wasn’t as naked as Amethyst (nor KitKat this time around, who had elected to even skip her ramie shift and instead go au natural); once again what was just barely hidden was more enticing than what was not.

And after they’d eaten, the two hapless heroines returned to their room to get ready for the upcoming day. Amethyst started cleaning her guns and reloading all of her magazines, while KitKat ran a whetstone over the blade of her axe, making sure that it was ready for a new day of fighting.


•••


The sun was high in the sky when the two mares emerged from their hotel room, a fashionable fifteen minutes later than the posted checkout time, but since the innkeeper only had one room, that was close enough and he didn’t charge them extra even though he had every right to do so.

not-Epona was still where KitKat had parked her, and the two mares mounted up with practiced familiarity and then they were off to the final confrontation.

They rode in silence, each of them contemplating what new danger they would face. Both knew dragons, but neither was sure how being cyber would change things. There was also the lair to consider—would it be a cave or a grotto or perhaps a gallery of stone? Even a hollow, if it were a smaller dragon.

What might its vulnerabilities be? For KitKat it was an easier list to run down; she had but one main weapon. Amethyst had a boatload of guns and an assload of ammo, she had hollow-points and tracers and slugs and pegasus-shot and also some hoof grenades because why not? Then there was the unknown, the Malware Musket which had come at a less-than-terrible cost due to KitKat’s shrewd negotiations—what would that do? That it had been mentioned in the mission brief implied it would be useful, but in what way? She couldn’t imagine loading it for a second shot in the face of an imminent dragon attack; there was a reason proper guns came with magazines.

All those things were things to consider as they traveled, or as they came upon an unassuming building that would have been perfectly in place on an office campus with a well-marescaped lawn and decorative shrubs and a parking lot for a hundred horses, a modern building that belied the dragon that surely resided within.

Circuitopia, home of the Cyber Dragon.

“Well,” KitKat said as she parked her horse next to a beautiful charming bright red Toyota Yaris (the only other occupant of the parking lot), “I think you’ll be taking the lead from here on. I never did my best work in buildings anyway.”

“I don’t trust this.” Sparkler grabbed KitKat’s belt and lowered herself off the horse. “Dragons ought to be out in nature, not in some modernist office building.”

“It is a Cyber Dragon,” KitKat reminded her. “That’s a different type—you’re thinking of the traditional chromatic, metallic, and gem dragons. Cyber isn’t even on the list.”

“Sounds electronic. Maybe this is what the musket is for.”

KitKat nodded and grabbed the saddle horn, easily dismounting. She checked to make sure that the horse was square between the lines and far enough away from the Yaris to avoid door dents. “How do you figure we’ll get in?”

The two of them looked over at a plainly-market visitor’s entrance, and then at an open window on the fourth floor. “You know, I brought this rope for a reason,” Sparkler said, referring to the sixty-six feet of black nylon rope she’d grabbed before being portalized. 

“I like the way you’re thinking.”

The two mares walked towards the building

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And right into the main lobby.


•••


They came in at high noon, the sun at their backs, a gunslinger and a fighter side-by-side. The receptionist looked like an anthropomorphized version of Grace Manewitz, and even though neither pony knew who she was, she was the first pony anthro they’d seen. Besides themselves, of course.

She was dressed in business-casual attire, a blouse with a name badge and glasses with zirconium chips at the earpiece. She had a pencil tucked behind an ear and an armpit fetish*** that neither KitKat nor Amethyst knew anything about.

Also unknown to them was that she was wearing a black skirt, and sensible flats. This was because she was sitting down, and the desk had a modesty panel so they really couldn’t see much of her below her breasts.

Sparkler, who did not have a modesty panel, already had her gun up. “No funny moves, don’t hit the alarm, keep your hands where I can see them, and slowly slide yourself away from the desk.”

The two mares split apart. KitKat knew not to get into Amethyst’s line of fire, and she also knew all about flanking an opponent.

“We’re going to tie you up,” Sparkler said. “Just do what we say and we won’t hurt you.”

Grace nodded mutely, her eyes wide. This was only her second day on the job.

“Catch!” Amethyst tossed the rope over, her gun still trained on the receptionist.

KatKat caught the rope. As soon as she touched the free end to Grace, the receptionist shivered. “Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you,” KitKat promised. “This is for your safety and ours. Hands behind your back, please.”

