Dash of Humanity 2: A New Dawn

Chapters

2. Housewarming Gifts
3. Lowering Expectations
4. Don't Grumble, Give a Whistle
5. A Normal Day in Ponyville
6. It's About Time
7. A Day to Remember
8. Iron Pony
9. Trip to Canterlot
10. Wrench in the Gears
11. Face Your Fears
13. Dawn's Pardon
14. The Hunt for Knight-Captain Armor
15. Heart of Darkness
16. Welcome Home - Epilogue
17. The next day - Epilogue
1. For a New Dawn
12. Melancholy

2. Housewarming Gifts

Everything in Ponyville looked so different now. I wasn’t sure if it was the fact I had my own body, or that I was walking instead of flying. The dirt path I was on ran along a small stream near the edge of town. According to Twilight, my house would be the fairly-new one at the end of the path.

“So, you still worried about a surprise party?” Dash asked. She was walking alongside me, having volunteered to show me to my new home.

“Nah, you said she’d give me a day to adjust first, right?” There would be plenty of time to stress out and have surprise parties. For now I wanted to relax and forget my worries, like not having a cutie mark in a society that places so much weight on them.

“Well, this is Pinkie we’re talking about. While there won’t be a big surprise party, we did have to bargain with her.”

I moaned and shook my head. “Alright, how many ponies are going to jump out from behind my sofa in my new house?”

“Just five.” Dash smiled triumphantly. “I reminded Pinkie that you like to punch ponies in the face when surprised.”

Chuckling, I elbowed her side. “Real smooth, let’s start threatening all the ponies with physical violence to get our way. Which way now?”

Dash gestured to the right. “This is the last intersection. Fluttershy’s cottage is left, follow it around the Everfree. If you go straight, there are a couple older houses bordering the Everfree. To our right are all the newly built houses.”

“You’d make a great tour guide.” I turn and start to walk down the dirt road. I never really appreciated how nicely planned Ponyville was. The houses were in neat rows, with small yards. Fences weren’t needed, and usually only existed as a decorative item. The hard-packed dirt didn’t seem to erode away when it rained, making the streets rather smooth.

“You didn’t talk much about your week in the hospital, how was it?” Dash was flying now, wisely out of hoof’s reach if she decided to make any more smart remarks.

“The usual. Wake up, eat veggies, have a nurse tell me how to walk ‘properly’, eat more veggies, sit in a desk and try to hide an erection while a sexy teacher explains Equestria history and law to me, more veggies, clop in the shower, and go to bed. You?” I glance up at her, as if there was nothing amiss in my explanation.

Dash kept a decent poker face, hiding most of her shock from me. “Well, your stallion problems are your fault for not using that marelight I bought you.”

“I told you, that orderly stole it! That hospital was creepy as fuck.”

“Really?” Dash swooped down and took a playful swipe at my back. “I think you just didn’t want the nurse finding it in your night stand.”

“You’re incorrigible, Dash,” I deadpanned.

“No, you’re incure—incore—insufferable!”

“Good, you used your big-mare words.” Dash swooped back down to try and rough-house with me again. This time I was ready, flaring my wings and grabbing her in mid air. She fell to the ground, tumbling through the dirt with me, and landing on my stomach.

I was too busy laughing to pay much attention, and felt her hooves slam down on my chest. “Hey! That was a cheap shot,” Dash pouted.

“If you’d hurry up and help me with flying lessons maybe I’d stand a chance in a fair fight. I think you just like being on top.” I stuck my tongue out at her.

“What, you don’t like Fluttershy being a stronger flier than you?”

Dash continued to tease me as she pinned me to the ground. I realized the problem this presented when I started to focus on the warmth of her belly. “Uh, Dash, I think you should get up now.”

“Say Uncle, maybe then I’ll let you go.” Dash crossed her forelegs and stuck her tongue out.

“No, Dash, I’m getting—”

“Say Uncl—eep!” Dash flew up into the air in shock as she felt me poke her flank.

“I tried to warn you.” I rolled over and stood up and tried to ignore my stallionhood. Ponies seemed to be experts at pretending they weren’t always parading themselves around naked. However, I wasn’t used to having myself on full display—not by a long shot. To make it worse, there was absolutely no way to hide arousal as a stallion.

I could tell already, me and my stallionhood were going to clash heads a lot.

“Sorry, Dash.” I watched her fly down the path towards my house.

“Nah, my bad. Should’a known better than to get you hot and bothered.”

I ran over towards her to catch up. “Well, I do appreciate you and Scootaloo taking me in and treating me like a brother. It’s nice to have a pony I don’t have to feel overly-formal around.”

“It’s the least I can do. After all, we know each other’s dirty secrets. Getting to know each other that well, it’s not like two ponies can go back to just being friends.”

Dash glanced at me and smirked, so I nodded in agreement. She had been a great asset to help me get used to how Equestria works. Part of me was still angry over losing all hope of getting back to Earth; I could be honest with Dash and count on her, and that made the loss bearable. She was definitely a lot more important to me than just a friend.

The house came into view on the right. It was two stories tall and painted yellow on the sides with red shingle roofing. The windows were neatly trimmed and painted white. There were some bricks laid out front to form a visual space for a front yard. Somepony seemed to have planted a few flowers out front for me.

On the second floor was a master bedroom and a large balcony. Pegasi that lived on the ground often had houses with this same layout. It allowed them to easily relax outside, and fly in and out of their home. It also seemed to be ingrained in every pegasus that higher is safer, so nearly all of them loved living on the second story or higher.

“Wow, Dash, thanks.” I closed my gaping mouth and tried to recover from the shock. I’d never owned a house this nice on Earth. “Much nicer than the apartments I’m used to living in. Hell, my parents' house wasn’t much bigger and that cost three hundred thousand.”

“What? Three hundred thousand bits?! That’s outrageous!” Dash shouted.

“Heh, well it was in dollars. Then again, I’m not sure there’s a conversion rate for dollars to bits,” I replied.

“Oh, yeah.” Dash chuckled, flying up to the balcony to go inside. “Remember, act surprised, or Pinkie will try even harder next time.”

I moaned, approaching the front door. Apparently ‘do not give me a surprise party, I need time to adjust’ meant ‘only jump out with five other ponies’ to Pinkie. Still, it’d be nice to see the familiar faces, and Pinkie’s baked goods were better than sex.

The door had no visible lock on it so I pushed it open, curious what waited inside. To my shock, the ponies I had come to know so well were just relaxing on a sofa and some chairs.

“Surprise!” Pinkie shouted, firing a large cannon at me.

I ducked in surprise as confetti and streamers nearly took my head off. My wings had spread on instinct and I felt the bits of paper blow through it. Now, I’d have to clean them out later. I gave them a few hard flaps and hovered unsteadily for a moment, hoping to knock most of the confetti out of them.

“Wow, Pinkie, you got me good,” I said in mock surprise. “I was sure you weren’t gonna do a party.”

Glancing over at Dash, I saw her and Applejack chuckling. Luckily Pinkie seemed thrilled to have caught me off-guard.

“Welcome, Dawn,” Twilight said. She carried herself with an air of grandeur, as if she had just undergone some sort of princess-training. At least she looked more comfortable in her role as an alicorn. When I first met her, she seemed nervous, obsessive, and possibly insane. In fact, most of the ponies had seemed insane at first.

“Thanks for coming, everyone, it’s great to see you.”

“Don’t you mean everypony,” Dash mocked.

“Really?” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t see how speaking frou-frou Equestrian like you is going to help me fit in.” Whether I planned to or not, I still found myself slipping into their sayings at an alarming rate. Part of me wanted to hang onto human terms, and pretend nothing had changed.

“There’s nothing wrong with civil discourse, darling,” Rarity explained. “One must carry themselves with an air of sophistication to attract a suitable partner.”

“I rest my case.” Dash started chuckling. I walked over to take a seat near the others. They were gathered in a semicircle around my coffee table and it was piled high in gifts. Rarity seemed a bit offended, however she should have gotten used to my personality by now.

“We got ya some housewarmin’ gifts,” Applejack explained. “And ah want ya to know we can always use an extra set of hooves on the farm, so don’t you worry none about gettin’ a job.”

“Pfft, he’ll want to work on the weather team, no doubt,” Dash said. “Wouldn’t want him getting a cutie mark in apples on accident.”

“Thanks, both of you. So, let’s start with some cupcakes.” I glanced over at Pinkie and smiled. “You didn’t forget to bring some, did you?”

She gasped. “Forget cupcakes?! I would never stoop so low as to forget cupcakes!” Pinkie pulled out a tray of cupcakes from what I’ll assume was a nearby table, and set them on the coffee table. “Dig in, everypony!”

I took one in each hoof and held them up. “At least now Dash won’t be worried about them going straight to her flanks.” I popped the first one in my mouth and chomped on it. The chocolate strawberry flavors were incredible.

“Hey! I’m not worried about a little junk food going to my flanks,” Dash retorted.

“S’not what you shaid before callin’ AJ fat,” I mumbled through my full mouth.

“Ya said Dawn was in control of yer body ‘n called me fat at that party,” Applejack stated, shooting Dash an accusing glare.

I smiled at the small victory, as Dash lost her facade of the cool stunt pony and muttered something under her breath. It was fun to try and coerce her to blush, if only because of how lovely her cheeks looked when they turned magenta to match her eyes.

“If you two are done bickering like a married couple, perhaps we can open the gifts? I’m due at a fashion show in Canterlot tomorrow morning,” Rarity stated. She took a nibble out of a cupcake, somehow managing the smallest bite I had ever seen.

“Eh, yeah, sounds good. I guess yours is as good a place as any to start,” I said.

In front of me was a white box with purple ribbons. There was a small card attached to it, but it wasn’t much of a stretch to guess who it was from. I fumbled with the bow for a second, still getting used to manipulating delicate objects with hooves. At last the ribbon fell off and I opened the box.

Inside were folded up clothes. If this was Christmas, I’d be in tears right now pouting. At least, if I were still a child.

Hopefully this isn’t a hideous wool sweater. Please not a hideous sweater. . .

Lifting the first piece out revealed it was a hoody, designed to keep a pegasus warm. There appeared to be slits for my wings, and I decided to try it on later when there was nopony around to watch me get tangled up in it.

Next were socks in a light brown to match my mane. “Does this mean ponies wear shoes?”

“Socks are more of a lingerie item,” Dash quipped. She twirled a hoof in the air, “I suppose they could keep your hooves warm during winter too.”

Everypony shared a quick laugh as I set them aside and pulled out the next item. It appeared to be a pair of pants, and I glanced over at Rarity for an explanation.

“I know you have slightly different views on modesty, and it’s not unheard of for ponies to wear pants,” she explained.

“Thanks, at least I’ll have the option now. What’s this at the bottom?” I pulled out a smoother fabric that seemed to be a full-body suit and some goggles. “A flight suit?”

“They’re not just for stunt ponies, darling,” Rarity began. “Stallions often need a little. . . ‘help’ remaining aerodynamic. You have. . . larger bodies than a mare.”

“Real smooth,” Dash snickered. “What she means is that you can’t fly with a—”

“Yeah, I get it, Dashie.” I set down the clothes in a pile and looked to the next box. Maybe one of them would contain a muzzle for my wise-cracking friend over there. I shot her a look and grinned, picturing her kneeling in the muzzle. Quickly I changed my line of thought before I had any unexpected surprises in the middle of a room full of mares.

Damn, I have a feeling I’ll be wearing those pants. A lot.

Pinkie’s box came next. It was much less elaborate and had a cookbook inside it. She quickly began to explain. “Everything you need to know to bake delicious desserts or yucky vegetables is in there. It’s made for non-unicorns, too! So no need to worry about messing it up.”

“Thanks, I have a feeling I’ll need to learn a lot of new recipes without meat in them.” I left out the part about how I would just visit the local Griffin restaurant when I was in the mood for some roast pork, or maybe beef. My chin felt wet as I realized I’d began to drool.

“See, he likes it already!” Pinkie cheered, coming out of nowhere to hug me.

“Hah, yeah. Thank you.” I wondered what meat would even do to me, if it could be digested. The orange box in front of me presented an opportunity to change my line of thought.

Applejack’s gift came in a simple box, containing a single watering can. I was puzzled by this, taking a moment to put it together. “Oh, AJ, you planted the flowers out front?”

“No, it’s to water the apple tree in yer backyard. My real gift was movin’ over one of my apple trees for you,” she explained.

“Wow, thank you! That’s incredible, I mean a full-grown tree must have taken a lot of effort to get over here.”

“Shucks, ya deserve my best for savin’ Equestria and puttin’ up with Dash.”

“Finally, somepony gets it!” I said and laughed. I heard a soft thud as Dash hit Applejack on the shoulder.

Twilight’s box was closest so I grabbed it next. It was fairly heavy and considering she ran the town’s library, I was fairly certain what was in it. I took off the lid and read the spines of the books. Knights of the Round Table, A Brief History of Equestria, Daring Do and the Escape from Jersey Shores.

I fought the urge to facepalm: the brief history book was twice as thick as the other two combined. “Thanks, Twilight. Quite a spread of literature here.”

“I’m glad you like them! Of course, you can check out as many as you want, but I bought these ones for you. I do hope you’ll start your own collection. If you need any recommendations, just let me know,” Twilight said. She looked rather thrilled for something as simple as some books, yet that was part of her charm.

A yawn overcame me as I sat there, suddenly wishing one of them had gotten me a coffee maker. There were only two gifts left. Fluttershy was sitting on a recliner, quietly watching me open gifts. Meanwhile, Dash was off to the side with her usual innocent look; the one where her smile and wide eyes said she couldn’t possibly be planning any mischief.

“Alright, then. Let’s see what the prankster got me.” I grabbed the cyan box and wondered how much money the gift wrapping store in Ponyville must make. Perhaps somepony had a special talent in having exactly the right color gift-boxes.

Lifting the lid off I expected to find something lewd or embarrassing, and was not disappointed. Luckily, I knew a thing or two about handling Dash.

I scooped the fuzzy hoofcuffs, bit, and bridle up with my hoof and lifted them out of the box. Dash had already broken out in soft laughter. “Dash, I knew you had feelings for me, but in front of our friends? I mean, maybe you can come back later tonight and I’ll get you all tied up, but what would Soarin say?”

“What? Those weren’t for me!” Dash shouted. “You’re supposed to use ‘em on somepony else!”

“Hmm,” I enjoyed her blushing for a minute while everypony broke out in laughter. “I suppose I can take volunteers. Anypony want to test out her gift with me?”

We continued to laugh and I saw Dash struggling to keep her wings from standing up straight. My own wings were unfurling and I realized this line of humor wouldn’t last much longer before I had a room full pegasi with wing boners.

“So, Fluttershy’s gift is last. I wonder what it is.” I leaned forward and grabbed the box. It was light, so I took the lid off and glanced down at the contents. “Wait, are these toy mice and cat treats?”

“Yep.” Fluttershy flew across the room. “I’ll be right back.”

I was puzzled, though I figured she had decided I need a pet. After a moment she flew back from upstairs, carrying a black cat. It only took me a moment to recognize him. “Bagheera!”

“He was wandering around town when I found him, after Discord blasted the poor thing over here from Earth. He was very frightened.”

Fluttershy set him down on the couch next to me, letting him reach out and smell my foreleg. He timidly sniffed as he got familiar with the scent, and something akin to recognition went through his eyes as he meowed. Bagheera started licking my foreleg and purring.

“Wow, that’s really nice.” I had to choke back tears. It would seem being a pony had made me more in touch with my emotions, yet my human thinking still made me feel like I had to ‘be tough’.

We all began to chat, gathered around in a circle. Everyone took turns telling me about their week, and how to find their homes in town. The time passed quickly until the sun had set, and soon they all began to go home.

Fluttershy and Dash were the last two to leave. There wasn’t much left to talk about this late in the evening. Applejack had left an apple pie cooling for me in the kitchen for dinner. Fluttershy had made sure I knew how to care for a cat with hooves. And Dash had been cocky, arrogant, and at the same time oddly concerned with my well-being.

“Well, if you need anything, just let me know,” Fluttershy said. “Cats can be temperamental.”

“Thanks, Fluttershy, I promise I will.” I walked over and opened the door, watching her walk out. Her flanks looked even better from this perspective: perfectly shaped, so soft, and of course buttery.

“Still chasing Fluttershy’s tail?” Dash whispered sensually as she walked up to the door. “I left you a new marelight under your bathroom sink. Don’t lose this one, they’re not cheap.” She whipped her tail against my backside, causing me to stifle a moan.

“Get out, you tease; but feel free to sneak back in around an hour from now.” I chuckled and closed the door behind her before she could retort. If she keeps on flirting like this I might ignore the fact she’s dating Soarin and test the bit and bridle out on her.

“Meow.”

I look over at Bagheera. “Tell me about it. I suppose there are worse places to be stuck. Now I just need to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do next. Getting some sleep is a good start, but first, I need to go to the bathroom.”

Author's Note

My New Year's Resolution?

Weekly Dash of Humanity updates with all the romance, love tetrahedrons, snarky remarks, and the apparently really-popular Dash/Dawn back and forth I can fit!

p.s. American English is real English, and those of us who grew up in California and don't have frou-frou higher educations pronounce Don and Dawn the same. Also, I changed chapter one so Greedo shoots first, and the name change was more than just a phonetics mix-up. Please stop sending me death threats.

3. Lowering Expectations

I had been enjoying the sun on a park bench when I smelt a familiar scent. Stallions have an odor to them—a sort of subliminal display of masculinity—I could smell it in the wind, all around me.

There was something about it that still unsettled me, so I rolled off the bench and stood up on the ground. The musky scent of sweat and hay, mixed with fresh rain, was getting closer. It sparked recognition in my mind. I knew I had smelled it before.

“Mmm, he’s coming for you,” a voice said. “Better get ready.”

To my left I found the source of the remark: a mare who was the spitting image of myself. For some reason, her coat and mane colors were reversed. The pink highlights at the roots of my hair had been replaced by larger cyan highlights throughout her dirty-blonde hair. Her coat was now that light shade of pink.

“Who are you?” I asked.

She giggled and batted her eyelashes. “Little ol’ me? Isn’t it obvious?” She pointed to her blank flank with the tip of her wing. “Only pony without a cutie mark is you, because you’re ignoring who you really are.”

“If you were me, you’d be a stallion.”

“Are you really that dense?” She circled around me, running her primaries along my sides. “I’m you, the real you. I’ve come to remind you what you really are.”

The fragrance was getting much stronger, stirring something inside me. “You mean a human?”

“Now you’re just pretending you don’t know what I mean. We both know what you really want.”

She ran a feather beneath my tail, tickling something I hadn’t felt since I shared a body with Dash. I leaned forward onto my forelegs, looking underneath my belly. Somehow I’d been turned back into a mare.

“How—”

My question was cut off as a heavy weight landed on my back. Soarin. I finally recognized that smell, the stallion from that fateful night and longtime object of Dash’s desire.

“Stop!” I whimpered. As he climbed onto my back I wanted to resist, and scream, but all I could think about was how strong his muscles were, and how he had set six flight records. My mind clouded as if it was full of Dash’s memories and not my own.

I heard the other mare giggling beside me as I surrendered to the stallion. “See? That wasn’t so hard!”

Meowing noises slowly brought me out of my fitful sleep. My cat sat on the nearby dresser, watching as I kicked the sheets around in an attempt to escape my dream.

I calmed down as I lay there, a little sweaty and sticky but otherwise unharmed. This was the first time since I had been given a new body that I felt like I had relapsed. For a few minutes in the dream, I had begun to think like Dash again. What made it worse was how easy and natural it had felt.

Bagheera jumped off his perch and ran downstairs, chasing after some imaginary prey. At least one of us was feeling normal. Still, I was very glad to have at least one familiar face from Earth, even if he wasn’t much of a conversationalist.

Some sunlight was pouring around the edges of the blinds and I figured it was about time to get out of bed. To be honest, I’m surprised Dash hadn’t woken me up at the crack of dawn. She had promised to teach me to fly like “I wasn’t a brick with wings”. I was probably late for our practice, but I didn’t regret the extra sleep.

I headed to the bathroom and cleaned myself up, brushing my teeth and running a comb through my mane. The last couple days had been stressful, and I’d spent most of them in my home. Applejack had been kind enough to bring by some fresh produce for me to eat.