She started looping the rope around Grace’s wrists, when the receptionist looked up at her, confused. “Aren’t you going to take my clothes off?”

“Uh . . . no, why would we do that?”


•••


They left Grace as trussed up as a Thanksgiving tofurkey, grabbed a pair of VISITOR badges off the desk, and made their way to the elevator in silence. Amethyst was wondering if they should have gagged her, while KitKat had different thoughts on her mind.

She didn’t express those thoughts until after they’d stepped on the elevator and Amethyst had pushed the ‘door close’ button.****

“Do you think,” KitKat began, then took a moment to collect her thoughts in a more coherent order and began again. “Does it concern you that we might be the bad guys?”

“What do you mean? We’re on a mission.” Sparkler pulled out the manila folder to illustrate her point.

“And Grace is just an intern, she’s got nothing to do with all this.”

“How do you know she’s an intern?”

“It said so on her badge.”

“But she’s working for the bad guys, and that makes her bad.”

“It could be,” KitKat admitted. “We don’t know her life. Maybe it was the only job she could get. I just worry, sometimes. It’s so black-and-white out in the wilds: if it attacks you it’s an enemy. I’m not used to this nuance.”

“Is it because she’s a pony?”

“Maybe.” KitKat looked at Amethyst with concern in her eyes. “Am I being speciest? Would I have thought the same if we’d tied up the innkeeper? Did I ever stop to think about how the hawk would consider my threat to kill him? He’s probably got an eyas at home, maybe more than one.”

“We can give him back the malware musket after the adventure is over,” Amethyst suggested. “I don’t really need to add a musket to my vast collection of guns, it’s a little too passé for my taste. I’d rather hold something that can fire off multiple loads in quick succession.”

“I was thinking that we should untie her after we’ve slain the Cyber Dragon.”

“Yeah.” KitKat sighed. “I hope she’s not too scared.”


•••


Grace was not scared. Grace was annoyed.

She’d somehow gotten lost and found her way to wherever this place was, and she’d also been turned into an anthro with a great rack and proper armpits when that happened. Whatever, that was all in the past and not worth fretting over.

What was worth fretting over was that none of her college degrees or business credentials had transferred over with her, and she’d been forced to re-start from the bottom of the corporate ladder.

Working as a receptionist was boring as Tartarus, or it had been until the two had come through the door. A smoking hot chick who was undressed to the nines and a big dude (Grace didn’t initially grok that KitKat was a mare, based on her size and her armor).

The idea that the two had come for a threesome instantly crossed her mind, and when the rope came into play, that practically sealed the deal—Grace was very into BDSM. Very very into it; she even had a set of fuzzy handcuffs in her purse just in case the opportunity arose.

And then the butch mare (she realized KitKat’s gender after she spoke) left her clothes on, tied her up, not told her the safeword, and left just as she was starting to get aroused.

There wasn’t anything she could do about it, either. KitKat had done a fine job of binding her, and she couldn’t even squirm on her chair to try and relieve some of the palpable sexual tension.

Grace wasn’t sure what she should do next. Try and escape, maybe roll her chair into the bathroom in case things got wild? Or should she just sit and wait like a good sub, trusting that they’d come back to finish what they’d started?

She’d never had a threesome with two mares.


•••


The elevator dinged as it arrived on the fourth floor, the doors slid open, and the two adventurers were mobbed by the dragon’s Minions.

Yes, those Minions, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Easing any moral compunctions that the mares might have had, solving any conundrums about the nature of good versus evil, or who’s the bad guy in any given scenario, the Minions were armed to the teeth and began their assault on the elevator as the doors were opening.

To both KitKat and Amethyst’s good fortune, their aim was on par with Stormtroopers, and the initial volley hit everything but the mares absolutely nothing, not even the background scenery. Did I say on par? I meant below par . . . well below par.

Before KitKat could even swing her tabarzin once, Amethyst answered the ineffectual assault. The Armsel Striker, better known as the Street Sweeper, is a 12-gauge shotgun with a cylindrical magazine that can hold a dozen rounds. It’s an entirely pointless weapon in nearly all use cases, but this was the exception; as quickly as you read this paragraph, Amethyst had emptied the magazine, filled the elevator entirely with cordite smoke, temporarily deafened both herself and KitKat, and cleared the onslaught of Minions, reducing them to a soup-like homogenate. 

She’d also stripped all the paintings off the wall, blown out all the fluorescent lights, set off the sprinklers, and also stripped most of the paint off the walls. The Street Sweeper didn’t discriminate; it was a proper point and click weapon.

Unfortunately, as the two adventurers were getting their bearings (not helped by the ringing in their ears), a second wave burst into the hallway, undeterred by the fate of the first. Minion intelligence rated right up there with their aim.

“There’s more of them coming!” Amethyst announced, completely unnecessarily—KitKat had eyes, too.
> Chapter 10: The Cyber Dragon
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 10: The Cyber Dragon

The two heroines looked down the hallway for a bolthole or a door—anything for a strategic retreat. There was one, not too far away, a very nice (and out of place for the building) oak door.

KitKat dashed down the hallway and tried the handle. It was locked.

Fortunately, she was a mare of many talents, and she had a lockpick set. By which I mean she had her axe. She hacked the door apart as Amethyst laid down covering fire in the hallway.

The two of them ducked into the room and the brief respite it offered. While Amethyst kept taking occasional shots down the hall to keep the Minions at bay, KitKat looked around the room to see what options they might have—a second door that they could escape out of, a strong desk that they could push up against the door, etc.

There was a desk, and there was a second door, but more importantly there was also a dragon. A huge dragon, a dragon which could have in no way come through either of those doors.*

The dragon was snoozing on a pile of bitcoins (and doge coins, and etherium, and a bunch of other ones you’ve never heard of. KitKat and Amethyst certainly hadn’t). There were even some Celestias in the pile (currently worth $12.19 each, down almost 15% over the last week [at time of writing]).

KitKat moved as quickly as she could, and as quietly as she could, and dragged the desk over to the door that Amethyst was covering. The two mares quickly pushed it in place; right as it was nearly blocking the doorframe, it made that really annoying screech of desk legs on floor, a noise only one step removed from fingernails on a chalkboard.

That woke the dragon. Gunfire, screams of agony from the hall, and shod hooves clopping all over the room weren’t enough to get its attention, but the moving desk did.

It didn’t yawn and stretch itself out, it didn’t snuggle with its coins like Sparkler and KitKat had been snuggling with each other; it didn’t even bother to rub the sleep out of its eyes. It snapped its head up at these invaders in its lair, and it immediately blew a gout of blue-screen breath at them.

Both KitKat and Amethyst had fast reflexes; both of them tumbled away. Both of them went in opposite directions, because they knew that presenting two targets gave them the greatest possible chance of success.

It was, however, for naught. At that range, the dragon couldn’t miss, and the blast splashed against them and briefly pinned them to the wall.

Although they didn’t know it—they hadn’t read the Monster Manual—the dragon’s feared blue-screen breath would render all electronics useless. Since KitKat and Amethyst were equipped with fully analog kit, it wasn’t very effective.

KitKat got back to her hooves and Leroy Jenkensed herself directly at the dragon, leaping for its head and bringing her axe down with shuddering finality. It passed through uselessly, and she crashed down to the coins under the dragon, her hands tingling around the shaft of her tabarzin.

She took another swipe at it as its head came down, its slavering jaw open, each of its teeth nearly as tall as she was. Once again, the axe simply passed through and she dodged just as its teeth snapped shut where she’d been standing. Non-fungible tokens skittered about on the floor under her, spoiling her footing.

The very instant that KitKat was clear, Amethyst—who had taken the opportunity to get in a good shooting stance—emptied her Ruger Redhawk into the dragon, who just chuckled. 

“Your weapons cannot harm me,” he said, as he slammed his tail to the ground, knocking both adventurers to their asses.

Amethyst kept reloading as she fell, and emptied her gun into him again after she landed, even if she didn’t honestly think it would do anything. Her mind was racing—it hadn’t felt like shock that had knocked them to the ground, it had felt like something else, but she wasn’t sure what.

KitKat was slower getting herself back to combat readiness. Only marginally slower; she was back on her hooves as the hammer of the Ruger fell on an empty chamber, facing the dragon once again.

What kinds of ammo do I have? Traditional bullets worked well against normal creatures, but Amethyst lived in the magical mystical world of Equestria which was filled with magical creatures.