Rarity’s flight suit waited in my closet, and I looked it over suspiciously. The zipper ran from the neck to the crotch, and it looked more like some flesh-eating monster than a practical garment.

I guess the only way to learn is to put it on.

My right foreleg was first into the suit, which had the odd stretch and feel of spandex, but felt a bit tougher and far more durable.

I Wonder if I’ll look as good as Soarin; the way his suitbrings out his muscles is amazing.

I shuddered, scolding myself mentally for going back to that line of thought. It took some fidgeting to figure out how to get the suit straightened out over my back until I put my right hindleg in.

The outfit was technically half on, and after a few failed attempts that ended up with me tumbling to the floor, I managed to get my left legs in. As soon as I did, everything seemed to slide into place. My wings had come out the slits in the side, and the zipper was all that remained.

Not recalling I had a handy pair of wings, I opted to roll onto my back to free my hooves to use the zipper. It made little noise as it glided along the teeth, closing up the outfit.

Looking in my nearby mirror revealed a stallion in a flight suit that shifted colors subtly as viewed. I wiggled around, getting used to the feel of the fabric, then headed out onto my balcony.

Two birds flew by, drawing my gaze to the neighbor’s bird feeder. She was watering plants and gave me a wave, which I returned. If I wanted to do some bird watching, there was a padded beach-chair on my balcony. It would’ve made a good place to nap in the sun.

I felt something in the air, like a twitch in my wings. My body ducked, acting on the information it had received. Dash flew by at breakneck speeds a second later. She had tried explaining to me how a pegasus can feel wind currents, barometric pressure, and sense precipitation. I had to write most of that off, as my “weather sense” was nowhere near that developed.

Luckily, a pony hurtling at you is pretty easy to sense as long as your wings aren’t covered. It seems evolution didn’t want pegasi flying into each other in mid-air all the time.

“Yo, Dawn, what gives? I could be taking a nap right now,” Dash scolded from my roof. “I thought your house would at least be on fire for you to be so late.”

Shrugging, I flapped my wings and hovered. “I ran out of matches, and just couldn’t get the curtains to catch fire. They must have been OSHA approved, fire retardant.”

“Say what now?” Dash pondered.

The wind felt a bit uneven, as if my wings had gaps or flaws in them preventing the wind from giving me enough lift. Granted, you can always beat the air into submission to fly, but her goal was to teach me to peacefully fly through it. When you’re not fighting the air, you save a lot of energy.

Dash groaned. “Look at you, like a colt fresh out of flight camp. How long did you spend preening your feathers this morning?”

“Preening?” I ask.

Her face vanished behind her hooves. “Ugh, how did you go a whole week without getting us killed?”

“Easy, I spent a lot of time with this really awesome mare who helped me out.” Dash looked at me and smiled, nearly blushing. “Her name is Fluttershy. Remind me later, and I’ll introduce you two sometime.”

She scoffed, and flew down to my balcony. “Alright, mister. Time to teach you a lesson.”

I landed in front of her. “The safeword is banana.”

Her eyelid twitched. “Turn around.”

“Go easy on me.”

“Damn, we’re just preening!” she snapped. Her tone wasn’t as playful as it usually was.

I turned around and sat down, lowering my ears to my head. “Hey, I’m sorry. Everything going okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” She sighed, taking a deep breath to calm down. “I wasn’t sure what to tell Soarin when he asked about you is all. Lift your wing.”

I lifted my wing up in the air, spreading my feathers. “Why not just say family and leave it at that?”

“I suppose, but rumors are rumors and he’s heard plenty about us; rumors I’d like to stop making sound real. Now, preening isn’t just about straightening and aligning feathers. Natural oils in our saliva waterproofs them and helps prevent damage.”

She gently bit down on one of my larger primaries, sending a tingling sensation down my wing. The entire appendage was more sensitive than a leg, having been built to detect subtle differences in airflow over the leading edge.

I watched how she tugged at the feather, sliding it between the two nearby ones. “Then you’ve got to repeat. Start with primaries; they generate most of the lift and control. Do your secondaries after, or you’ll have poor dexterity when you’ve gotta dodge something unexpected.”

Dash straightened a few other primaries before beginning on the secondaries. Each feather felt like a separate finger being manipulated. The sensations were bordering on arousal. For the first time, I was actually thankful for Dash’s ‘gift’ under my sink. Between it, and the flight suit, I was able to control my erection. My wings were a different story.

“Tertiaries are always last, they’re small and only need to be perfectly preened if you’re gonna pull a stunt or two. Otherwise, they only exist to protect the larger, more important feathers.” Dash chuckled softly as my wings had spread wide open. “Well, that certainly makes this easier. No doubt, you’ve noticed this before. When a stallion or mare is attracted to another, they display their plumage to prove their worth.”

I nodded. “Yeah, wingboners. I’ve heard of them.”

Dash scoffed, yanking one of the tertiaries out. I yelped in pain. “Broken feathers have to be plucked. If you see one that’s full of blood, that’s a growing feather. Don’t pull one of those, and if you do, put pressure on it and make sure you let Doctor Stables know. As for ‘wing boners’, that’s the vulgar way of putting it. They’re not ‘rigid’ so much as your biological drive is trying to impress somepony.”

“What’s so important about blood feathers then?” She nudged my other wing and I opened it up for her to preen.

“I’m teaching a foal,” she whispered softly. “Blood feathers are a growing feather. You only have eleven primaries, and each one molts and regrows about every two months. If you break or have to pluck one, that’s two months with ten percent less lift.”

As if to prove some sadistic point, she plucked a primary right out of my wing. “Gah! What the hay?”

Dash spit it out, revealing a broken primary. “That was your fifth primary, or P5. A broken feather is worthless, but look here.” She nudged my wing in front of me. “This is a blood feather, P4.” In front of me was a feather with a bright red vein running through the shaft. “After they’re about half-grown the next one grows in. You’re lucky, that broken feather will start regrowing within a week. You lose this blood feather, and it’d be a full two months.”

“Wow, I never realized there was so much to wings. Actually, I kinda figured we just used some kinda magic to fly.”

“Hah! Magic is for eggheads. We fly with nothing but our wits and some paper-thin feathers ‘cuz we’re badass,” Dash cheered.

“You sure are enthusiastic, I’ll give you that.” I angled my wing back as she began preening again.

“The larger ones are six and seven,” Dash explained. She preened out the longest feathers on my wings. “You can use them almost like a finger to manipulate things, but don’t get carried away. They’re fragile and can’t support much weight. Yeah, you could eat hay fries with them, but try to lift a cup and you’ll snap them.”

Dash seemed to be finishing up, but one of the feathers seemed to have gotten stuck. “You got it?” I asked.

“Yep, just hold still and stop fidgeting. Just because you can move each primary individually doesn’t mean you should.”

I chuckled. “You mean like this?” I wiggled the muscles in my wings, scattering the neatly-preened feathers back into disarray.

“Stop that! I worked hard!” She put her forelegs on my back and pinned me to the ground. “Now hold still while I fix it again!”

Dash resumed her work getting me ready for our flight lesson. “Yes, ma’am—”

“Dash?” Soarin landed on my balcony, shooting me a nasty look. “Is this the Dawn I’ve heard so much about?”

She stepped off my back, allowing me to stand back up. “Yes, Soarin, it is.”

“I’m Dawn,” I offered him a hoof. “Nice to meet you.”

He stared at it as if it would bite him, before finally giving it a hoof bump. “You forgot about lunch, Dash, though I think I see why.” He glared at me again, making me a bit uncomfortable.

“Oh crap, I totally forgot! Dawn, can I use your restroom?” Dash asked.

“Yeah, go ahead.” I watched her run inside and heard Soarin walking up to me.

“Listen, Dawn.” He waited until I’d turned back to face him. “Don’t think just because there aren’t many stallions around that you can swoop in on another stallion’s mare. There’s plenty of mares in the town.”

I flapped my wings so I could put my forelegs up in surrender. “Hey, buddy, you’re getting this all wrong. Dash and I are just friends.”

“I hope so. Mares go on and on about being nice and friendship, but if I find out these rumors I’m hearing about you two are true, there will be nothing friendly about my reaction.” Soarin gave me a large happy smile when he saw Dash returning. “It was nice to meet you!”

Dash trot out of the bedroom to join us. “Whew, glad you two got along. I’m sorry, Dawn, but you’ll have to show up on time if you want a flight lesson tomorrow. Oh, and let the restroom air out.”

She flew up into the air, giving Soarin time to smirk and shoot me one last glance. He turned and flew off. “Hey, Dash, race you to the restaurant.”

And like that, they vanished into the distance.

After Dash left I went back inside and tried to do a little reading. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get into the Daring Do book I had been given. There was always the town marketplace, or visiting a friend, but part of me just wanted to mope around for a bit.

There was a knock at my door and I flew over to open it. My wings definitely sliced through the air better now that they’d been preened, as opposed to bluntly beating through it.

Opening the door revealed a very happy pony. “Hey, Pinkie, how are you doing?”

“Good, but how about you? I got a knee pinch and a tail waggle which usually means someone decided to be mopey,” Pinkie explained.

“If that was a lucky guess, and not some freaky sixth sense, you can come in.”

“Okie dokie lokie! But what if it was half guess—half Pinkie sense, and half wanting to see my bestest new friend Dawn?”

I watched her trot into the house and set down her saddlebags. She’d packed them full of what I could only hope were cupcakes. Pinkie always oozed optimism and had a mane that looked as bouncy as curly. If she had forgotten the cupcakes, she’d still find a way to cheer me up.

“You realize that’s too many halves?” I deadpanned.

“So,” she began, ignoring my remark. “You haven’t told me if it’s okay to throw you a surprise party yet! I’ve got a really big one planned, but Dash keeps on saying it’ll spook you or something and I said ‘no way!’ You do want a party, right?”

“Yeah.” I took a seat on my sofa and watched as she got onto a nearby chair. “Could we have it somewhere other than my house, though? I hate cleaning up after parties.”

Pinkie gasped, offended. “What?! I would never make the guest of honor clean up after their own party!”

“Oh. . . well, your parties are already twenty percent cooler than any I had on Earth.”

Wait, where did I hear that before?

“Haha, well, there is no party like a Pinkie party! So it’s okay?”

“Sure, you have my permission to plan a surprise party and scare me to death when I least expect it.”

“Then I’ll have to look death in the face and have a staring contest, until he laughs, so I can get you back.”

Chuckling, I walked over and gave her a hug. “Pinkie, never change.” I was already feeling much better about my day.

“Why would I change? I’m not wearing any clothes.”

I let her go and took a step back. “I just mean, I really needed a laugh, Pinkie.”

“Hey, it’s why I’m here. Ponies may think I’m all fun and childish games, but I really care about making sure nopony is sad. Parties are just a magical mcguffin that always works, no matter what!”

Pinkie got up and pulled two boxes out of her saddlebags, setting them in my kitchen. “Cupcakes?” I inquired.

“Yep, my work here is done. Only one last thing.” She trotted in the room and looked me in the eye. “You need to go outside more, mister. Why don’t you go hang out with Dash? You seem to enjoy that.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “I can’t. She’s on a date with Soarin.”

“I see.” Upon glancing up at her, I was shocked she had a magnifying glass out and seemed to be intently studying my face. “Well, then we’ll just have to find you a date. Then everypony will be happy!”

“It doesn’t work like that, Pinkie.” I gently lowered her hoof to get the magnifying glass out of the way. “You don’t just go date somepony because you’re sad.”

“If you don’t want to, why not hang out with somepony else? You still haven’t tried apple bucking, and Rarity would probably love to use you to design new fashion wear for stallions. Or. . .” Pinkie stepped forward until she was inches from my muzzle. “Why don’t you go have fun with Fluttershy? A little birdie told me that you had a thing for her while you were inside Dash. Don’t you wanna ask her on a date?”

There was something in the way she spoke that built my confidence up. I had, in fact, been attracted to Fluttershy. She was, and still is, a beautiful mare. She had an urge to nurture me when I was stuck inside Dash, even before the others had gotten to know me.

“Yeah, you know what? I think I will. A little tea and inviting her out to dinner can’t hurt,” I replied. “Thanks, I’ll head over there. But first, let’s try those cupcakes.”

Fluttershy’s house was easy to locate as long as you followed the edge of the Everfree forest out of town. She had a large enough yard to house dozens of families of animals.

The trail leading to her cottage passed by several burrows, and I spotted everything from groundhogs to rabbits and snakes. Some of the trees were nearly thirty feet taller than me and had nests on every branch.

I also spotted a large den, more of a shallow cave really, with a grizzly bear inside of it. My first instinct was to take flight, but the bear smiled and waved back at me. Apparently not everything with sharp teeth wants to take a bite out of you in Equestria.

Asking Fluttershy out on a date had seemed like a great idea, but I was already getting nervous. I figured flowers would be a little too cheesy; after all, I was just asking if she’d like to go to dinner. Now that I was on her front porch, I sorta felt like an ass for not getting any. There were some daisies planted in her planter. I could give her one of those, but then I’d be giving her a flower picked out of her own garden!

The door opened quietly and Fluttershy peaked her head out. “Um, Dawn? You’ve been standing on my porch staring at my flowers for a while now. Are you okay?”

“Huh?” I glanced back at her, then at the flowers. “Yeah, of course! They just look… tasty! Yeah, that’s it…”

“Oh.” Fluttershy giggled, picking one up for me. “Here, they are quite tasty.”

“No thanks, everypony knows you don’t eat flowers. Vegetables, maybe.”

“Dawn, you’re a pony now and ponies love to nibble on flowers. Trust me.”

“Well, anything for a cute mare.” I grabbed the flower, biting half the petals off and chewing them. True to her word, this flower did taste amazing. It wasn’t quite a fruity taste, and it definitely didn’t taste like vegetables. It was sweet with a slight tang, dry but not brittle. Before I knew it, I’d bitten the flower off the stem and finished it all.

“See?” Fluttershy smiled, her wide eyes staring at me in a soothing way.

“Thanks, that was really good.” I smiled, trying to think of some witty pickup line.

“Care to come in? I could get some tea.”

“That’d be great.” I followed her inside and made my way over to the couch.

No sooner do I sit down, Angel jumped onto the table thumping his foot. He stared at me, glancing down at my groin and shaking his head.

Wait, is a rabbit seriously trying to cock-block me?

“Go away, shoo!” I bat a hoof at Angel, who dodged it with a single hop.

He laughed at me, making a soft squeak and facepalming. Angel gestured with his arms, trying to convey something to me. For a moment, he almost looked sad instead of angry.

“I don’t play charades, sorry.” I smiled at him and noticed Fluttershy coming back in.

She set the teacups down and sat down across the table in her recliner. After tasting her tea, she brushed Angel off the table who looked quite upset to be pushed aside. “Dawn, what’s on your mind?”

Taking a drink of herbal tea only bought me so much time before I was left right back where I started. When I looked at Fluttershy’s eyes it seemed like I didn’t have a worry in the world. She might have been the only one of the ponies who truly treated me no different than any other pony. Her kindness broke through to me when I felt isolated and alone.

“Well, I got to thinking today that I, uh… don’t want to be alone, and stuck in my house all the time.” I glanced at her cutie mark and suddenly felt butterflies in my stomach. Asking someone out was very different than making crude sex jokes with Dash, and being here with Fluttershy was nerve-wracking.

“That’s good advice. You’re welcome to come visit me anytime.”

“Yeah, I’d like to do more than visit. . . Would you like to go get dinner?” I spit the question out, as if it were hot tea I expected to burn me.

“Hmm, I suppose I could eat out tonight.” She glanced around, surveying to ensure all the pets have been given supper. “I’ve already fed the animals.”

“Awesome, it’s a date!”

Fluttershy glanced up at me, her eyes widening and the first hints of a frown forming. “Oh my. . . “

I gulped. “Um, Fluttershy?” My wings twitched nervously as my legs began to feel rubbery. No doubt my body was preparing to get crushed, the only mare other than Dash I was this close to was rejecting me.

“It’s, um. . . a long story, but I’m afraid we can’t date. We can still be friends, though!” Fluttershy looked around the room for an exit. At least she was as uncomfortable as I was.

“Friends.” There was a speech I’d heard before. “Thanks, but I’m not really hungry so I’ll just head home.” I got off the couch and headed towards the door.

She must have seen past my smile, penetrating my facade. A moment later, she stepped in front of me, now in full nurture mode. “Dawn, sit down.” Her firm, gentle voice made it clear I should do it, without coming off as an order.

“Okay.” After reversing course, I reached the couch and sat down. I poked it with a hoof, noticing how fluffy the red cushion was.

“Dawn, there’s something I don’t tell too many ponies. I really don’t want to hurt you, so I’ll trust you with this.” Fluttershy draped a wing around me. She had climbed onto the couch silently and light as a feather to sit beside me.

“Yes, I’ll keep a secret.” I leaned into her side, enjoying the closeness.

“I thought you knew, since you spent all that time inside Dash. The reason why things get awkward between us occasionally, why she’s so protective of me, why I haven’t gone out on any dates with a handsome stallion like you. . .”

I leaned away to give me room to look at her, my curiosity piqued.

“You see, Dawn, I’m. . . a fillyfooler.” Fluttershy smiled, running a hoof across my shoulder.

“Oh.” It definitely softened the blow, but still left me feeling a bit dejected. A jealous part of me, upset at Fluttershy’s rejection, wished I’d never helped Dash get together with Soarin. Then I’d be able to pursue a relationship with her. Unless. . . “Wait, is Dash a fillyfooler too? But she and Soarin. . .”

She squeaked and hid behind her mane. “Oh no! Dash is a perfectly normal mare, not like me.”

“Wait, don’t talk like that. You’re perfectly normal, and drop-dead gorgeous. Why would you be afraid to fall in love with another mare?”

Her cheeks turned pink. “It’s my fault, though. At flight camp, Dash and I were just kids. I had a crush on her and talked her into making out with me. We finally agreed it’d be a good way to see if we had something more. Unfortunately, the other fillies and colts found out.”

“Oh no, so they picked on you?”

“Worse. It turns out Dash didn’t enjoy kissing me. She liked me as a friend, but even to a little filly I could tell that what she felt when we kissed was much different than what I did. Dash didn’t share my feelings, but everypony in school called her the fillyfooler. Just because she has a rainbow mane, everypony picked on her when I was the one who liked fillies!”

Fluttershy sniffled as she began to cry. I reached under her wings and pulled her to my side. “Hey, those fillies were idiots. Dash is still your best friend, trust me. She cares a great deal about you. Yeah, she’s not a lover but she views you like a sister. Even though things didn’t work out, you still became the kindest mare I’ve ever met. If you ever doubt you’re beautiful, know that when I see your flanks I imagine they’re softer than a cloud. There. I said it.”

Her sobs were interrupted by soft laughter as she thought about my joke. “I—you really found me that attractive, that you’d want to date me?”

“Of course! And if I knew any other mares I’d totally try and get you a date or something. Yeah, I’m bummed we can’t date but I still consider you and Dash my closest friends. You’re the only two ponies that really get me.”

Fluttershy hugged me tighter. “Thanks, Dawn. Here I wanted to comfort you for rejecting your date, and you ended up comforting me.”

“That’s what friends are for,” I replied.

“So. . . you still want to get a bite to eat, as friends?”

“I have a better idea. Why don’t I give you a massage, as friends? You did give me quite a belly rub on my first night in Equestria. I feel like I should return the favor.”

She climbed out from under my wing and laid down on the sofa. “Okay, but you’ve done this before, right?”

“Pfft, of course! Sure, I’ve got fewer fingers and toes, but it can’t be that different.”

I reached below her wings and applied pressure, rubbing my hooves into the muscle. Fluttershy immediately let out a yelp of pain.

“Stop! No, not like that.” She got up and waved a hoof in a circle. “Turn around and lay down. I’ll teach youhow to give a massage with hooves. That does mean you will owe me two massages, however.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I joked. I turned around and quickly laid down on the soft couch. My body sank a few inches into the cushions and I felt her hooves begin to trace one of the muscles in my back.

Author's Note

Bonus points to Pinklestia for the idea of Dawn's feminine side appearing in a dream.

4. Don't Grumble, Give a Whistle

The voice of Celestia resonated in my head as I flew down the trench of the Death Star. “Use the force, Dawn.”

I moved the small wooden airplane between the books I had set up in the crusader club house. Scootaloo was leaning forward to get a better look and threatened to topple over onto my recreation of the famous scene.

“Dawn! Your targeting computer is off!” Admiral Twilight’s voiced cracked through the radio, sounding panicked.

“It’s okay,” I replied.

“The force is strong in this one.” Queen Chrysalis continued to weave left and right, keeping my ship in her crosshairs.

“Look out!” Scootaloo shouted.

“Haha, it’s okay, Scootaloo, just let me tell the story, alright?”

I had to keep my ship steady as I aimed for the exhaust port. I heard my dashboard beeping, warning me that Chrysalis got a target lock. Any second now I was going to be vaporized!

There was a loud explosion and a scream over the communicator. “Awww yeah!” I saw Chrysalis’ ship spinning out of control in the rear view display.

“Dash?” I asked.

“You didn’t think I’d let you have all the fun and get all the credit, did you, kid?”

“Thanks.” I focused on the exhaust port up ahead, pulling the trigger to fire off two proton torpedoes. They zoomed down the exhaust port as I pulled up, locking my wing together and maxing out the throttle.

“Party’s over. Get clear of the death star!” I shouted.

All the ships from the Solar Rebellion pulled away, leaving the death moon built by Nightmare Moon behind. Moments later, a deafening explosion filled the area.

“But sound can not be transmitted through a vacuum,” Sweetie Belle corrected.

“Oh yeah? But I can use the force to lift objects with my mind?” I retorted.

“Yeah, unicorns do that all the time.”

“Oh come on!” Scootaloo shouted. “Let Dawn finish the story!”

I flew back to the rebel base, where I got a gold medal for saving the Solar Rebellion from the Lunar Empire.

“The end.”

“Aww, that can’t be the end! What about Nightmare Moon or Queen Chrysalis? What happened to Celestia?” Scootaloo asked.

“Yeah, we want to know!” Twist added.

I looked around at all the fillies and colts from Cheerilee’s class. I could have sworn it was just me and the CMC when I’d started my story. Now, there were twelve children and Pinkie Pie listening.

“Look, there are more stories, but that one took a lot of energy out of me.”

“What about Lord Chrysalis? Why’d she go all evil like? Is there a story about that?”

I winced. “Uh… no. That was the first movie. You’ll just have to use your imagination.”

“What about Dash? She shot King Sombra and killed him,” Diamond Tiara pointed out. “Isn’t that murder?”

“What, was Dash supposed to wait for Sombra to shoot first?” Scootaloo asked.

“Come on, fillies, it’s not important. What is important is that this story accurately portrays my life before I moved to Ponyville.” I looked over at Pinkie. “Right?”

“Absototalutely! Dawn was a fighter pilot in outer space before this,” Pinkie said.

“Alright, I think everyone should head home. I have stuff to do,” I said.

Pinkie and I waited for everypony to leave, before walking off towards Ponyville. I had spent the entire morning hanging out with the children and it had taken a lot of energy. The fillies in this town have a reputation, mostly from the Cutie Mark Crusaders, of being trouble makers.

“So, Dawn,” Pinkie said. “I heard Fluttershy said no to your date.”

I sighed, having not told her why Fluttershy turned me down. Apparently only me and Dash knew she was into mares and I planned to keep it that way. “No biggie, there’s plenty of mares in town.”

“At least you’re not all sad and mopey about it. So I was thinking…” Pinkie jumped in front of me so I had to stop walking and stand still. “Why don’t I get you a blind date?”

“Uh, I guess. . .”

“Nuh-uh, no guesses! Do or do not, there is no guess!”

“Celestia, what have I done? Now you’re going to be stealing all my Star Wars references.” I facehoofed and shook my head.

“Well, I told you I’d rather hear a story about vampires and werewolves.”

“No, you really wouldn’t. And yeah, so when is it?”

Pinkie smiled. “Sugarcube Corner at seven! You’ve gotta Pinkie promise to be there and I’ll find the bestest mare ever!”

“Sure, Pinkie promise to be there. It’s cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye, right?”

“Yep!” Pinkie ran off, only remember when she was forty yards away to shout back, “Thanks, Dawn! See you later!”

I shrugged and continued towards my house. I’m sure Pinkie would find a perfectly nice mare for me to date. My mind couldn’t help but wander to Rainbow Dash. Of all the mares in the town there were only two I really cared about, and one of them turned out to be lesbian. I hoped the nine-mares-to-one-stallion ratio didn’t mean most mares swung for the other team.

My stomach grumbled when I noticed a patch of wildflowers, recalling how tasty they were. The bright red and yellow flowers ahead of me would make a suitable lunch. Since they grew against the edge of the Everfree, I doubt I was eating anypony’s prized garden.

I made short work of that patch of flowers. It tasted like honey and strawberry. I followed the edge of the forest towards my house, finding a patch that looked more like roses. The white and pink ones were quite delicious, reminding me of a vanilla potpourri my mom had favored when I was a kid.

My mind wandered as I sampled every flower I could find. I’d managed to find one of every color and several different species. My favorite were light blue flowers with long white stamen. They tasted like dark chocolate covered blueberries, and I ate more of them than any other flower I sampled.

My stomach was feeling full so I left the edge of the Everfree and went back to my house. When I let myself inside I found Bagheera waiting for me, or more accurately waiting for me to feed him. I went into the kitchen and poured him some cat food. He rubbed himself around all four of my legs as I did so, making it a tad difficult.

Once back in my living room I plopped back on my couch and glanced through some books I had borrowed from the library. There was one in particular on myths and legends that I had checked out.

Of the many fables in the book, several referenced humanoid creatures. They seemed to be a bit of a “Big Foot” or “Loch Ness Monster” here in Equestria. Ponies would often see something they couldn’t identify, and imagine scary creatures that stood on two legs. According to myth, they were extremely intelligent, often tricking ponies into their own death via pits with spikes on the bottom or other gruesome things.

I opened up the book to the marker I had left. One of the most promising myths was of a Slender Human that wandered the forest. Deep down I knew this was all superstition and folk lore, yet at the same time, these legends were about me and my people. Perhaps one of them would provide insight into humanity, and how to get back to Earth.

Slender Human would stalk ponies for weeks, appearing in the corner of their eye or late at night. Anypony who went out during the night time would vanish for two days. When they returned, they were too frightened to speak. They would mutter about belly rubs and long, scratchy fingers. As one of the few myths not playing up to the predatory nature of unknown creatures, it was most promising.

“Wow, reading children’s books now, Dawn?”

I sighed, recognizing the voice. “They’re not children’s books, Dash, it’s research. By the way, didn’t your mother teach you to knock?”

“Dunno, I grew up with my dad,” Dash replied.

“Sorry.”

“Eh, no problem. I just didn’t expect you to be an egghead. Maybe Twilight messed the spell up.”

I closed the book and leaned over the back of the couch to face her. “Why don’t you come over here and sit down. I can teach you to read Equestrian.”

She huffed as she landed and walked over to me. “I know how to read! You, on the other hoof, can barely fly and you missed practice again this morning.”

“Sorry, I was telling the Crusaders about Star Wars and got carried away.”

“Star what?” Dash asked.

“You know, Star Wars. You’re a smart-ass fly-mare who is the fastest pony in the galaxy known as Dash Solo in the story.”

“Go on.”

“Well, you’ve got a side-kick named Flutterbacca—I know, I couldn’t think of a better name—that’s covered in beautiful long pink hair.”

“Pfft, sounds like some silly wish fulfillment to me.”

“Hey! That movie was a classic, I read all the books—”

“Egghead,” Dash interrupted.

I jumped over the couch, getting the drop on her. I landed, knocking her back, and pinning her to the ground. “Why don’t you say that to my face?”

She smirked. “Egghead.”

I felt two hooves lift me into the air by my stomach, and landed on the floor moments later. Dash came over and landed on my chest, standing over me.

“That is why you’re an egghead. You need to practice your flying and exercise more, or you’ll have those puny little muscles forever.”

“Fine, you win. Can we go practice now?”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Dash walked out my front door as if she owned the place, leaving me to follow behind and close the door.

At last I could relax a little and enjoy the sunshine. The weather is nearly always a perfect eighty degrees, with a slight northern breeze, in Ponyville. The pegasi take great pride in the weather doing exactly what they want, when they want it.

There was a patch of clouds overhead in an otherwise empty sky, and I realized Dash must have put them there. She had already taken off towards them so I flew after her. Once I reached the cloud I landed in the middle of it.

I still wasn’t used to standing on clouds. They weren’t soft so much as they were like a strong gust of wind. A blanket you could feel; it was fuzzy or scratchy or warm. A cloud you could see, and stand on, yet it was so light and insubstantial that it felt like you were just flapping your wings in a steady hover.

My mind continued to ponder the cool mist that I was standing on. I laid down on it, nearly falling asleep. It felt like the cool side of the pillow, only it supported my entire body without putting any pressure on it.

“Hey, I didn’t bring you up here to nap,” Dash said.

“Well if you didn’t want me to nap, why’d you make the clouds so damn comfortable?”

She sighed, and stomped a hoof in my cloud, causing it to vanish. After free falling for a few seconds I managed to catch myself and fly back up to her.

“Hey!”

“These clouds are for bucking. I made them thin to help you out. You need a job, not to mention a cutie mark, and if you’ve got half my talent you’ll manage to figure out how to bust a cloud.”

I nodded, and flew next to the cloud to her left. “Okay, so I just kick it while somepony is trying to enjoy a nap?”

“Pretty much. Then, if that pony is me, you get your flank kicked.”

“Fair enough. How hard can it be to bust a cloud?”

The cloud was floating gently on the breeze towards me. I turned around and kicked it with both hooves. They punched right through it, covering my fur in a fine mist of water. The cloud remained intact.

“Gwahaha! What horrible aim,” Dash observed.

I kicked the tuft of cloud off my hind legs, then turned around and flew through the main part of the cloud. I punched a hole through it, turning it into a donut.

“Oh, this is priceless!” Dash landed on a cloud so she could roll onto her side and laugh.

She shouldn’t have taken her eyes off me. I flew up to her cloud, and focused mentally on the image of the cloud evaporating when I kicked it. As I spun around, my hooves seemed to tingle slightly until they contacted the cloud. There was a loud yelp and something falling through the air. By the time I turned around, the cloud had completely vanished and a very confused Dash was plummeting through the air.

One of the benefits of being a stunt pony was knowing how to recover from a tumble. Dash had already started zooming towards me, and I wasn’t nearly fast enough to get out of her way. She hit me in the side, knocking me onto a nearby cloud, where I landed with a thud.

Dash hovered overhead, forelegs crossed. “That was a cheap shot, but at least you figured out how to manipulate the weather. There may be hope for you after all, Dude.”

“Oh come on,” I whined. “Not that nickname again.”

“Then stop making it so fun to tease you with, Dude.”

I covered my eyes with a foreleg and sighed. “Alright, you got me. You got anything more useful to teach?”

“Yeah, it involves wind current, drag, and the mechanics of flight.”

“Wait, you know aerodynamics?” I got to my hooves and stared at her. “Looks like you’re the real egghead here.”

“Pfft, just because I don’t care about things like math or history doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough not to study meteorology or aerodynamics. I am a regional weather manager after all, and that requires a four year degree.”

I began to laugh, slapping a hoof on the cloud. “You. . . you. . . Stop. College?!” I laughed some more, trying to get the image of Dash wearing black-rimmed glasses out of my head. Just imagining her hitting the books was too much.

“Hey!” Dash was blushing profusely at this point. I would guess she doesn’t talk a lot about her college education, on account of wanting everypony to see her as a stunt mare and not an egghead.

“Sorry, I just didn’t expect you to you know. . . I mean, you always struck me as an athlete.”

“Well, I did get in on an athletic scholarship. I don’t usually talk about it much. Most ponies don’t really care about education, they just find a special talent and do that the rest of their lives. I always wanted more—challenges to overcome, races to win—so when my father challenged me to finish college and become a regional weather manager like him. I did.”

“Thanks for sharing that. I’m surprised I don’t remember more about you after all that happened.”

“Well, I remember enough about you for the both of us, so let’s agree not to go telling everypony I’m an egghead, or else.”

I put my hooves up in mock surrender. “You win! Now, what was that you were gonna teach me next?”

It was eight by the time I got home, thoroughly exhausted from all the flight techniques, exercise, and general rough-housing with Dash. I had to admit she really knew her stuff when it came to all things flying.

My sofa was as far as I made it after locking the door. I could already tell my muscles were going to be sore in the morning. My plan hadn’t been to fall asleep on the sofa, but I couldn’t help it. It was so soft and warm.

At some point I felt my cat climb onto the couch, before falling back asleep.

Author's Note

Have I mentioned how weird it is to write slice of life? I always feel like nothing happened... and this one is heavy on the 'slice'. Anyway, it's a first step to getting back in the swing of things, and I set up some fun times for the next chapter. I hope to get it out a little quicker since I have more ideas for what to do with chapter five than I had for four.

5. A Normal Day in Ponyville

I walked out onto the balcony of my house to stretch in the sunlight, yet for some reason there was a thick layer of cloud as far as my eyes could see. Since they were lower than my balcony, I walked out onto them. I tried to focus like Dash had told me, to feel the size and shape of the clouds. Perhaps the cloud I busted had been more luck than skill, since these clouds didn’t budge an inch.

The wind picked up, and I twisted my head over my shoulder to see if any of the other homes in Ponyville were blanketed in the dense clouds. My house, along with the roofs of my neighbors’ houses, were gone.

I returned to where my house should have been and stomped the clouds with my hooves, slowly dispersing them. A pit started to form until my hoof hit something solid. There was asphalt underneath, painted with two solid yellow lines.

When I returned my gaze skyward, the sun was blocked by a tall skyscraper. The buildings were charred black and windowless, with several of the tall buildings more than halfway crumbled to dust. I realized I was dreaming again and shook my head.

At least there’s no sign of—

“Awesome!”

A pegasus flew past me, blowing the clouds away, and turning around the corner of one of the buildings. As she vanished, I heard another voice behind me.

“Hey, Dawn, long time no see.” The female version of myself walked calmly across the street towards me.

“Yay,” I deadpanned. “It’s you again.”

“I have a name you know, or at least I picked one out. It’s Desire,” she explained.

“Well, no offense, but since this is my dream, I think I’ll be going now.”

“But you haven’t met Iris!” Desire whined. Her tone ate away at my nerves like a cheese grater.

I started walking away, shaking my head. “Nope! I’m not gonna entertain delusions, even if they are in a dream.”

“You’re still upset I want you to admit your true desires to be female? Fluttershy would date you if you were.”

Spinning around, I poked her chest with a hoof. “Hey! That’s none of your business.”

“Why not? I’m you! Or, maybe when you wake up you’ll find that you’re me!” She started laughing when a blur tackled her to the ground.

I watched as another pegasus quickly hoofcuffed her legs and put a gag in her mouth.

“Great, now I’m in a dream where mares are tackling each other and tying each other up. This is high school all over again.” I started to walk away again, heading towards one of the ruined buildings. I might not have been able to will myself to wake up, but I was not going to stick around here.

“No, wait! Dude, you’ve got to check this out!” A pegasus landed in front of me that looked a lot like Rainbow Dash. She had the cyan fur, but her mane only had the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. I stole a glance at her flanks and noticed she lacked a cutie mark as well. “I’ve been practicing this to show you!”

Before I could object, she took off and started weaving in and out of the support beams of one of the hollowed out buildings. Her dexterity was amazing, and she was able to do tricks I’m not sure Dash could have. Then again, it was a dream, so how hard could it be?

She finished her routine and landed in front of me, sweat dripping down her fur. “Hey, I’m Iris! I see you’ve met Desire.”

“And who are you supposed to be?”

“Pfft, me? Just the awesomest pony around. I could totally teach you to fly like that, make you the coolest mare in Equestria.”

I chuckled. “Oh, great. Another dream me wanting me to be female, no thanks.”

“Dude!” She flared a wing in front of me so I couldn’t brush past her. “Mares run everything! You don’t wanna just be somepony’s baby-daddy? Not to mention all the coolest ponies are mares. Spitfire, Fleetfoot, Fluttershy, Twilight… Dash, of course, but that goes without saying! I mean, no stunt stallion can do half the tricks a stunt mare can. We’ve got more dexterity!”

“Convincing argument, but no, thanks. This whole dream is just reeking of multiple personality disorder, and I’d rather not open that can of worms. Why don’t you go play with Desire?” I pointed over at where Iris had tied her up. The mare seemed to be enjoying the bondage, rubbing herself against the pole of a street lamp. “Oh for the love of Celestia!”

I darted off around the building, flying as fast as I could to get away from the ponies behind me. It seemed to work, and I found a nice little laundromat to hide in. My mind focused on waking up and ending the dream, but it had no effect.

Sighing, I began to think about Desire. If she was some part of my mind representing my desires, why is she a mare? I was fairly certain I liked Dash just as much as Fluttershy, and if it weren’t for Soarin I could have taken a shot at a relationship with Dash. Did part of me deep down want to be a mare? It seemed absurd, and I was sure it was just a side effect of living in Dash’s body for so long.

A shadow cast itself across the room, and I let out an exasperated groan. “Can’t I go one night without dreaming of crazy stalker-ponies?”

“I don’t know, Dawn. What is troubling you?” the voice asked.

Turning to see Luna standing there was almost as shocking as waking up in another pony’s body. I floundered to my hooves and shook my head. “Is this another hallucination?”

“Relax,” Luna ordered. She walks closer to me and sits down. “We are in your dream. I decided to check up on you. It seems prudent you have somepony to talk to if you are having any difficulties.”

“Alright.” I sat down and pointed outside. “There’s a couple of ponies bugging me. One keeps talking about how I desire to be a mare, and the other is like Dash 2.0.”

“Do you desire to be a mare?”

“No!” I looked up at her and felt bad for shouting at her. “I mean, I don’t think so. There was nothing wrong with being a mare, but I wasn’t born one. I’m a stallion.”

Luna smiled. “Dawn, it is not unusual for ponies to wonder what it is like to be the other gender. You’ve lived as the other gender. It’s natural for you to have some lingering thoughts or doubts. It is also natural for these sub-conscious thoughts to take form in dreams; it is the only way they can communicate with your conscious mind.”

“I guess that makes me feel better. It’s not like Desire can make me wake up as a mare.”

“Indeed, they only have the power you allow them to in your dreams. I must ask, however, why you would dream of such a barren and inhospitable landscape.”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. I watched lots of movies like this on Earth. Zombies, aliens, or maybe a few stray nukes bring about the Apocalypse. A few lone survivors try to travel to a safe place to rebuild civilization.”

“Hmm.” Luna chuckled. “Well, even the backdrop to your dream is trying to tell you something. Do you know what it is?”

Looking around the laundromat for clues revealed nothing but broken washing machines and dryers missing their doors. It took a few minutes to piece it together in my mind, but I finally thought I had the answer she wants. “Since I’m all alone in Equestria, I feel like I’m the lone survivor trying to find a place to rebuild.”

She nodded. “Exactly. Your alienation, the thoughts you repress, they all manifest in your dreams. You will wake soon, and when you do, you must not be afraid of your thoughts or desires. Do not alienate yourself.”

Luna stood up and slowly faded out of existence. The fabric of the dream started to ripple and fade as I woke up. Desire stepped out from behind one of the washers before I woke up. She had a massive smile plastered across her face. “Rise and shine, sleepy mare.”

I woke up with cotton mouth and a thin layer of slime over my teeth. Forgetting to brush my teeth had given me a bad case of morning breath, and if I hadn’t been so damn comfortable I’d have rushed to the bathroom right now to fix it.

My teeth remained nasty no matter how much I licked at them, and I had little choice but to reach over for the glass of water I like to keep on my nightstand. I picked it up and took a drink, finally feeling proficient at using my hooves for manipulating smaller objects.

When I put the glass back on the cedar nightstand, I noticed my fur coat appeared to be pink. It was a light shade of pink, similar to somepony but I couldn’t quite put my hoof on it. I just knew I’d seen it before.

Shaking my head to clear my vision didn’t fix the problem, so I rubbed my eyes a couple times. My hooves had a nice glossy sheen, my pink fur looked well cared for, and as my mane swung around into view I noticed cyan highlights in the brown hair.