For her part, KitKat was considering what other options she had to attack the dragon. She had a far more limited set of weapons from which to pick—with the exception of improvised weapons, which might at least give her a sense of what the dragon was vulnerable to. She grabbed a kerosene lantern** off the wall and lobbed it at the dragon as a poor mare’s Molotov Cocktail.


•••


Over the next few minutes, the mares kept trying different weapons with little success. Amethyst occasionally had to break off her offensive on the dragon when a Minion got a little bit too brave.

“We’re not in a good position,” Amethyst shouted as she blasted another Minion with her shotgun.

“I know.” KitKat jabbed at the dragon with a ficus plant that had been decorating the room, then ducked back as it retaliated with a forearm swipe. “Hey, have you tried the musket yet?”

“Musket?”

“The one that I negotiated for at the Binary Bazaar.”

“Oh yeah.” Amethyst reached back and unslung it. “You know, I almost forgot I was carrying this thing.” She pulled back the hammer and took aim, catching the dragon right between the eyes as he turned towards her.

It didn’t have any effect that they noticed, but they were looking at the wrong thing. The bullet went through the dragon with no effect, hit the wall beyond it, and then bounced off and tumbled into the pile of NFTs, sparking against every one it touched.

They also didn’t notice that the value of the dragon’s crypto-wallet suddenly took a nosedive—but the dragon did.

It bellowed out a pained roar, and washed its blue-screen breath over them again (it still wasn’t very effective); from behind they heard the Minions suddenly surge, crashing into the desk hard enough to move it a few inches away from the door.***

“Huh, I would have thought this would do more after all the trouble we went to to get it.”

“Maybe he’s got a weak scale around his heart,” KitKat suggested. “Some dragons do, I’ve heard.”

Just then, as if in answer to a prayer, Buttercup appeared on top of the desk. 

Neither KitKat nor Amethyst had seen Buttercup as an anthro before, and what a sight to behold he was! He was a full head taller than KitKat, 350 pounds (159kg [25 stone]) of muscle and blue-grey fur, standing like a barbarian out of a Boris Vallejo painting.

He was also completely nude, and hung like a horse; twenty-four inches of girthy mottled horsecock swinging down nearly to his knees. The kind of thing that would make a mare swoon.

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After a moment of swooning, Amethyst narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Something felt off, something she might notice once she tore her eyes away from his splendid stallionhood. KitKat, meanwhile, succumbed to her weaker female nature and jumped up on the desk to give him a big hug, forgetting for a moment that they were in combat.

“The dragon’s too powerful for you,” Buttercup said, his voice deep and sonorous, vibrating through him almost like a purr. “Come with me, I’ve found a way out.”

“He’s a fake,” Amethyst warned. “He has nipples. The AI didn’t know that stallions don’t have nipples.”

“And he would never tell me to give up on a fight,” KitKat said. She grinned, revealing a pair of canine teeth that the AI also didn’t know equines had, and jumped back off the desk. “We’re scaring the dragon and it’s making us see illusions.”

“I agree,” Amethyst said, and fired the musket again, this time aiming towards where a weak scale might be.

The fake Buttercup, meanwhile, tried to reformulate his strategy by making his penis even larger, and therefore more enticing. A moment later, it thumped against the surface of the desk as he went full ludicrous.

The two mares ignored him, focusing instead on the Cyber Dragon’s reaction to a second musket volley. It didn’t appear to faze him yet again, and then KitKat let out a war cry and started running around the edge of the room, distracting the dragon. 

Amethyst paused in reloading long enough to lob her leftover devilfruit cocktail at KitKat, who caught it and then darted in, smashing the glass to-go bottle against the dragon’s head.

“What the fuck is that?” the dragon roared. “It smells like ass.”

“Devilfruit,” KitKat said. “It’s unbelievably toxic,” she lied.

Sparkler fired the musket again as KitKat ran around the edge of the room, trying for the dragon’s hindquarters.

Behind her, she heard the dragon bellow, then chuckle again. “Behind this façade is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof.”

“You stole that from V for Vendetta,” Amethyst chided, wagging her finger at the dragon like she might a naughty child. Not the wisest thing to do in the face of a dragon, but then she knew something that the dragon did not. She wasn’t left handed. KitKat had just found a curtain behind the dragon and swept it open with the butt of her tabarzin, revealing a server room.