No way…

I lifted up the blanket and look down between my legs to confirm the dreadful suspicion.

Legs? Check. Tail? Check. Penis? Negative.

Dropping the blanket, I looked around as I started to hyperventilate and gave myself a headache.

How could this have happened? This isn’t possible! I need to recount what I did yesterday. . .

My memories raced as I recalled the last twenty-four hours. I was telling the Cutie Mark Crusaders a story, I promised Pinkie I’d go on a blind date, then I’d practiced with Dash and went to bed.

Pinkie. I’m gonna put hair remover in her shampoo for this! How could she?! Turn me into a bucking mare for missing a blind date?

I kicked the covers off and flew into the bathroom. I heard my cat screech as he was flung through the air along with the covers.

“Sorry, Bagheera! Bigger problems right now!”

Kicking the door wide open and flipping on the lights revealed a pink mare in the mirror. I looked exactly like Desire did: nice rounded facial features and all.

Hey, it could be worse. . .

[How?]

Well, I could be hearing Desire’s voice in my head.

[Like this?]

My eyes went wide in shock as I stared into the mirror and my hooves trembled.

Roseluck was watering her flowers in her front yard, three houses down the street from Dawn’s house. She looked up as she heard a flock of birds taking off from a tree, followed by a loud stream of obscenities. Her ears flattened against her head, and she looked around, hoping no fillies were present.

[I told you that you wanted to be a mare!]

“Shut up! This is all a misunderstanding!” I shouted into the mirror. There were several cracks in it where I had hit the laminated glass with my hoof.

[Aww, come on! I bet if we go over to Fluttershy’s house she’ll totally bang us as soon as she sees us!]

“No! I refuse to talk to you. I’m not crazy!”

[Well, you are yelling at yourself in a mirror when you could be rutting Fluttershy’s brains out, so… yeah, definitely crazy.]

You, just shut up! What happened to stalking me in my dreams like a good split-personality?

[I got tired of the reruns. I mean, honestly, if the ponies knew half the things you dreamed.]

I sat down on the floor, trying to slow down my breathing. This was a nightmare. I’d not only been turned into a mare, but it’d brought out another side of me. It was like having post-traumatic stress from my time inside Dash. I didn’t know what to do to fix this mess.

After relaxing for a while I got up and went downstairs to get some breakfast.

[Oh, get some daisy flavored corn puffs!]

Not talking to you.

[La la la la la la la la la la la—]

Quit it! I’m gonna fix this and make you go away.

[Aww, sounds like somepony needs to get laid.]

I groaned and opened up the fridge. There were some hard-boiled eggs in the drawer I had cooked earlier this week in case I needed a snack. I took out the last four and set them onto a plate, then carried it over to the table.

They would have tasted much better with a little salt, so I grabbed the salt shaker and shook it above my eggs. To my surprise, the lid of the salt shaker fell off, drenching the eggs in salt.

[Hehehe.]

Ignoring the totally-normal-and-in-no-way-insane voice in my head, I headed back to the fridge. Inside seemed rather barren, and all I could spot to eat were cupcakes. I pulled them out and set the box on the counter.

Inside were some red cupcakes, so I took one and tossed it in my mouth. It tasted a lot like cinnamon at first, but very spicy and hot. After making the mistake of swallowing one, I realized it had some kind of Tabasco in it. My mouth and throat started burning.

“H-hot!”

[Gahah! This is so much more fun than hanging out with Iris and the others.]

I turned the faucet on the sink to max, but no water came out. I slapped it a few times with my hoof, desperate to get something to drink. My eyes watered, and my forehead had beads of sweat forming.

Rushing back to the fridge I flung the door open and reached for the carton of milk. I ripped the top off and tilted it back above my open mouth, only to find it empty. I shook it a few times in disbelief before noticing a note on the side.

Nopony breaks a Pinkie promise.

- Pinkamena Apple Pie

This was the proof I needed that Pinkie had done all of this to me.

That bitch is dead!

[That’s the spirit! Let’s go buy a few cucumbers and tie her up, then we’ll—]

“Shut up!” I screamed.

My mouth was still watering, and I could feel my sinuses draining, snot started to run out of my nose. The hose in front of the house seemed to be my next best option. I raced to the front door, threw it open, and dove towards it.

I trampled the small flowerbed on the way to the hose but managed to turn it on, and directed the stream of cold water into my mouth. After gulping down as much water as I could stomach, I started to wash my face off.

[This is fun! You need to turn into a mare more often. Oh, or maybe you can just stay a mare! Yeah!]

“Excuse me,” a voice called out.

I turned to face the tan pony with dark pink hair. “You’re Rose, right?”

“Yes. Is Dawn home? I heard some. . .” she blushed, “screaming.”

My eyes darted around as I tried to think of an explanation.

Do I tell her Dawn’s a mare now? That he woke up and freaked out? That Pinkie Pie is a sadistic bastard? That’s it!

“Dawn broke a Pinkie promise. He’s currently indisposed.”

“Oh my, I’m so sorry. Are you two, uhm. . .” Rose smiled as her eyes ran over my flanks.

“No! We’re, uh, related. Definitely not sleeping together, nope, not gonna happen.”

“Hehe, well then, feel free to stop by my store. I’ll give you some of my special roses later,” she said.

I watched her leave and then turned off my water, leaving the hose in the puddle of mud that used to be petunias. Heading back inside I ignored the muddy hoof prints and flopped down on my sofa, defeated.

It was bad enough that being a mare again was all part of some childish prank, but I didn’t know how to fix it. I could track down Pinkie, but I wasn’t really in the mood to see her right now. Dash would probably spend the first thirty minutes laughing, before telling me to go see Twilight.

That’s it, I can just go have Twilight fix it. She fixes everything.

[Oh, bad news, champ. . . that wetness down there, isn’t from the garden hose.]

What do you mean?

I looked down and noticed the smell of a mare in heat.

Desire?

[Yes?]

I fucking hate mares.

[Aww, come on. It’s not that bad. We’ll just go take a shower.]

No.

[Hmm. . . Got any root vegetables?]

No.

[Flashlights?]

No.

[Remote control?]

No.

[Hairb—]

No! I am not clopping in this body, dammit!

[Pfft, a cat would have been fine too.]

What’s wrong with you?!

[Well, for starters, you finally get what you desired all this time and you’re being a little crybaby about it.]

I looked over at the clock and moaned. This was not how I expected today to go. I was late for flight practice with Dash. Twilight wanted to talk about the search for Shining Armor, and Applejack had asked if I was competing with her and Dash in the Iron Pony contest.

Crap, Dash. . . She’ll be here any minute to check on me! I need to get to Twilight’s and get this fixed before—

Somepony started knocking at my front door. I knew it could only be Dash. Thank Celestia she’d listened to me yesterday about learning to knock. I got up and flew to the back door.

“Dawn?” Dash knocked a few more times.

[Come on, this is a golden opportunity! You’ve already got hoofcuffs and a gag for her to use on us!]

You know they have antipsychotic meds to get rid of voices in your head? Just keep on being a smart-ass.

[Heh, I’m you. You can’t get rid of yourself!]

I closed the back door behind me and flew straight towards Ponyville’s main square. This low to the ground I doubted Dash had spotted me. She was likely in the house looking for me now. Once I was out of sight of my home, I landed and started walking towards the Library.

My mind kept wandering, and I found myself increasingly distracted by the heat radiating from my plot.

Come on, are you causing that?

[Nah, I’m just the manifestation of your desires. The crazy and the heat, that’s one-hundred percent you, baby.]

I think I understand where Dash was coming from now. . .

The further I walked into town, the more I noticed my legs slowing down. The dirt felt like molasses, sticking to my hooves with each step. The added weight continued to slow me down, and I could smell a sickly sweet scent in the air. My wings started to twitch, and I had the urge to spread them out, but resisted.

Come on, help me out here, Desire. Can’t you, I don’t know, postpone the whole ‘heat’ thing until I get to Twilight’s?

[And miss out on a good rutting? No way!]

My body continued to slow down, becoming harder and harder to control. I’d never felt anything like this and couldn’t figure out what the hell Pinkie drugged me with. I came to a stop, four hooves firmly on the ground. Looking around for help, I saw Big Mac.

And he saw me.

Big Mac was standing there, staring right at me. I tried to call out to him for help but the words got caught in my throat, as my gaze drifted down his chest.

My front legs buckled, and I found my tail twitching and wings flaring, as I assumed the position.

Dammit, what the hell? You’re doing this to me!

[Heh, no, but I sure am enjoying it! You’re such the little slut, Dawn. I’m so proud of you!]

The sickly sweet scent grew stronger as my fragrance filled the air. A musky odor soon joined it, and I could see Mac’s hooves as he walked behind me, seemingly hypnotized.

No, no, no.

[Yes, yes, yes!]

Something flashed by, tackling Big Mac. I could hear it, and felt the thud in the ground, yet couldn’t get a good view of it.

“What the hay, Big Mac? You can’t do that out here in the middle of a street. And you!” Dash stomped over to me, twisting a wing and lifting me back onto all fours. “You can’t just—”

“Ow,” I whimpered. I looked at Dash, the pain brought me back to my senses, as she scrunched her nose.

“Damn, I’ve never smelt a mare who had it this bad. No wonder Big Mac couldn’t control himself.”

“What in tarnation?” Applejack galloped over until she stood between me and Big Mac. “Did ah just see y’all gettin’ ready to rut in the middle of the street?!”

Mac’s eyes drifted to the ground. “Eeyup.”

“Yeah, this mare here—wait, I never asked your name. Who are you?” Dash asks.

“I’m, uh. . . Leia, Leia Skywalker.” I smiled, hoping she would buy my lie.

“Wait a minute, ah’ve heard that name before,” Applejack stated. “Yeah! It was that strange story Dawn told all the kids.”

Dash’s eye drifted to my flank, where the lack of a cutie mark stands out like a broken hoof. “Dawn?!” she whispers sharply.

“Yeah. . .” I sighed and looked at the ground.

“Applejack, you take Mac home. I’ll take care of this mare,” Dash orders.

[Yes! Hoofjob!]

Shut up!

“What the hell?!” Dash asked.

“Pinkie. I broke a Pinkie promise. That bit—mare is insane,” I stated.

Dash chuckled. “I dunno, this seems a bit much for her. Better get you to Twilight.”

She trotted off but my legs were still feeling a bit heavy, making it hard to follow. I managed to catch back up, my mind clearing itself of the haze it had been put into recently. Dash led me straight to the library, not talking much, but not falling over in laughter either. I didn’t expect her to handle this so well, as I knew how much she loved to pull pranks. In fact, she often went pranking with Pinkie.

I tripped on the step up to Twilight’s door and quickly got back up and followed Dash inside.

“Hey, Twilight, I got somepony for you to meet!” Dash shouted.

The alicorn rounded a corner to appear from the kitchen, and smiled. “Hi, I’m Twilight Sparkle, librarian, princess—”

“And egghead know-it-all,” I interjected.

Her mouth went agape as she struggled to think of a response.

“Hah! It’s Dawn, Twilight.” Dash pointed at my flank. “He broke a Pinkie promise, but I am not sure Pinkie would go this far.”

“I, uh, well the kind of magic needed to do this is beyond Pinkie.” Twilight walked over and opened my mouth with her hooves to look inside.

I batted her hooves away. “You and doctors, always looking in the last place you’ll find something wrong. If you want to fix me, start with the cooch.”

Twilight’s blushed and muttered something incoherent. Dash let out a nervous chuckle, and I realized I was making them uncomfortable.

“Look, sorry. I just woke up as a mare and started hearing this voice in my head. It is not a good day.”

“You’re hearing voices? Oh my, I really should have gotten you somepony to talk to before your, uh. . . condition worsened.” Twilight walked around me, her horn glowing.

I could feel the magic creep over me as it scanned me for problems. Even that little touch excited me.

[Remind me to thank Pinkie.]

Sure, right after I’m done covering her toilet in super glue.

[Oh, you could totally tie her spread-eagle to a bed. The best punishment would be a whip and some hot wax.]

You know, now that I can hear my desires given voice, you’re right. I’m a pervert, and I’m gonna work on that. But for now, just shut back up, okay?

[Aww, you know you love it when I talk dirty.]

I swear to Celestia, if I hear one peep from you after they fix this I’m checking myself into Broadhoof for a psychiatric evaluation.

[Party pooper.]

“Well, I don’t see anything wrong, but I’ll need to run tests to try and get you back to normal,” Twilight explained with a sparkle in her eye. “And that means I’ll keep you overnight.”

“Yay, sleepover.”

“Thanks, Dash, I’ll take it from here. Dawn, why don’t you find a book to read on the couch until I have the lab ready,” she instructed.

I sighed and went over to the couch. There were a few books on the table but I wasn’t in the mood to read. Instead, I just laid down and tried not to fidget as I waited for Twilight to fix this mess.

Author's Note

Part two of the poison joke arc may (hopefully) come out on the 28th, mere hours before my movers show up. To those who want more, why don't you look at that new story in my stories list called "Dash of Humanity 2: Sexy Bits." It's the cloptional chapter where Twilight uses the Scientific Method to 'diagnose' Dawn. Also, it's where the romantic clop scenes between Dawn and _______ will go.

**Link** - not yet approved, but should be up in a few hours.

For new readers, cloptional is optional. There will be 1-2 sentences after each one that sum up what happened.

6. It's About Time

It only took a couple experiments for Twilight to figure out I was under the effects of poison joke. The story about how I had consumed the weed was a little harder to figure out.

I had to give Twilight a step by step recount of the things I had done yesterday. We figured out I’d eaten the poison joke while grazing on flowers. It was relieving to know Pinkie hadn’t done this to me.

Twilight was concerned that I didn’t have somepony to talk to after all I’d gone through. I tried to convince her that I was sure Luna would visit from time to time, and that I didn’t need a shrink. We finally settled on me spending a day at the spa with Rarity. Once Twilight had handed me off to her friend, she got back to doing “princess stuff.”

Rarity was leading me down the street to the spa, where they kept the antidote to poison joke in stock. “Dawn you’ve got a lovely mane, you know that?” she asked.

I glared at her. “Lovely? I’d rather have it unkempt and sweaty, like a stallion’s.”

“No need to get hissy, you’ll be back to your self soon enough. It’s too bad the poison joke didn’t improve your dour outlook on life at all.”

I followed her through the door of the day spa, where two well-groomed mares stood ready to greet us. “Rarity! Lovely to see you again. The usual?”

“Yes, just me and my friend. . .”

“Wind,” I interjected. “Pronounced ˈWīnd not Wind.”

“I’m Aloe, and this is Lotus.” The pony gestured to her sister.

“Oh, and darling,” Rarity put a hoof over Aloe’s shoulder and whispered. “We’ll need the poison joke antidote in the spa.”

“Really? Your mane looks fine.”

“It’s for him—her, Wind, but she’s a tad embarrassed.”

Aloe nodded. “Oh, no problem. We’ll get right on it.”

“Right this way, Wind,” Rarity chuckled at my improvised name.

I followed her into the next room and saw several benches, oddly shaped and slanted. I watched her lie down on one, realizing it was some sort of massage table for ponies. I quickly got on the one next to her.

“You know, I should really thank you for bringing me here and doing more than just giving me the antidote.” I looked over at her as Lotus rubbed Rarity’s back.

“Please, it’s the least I could do. After all, you seem rather adept at getting yourself into trouble and I figure you might like a little girl time to chat about your problems.”

I cringed, shaking my head as my wings were massaged. “Please, I was, I mean I am perfectly happy as a stallion. . .”

[Come on, you’re really gonna turn your back on being a mare? Wasn’t I fun to hang out with?]

A voice in my head wanting me to bang anything phallic shaped? Of course, what could possibly be more fun!

[You’ll miss me when I’m gone, and so will Fluttershy! She totally would have banged mare-Dawn.]

“Ms. Wind?” Aloe asked.

“Hmm?”

“Did you want a hooficure?”

“Yeah, whatever.” I looked over at Rarity. “So is this how you get all your gossip? Invite ponies to the day spa and learn their secrets?”

She huffed, staring at me. “Really, Dawn, I would never betray a pony’s trust. I wouldn’t even betray it if your attitude was rubbing one of my best friends the wrong way.”

I raised an eyebrow as I tried to read her expression for some hint. “Really? Which pony thinks I have an attitude?”

“Tsk, tsk, I just said I’d never betray their trust. However, aren’t you concerned soon everypony will get rubbed the wrong way? I thought you’d be happy to have your life back, instead it’s like your first few days with Dash all over again.”

I looked down at my hoof as Aloe clipped it. The tools she was using looked rather odd. One of them was almost like a potato peeler, then there were the clippers, and some metal bits to scrape dirt out from under my hoof. I realized I had absolutely no idea how to clean hooves in the first place, so perhaps it was good somepony else did.

“Sorry, Rarity, I can get a little carried away sometimes, especially when I’m in a bad mood.”

“This is about more than the poison joke, isn’t it?”

Aloe picked up one of my back hooves and started clipping, the thick nails making loud noises as they were trimmed down. “Yeah, more of a matter of the heart and all. I mean, if I’m going to live here, it only makes sense I get a girlfriend right?”

“You mean a marefriend? Then yes, it makes sense.”

Aloe walked around and softly spoke into my ear. “Time for the spa, Ms.”

“Thanks.” I got up and followed her over to the indoor spa, which smelled strongly of lavender. Rarity and I wasted no time sinking into the hot water, as it felt heavenly. “So, what do I do if I’m not sure, and meanwhile one of the ponies I like is seeing somepony else?” There were some cucumber slices on the side of the spa so I started to eat them.

Rarity levitated a couple cucumber slices over to her eyes as she leaned back and relaxed. “Oh, have you told Dash how you feel?”

I spit my cucumber out into the water. “What?! Who said—I meant Fluttershy!” I was glad her eyes were closed as I could feel myself blushing and must have been as red as an apple. At the same time I could feel the water tingling and burning my skin.

“Darling, really,” Rarity laughed. “You’re lucky Dash isn’t good at reading ponies. Oh sure, I know you like Fluttershy, but somehow I don’t think you’re the type of pony she’s looking for.” She smirked slightly as she levitated a drink up and took a sip.

“Do you—” I glanced at her, certain she must somehow know Fluttershy likes mares, but unwilling to risk asking and potentially revealing such a big secret. “It doesn’t matter, Dash is with Soarin and I didn’t sleep with him just to turn around and break them up.”

It was Rarity’s turn to spit into the spa, which hopefully was well-chlorinated. I coughed, noticing my voice sounded more masculine, and felt a pressure growing in my groin. That was when I noticed my fur had reverted to its proper shade of cyan. This must have been the poison joke antidote.

“Dawn, you slept with Soarin?!” Rarity had removed the cucumbers to look at me.

“What? You say it like I wasn’t in a mares body at the time. That totally makes it not-gay.”

“Please, don’t be so uncouth.” She shook her head. “I could care less who you sleep with, I just didn’t expect such. . . chivalry from you. To go to such great lengths just to see Dash happy, you must truly care for her.”

I blushed again, only this time it was in my stallion body which made it that much more embarrassing. “Hey now, so how about the weather? I heard it’s gonna be, uh. . . sunny.”

She giggled and splashed some water at me. “I see how it is. Well, if you ever want advice my door is open, and I promise not to put you in a french maid’s outfit.” The way Rarity winked at me seemed to say that she knew I had been wearing said outfit with Soarin.

“Yeah, thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Oh dear!” Aloe shouted. She rushed over to the spa. “Where did Wind go? And how did a stallion get in here?”

“Relax, Aloe, this is Dawn.” Rarity pointed a hoof at me. “Wind had to leave so I invited him for the rest of the session.”

“Oh, well it’s rather unorthodox but you are my favorite customer.” Aloe winked and walked back towards the exit to the room. I could hear her hushed whispers in the next room to her sister about the stallion that had snuck in.

“So, Rarity.” I scooted over towards her in the spa. “You’re her favorite customer? Do tell, just what is ‘the usual’ she gives you when you drop by alone? You wouldn’t be eating pie with her, would you?” Her eye twitched and I began to laugh, slapping a hoof in the water.

“Why I never—the nerve! You’re truly a stallion with such a lack of etiquette! I’ve got half a mind to change you back to a mare right this instant. At least she had some decency!”

I stopped laughing, and put a hoof on her shoulder. “Relax, Rarity. I’ve got to work on my attitude, and you need to loosen up a little. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”

Rarity’s eye twitched again.

By the time I got out of the day spa I had been cured of the poison joke, given a mud bath, a sauna, another spa treatment, and had some kind of honey-shampoo rubbed through my fur to make it softer. To say I was a little excited to have two mares rubbing shampoo over my entire body is an understatement, and for once I genuinely missed being a mare. Their arousal was so much easier to hide, so long as nopony was around to smell it, that is.

I walked down the road towards my house when I noticed the birds had stopped chirping. Looking around there were only a couple ponies out and the wind had stopped. The first tumbleweed I had seen in Equestria appeared out of nowhere and rolled across the road.

That’s when Pinkie happened.

She landed on me from behind like a heat seeking missile, and hugged me. “Oh Dawn, I’m so sorry! I heard about the poison joke and I never would have messed with your salt shaker if I’d known. I looked all over for you to try and fix it, and then finally I went to Twilight because my Pinkie sense was all out of whack, and by the time—”

I stuck my hoof in her mouth, finally realizing why ponies seemed to do this to her so often. She could really get carried away, not to mention she’d just tackled me to the ground. “Hey now, it’s okay. I’m not mad, I mean I was at first when I thought you did it, but you didn’t. So can I get up now?”

Pinkie spat my hoof out and got up. “Okay! So, watcha doin’?”

“Uh, I’m walking home.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Dawn?”

“Well gee, brain, where are we going to find an amputee, a ouija board, and three pounds of tree sap?”

“Ponyville Retirement Home, Time Turner’s Trinkets and Oddities, and Maple’s Pancake House. Why?”

I stopped and looked at her in disbelief. So this is why it’s so easy for her or the crusaders to get into trouble. She’s a living directory for where to get all the kinds of things nopony in their right mind would ever need.

“Would you believe me if I told you it was a joke?” I asked.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t a very good one. Must be a human joke,” Pinkie said.

“Sure is.”

As soon as I started walking forward I saw Pinkie’s tail twitching in an odd way. Before I could ask her why that was, a cyan blur appeared out of the corner of my eye and knocked the wind out of me.

Moments later, the familiar face of Dash unburied itself from my ribs and looked down at me. “Dawn?! Are you okay?”

I grunted and tried to speak, but she was still sitting on my ribs. Things might not have gotten any worse, but Soarin landed next to us. “Nice landing, Dash. At least somepony broke your fall this time.”

“Hey, I don’t see you trying to do a sonic rainboom in a hundred yards from a standing start!”

Dash got off me and I brushed myself off. Luckily Pinkie was there to help me to my hooves, as the other two bickered about stunts. “Why is she always crashing into things? And why are those things often me?”

“I dunno,” Pinkie answered. “Maybe she likes how soft and squishy your ribcage is!”

I rubbed the sore spot on my side and winced. “Yeah, I really hope that’s not it.”

“Hey, Dawn,” Soarin said. He walked over with a cocky grin on his face.

“Hey, what?”

“So I haven’t seen you training any. You decide not to enter the Iron Pony competition next week?”

“The iron what?” I glanced over at Pinkie, then at Dash. “I just got here, if you hadn’t heard.”

“Oh, no problem.” Soarin waved a hoof dismissively. “You wouldn’t stand a chance against me anyway.”

I raised an eyebrow. Oh, so that’s how he wants to play this. A pissing contest in some decathlon. I shouldn’t rise to his bait. “Well, lucky for you I’ve got no interest in competing in any sporting events.”

“With only a week left to train the best trainer in Equestria couldn’t have gotten you ready. Then again, trained stunt pony versus a blank flank isn’t much of a contest.”

I took a step forward and was about punch him in the face when Dash protested. “Hey! I’m his trainer, and I could totally have him ready in a week!”

Soarin’s jaw fell open and he looked at Dash in shock. “This is the pony you’ve been teaching to fly? I thought you meant Scootaloo!”

“Yeah! Dawn here’s a natural, isn’t that right?” She looked back at me.

Naturally has two left wings, maybe. . . “I, uh, yeah?”

“Pfft, well it would be fun to have some more competition if you really want to waste time training him, Dash, but we’ve got the Wonderbolts show in Cloudsdale in three days.”

Dash laughed. “Hah, I’ve made the Cloudsdale run in three hours. You worry about your performance and I’ll worry about getting him on the winner’s podium.”

Oh nothing could possibly go wrong now. Let’s just piss off Soarin and brag about how I’m gonna kick his flank at some competition. “Thanks, Dash.” At least one of us is confident.

Soarin glared at me and snarled, and I gave him an innocent grin. “Come on, Dash, don’t want to be late for dinner. I’m awfully tired from flying in from Cloudsdale today, we’ll want to get back to your place early tonight.” He smirked, and turned to walk away.

Dash turned to me before following him. “Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow morning for practice, and no turning yourself into a mare to get out of it this time!” She laughed.

“If only it were that easy.” I turned to Pinkie. “So, what exactly is the Iron Pony?”

“Oh, it’s a series of races and events.” Pinkie pulled out some rope and began pantomiming them all. “There’s the lasso toss, bull riding, sprinting, tug-o-war, and more! Then at the end, we go on a nice, long marathon across the forests towards Canterlot in order to make all the leaves fall down.”

I shook my head. “You run a marathon to make the leaves fall down?”

“Yep!”

You know what, that’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard here. Not by a long shot.

“Alright, well I better be getting home.” I faked a yawn, and started to walk away.

“Okie Dokie Loki!”

As I walked down the road I reflected on my conversation with Rarity. There were dozens of eligible mares in Ponyville, and yet only two really caught my interest. One only liked other mares, and the other had already gotten a boyfriend. I was going to have to figure this mess out before it got out of hand.

For now, I still felt like I had earned some time to adjust to life as a pony. I decided to get a good night’s sleep and think about it, only to realize I had walked down the road back into town, and not to my house.

Twilight’s Library was just ahead of me and the lights flickered on as the sun set. I decided to go see what she was up to since I was already here, and thank her for fixing the incident earlier today. She had a very ‘skilled’ method of collecting data in her lab that I found quite enjoyable.

I knocked on the door, only to recall it was a public library so I let myself in. Spike shot me a confused look, before sitting back down and reading his comic. He probably wasn’t used to getting a break from his butler duties.

“Hey, Spike, Twilight home?”

“Yeah, upstairs, second door, private study,” Spike recited.

“Great.” I flew up to the second floor and went to the door in question, knocking three times.

“Who is it?” Twilight asked.

“Dawn, can I come in?”

“Oh, sure.”

I pushed the door open to find her desk covered in books, and a large map of the Crystal Empire on the wall. I didn’t need to think long before I realized what she was looking for. “Any luck finding Shining?”

“No. It’s only been a few weeks but nopony has seen or heard of him since Discord attacked the Crystal Empire,” Twilight said.

“I’m sure he’s still out there, I’ll help you look if you want.”

She glanced at me and smiled. “That’s very kind, but until I have a new grid to search, or some other clue, there’s nothing to do. He’s either hiding, believing Discord hasn’t been beaten yet and waiting for us to find him or. . .”

I frowned, finishing her sentence. “Or Discord got to him, trapping him somewhere. Well, I’ll get back home. I came at a bad time.”

“No.” Twilight got up and walked over, giving me a quick hug. “Thank you. It means a lot that you wanted to help me search for him. Stop by some other time and maybe I’ll have a better lead to investigate.”

“Thanks, Twilight, for figuring out the poison joke. I’ll let you get back to studying.” I turned and left the room, letting the door close behind me. As I left I said goodbye to Spike, and took to the sky.

I landed on my balcony and went inside, cleaning myself up and getting ready for bed. Bagheera was waiting for me and I laid down on the bed and pet him.

Before I could get any sleep I thought about the comment Rarity had made earlier. She had said they thought I’d be happy to have “your life back.” This wasn’t really my life, but a new one. I didn’t know why that bothered me so much, but part of me still thought of this as temporary. A part of me wanted to deny recent events, and resist settling into this life.

I stretched out and yawned, then flipped the pillow over to rest my head on the cool side.

Author's Note

Slice of life is still interesting to write, as I'm constantly fighting the urge to add explosions.

7. A Day to Remember

I rolled over in bed and hit my alarm clock to turn it off. Unfortunately, I forgot I had hooves now and my love-tap turned into a sledgehammer, shattering the third clock this week. Sooner or later, I’d have to buy an alarm clock that cost more than eight bits.

Yawning loudly, I tossed the covers aside and got out of the bed. Normally I’d have slept in much longer, but I knew Dash would be by soon to insist on teaching me to fly. She still liked to say I flew like a brick with wings, and I didn’t mind spending the extra time with her, so we continued our lessons.

Bagheera was sitting in the window watching some birds in the distance. He had already caught a few of them and left them on the bed as gifts to me. It came as a bit of a shock and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to make him stop before Fluttershy gets involved. Then again, she takes care of plenty of carnivores at her cottage. I’m just worried the next bird he drags in will belong to somepony.

My closet door opened up to reveal a floor littered in sweaty flight-suits. It turned out that because ponies wore clothes infrequently, they hadn’t bothered to invent affordable washing machines. Only larger, richer cities had them. After all, who needs a machine when you have two perfectly good hooves? Everypony else used wash-tubs and clothes-lines, but my plan was to find a mare to do my laundry for me. The only logical alternative was burning the dirty clothes before they became a bio-hazard.

I took down a clean flight suit, my last one, and put it on. Today Dash was convinced I’d be able to do some stunts in addition to endurance training for the Iron Pony competition. I wasn’t so confident, but I had still mastered the basics of flight.

Only minutes later I had flown off my balcony and into the sky, looking down on Ponyville. From up here things were quiet and simple. There existed only the thrill of the wind cutting through my feathers and mane. I could lose myself for hours up here, looking down on the tiny ponies going about their daily lives. Everything just felt right when I could fly, and I began to forget ever being human when I flew. Who would want to go back to spending their entire life stuck on the ground, after tasting the freedom of flight?

I never managed to lose myself for long when I took flight. Dash seemed to have a sixth sense, or perhaps was just busy with weather duty, and often came over to see how I was doing. At least this time I saw her coming, robbing her of the opportunity to throw any clouds at me or shoot any lightning near me. The first time she did that, I nearly had a heart attack.

“Yo, Dawn, glad to see you are awake on time. Before I met you, I thought I was the champion of sleeping in,” Dash quipped.

“Yeah, well your life before you met me sounded pretty boring.” I cleared my throat and did my best impression of her voice. “Oh, I want to date a strong Wonderbolt but I don’t want to look girly!”

“Hey!” She chucked a piece of cloud at me, causing it to poof into mist as it hit my wing. “At least I didn’t spend my whole life as a pecker checker.”

“I checked more than peckers as a nurse you know.” Thinking about it, I really ought to get a job here in Ponyville. Surely there would be some relaxing jobs I could get, and if I ran a small bait and tackle shop or something, it’d save me having to relearn medicine for pony anatomy.

“So, you ready to learn some stunts?”

“Sure. The trick is to fly recklessly and crash into the library, right?”

Dash rolled her eyes and crossed her forelegs. “I swear, you crash one time and Twilight never lets you hear the end of it…” She pointed over to some clouds she had arranged. “It’s more along the lines of defensive flying, with style. I wouldn’t want you getting eaten by the first manticore or dragon you run into.”

“Well why didn’t you say so? I love mortal peril.”

“You’ve been practicing the techniques I showed you, right?”

“Yeah, keep the primaries spread to feel the wind current—”

“I know what they are, I taught them to you,” Dash chuckled. “Well, I figured clouds would be nicer than trees when you are practicing. Use the tips of your wings to sense changes in wind current. You won’t always see the obstacles, but if you’re quick, the pressure difference will allow you to pull your wings in before you snap half your primaries hitting them on something.”

The course looked more like a minefield than any organized creation. The weather must have called for partly cloudy to create this maze in the air. Luckily, it’d keep me out of sight of any curious ponies on the ground if I were to crash and burn like Dash thought I would.

“And I’m guessing this agility will also come in handy for the Iron Pony obstacle course.”

“Yep! Just try and follow me through the course.”

She flew into the clouds, vanishing after a few seconds. I smiled, knowing that if I managed to keep up with her, I’d get a glimpse of her well-toned plot. There’s nothing wrong with admiring beauty, especially when the wind is blowing.

I darted forward, clipping the first cloud with a wing and shaking my head in disappointment. This would require more focus than I thought, so any masculine urges would need to take a back seat while I focused on following her rainbow contrail.

The first challenge was banking hard right and left in succession. My center of gravity and weight felt very low compared to my wings on the top of my body. To bank left I had to have my left wingtip pointing at the ground. To bank right my left wingtip had to be pointing straight up in the air. This required me to tuck my legs in hard each time I banked. The shift of weight inward allowed me to roll over more easily and change direction.

Banking back and forth was far more tiring than I had expected. Normal flying was like walking, but add a few sharp turns to it and it suddenly felt like a cross-fit workout. It was no wonder everypony was so amazed by the stunts that Dash or the Wonderbolts did.

I caught a glimpse of Dash ahead and she must have seen me, because I could have sworn she was showing off. There was a horizontal cloud in the way that we had to fly over. Instead of flying over like a normal pony, she tilted her wings vertically to bring her to a rapid stop. Her momentum sent her hind legs up and over her head, doing a somersault of sorts over the cloud, and flying off.

I was so busy being amazed she could do that, I hit the cloud face-first and burst out the other side, trying to shake all the water out of my eyes and mane. The next cloud was higher so I missed it, then climbed over the third cloud. The change in gravity as I flew up and down rapidly was almost too much to take.

On Earth, I’d seen astronauts training in special planes that flew a parabolic arc to simulate weightlessness. Now, as the clouds spread out, I struggled to get used to the sensation. The hardest part was not letting my brain trick my wings into flying differently. Whether I felt twice as heavy or weightless, the air hadn’t actually changed. If I suddenly flapped twice as hard or not at all to compensate, I’d drop down into a cloud and get a face-full of ice-cold mist.

Just when I was starting to get that down, I saw Dash tuck her wings in and fall like a rock ahead of me. Part of me panicked as I hurried over, only to realize the cloud in front of me was like a solid wall. I flared my wings to come to a stop, not wanting to run face-first into yet another cloud.

My momentum ceased in an instant, and I felt the air rushing upwards as I fell. I began to flap my wings, but the sudden stop had thrown my hind legs out in front of me and I was now upside down.

I flailed my legs like a cat falling out a window. Unfortunately, I was not a cat and my panicked flapping and kicked only disoriented me more. Finally I curled my legs and wings in, tucking into a small ball. I closed my eyes to stop the spinning that was distracting me, then flared my wings out. The wind was tearing through my feathers, but after a few more seconds I was able to figure out which way was up, and spread my feathers out.

Opening my eyes, I began to pull out of my tumble, then crashed face-first into a cloud. Dash had put it there incase I did what I just did—spun out and fell to the ground—to keep me from getting hurt.

She was also laying on her back laughing from the sight of me turning from pegasus to projectile and slamming into the cloud.

Spitting out the water I had scooped up during the crash, I turned my gaze to her. “Hey! I was totally gonna recover from that until you put a cloud in my way!”

“Sure… sure… you… were!”

I scooped up a large piece of cloud and threw it at her, causing it to burst into water droplets and soak through her fur.

“Gah!” Dash flipped up and looked at me, smirking. “Try that again, I dare you.”

As I scooped up a piece of cloud to throw at her, she flapped her wings, dissipating the cloud from under me. I didn’t fully understand how to control weather yet, but I understood I was in trouble as I began to fall and saw the ground not twenty feet below me.

This time I was able to break my fall with my wings, tumbling across dirt as I landed. I got up and dusted off my flight suit, shaking my head. I should have known better by now than to get in any sort of contest with Dash. Whether it was a race or something small like throwing a piece of cloud at her, Dash hates losing.

“Alright, you’re right, I fell…” I looked up and sighed as she flew down to the ground. “That was a nice course though, I’d like to run it again.”

“Sure, and after that I can take you through Ghastly Gorge.”

“Awesome, it’ll be like the Death Star trench run.”

“You know, someday you’re gonna have to put on a play for the town so everypony can enjoy a little Earth culture,” Dash observed.

“Hmm, I wonder what a cutie mark as a director would look like.”

I frowned, seeing Soarin flying over to us from the distance. Dash followed my gaze, and turned back to speak to me when she saw him coming. “Hey, I know you two aren’t getting along but, could you try? For me? He’s really nice when we’re alone. I just can’t get him to shake this silly notion that you’re in love with me.”

“Oh, I uh…” I smiled, seeing Soarin would be here in a few moments. Dash had hit a nerve. I was still working my feelings out for her and Fluttershy. Still this was hardly the time to bring that up. “Yeah, I’ll try harder.”

Soarin landed a short distance away. “Hey Dash,” he lost a little enthusiasm from his voice, “Dawn.”

“Hi, Soarin. Say, Dash was just telling me you might be able to teach me a few tricks in this obstacle course she set up. I don’t suppose you’d like to hang-out?”

He paused for a second while he thought about what to say. We hadn’t really spoke more than a few words to each other so far, and I doubt he was suspecting me to ask such a question. Dash also went wide-eyed, not expecting me to go with such a blatant approach.

“Uh, sure?” He looked to Dash. “You still think he has a chance at the Iron Pony?”

Dash chuckled. “You worried he’ll steal second place from you, Soarin?”

“Second? Who is gonna get first?” I asked.

Soarin rolled his eyes, “Dash, of course. She still thinks she can beat me in a race.”

“Come on, the day you beat me in a race is the day I’ll let you…” Dash leaned in and whispered in Soarin’s ear. I can only imagine what she said, but thankfully his flight suit protected his modesty.

“Ahem,” Soarin coughed. “I uh, guess I can show Dawn a few tricks. You want to wait down here at the finish line?”

“Sure,” Dash answered.

“Great.” I smiled at Soarin and flew up towards the start of the course. Dash looked happy, which made me happy.

Once at the start, Soarin flew up next to me and began to explain some techniques more suited to stallions than mares. With our slightly-larger frames and broad shoulders, the aerodynamics changed a great deal from those of a mare.

After info-dumping a ton of flight tips and tricks on me, eighty-percent of which I’m sure I’ve already forgotten, he flew towards the first cloud.

“All right, so just follow me through and keep those tips in mind. Use the extra body weight to gain momentum at the right times and you won’t tire your wings out as quickly.”

Soarin took off into the maze, and I decided to see just how well I might be able to keep up with him. He was definitely more agile than me, though not nearly as fast as Dash. He seemed to calculate every maneuver well in advance, transitioning seamlessly between them.

This time the banking was a little easier, but it was still akin to trying to do ninety-degree turns in a car going forty-miles per hour over and over. I found all my focus going into each turn, keeping the perfect mix of balance, weight, and lift from my wings.

I finished up that section and began to arc up and down over the horizontal clouds. This time I had much more control over my senses as my inner ears cried out I was weightless, and my eyes stated that I was not. Luckily I was not one to get motion sickness.

Soarin was getting too far ahead of me and I tried to catch up, but still lost sight of him. I picked up speed, flying around the last corner much faster than I had when following Dash.

A large tuft of cloud hit me in the face. This one didn’t burst into mist as easily as the others. It both hurt and clung to my face, leaving me to try and break up the last bits of it with my hooves. There was another thud as I burst through part of the obstacle course, drenching myself in moisture, and feeling the familiar sensation of tumbling.

I stayed calm, trying to get my bearings using the wind on the tips of my feathers, however they were soaked wet. With my wings wet, the air currents felt different and I had never practiced like this before. Not knowing what to do, I went to the tried and true method of flailing about like a madpony.

By the time I cleared my vision the world was a blur of colors flashing by. I made out the sight of a large oak tree coming up on me fast. Aware that I was in for a painful reunion with a long-lost friend known as the ground, I curled up into a ball, shielding myself the way Dash had taught me to minimize injuries to vital body parts.

There was a loud crash as I hit the tree and burst through a window. A sharp crack hit my side as I came to a complete stop, and dropped to the floor. Not a second later, dozens of hard, heavy objects fell down on me, burying me.

Once I was sure I was done plummeting to my demise, I uncurled and opened my eyes. There in front of me was a welcome sight, Spike, and an unwelcome sight, a furious Twilight.