Too late, the dragon sensed what KitKat was doing. “Hey, pay no attention to the mainframes behind the curtain!”****
> Epilogue: Thank Somepony it's Over
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Epilogue

Despite the dragon’s entreaties, KitKat was paying attention to the mainframe behind the curtain. She’d already figured out that the dragon was an illusion, much like Buttercup had been (and still was; he’d stepped on his own dick and fallen off the desk and then he glitched out because the dragon couldn’t bother to keep up with such a stupid trick when his very core of being was threatened), and she also knew that illusions didn’t have much range. Something about thaums and lossy conversion, she wasn’t entirely certain—that type of magic was not at all her specialty.

Really, no magic was. She knew how to avoid spells, and did know some earth pony cantrips, but most of them weren’t too useful in combat.

Except for fast-healing, that was very useful in combat. And other places, as well.

She regarded the mainframes, humming away with electricity and blowing hot air out their cooling vents. Everything attached with a sloppy mess of cables (the cyber dragon’s IT guy didn’t do proper cable management*); green LEDs blinking as the processors worked.

KitKat poked at one of them with a hoof, and not much happened. She paused in thought—feral Roombas would skitter away when you poked at them and then they’d come back in force. These hadn’t done anything.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the dragon’s head coming around, so she shifted her grip on the axe and did her best impression of a golfer trying for a four-hundred yard drive.

The dragon might have been bulletproof (and axe proof), but the mainframes sure weren’t, and she set about defunging their tokens as the dragon screamed in agony.

Midway through, she heard a loud crash from across the room and brought her head up just in time to see Buttercup Kool-Aid his way into the server room.

This was the real Buttercup. He was exactly the same as he’d looked before, except this time he was wearing—well, he still wasn’t wearing anything. He’d only recently started going in the field with KitKat, and he didn’t have any armor yet.

He also didn’t have nipples.

Across his back was slung a portal gun, the very same one which had brought KitKat to this accursed place. In his hands was a warhammer, flecked with plaster and concrete dust. And below that was his swinging cod, a more-reasonable eighteen inches of it.


•••


The two of them quickly fell into their groove. KitKat concentrated on wires, which were susceptible to an axe. Buttercup dealt with circuit boards and chips, which could be completely obliterated with one swing of his warhammer.

Amethyst kept the Minions at bay.

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•••


In less time than it takes to write, they’d unfunged all the tokens and defeated the dragon (who got increasingly pixilated and erratic as each mainframe in turn was destroyed). They knew that their mission was complete when a virtual moth flew out of the cyber dragon’s virtual wallet.

Coincidentally, that happened at about the same time as Amethyst finished off the last of the Minions, and the trio joined up in the main room.

KitKat introduced Buttercup to Amethyst and they were just about to portal their way out of there when they remembered that they’d left the receptionist tied up in the office, and KitKat suggested that the grey wolf might give them a reward for completing their mission.

(They could have just taken one of the computers and gotten a fortune in bitcoin, but that thought hadn’t occurred to any of them.)

Since the hallway was littered with dead Minions and minion gore, they elected to take the back staircase, the one Buttercup had taken up to the server room.


•••


Down in the lobby, Grace was still tied to the chair, as horny as she’d ever been. That horniness only increased when the door to the stairs opened and the first person out could have been a Greek god, but with a porn star’s cock, everything the Wizard (who she’d never met [thank Celestia]) wasn’t.

Five minutes later, for the first time in her life, Grace came while she was being untied, in no small part because Buttercup had been doing the honors and it wasn’t just his hands that kept pressing up against her as he loosened the ropes.

She stumbled as she tried to stand (both as a result of the orgasm and because her legs had gone to sleep as she sat) and so Buttercup just wrapped an arm around her waist and picked her up in a fireman’s carry.

The four of them crowded into Grace’s Toyota Yaris hatchback and then KitKat remembered that they shouldn’t leave not-Epona behind, so they fit her in, too. It was very crowded, but nobody minded. Japanese compact cars are bigger on the inside.

With the windows rolled down, it was almost comfortable. 

Or at least so Grace thought, since she was sitting in the back seat with Buttercup on one side and KitKat on the other, relegated to being the filling of the sandwich of her dreams. They’d tossed their weapons, the portal gun, Amethyst’s arsenal, and Grace’s purse in the hatchback.

The horse got to ride shotgun, since she wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the car, and Amethyst drove. She didn’t bother to inform anyone else that she’d never driven a car before.