“My books! I just finished organizing—” Twilight surveyed the scattered books while frowning. Finally, as if she’d mistaken me for a book for the last ten seconds, she whipped her head back to me. “Oh my, Dawn, are you alright?!”

“I think so…” I stood up and started to check my legs and wings. “And thanks, it’s good to know I’m a close second on your list of things to check after a crash.” I stuck my tongue out at her, getting a loud laugh from Spike.

“I wouldn’t be laughing, Spike” Twilight interjected. “You’re gonna have to re-organize the books for me while I make sure Dawn is okay.”

“Awww…” Spike frowned and went to retrieve a ladder.

“You should give the guy a day off, seems like you two are re-organizing the library every single day.”

“I’m just trying to find the optimal system to organize and catalog every book in my library, so that any book can be found in under thirty seconds,” she explained.

I shook my head in disbelief. “Why can’t you just be happy with the Dewey Decimal System?”

“The Dewey what?”

“You know, the numeric system to organize books? You probably call it the Pony Decimal, or Stalliontastic, or Marey Decimal system.”

Twilight’s eyes lit up and went wide, and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach that I’d made a mistake mentioning it. “Really? You have to tell me all about it! Where does it start? How does it categorize the books?”

I looked around, desperate to escape. I didn’t want to spend all day in a sweaty, damp flightsuit organizing a library. Perhaps the quickest way out would be to just write it down for her, but I wasn’t too fond of hoof-writing as a pony. It just made me miss my fingers.

“Look, it’d take too long to explain, but basically you assign a number to a general field, like science, of 500. Then if it’s math related, it’d be 510. If it’s geometry, it’d be 516. For a specific geometry, it might be 516.3 or 516.7.”

Twilight leaned in closer smiling, causing me to back up a step. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that all this talk of the Dewey Decimal system was turning her on. Come to think of it, her tail did look a little higher…

“This is incredible! Why didn’t I think of this before? I could re-organize alpha-numerically in a third of the time based on the assigned reference number! Dawn, I can’t thank you enough! Tell me the rest of the numbers!”

I gulped, regretting my job as a library assistant in college. Sure, it paid the bills, but my knowledge of organizing books was now a liability. If I had to break out in a rap song to remember all the general categories of the system, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Well, um, 000 is generalities—”

“Yes!” Twilight grabbed me and hugged me. “Go on, what’s 100?”

“Phil—oso—phy—” I finally managed to pry her off me, though she still looked fervant.

“200—Wait, Spike! Get a pen and quill, stat!”

I thought about it for a second. “Oh, that’s religion—”

The door to the library burst open, interrupting me. The most glorious thing stepped through the door: Rainbow Dash. She was here to rescue me from reciting the entire Dewey Decimal system.

“Dawn?! Are you okay?” Dash rushed over to check on me, an indifferent Soarin walking behind her.

I sighed and relaxed my shoulders, wiping some sweat from my brow.“Twilight, you’ll have to just fill in the rest. I trust you could improve the system anyway.”

She almost hugged me again, but Dash was in the way and held a hoof out to stop her. “You didn’t break a wing? Primaries intact? No shards of glass?”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Dash, you know I enchanted my windows so that wouldn’t happen again. Now, I need to get to work! Spike! Where’s my pen and quill?”

“We’re out of quills!” Spike yelled from the other room.

“Out of quills? This is horrible!” There was a loud pop and a faint hint of sulfur, and Twilight was gone. She had teleported off to find a quill, no doubt.

“I’m fine, Dash. I was going around a corner in the course and got hit in the face by a dense cloud.” I glanced over at Soarin, who I could swear was smirking.

“You should be more careful, I was really worried,” Dash walked around me while looking for injuries and poking my wings.

“Soarin, did you see what happen? One second I’m following you and the next second, a cloud nails me in the face.” I stared at him to make sure he understood what I was accusing him off.

“Nope,” he chuckled. “I guess you need more work on flying than you thought.”

He still looked guilty as sin to me, but Dash interrupted before I could go any further. “Dawn, Soarin wouldn’t lie. He saw you hit one of the walls and tumble. You can’t seriously be telling me he sabotaged you?” She lowered her voice. “You promised to try and get along for me.”

Her last remark hurt. I had promised to try and get along with him; I valued what I had with Dash. However, I could tell Soarin had done that on purpose. Since I couldn’t prove it, I had little choice but to be the bigger stallion and forget it happened.

“Yeah, you’re right, Dash. At least I got to practice my emergency landing.” I chuckled and bumped her in the shoulder. “You’re a good teacher. Thanks for the lesson.”

“Whew. Well, I need to get going. See you at the competition!” Dash turned and trotted over to Soarin.

While her back was turned, I lifted a hoof to my eye then pointed at Soarin. From now on, I’d keep a closer watch on him.

Once those two were gone, a confused Spike walked back into the room. “Hey, Dawn, what happened with Twilight?”

“Oh, it must have been something I said. Why don’t we take the rest of the day off, and hang out? I’m pretty sure Twilight’s going to be deep in study over the next few days.”

“You want me to sneak out before she gets back and makes me organize the library?” Spike smiled and dropped the cleaning supplies he had been carrying. “Awesome! What do you want to do?”

“How about we go see what trouble the Cutie Mark Crusaders are getting into?”

He laughed and walked towards the door. “This ought to be good. Though, I don’t crusade with them anymore after they tried to get marks as dragon tamers.”

I followed him outside, and we headed off towards the school. “What’d they do? Did they tame you with a chair and a whip and force you to alphabetize books for them?”

“Ha ha, worse. We ended up making a mess of the comic book store and I accidentally burped on a first edition comic worth a hundred bits.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Twilight says I shouldn’t crusade and worry about finding a purpose like most ponies, I can just do whatever I want when I grow up, but I can hardly decide what that is.

“Yeah, that’s a tough one.” Everypony in Equestria seemed to know their place and purpose in life, something that seemed to often elude me back on Earth. Spike and me were different, as neither of us were given a magical sign to tell us what to do with our lives.

I glanced back to my bare flank, wondering if I should just march up to a hospital and apply to be a nurse, or if this was my chance to change careers.

In a way, finding a job felt like admitting defeat. If I accept that I need a job, that I have to find my place in Equestrian society, then I’m accepting I’ll never get back to Earth. On the other hoof, if I find the right ponies who know the right magic, I could quite possibly find a way back into a new body. It seemed a fool’s hope, however finding a job had a finality to it I wasn’t thrilled to accept.

“What are you thinkin’ about?” Spike asked.

“Earth, employment, cutie marks.” I replied.

“So what do you miss about it most?”

I glanced around for a moment. “Red meat. Man, they could make some amazing food back on Earth. Eggs and bacon just can’t cut it forever. Even though the vegetables taste good now, I’m constantly craving a cheeseburger.”

Spike laughed. “You know, if you decide to travel, there’s a place in Canterlot that serves burgers to griffons, or just visit Griffonia. I bet they’d love to see a pony who eats meat until they get sick to their stomach. As for me, I’ve been craving fire rubies.”

“Good to know I can sneak into a shady establishment to eat animals that may or may not have been sapient. For now I think I’ll make due with this tofu recipe Fluttershy made for me once.”

“Bleh.” Spike shivered as he shook his head. “I’ll never try tofu again, and I don’t like vegetables either. I’ll stick to gems, hay fries, and ice cream.”

“Thank you! Finally someone who understands.” I laugh along with him as we near the school. “You might want to try a salad one day. Who knows, you might wake up on another world.”

“Eh, I’ll pass. If I get zapped to another world, Twilight would go crazy all over again. You hear about the Smarty Pants doll?”

“No.”

Spike quickly recounted the story to me as we waited outside of the school. Soon we saw Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle exit the school. They seemed to have two unwanted guests tailing them.

“There’s no way these three will get a cutie mark,” Diamond said.

“Oh, it’s those two again,” I whispered to Spike. Their whole rivalry thing was as close to violence as ponies seemed to get. It amazed me that nopony had knocked one of them out cold with a right hook yet, however nopony thought that way here.

“Unless their cutie mark was a blank flank, and their special talent is being special at nothing,” Silver added.

“Shut it, you two,” Scootaloo said. I could hear the annoyance in her voice from over here. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Diamond looked at Silver. “Well, there is that ball our families were invited to. However, it’s a school night, so we can’t go. That means we get to hang out and watch you three try and fail to get a cutie mark!”

I shook my head as I walked over. It was clear enough to me that Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, and Sweetie were trying to be the bigger fillies. Part of me couldn’t resist the urge to vent a bit of my frustration at Soarin on the spoiled brats.

I walked up closer to the fillies, getting in position to interject. Apple Bloom turned to face me, but Diamond was on a roll. “I heard you’re still not allowed in the day spa after you put cement mix in the mud bath. How stupid are you gals?”

“You must be Diamond Tiara, I’ve heard all about you,” I said.

She spun around to face me and Spike. “Huh? Who are you?”

“The name’s Dawn Seeker. Tell me, how does it feel to know you’ll spend your entire life with no talent beyond wearing diamond tiaras? Or do you actually get to make them, too?” I turned to Silver. “And you: a lifetime of making kitchenware for us lowly peasants to eat with. If you ask me, you two got jipped.”

Diamond’s face got flush with anger, while Silver looked down at the ground. “You can’t talk to us like that! My father owns this town, he’ll—”

“What? Not give me a job?” I turned to show her my flank. “No thanks, I don’t need one. I get by just fine without an ass tattoo.” I walked over next to the fillies. “And when we do get cutie marks, they’ll be a lot cooler than our ability to be spoiled brats and talk down to other ponies.”

“I—”

“Come on,” Silver interrupted. She nudged Diamond and they started to head home. I could hear her complaining about ‘the nerve of some ponies’ until they were out of sight.

“That was so awesome!” Scootaloo cheered, jumping up to give me a quick hug.

“Ah don’t know, sis’ says we shouldn’t provoke ‘em or it just makes ‘em tease us more. Like, they only do it ‘cuz they like how we react,” Apple Bloom frowned a bit as she looked at me. Clearly her sister had been rubbing off on her.

I nodded and sighed. “I just couldn’t stand by and watch, though. Us blank flanks have to stick together, right?”

“I appreciate it, but I’m sure we’ll work things out and become friends someday,” Sweetie smiled at me and adjusted her saddlebags.

“That’s pretty optimistic. Good luck with that,” I replied. The fillies had a point, however, and I wondered why they were still rivals if they’d been taking the high road this entire time.

Scootaloo hovered in the air, forelegs crossed like Dash often did. “So, what brings you by?”

“I thought I’d see what kind of hijinks you three were up to. What’ll it be today? Demolition cutie marks? Skydiving cutie marks? Quarry Eel dentist cutie marks?”

The three started to smirk ominously. “Well, actually, we’ve been planning on trying our hooves at tree trimming,” Scootaloo explained.

“Wait, like with a woodchipper?” I looked at Spike, then back at the girls. I bit my lip while hoping this was a prank of some kind.

“Yeah! We saw some stallions doing it and it looks easy,” Sweetie added. She pulled a small pamphlet with half a dozen yellow warning labels on it about safe operation of an industrial woodchipper. “Plus, our crusades usually end up with us covered in tree sap, so this’ll cut out the middle pony.”

Images of one of the fillies slipping into the machine filled my mind, as did images of the kind of shady stallion who would let fillies borrow a woodchipper. “I uh, think you should try something with less whirring blades.” I grabbed the pamphlet and tucked it into my flight suit.

“Hah! We decided not to rent that woodchipper anyway! Ah’d never hear the end of it from my sis’.” Apple Bloom reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a receipt. “We rented chainsaws!”

Spike facepalmed and shook his head at this revelation. At least there was one pony—or dragon—in town who seemed to think these fillies needed a little supervision. On the other hoof, I wouldn’t want to ruin their fun by ratting them out to their big sisters.

“I’ll take that too.” I grabbed the receipt. “As fun as chainsaws are, maybe there is something else you could try.” I searched my head for ideas. I could help them pull some practical jokes. That would be safer and wouldn’t cry out ‘serial killer cutie marks’ to anypony passing by. I bet they’d know just which two fillies to kill first. Gah, bad brain! No killing!

“Like what?” Scootaloo tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “Because we can’t get our deposit on the chainsaws back.”

“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t find the one pony in town who rents chainsaws to fillies, and suggest pranking instead.” I gestured back towards town. “Plenty of ponies are still at work you could prank.”

“Ah dunno, didn’t we try pranks already?” Apple Bloom asked.

Sweetie shrugged. “I know I’ve stuck tape on Opalescence’s paws before, but we’ve never pranked like Dash and Pinkie do.”

“See? Let’s go do some fun, safe crusading.”

Spike finally joined the conversation, albeit briefly. “Thanks, but I’ll go look for some new comics. I don’t wanna be anywhere near those three with bags full pranking supplies. Have fun, girls.”

“Thanks, Spike,” Scootaloo answered. “You know what this means?”

The other two bumped hooves with her. “Cutie Mark Crusader pranksters, yay!”

We all headed into town together. I made one quick stop so I could take the flightsuit off and get saddlebags and bits. I brought enough change to buy enough supplies to pack all four of our saddlebags to the brim. I figured that the best way to ensure my own safety from pranks, was to be one of the pranksters. Since I had just armed these three young ponies, I figured I was responsible to keep an eye on them.

We headed through town looking for a place to start our rampage.

“What should we do first?” Sweetie inquired.

“Why not start with a classic I did as a child? The burning bag on the front porch.” I recalled fond memories of this prank, and the ensuing race for cover that often followed.

The trio looked at each other in confusion until Sweetie finally spoke up. “We haven’t heard of that one.”

“Here, this is Rarity’s house, right? Let me show you how it works on your big sister.”

Luckily for the fashionista, I wasn’t about to teach the fillies how to light dog turds on fire. Instead, I went over to the neighbor’s planter and scooped some mud up and dropped it in the paper bag. I folded the top and handed it to Scootaloo, followed by a lighter.

“Alright, squirt, just run up to the door, light the bag on fire, then ring the doorbell and run back here.” I nudged her forward, and then ducked behind the bush with the other Crusaders.

“Okay.” She walked forward, looking around as if she were robbing from a bank.

I couldn’t resist shouting out “boo!” and watching her jump in the air. Considering all of our laughter, it was a miracle Rarity didn’t hear us coming.

About a minute later, Scootaloo had set down the bag and gotten the lighter working. She flew up, hit the doorbell, and darted back to the bushes.

I took the lighter back, because unlike some unscrupulous sales-ponies, I wouldn’t let fillies run around with anything that posed a real risk.

“Now we wait.” I tried to shrink down behind the bush, unsure if my larger frame was actually hidden form anypony. I had a stupid grin across my face. Lying had never been my strong suit, and if Rarity got one look at me over the next day or so I’d probably burst out laughing. Therefore, I’d have to hold it in and have a good laugh after we get away clean.

Apple Bloom crawled up next to me to peek through the bushes. “Psst, Dawn, I don’t get it.”

“What would you do if something was on fire?” I asked.

“Call neigh-one-one?” Apple Bloom replied.

“Get some water?” Scootaloo answered.

“Stomp on it?” Sweetie offered.

“We have a winner!” I shushed them all with my hoof as the door opened.

Rarity looked outside for her visitor when she noticed the burning bag on her porch. Her eyes went wide and she gasped, and for a moment I thought she might faint. Finally, she screeched and reared up on her hind hooves, stomping the fire out.

Not ten seconds later, with the fire extinguished, she noticed the mud covering her hooves. It had also splattered onto her hind legs. There was a thud, and this time she had in fact passed out.

The Crusaders were laughing loud enough to wake the dead, meanwhile my mouth was agape as I worried for Rarity. “Crap, is she okay?”

Sweetie took a few deep breaths until she could reply. “She’s a germaphobe, she hates mud and filth.”

I shook my head and sighed. “You could have warned me before.” The situation was kinda funny, after I was certain I hadn’t given her a heart attack.

“I thought you knew,” Sweetie responded.

As Rarity began to wake up I grabbed Sweetie and nudged the other two forward. “Quick, Run!” We scattered away from her house, using the neighbor’s home for cover.

“Rainbow and Pinkie!” She stomped her hooves on the wooden door frame, her voice carrying clear across the street. “So help me, I’ll get you for this!” Rarity shouted.

Once we were safely in an alleyway we stopped and resumed our laughter. I couldn’t believe she’d immediately blamed Dash for it. If it was this easy to prank and get away with it, we were going to have an incredible day.

“Did ya see the look on her face?” Apple Bloom was panting as she leaned back against the house, exhausted from laughing while running.

“I know!” Scootaloo stood up and started pantomiming Rarity’s actions. “Not even Dash has pranked a pony so good they passed out!” She finished her charade and fell over to the ground, causing us all to break out into laughter again.

Apple Bloom straightened out her bow and adjusted her saddlebags, which carried some of our supplies. “Ah can’t wait ta tell my sister about it.”

I raised an eyebrow and looked at her. “You’re gonna tell the Element of Honesty that we pranked Rarity? Do you want to get us all revenge pranked?”

“Oh,” she blushed and fidgeted with her hooves. “Ah guess that’s right, wouldn’t want to get grounded.”

“Come on, let’s go prank somepony else!” Scootaloo jumped up and headed for the corner. “I know just the pony, they usually sleep in the afternoon ‘cuz they work at night.”

“Sure thing, lead the way.”

I followed the three Crusaders, who had that childish glow about them. It was the happy, smiling glow that let everypony who saw them know they were up to no good. It was pointless to try and hide it, I’d been a kid once too. The way they’d carry on and then get all serious and quiet the instant an adult looked at them was a dead giveaway that we were aiming to misbehave.

When we finally got to the house I noticed some expensive stereo equipment inside the house. Whoever lived here was clearly an audiophile, and I made a mental note to stop back by sometime and see what kind of music they had, and where they got those subwoofers. If this pony got to blast music that loudly, there clearly were no laws against noise pollution.

“Alright, we’ll just go in through the front door—”

“Scootaloo, we’re not breaking and entering.’ I stepped in front of her and stared down at her. There were limits to what I was about to let them do.

“It’s not breaking and entering if the door is unlocked, and nopony locks their doors,” Scootaloo replied.

“Would that be because they trust their neighbors and live in a town where everypony knows everypony? Where no one would expect three fillies and a stallion to break in?”

“Exactly!” Scootaloo started to go for the door, but I grabbed her tail with my teeth.

“Nuh-uh.” I wasn’t going to be responsible for causing an entire town to lock their doors in fear of pranksters.

While I had my attention in Scootaloo, I saw Apple Bloom in the corner of my eye slipping through the front door.

Dear Celestia, what monsters have I created?

A few minutes later she came back out with a grin a mile wide. The damage was done now, I suppose I should trust that the Crusaders knew the townsponies better than I did. Perhaps it wasn't going to be a big deal.

“What’d you do?” Images of her breaking a gas line and lighting the stove to cause a massive explosion went through my head. Luckily, I knew they were children and not arsonists… yet.

“Nothing.” Apple Bloom lied, a wide smile growing on her face. “I just put a little glowing shampoo in their shower. Now Vinyl’s hair will glow in the dark for days!”

“You know, giving a DJ glow in the dark hair isn’t a prank?” It was still funny, but they should have just stuck to the itching powder. “Five bits says she loves having glowing hair.”

Sweetie bumped my hoof. “You’re on!”

I shook my head. “No way, I’m not taking you three into a nightclub to settle a bet.”

“Awww, come on!” she shouted.

The three huddled for a second, then trotted off towards the next house. I followed behind them, keeping an eye on the fillies as the mayhem continued. They seemed to be having a blast, and aside from the fear of getting caught, so was I.

Scootaloo spent most of her time flying up into houses, leaving sneezing or itching powder on everypony’s bed. Sweetie attached clear tape to mailboxes, sealing them shut. Apple Bloom hid some whoopie cushions under the padded chairs at a local restaurant.

I’m definitely gonna get caught for this. Maybe I can claim they held me hostage?

All in all, it was very enjoyable. I should have quit while I was ahead, but pretty soon it was getting dark and I’m fairly certain we had pranked over half the town.

“That was a lot of fun,” Scootaloo said. She looked back at her flank and sighed. “Still no cutie mark.”

“Me either,” the other two chirped. They all deflated a little as they realized another crusade had failed.

“Hey, at least we had fun, right?” I bumped into Scootaloo and tried to get the trio to lighten up.

“We sure did.” Apple Bloom chuckled as she recalled saran wrapping over a pony’s toilet. “And nopony suspected a thing.”

“Yeah, they’ll never figure out it was us,” Scootaloo added.

“And if they did, what’s the worst that could hap—”

“No!” I spun around and stuck a hoof to Sweetie’s mouth, stopping her from saying it. “Are you trying to jinx it?” The fillies started to laugh.

“Relax, Dawn. Everypony in this town has a sense of humor,” Scootaloo laughed, pushing my hoof away from Sweetie.

Everypony has a sense of humor, and access to a prank shop. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. I’ll have to make sure to keep my doors locked from now on. They still have enough itching powder left to crop-dust Canterlot.

Pushing images of the three fillies breaking into my house at night out of my head, I realized how late it had gotten. Hopefully everypony would suspect Dash and Pinkie long enough for me to enter witness protection. “Alright, I’ll see you fillies later. I’m getting hungry.”

“Bye!” they parroted. The three fillies headed off towards their homes, leaving me to cross over to main street and head towards town square. There was a bistro I could eat at and then go home for a relaxing, quiet night.

It was a tad chilly out that night, and the clouds from earlier had vanished. The stars seemed to twinkle a little more than usual, and I was able to see the hints of the galaxy in the sky. I’d call it the Milky Way, however I didn’t know how far from Earth I really was. The universe is a big place, and for all I know I could be in Andromeda or orbiting a star comparatively close to home.

As my mind wandered to the stars, I ran face-first into Pinkie Pie.

“Dawn! There you are.” She bounced back as I rebounded, as if she had fully expected me to run right into her. “I had a feeling I’d find you out here! I still owe you a blind date!”

I shook my head to recover from the shock of colliding with her. “Oh, sure thing, Pinkie. I’ll take you on a blind date.”

She blushed, getting a cute smile as she did so. “Not me, silly! But, if the pony I set you up with doesn’t work out, maybe we can go on a date! I have a lovely macaroni and sugar recipe you’ve got to try.”

Chuckling nervously, I felt my teeth ache at the thought of a pasta made primarily of sugar. “Oh, well it’s late, and I don’t want to drop by unannounced on some blind date.”

“Nonsense! I told them that I had a Pinkie Sense you’d meet them for dinner at six at the bistro.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you say so?” I smiled, while I looked around for some wires or an antenna to prove this was Pinkie-bot. It would explain how she seemed to predict so many things all the time, and would provide me excellent small talk for my dates.

Oh, haven’t you heard? Pinkie is a robot. She runs on sugar alcohol, it’s a type of clean-burning fuel. The best part is, she can consume large quantities of sweets and nopony is any wiser. I just have to drop by every three-thousand bounces or six months, whichever comes first, and give her an oil change.

There was a loud snapping sound as Pinkie clapped her hooves. “Equestria to Dawn!”

“Gah!” I flinched and ducked backwards as she snapped me out of my daydream.

“You zoned out pretty good there. Were you thinking about whether or not you should be a mare or a stallion now that you found out about poison joke, and are considering if you could go your whole life as a mare just to make Fluttershy fall in love with you?” Pinkie looked over the black rims of some glasses she was now inexplicably wearing, while tapping her hooves together like a shrink.

I shuddered and shook my head no. “Just wondering whether or not you’re a robot. Also, without using the words ‘Pinkie Sense’, how did you guess all that about me?”

“Oh, that’s easy, I saw you visit Fluttershy a few days ago. She must really like you.” Pinkie giggled, looking at me as if I were clueless. “She’s sorta shy if you didn’t notice.”

“Really? It never crossed my mind,” I retorted.

“Yepperoni! I’m very inquisitive, and I’ve seen how you look at Dash too—”

“Are you taking me on a blind date or interrogating me on my love life?” I snapped.

“Oh.” She frowned and slouched slightly as we walked. “Sorry, I just wanted to make some small talk.”

I sighed, putting a wing over her to hug her. “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you. You’re very perceptive, Pinkie, to be able to guess all these things about another pony. I’m just not ready to decide all these things right now and it’s shocking you figured them out.”

She smiled and seemed to reinflate. “Okie dokie lokie! Well, Auntie Pinkie is here if you ever need somepony to talk to about it.” Pinkie shoved me forward towards the restaurant. “You’re here to meet Lyra, mint green mare with a lyre cutie mark. You can’t miss her!”

I turned around but Pinkie was gone. She had left me at the entrance to the bistro so I went inside, seeing booths and tables around the main room.

“How many?” a waiter asked.

“I’m meeting somepony here,” I replied.

“Very well.” He gestured for me to come inside.

Once I got a better look, I saw her right away. In the corner was a mare with golden eyes and long flowing hair. The description of mint green was spot-on. It was a rare color, considering I hadn’t seen any other pony in town with that kind of coat. She had white streaks in her hair, and a horn.

Lyra must have seen me staring from across the room, because she smiled nervously and blushed a little. I stumbled forward into a chair, eliciting a chuckle from her. Finally, I made my way over to sit down and, with any luck, have a pleasant evening.

“You must be Lyra.” I reached out a hoof to shake, but instead she just bumped it.

“Yep, and you must be Dawn. Nice to meet ya.”

“Likewise.”

I sat down and took a sip of water, staring at her eyes again. After a moment I realized I was drifting into awkward silence territory.

What am I supposed to talk to her about? Being a human? Having sex with Soarin? The train? The bacon? Quick, just compliment her!

“You have lovely eyes,” I spat out.

Her smile made me feel giddy inside, “Thank you.”

Play it cool, you’ve dated before. Don’t let the excitement of meeting somepony new make you act like a fool.

“So, you’re a musician?”

“Yeah, I play the lyre. What do you do for a living?” She levitated her drink up effortlessly, and for a moment I paused just to ponder how easy unicorns made magic look.

Shrugging, I looked out the window. “Don’t really know yet. I’ve only been in town about a week.”

Lyra leaned forward, setting her drink back down. “Hmm, where’d you live before this?”

“Far away, in America.” Maybe I couldn’t go around telling everypony I was a human, but I could at least name places I knew she’d never have heard of. “I was a nurse and got tired of cleaning bedpans, next thing I know I’m eating a salad in Ponyville.”

Then I inhabited Dash’s body and punched Soarin in the face. Yep, I’m just a normal, everyday pony.

“Oh, cool. Pinkie had a lot of good things to say about you, but nopony seems to know much about you or they wouldn’t say. Rumor has it you’re some sort of changeling spy seeking asylum.”

I laughed so hard at the thought that I had to take several deep breaths to recover. My only consolation was that if I was embarrassed to have the entire diner staring at me, Lyra must likewise be blushing profusely.

“No—no, nothing like that.” I took a few more deep breaths to calm down. “I’m just new here.”

“Mmmhmm, with no cutie mark. I find it kinda fascinating.”

The waiter walked over to the table. “Good evening, can I get you started with some appetizers or soda?”

“I’ll take a caesar salad with egg,” Lyra stated, handing him her menu. “You ready to order, Dawn?”

“Yeah, I’ll take the same with extra olive oil and some soda.”

“I’ll get that started for you right away.” The waiter turned and left, heading straight for the kitchen.

His appearance had given me time to regroup and look around. Judging by Lyra’s drink, she hadn’t been waiting here for me long, which was a good thing. The red and white checkered tablecloth matched the tiles on the floor. The color red dominated the diner and it had the sort of fifties feel I might have seen on Earth.

As my gaze flowed around the diner it finally circled back to the mare sitting in front of me. Recalling that I was here to socialize and not practice my interior design skills, I smirked and continued our conversation. “So, you were saying?”

“Oh, your cutie mark, if you don’t mind me asking.” She looked down at where my flank would be if the table weren’t there, before returning her gaze to my eyes. “I’ve never met or heard about anypony without a mark by the age of eighteen. How old are you?”

“Eh, twenty-eight years.” I chuckled as I recalled my rebirth as a pony. “Or, two weeks... depending on how you look at it.”

“Huh?” She shifted in her seat and looked at me with her head tilted as if I might have just suffered a small stroke. She seemed split between wanting to laugh at my joke, and not knowing if I was being serious.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” I didn’t think she’d buy the whole human bit anyway.

Awkward silence, round two, start!

It was difficult to think of things to say and connect with her. I’d never been much of a socialite, but I normally did a bit better than this. Finally I’d had enough, and decided to just get the elephant out of the room.

One more pony knowing I’m a human won’t hurt anypony, right?

I leaned forward, shooting a sideways glance to make sure our coast was clear. “Psst, okay, so you want to know where I came from?”

Lyra cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah…”

“Alright, so it’s a secret, but I’m literally not from around here. I come from a planet named Earth, and I’m human. Discord cast a spe—”

Lyra’s smile vanished as she leaned back and used her magic to slide her drink to the side and grab her saddlebags. She looked like she was getting ready to leave. “Did Bon Bon and Pinkie put you up to this? You’re not even really a blank flank, are you!?”

“I—what are you talking about?” I could only stare at her in confusion as I tried to think about exactly what I had said. “You asked where I came from—”

“Yes, where you came from, not some made-up story about fingers, toes, and shiny—”

“Stop,” I interjected, reaching a hoof out to try and stop her from leaving. “Look, I don’t know why I upset you but I’m sorry, okay? You wanted the truth and that’s the truth. Now, why do you think Bon Bon and Pinkie would go through all this trouble? I didn’t think anypony even knew humans existed.”

She chewed her lip for a moment, finally relaxing. “It was just a phase in college, I had a history professor who published a book supporting the existence of humans in Equestrian fossil records, before a mass extinction event millions of years ago. It was utter rubbish, but I was young and may have spent a year or two trying to prove they were still out there somewhere, okay? It’s nothing to make fun of.”

I chuckled, causing her to scowl again. “Sorry,” I raised my hooves in surrender. “Look, I know now that it may be a touchy subject, but your professor was right. I Pinkie Promise that I was a human.”

The waiter walked over, levitating two salads and my soda. He set them down on the table, giving us both a pause to calm down a little, before leaving.

I took a bite of the salad and drank some of my soda. Leaning forward, I began to speak in hushed tones. “Look, if you want to hear a story about the craziness that went on with Discord, and the Elements of Harmony, and cold-clocking Soarin at dinner, I’ll be glad to tell you. And if you don’t, well then let’s just pretend I’m a used cart salesman from Canterlot and enjoy our salads. Deal?”

Lyra stared at me for a moment, a conspiratorial grin spreading across her face. Finally she leaned forward. “Alright, let’s hear this story of yours.”

I began to recount my tale for the first time since I had gotten to Equestria. It was almost therapeutic to lay it all out on the table for her, and tell her about my life as a human and subsequent journey to Equestria.

There was no detail spared. She laughed at how I knocked out Soarin or nearly trapped Dash in a flooded lavatory. The back and forth between me and Dash was another favorite, and before long we were talking about everything from automobiles to my more embarrassing details as a mare.

“There’s no way! You did that for Dash?”

I shrugged. “Well, I owed her and I promised to help make things right. I went on a date with Soarin, and the whole time I’m thinking ‘please don’t act like a dude, Dash is counting on you’! At least, I was thinking that before the third glass of wine.”

Lyra laughed and looked at me. “Wait, you were drinking?” She smirked and batted her eyes. “Oh, so did you let Soarin spend the night?”

I froze in terror before recovering. I hadn’t planned on telling her that I banged Soarin, but her soft chuckle and my reaction let me know that ship had sailed. I just nodded my head slightly.

“Heh, your secret is safe with me.”

I exhaled a breath of relief. “Good, so you’re not going to have me committed to Broadhoof Asylum?”

Lyra tilted her head. “Well… I guess that depends on how the night goes.”

The waiter headed over with our bill and set it on the table. “Closing time, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”

I smiled and looked around, realizing we were the last ponies in the diner. It caught me off guard that I’d lost track of time so easily.

“Wow, where’d the time go?” I turned to look at Lyra as the waiter left us..

Lyra levitated up a bag of bits to pay for the bill, prompting me to reach into my saddlebags. Somewhere behind the miscellaneous prank items I bought the crusaders must be some spare bits.

“Well this is embarrassing,” I muttered under my breath. Beneath a container of itching powder I’d found the small, faux leather pouch. The drawstrings were loose and the inside was empty, save for some lint. I scowled a bit as I realized what this meant.

“What’s the matter?” she muttered, watching me shuffle around the contents of my bag..

“Would you tell anypony if I spent all my bits on whoopee cushions and itching powder for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and couldn’t split the check?” I tossed the empty bag on the table.

She chuckled and finished setting out the bits for the bill. “Well, I guess you’ll have to walk me home and we can debate how you repay me on the way.”

“Thanks! I’ll get you paid back tomorrow.” I tossed my belongings back in the back and buckled them closed.

Lyra rolled her eyes as she got out of the booth, and I was quick to follow.

As we left the diner, she spoke up. “So, I guess now you just need to find a cutie mark, huh?”

“It couldn’t hurt. I haven’t figured out what I want to do with my life yet.”

“Doesn’t that describe most ponies?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but most ponies don’t live half a life-time doing one thing, then have their entire world change.”

“I can see how that would take a toll on you.”

“No kidding.”

She turned down an alley that split off before getting down to the street my house was on. Four houses down was her house and I followed her up to the door. There was something about the house that looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Well, this is my house. Now, about repaying me for dinner… why don’t you come inside and have a drink and we can—”

I saw the open window upstairs and interrupted her. “Wait! You can’t sleep here!”

Lyra looked surprised, glancing around at my boldness. “I uh—what?”

I was disproportionately panicked that my pranking earlier might ruin an otherwise pleasant evening. “Look, it’s late, you can sleep at my house.”

“Huh?!”

I glanced at her and saw the confused expression on her face. The poor mare must have thought I meant sex. “No! I just remembered, Scootaloo flew in your window and put itching powder on your bed. You’d have to do laundry to get the powder out—oh man, I never should have taken them pranking, but some idiot rented them chainsaws and I couldn’t let them take those out to the Everfree! I—”

Lyra used her magic to grab my chin and gently close my mouth, leaning forward to kiss me. After I blinked a few times she pulled back, looking me in the eye. “You talk too much. Go ahead, I’ll follow you to your house tonight.” She winked, and released the magic.

I smiled, finally putting two and two together. Tonight was my lucky night.

Author's Note

Cloptional chapter to follow shortly. Care to wager what it'll be about?

8. Iron Pony

My hooves dangled off the edge of the bench as I laid on my back. It was a great day to work on my tan, despite the fact I couldn’t really tan anymore. It felt good to let it all hang out as the sun warmed up my belly.

There was a pony I hadn’t seen before on the bench across from me. He had very similar colors to mine and hadn’t said a word. He was my only companion as we took our naps in the middle of the park.

I turned to look at him and tried to see what his cutie mark was. They provided a great way to remember pony names as they were often related.

“That’s L. We never caught his real name, he’s too lazy to finish telling us it,” a pony in a trenchcoat said.

The new voice was coming from the side of the bench. I was perfectly comfortable and didn’t bother to cover myself up. When I tilted my head back to look at them, they appeared upside down. I saw a pony wearing dark sunglasses, a fedora, and a trenchcoat. In fact, the pink fur of their face and some blonde hair was all I could see.

“Can I help you?” I asked out of politeness. This was my bench, after all.

“Oh, I was just watching you.”

“Well, miss? Can I help you?”

The pony coughed harshly, and lowered her voice. “What? I’m not a mare, I’m a stallion!”

“Sure you are.” I sighed loudly and sat up on the bench, gesturing next to me. “I guess you wanted to sit down?”

“Well, I just, you know, thought we’d chat.”

Once she, or “he”, sat down next to me I offered them my hoof. “I’m Dawn.”

“I’m Denial.”

“Isn’t that a river in Africa?” I joked.

“Heh, guess so.” Denial inched away from me a little bit.

“Wait, how do you know about the Nile? Nopony should know about that.”

The pony chuckled and looked at me, shaking her head. “Nah, you’re dreaming again. I just thought you’d enjoy the company of another stallion.”

I pointed to the other bench. “I was with another—wait, where’d he go?” The lazy pony on the other bench was gone now. Me and Denial were now the only two ponies in the park, and nopony seemed to be walking along the dirt paths. “Oh, well I guess I am dreaming then. You’re the first, I mean second, ‘stallion’ I’ve met in my dreams.”

“Hmph, damn straight I’m a stallion. Mares are stupid.”

“I’m guessing you and Desire aren’t pal—”

“No!” Denial blurted.

“Did somepony call?” Desire said.

“Ugh, you just had to say it,” Denial quipped.

“What?” I shrugged my shoulders. On the bench across the dirt path from me sat Desire, her blue hair sparkling in the sunlight. Her fur looked as soft and pink as a peach.

“Dawn ol’ buddy, how’s it going?” Desire said. She smiled widely and waved her hooves around like a mad pony. “You like what I did with the place? It’s been so confining since you let me out to play a few days ago. What was that stuff? I really liked it!”

Looking at Denial, I noticed she seemed a bit out of sorts, glancing everywhere but at the two of us. I would have been more concerned about her feelings, but this was my psyche and I wasn’t the one wearing a trenchcoat.

“Hey, Desire. Yeah, you know I missed you too… the way you presented me in front of Big Mac? Classic.” I rolled my eyes as the last of the cynicism dripped off my voice like honey.

“Oh boy was it! Did you see how well hung he was? Just tell me how to get some more of that flower and we’ll do it again. You know you want to!” Desire jumped off the bench and ran over to me, holding out a bouquet of flowers.

“You flatter me,” I quipped.

“You ate so many flowers that day, which one was it that let me out to play? Please tell me!”

“It was the one I’m not eating again. I mean, maybe if I’m drunk and horny and Lyra wants to stick that lovely horn in my—” I groaned and pushed Desire back. Just having her near me was making it hard to think clearly.

“Oh, Lyra did seem lovely,” a pink mare said. Unlike Desire, this pony’s whole body was a uniform shade of pink.

“Have we met?” I asked. This was getting too crowded for my liking.

“I’m Love, Amore, uh… Liebe!” she said.

I rest my head in my hooves, sighing. If I was lucky this would be one of those dreams I forgot. “And why do they call you that?”

“I dunno, Desire says I’m a hopeless romantic.”

“Nopony wants foreplay! The whole point is the action!” Desire argued.

“But what about Fluttershy? She’s so nice and while you’re trying to get Dawn laid, he’s dating the wrong pony!” Love walked over and nudged me. “Lyra’s nice and all but what about Fluttershy? If you can control Desire here, you can turn into a mare and date her!”

“Hah! Mares are lame. You should stay a stallion,” Denial said as she crossed her hooves.

“Who pissed on your tampon, Denial?” Desire hit her in the shoulder with a hoof.

“I’m just saying, Fluttershy is more awesome than Lyra.” Love pushed past the others, crowding in on me as if proximity to me would make them more persuasive..

“Awesome? Dash is awesome! Fluttershy’s just like,” Iris waved her hooves around as she hovered in mid air. “Twenty percent less awesome than Dash!”

The ponies now surrounded me, making me feel a bit claustrophobic. Denial on my right, Desire on my left, Love prodding me to get my attention, and Iris, showing off as she hovered in mid-air with only one wing.

“Anypony else we’re forgetting?” I asked. “I want to make sure all of my split personalities are here when I tell you all to buzz off.”

“Pfft, come on, Dawn, we’ll go practice some stunts. You’re too cool for these losers anyway,” Iris stated. “Then we can change you into something a little more ‘aerodynamic’ in time for the Iron Pony!”

“Forget that, we need to pay Big Mac a visit!” Desire argued.

“No! Fluttershy would be crushed if you went sleeping around,” Love countered.

“Enough!” I shouted, slamming a hoof on the park bench. I blinked once and all the ponies were gone.

Across the dirt path, L was back and taking a nap. Looking around there was no other pony in sight. A few birds had taken a perch on a nearby tree and chirped, otherwise the park was deserted.

“Well, that’s a handy trick. I just don’t know why you’re still here.”

L’s chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath and stretched.

“At least you don’t talk much. You could teach the rest of my insane alter-ego’s a thing or to.”

“Nah.”