•••


They made two stops on their way back.

First, they picked Kukka up from the inn, and then they drove off into the sunset while the innkeeper shook his fist at them.

Second, they stopped at the Binary Bazaar long enough to return the musket to the hawk, along with a heartfelt apology from KitKat for taking advantage of him like she had. He forgave her and the two hugged it out, and then they drove on.


•••


By the time they’d made it back to the city, the car was more or less done for. The suspension had never been intended to take so much weight, and KitKat had used her axe to make a sunroof since it was getting rather crowded. She didn’t know much about car design and didn’t understand how important a structural element the roof of a modern car is.

They left it in front of the nondescript government building and piled out, bearing resemblance to a clown car. Buttercup accidentally tore his door off its hinges as he went to open it, and then he and KitKat had to separate Grace and Kukka, who had started making out on the car ride.

The five of them and one horse made their way back to the grey wolf’s office. They politely informed his secretary—who was even older than him—that they were there to see him and that they had completed their mission.

She kept eyeing them disapprovingly over her half-glasses, although none of them were sure what she was most disapproving of. Was it not-Epona nibbling at the decorative government-issued fern? Was it Amethyst or Buttercup, both naked as the day they were born, casually sitting in the office chairs without a single care in the world, everything on display? Was it Grace and Kukka picking up where they’d left off in their make-out session? Or was it KitKat, resplendent in her armor that was streaked with Minion gore?

They would never learn the answer.

The door opened to admit the group, and Amethyst took the lead, setting photographic proof of the dragon’s defeat on the wolf’s desk.**** “We’ve completed the mission,” Amethyst said.

“And we’d like our reward,” KitKat added.

“Or else,” Buttercup didn’t add, but he didn’t have to; the sentiment was perfectly clear in his casual crossed-arms stance. The only thing that would have made it more intimidating would have been if the ceiling in the room was taller; as it was, he had to bend over just to stand.

Also, even though he was well past his prime, the wolf still possessed the penis insecurity that most males do, and he very clearly couldn’t measure up to that monster.

Also also he was still obsessed with KitKat’s armor. And a little bit distracted by the fact that Kukka had her paw down Grace’s blouse, and Grace had her hand up Kukka’s dress. Truly a love story for the ages.

“Oh, yes, of course.” He opened a desk drawer and started sorting through files, occasionally eyeing KitKat’s firm cuisses. “Um, I hesitate to ask, but do you have receipts for your expenses? Do you have a mileage log and a fuel log for any vehicle usage you may have availed yourselves of? Do you have an explanation of why there were two of you at the start and now there are five? Six if you count the horse? Did you stay in an approved hotel, and did you get the government rate?”

Three of the six looked at each other in confusion; the horse had her muzzle in the wolf’s fern (every office had an identical fern, and they were all government-provided) and I think y’all can guess what Kukka and Grace were doing. Let’s just say that those handcuffs Grace had were really coming in clutch.

Amethyst was the quickest to figure out what was going on; besides her Mom’s government job, unicorns were just naturally better at navigating bureaucratic hurdles. “You got the forms?”

He nodded and opened a notebook and spread the forms out and the three of them spent the next hour filling out boring paperwork. They didn’t have any receipts—they’d never been given them, or if they had, they hadn’t kept them—but each time the wolf raised an objection, Amethyst tapped the paperwork with the barrel of a gun and insisted that the receipt was right there.


•••


In the end, they got all their expenses covered and a job completion bonus of fifty dollars to be split evenly (the government is not generous) and they all got good references for the future.

A few minutes later, back in the parking lot, they all hugged and then crowded around Grace’s now completely useless Yaris, and Buttercup—who was the resident portal expert—portalized them all back to Equestria, where they belonged.

Except for not-Epona of course, who got portalized back to not-Hyrule.


•••


KitKat woke with a start. She was tangled up in a bedroll next to a warm body—she instinctively moved away as a hoof touched her back, and then she realized where she was and who she was with.

She nestléd back up against her bedroll companion and turned her head to nuzzle his cheek. “Mmh, I had the strangest dream.”

“So did I.” Buttercup kissed her on the muzzle and then pushed the tent flap aside. The two of them were deep in a forbidden forest, it was raining, and they could hear the distant hisses of evil monsters waiting to be defeated.

There was nothing she liked better.