I raised an eyebrow, unsure if he’d just spoken. After watching him for a minute I laid down to fall back asleep. Maybe if I fell asleep in a dream I’d wake up in real life.

Beneath the bench I saw some yellow fur and leaned my head over the end. A pony was hiding underneath and jumped when we made eye contact. “Gah!”

The yellow pony with blue hair rolled out from under the bench. “I’m so sorry… I was just um… eavesdropping a teeny bit and didn’t want you to zap me away too!”

“It’s okay, you’re not badgering me like those others. I’m Dawn.”

“I know,” she said.

I waited for a moment, clearing my throat. “And you are?”

“Oh.” She shrank back a bit as she whispered “Heart.”

“Well, nice to meet you. Are you here to cast a vote on my gender too?”

“No, I couldn’t possibly impose like that… I just wanted to make sure the others weren’t bothering you but I couldn’t bring myself to be mean and ask them to stop.”

I ignored her and rolled onto my back, staring up at the clouds. They were currently forming the shape of a monkey on a trampoline, with a particularly large cumulus cloud forming the trampoline.

“So, any idea when I wake up? I seem to recall having a guest over,” I said.

“No, but I was so happy you made a friend! I know it’s hard as a stallion in a matriarchal society. You’re very brave,” Heart observed.

“Thanks, I think…”

Heart’s eyes darted around as she crawled out from under the bench. “Oh, you’re very welcome. I hope you have a good day.”

I yawned and stretched out on the bench, feeling quite tired. “Yeah.” I closed my eyes for a minute.

I felt something tugging at my forelegs, pinching them slightly. My eyes blinked a few times, clearing some crust from the eyelids. Upon trying to roll over, I felt a weight upon my chest. As my senses returned, I noticed the mint-green mane flowing across my mouth, and coughed as it started to tickle my muzzle.

Lyra moaned and shifted her weight, sliding down my side to the bed without waking. I noticed a trail of drool from her mouth to my chest, and the sudden cold air as her warm body slid off. She had made an excellent blanket, among other things, last night.

However, given our late night activities, I had the slight problem of being cuffed to the bed and unable to get loose to use the restroom.

“Lyra?” I whispered in her ear. She needed to wake up so I could make my way towards the first day of the Iron Pony competition. If she didn’t, Dash might waltz in to check on me, and I’d never hear the end of it.

“Lyra, hey, wake up,” I pleaded.

“Five more minutes.”

Sighing, I shifted my weight until she was perched closer to the edge of the bed, then bumped her off. She hit the floor with a thud, taking the blankets with her.

“Gah!” Lyra gasped as the sharp pain in her rump brought her quickly out of her stupor. “Ow, where am I?”

“Platform seven and three-quarters,” I remarked dryly.

“Huh?” Lyra stood up and used her magic to disentangle herself from the sheets. “Oh, Dawn! That’s right, we had quite a lovely evening, didn’t we?” She began to fold my blankets in her magic, stashing them in her saddlebags.

“Wait, are you stealing my blankets?”

She rolled her eyes. “Obviously, you did cover mine in itching powder after all.”

“Hey! That was Scootaloo.” I frowned and tried to give her puppy dog eyes.

“Hah!” Lyra gave a few more hearty laughs as she set a pillow down next to her saddlebags. “You weren’t blaming Scootaloo last night when it was time to punish you. Regardless, I’ll return them once I get a chance to wash mine and dry them outside.”

Sighing in defeat I lifted my hooves up. “Alright, you win, can you let me go now?”

Lyra chuckled as she took a pen off the nightstand and tapped it against the cuffs. “They’re not locked, silly.”

I glanced at where the pen was tapping and, sure enough, if I twist my hooves just right I could manipulate the buckle to take them off. “Wow, that was a cheap trick.”

“Using cuffs with no lock? Oh yes, how will I ever sleep with myself at night?”

Once free of the cuffs I stood up on the bed and stretched out my wings and legs, stealing a glimpse at Lyra’s flanks. “I don’t know, maybe you shouldn’t sleep alone tonight. You’ve got to stay warm, right?”

She strapped her saddlebags on her back. “Oh, I’ve got plenty of blankets to stay warm. You, on the other hoof, may want to make sure your radiators are working to heat your house tonight.”

I jumped down and headed over towards the bathroom, needing desperately to void my bladder. “So you’re heading home?”

“Yeah, sorry to rush out, but I’ve got to cheer for a friend of mine at the Iron Pony contest today.”

She walked over and gave me a kiss on the cheek as I waited in the door to the bathroom. “Well then, I guess I’ll see you later at the competition.”

Lyra walked towards the stairs and flicked her tail as she headed down. “You sure will.”

I closed the door to the bathroom and went over to the toilet to take a piss. First, I would have to figure out how to use the toilet while aroused. I sighed and reached under the sink. “Why can’t things ever be simple?”

After showering I put on my flight suit and headed towards the farm. It was rather cloudy today, and not many members of the weather team were in the air clearing the clouds. They had likely all been given the day off.

Everypony in town seemed to be heading towards Sweet Apple Acres today for the Iron Pony competition. They all seemed in good spirits, excited to compete and have some fun.

Per my understanding, the contest had started between Applejack and Dash and quickly became a town favorite. This year ponies from as far as Canterlot had come to attend and compete. At the end of the contest they would hold the Running of the Leaves, to signal the end of fall.

I don’t yet see how running can make leaves fall, but Twilight assured me it’s amazing what Earth ponies could do without magic. One Earth pony can clear ten acres of snow in a day with nothing but a snow plow, and inhuman stamina. Thank Celestia this spring my job would be much easier. All the Pegasi do is help birds migrate. If these birds were anything like on Earth, they would have some sort of magnetic compass built into their brains and I could nap on a cloud while my flock of birds flew south.

Already I had spotted many familiar ponies chatting and getting ready for the event. I made my way over to the de-facto celebrities to say hi.

“Hey, Twilight, how’s the Dewey Decimal System coming along?” I asked.

“Dawn! It’s fantastic!” She seemed to blush a little as she glanced away from me and towards Applejack. “I stayed up all night working on it, and would have finished but somepony dragged me out of the library.”

I tilted my head to the side as I recalled a fragment of a dream involving Twilight, me, and the Dewey Decimal System.

“Ya got better things ta do than organize the library again, like cheer me on as ah whip Dash’s flank.” Applejack smirked as she shot a glance up at a cloud with a rainbow tail hanging over the side.

“Ha!” Dash shouted back. “You’ll need an act of Celestia to beat me!”

“This year ya can’t use yer wings!”

Dash’s tail shook as she laughed. “Would I be taking a nap if I wasn’t sure I was gonna win?”

“Oh, would she?” Pinkie said.

I turned around and saw her standing next to a hot air balloon with Spike. She was armed with a bull-horn and some confetti, cupcakes, and other supplies I can only assume were stashed around town in case of hot air balloon emergency.

“Hey, Pinkie, come to cheer us all on?” I asked.

As I walked over to steal a couple cupcakes, Spike spoke up. “We’re hosting it together this year, and Twilight got us air time on Everfree Northwest!” He held up a mic attached to a box, which looked like an old-school CB radio on Earth.

“Wait, you guys have been holding out radio on me?”

“You never asked.” Pinkie gasped loudly as her left hind leg twitched and her right foreleg shook. “Oh my gosh! You and Lyra—the date went well! I’m so happy!”

Before I could reply, Pinkie had wrapped her forelegs around me in a hug. I could see Dash’s head poking out from over the cloud now, and she looked wide awake after hearing that.

“Heh, yeah, it did.” I returned the hug, knowing it was a quicker way to get Pinkie off me than a crowbar.

“I’m so happy for you,” Fluttershy added from somewhere behind me.

I smiled at her. “Lyra’s here to cheer for me. It’s no big deal.” Pinkie finally let go of me and I walked back towards the others.

“Well, that explains the latent magical energy on his body,” Rarity whispered to Twilight. The two unicorns were blushing. Apparently a shower can’t hide all the signs that you’ve gotten lucky. At least now I knew why Twilight was blushing earlier.

“Hey, Dash, where’s your better half?” I shouted up to her.

“He said something about finding his Wonderbolt outfit so he looks good when he loses the competition to me,” Dash replied.

“Someone sure is full of themselves,” Applejack deadpanned. She had begun to stretch out for the first event and didn’t bother to look up.

“Pfft, just ask Dawn. I’m gonna get more gold medals than their are apples in the Apple family.”

Applejack looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “I, uh, am not gonna get in the middle of this?” I told her.

“Hah! Looks like Dawn took yer common sense with him on the way out, Dashie!” Applejack mocked.

“Hey! He didn’t steal any of my change!” Dash jumped off her cloud and flew down to land next to Applejack.

I sat down to begin my own stretches, starting with my back and then legs. The two mares started a friendly argument together about who would win. While stretching a pony introduced himself to me as Time Turner, official referee of the contest. He assigned me the number forty-two for the competition.

With more and more ponies arriving, it was just a matter of time until I spotted Soarin. He was in his Wonderbolt outfit and had over a dozen fillies following him around the track. Scootaloo was at the head of the pack, gazing at Soarin. Her tongue was hanging out, wings extended, and cheeks blushing. Next to her was a dark blue pegasus, who seemed to be having a similar reaction to Scootaloo.

Fillies and Colts can be so naive, and not realize one of their friends has a crush on them.

“Ladies and gentlecolts! Welcome to the fifth annual Iron Pony Competition!” Pinkie shouted from her balloon. “This year we have a series of exciting events, with more medals, more confetti, and more parararararty!”

There was a loud bang as a cannon fired streamers into the air, and the crowd of gathered ponies cheered wildly.

“That’s right everypony!” Spike added. “And this year we have contestants from as far as Cloudsdale and Canterlot!”

I got up and headed over towards the first event. It was the tug-o-war, a simple way to start sorting ponies into categories by strength. There would be small tokens awarded for winning minor events, and medals for winning categories such as strength, speed, or stamina.

The Apple family had dug a dozen ditches and filled them with mud, so that many ponies could do the tug of war at once. Pinkie continued to talk in her excited voice, sounding like she’d had a triple espresso.

When she called my number it caught my ear. “42 is facing number 13 at the tug-o-war! Seventeen is facing…”

I walked over towards the rope, curious to see who my opponent was. Dash was already lined up across from Applejack. No doubt one of them had bribed Pinkie to ensure they faced each other. When I turned to face my opponent, I let out an exasperated sigh.

“Soarin.”

“Dawn, glad you showed up. Someone has to finish last place, and I’d feel bad if it was Derpy again,” he said.

I glanced over at Derpy briefly. “Hey that was uncalled for. Remember when you take second place to me, that second place is the first place loser.”

“Contestants!” Pinkie shouted. “Pick up your ropes and get ready to ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuumble!”

“Watch your back or I’ll snap one of those flimsy wings clean off when I win.” Soarin bent over and picked up the rope.

He was being unusually mean, and if he kept it up I’d figure out which button to press to make him snap. I wasn’t here to pick a fight, however my patience was wearing thin. THrowing his ass into this pit of mud would cheer me up for now.

I took the rope in my mouth and tested my footing, tugging on the rope. Soarin tugged back, glaring at me as he did so.

“Everypony ready?” Spike asked. “Three, two, one.”

“Go!” Pinkie screamed, firing off her cannon.

The rope went taut as Soarin and I both pulled. I had to adjust my footing several times in the loose sand, and so did he. Despite my efforts, he was making steady progress and inching me closer to the pit.

As my foreleg slid in the sand, it hit a rock in the dirt. I put all my weight onto that leg and started to pull back, feeling my neck strain from holding onto the rope. I was able to plant my other legs and wait until all four hooves were planted firmly.

Soarin was leaning backward, legs nearly perpendicular with the ground. He was putting everything he had into staying in place, however I was slowly digging hooves into the ground and backing up. Because I had the upper hoof and a chance to find good footing, he didn’t stand a chance.

I could hear other ponies landing in the mud, or falling on the ground. Winners were being declared as Twilight and Turner went around, handing out yellow ribbons.

The rope slipped in my teeth a little, reminding me to bite down. The knot at the end of the rope was pulling against my teeth, and I could see the red flag in the middle of the rope had nearly crossed the line on my side. I had almost won, but even with one of his hooves now dangling over the mud pit, Soarin was still resisting.

Right when I thought I had him, he flapped his wings hard, finding some footing and pulling back as dust blew into my eyes. I closed them as the dust hit, irritating them, and stumbled forward a couple steps. I didn’t stop until my hoof hit the rock again, and I began to flap my own wings for more leverage.

“Dawn’s disqualified!” Twilight called out.

Soarin was the one who broke the rules first!

I channeled my anger and tore back on the rope, sending Soarin face-first into the mud. I spit the rope out and turned to Twilight. “He started it! He blew dust in my eyes!”

She looked up at Pinkie, who shrugged her shoulders, then at Turner. “One second, Dawn.” Twilight went to him and they seemed to be discussing it to see if Soarin had cheated too.

Meanwhile, I turned to look at Soarin whose Wonderbolt outfit was now covered in mud. As he climbed out I walked over to give him a hoof. “Can’t even win when you cheat, huh? Want a hand?”

“Hand?” Soarin spat, wiping the mud off his muzzle. “Gah, you got lucky, I saw the top of that rock in the dirt!”

“Well I just hope you don’t get disqualified for cheating, it’d take all the fun out of my victory.”

Twilight came back over to address the both of us. “We’ve awarded a point to Dawn. Though the use of wings or magic isn’t allowed, Soarin you used your wings first. Dawn used them in response, and as you’re both Pegasi you were still evenly matched. If you break the rules again, either of you, we’ll take away five points.”

“Yes, Twilight.” I smiled and nodded.

Soarin got out of the pit and started to walk towards the nearby barn to discard his muddy flightsuit. “Whatever.”

“Hmm, I wonder what his problem is.” Twilight turned to look at me. “Did you do something to him?”

“Really, you haven’t heard? He’s a bit jealous that I’m secretly boning Dash or something.” I caught myself after I said it, and looked to find Twilight blushing. Ponies weren’t used to such crude humor. “Sorry, old habits and all.”

“Yeah, haha. It’s not like you’re sleeping around or anything. If you, uh, require any books on sexual education let me know. Bye!” Twilight rushed off before I could reply.

“Wow, that was weird.” I looked around, but I was just talking to myself. I headed off towards the next event.

On my way over there I saw the crowd mingling with some of the contestants. Lyra made her way over to me, reaching me as I stood near an apple tree in the shade.

“Hi, Dawn, that was a nice victory for you,” Lyra said. She smiled, and I could smell some sort of mint-based perfume.

“Thanks, Lyra. He’s had that coming for a while, and then he had the nerve to cheat.”

“Usually it’s the mare that’s over-protective of their stallion. I mean, there’s plenty of mares to go around so we can get really defensive and attached to our stallions,” Lyra explained. “Still, Dash is a hell of a mare so I can’t blame him.”

“Well I could do with a little less of his attitude. I’ve got enough to adjust to around here,” I observed.

Lyra levitated a wet washcloth out of her saddlebag. “Hey, brought you something to cool off.” She began to wipe the sweat off my brow. “Well seeing as how the elements and I are the only ones who really know what you’re going through, just remember you can talk to me about anything, okay? Maybe over dinner this weekend or something.”

I caught myself staring at Dash, who was off in the distance rubbing her win in Applejack’s face. Lyra had asked me something and I’d missed it, so I just faced her and nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

Soarin was heading over to Dash too, now free of his dirty flight suit. He pointed in my direction and looked pretty upset, and Dash seemed to get a good laugh out of it. She nudged him playfully but he looked anything but playful.

“I have a feeling Soarin isn’t gonna let that one go. What event is next?”

Lyra put the cloth away. “Buffalo riding. The first time they had this event they bucked Spike off their backs, but the poor guy can’t get thrown by fifty ponies. Now a buffalo volunteer will try to buck the ponies off! It sounds really fun.”

“And dangerous.” I turned to her and smiled. “Thanks for the sweat rag, with you on my team there’s no way I’ll lose this contest.” I gave her a quick hug and stepped back.

“Yeah, just try not to get yourself killed on the buffalo. It’s not often I meet somepony who can clean the bats out of my attic.”

I laughed, bumping her in the shoulder with my hoof. “Oh, it’s nice to know where I fit into our relationship. I’ll be sure not to kill myself, but I might break a wing if it means I can see you in a nurse outfit.”

“Hah! Keep dreaming, pal.” She smirked and walked back towards the stands.

Once she was gone I glanced back to see what Dash and Soarin were up to. They were at the rodeo ring along with a crowd of ponies. I hurried over to see who was competing.

By the time I got there, the twenty by twenty foot enclosure was surrounded by ponies, and the stands were packed. In the middle was a buffalo with some face paint and a headband. A unicorn on his back slipped and fell off, and the judges stopped the time.

“Fourteen seconds!” Pinkie shouted.

I looked up, seeing her and Spike still doing their announcements in the balloon. Applebloom brought some water for the pony who had fallen off the buffalo, spilling some in the dirt.

This was the closest I’d seen the ponies get to violence. As they stood around cheering and tossing popcorn into the ring, pony after pony climbed on the back of the buffalo. Every time, the buffalo made quick work of tossing them off. The laughter and cheering was infectious, and I nearly missed my number being called.

“Forty-Two!” Pinkie shouted. “That’s you, Dawn!”

I looked around. “Oh, yeah!” I flew over the fence into the pen, walking over to the buffalo.

“Dawn’s a new resident of Ponyville, hailing from far away,” Spike said. He had an excitement in his voice as he built up hype for me.

I saw Scootaloo clinging onto the fence. “Go Dawn! Get a buffalo riding cutie mark!”

I waved to her, and walked up to the buffalo. “Hi, I’m Dawn.”

“I’m Little Hoof. Apologies in advance if I toss you into the fence, it’s nothing personal.”

I laughed and climbed onto his back. “What good manners for somepony who is about to excite a crowd of ponies by flinging me onto my ass.”

On his back was nothing but a basic rope harness to hang onto. As I thought about it, I realized I had no idea how to ride a bull, let alone a buffalo, let alone in a pony’s body.

This was going to hurt.

“Go!” Pinkie yelled.

I did the first thing that came to mind, twisting my hoof under and around the rope, creating a loop on my foreleg. Little Hoof wasted no time, immediately flinging me forward.

My foreleg was yanked hard as it was the only thing stopping me from flying straight over the buffalo’s head. I slammed back down on his back, being flung the other direction. I could feel the rope dig into my skin and burn, then I felt a sharp pain in my back.

“Three seconds!”

I groaned, rubbing my sore foreleg before I stood up. The buffalo had made short work of me, but the crowd was cheering regardless. Apple Bloom ran under the fence, delivering me some water to drink.

“Good job, Dawn,” Apple Bloom offered.

“Thanks.” I drank the water and headed back to the crowd. My eyes drifted across the crowd and I saw Soarin having a good laugh. I walked past him, wiping fake sweat off my brow. “Whew, I felt so bad about the tug-o-war I thought I’d give you a freebie.”

“Hah! You’ve got the upper body strength of a filly.”

“Thanks, I work out.” I ignored him and continued to the corner and flew out of the ring, taking a position up in the crowd.

Once I had found a nice place to watch the rest of the contest, I saw Dash enter the ring.

“Hah! I could beat Applejack’s time with both hooves tied behind my back,” Dash quipped.

“Oh really? Ah can tie ‘em for ya,” Applejack retorted.

“I, uh, think I’ll pass. Thanks!” Dash flew up and landed on the buffalo’s back.

From here I could see her get a much better grip on the rope. Dash tapped the buffalo to let him know she was ready as Pinkie counted down.

When the round started, Dash threw a foreleg in the air and shouted “Yee-haw!” She was looking right at Applejack as she did so, and even managed some laughter as the round started. I had to hand it to her, she had balls to mock Applejack while on the back of hundreds of pounds of pure muscle. If anypony was going to beat Applejack’s sheer strength and stubborness in this contest, it’d be Dash and her iron will.

I looked around for a clock because Dash had been on the buffalo for a while. She might have already won, but the buffalo was clearly getting frustrated. His job was to toss ponies off, and here was one that seemed to be glued to his back.

Finally, Dash was thrown off the buffalo. Even before she landed I could tell from what she had taught me about crash landings that she wasn’t prepared. She hadn’t tucked her legs in and wasn’t trying to divert her momentum by rolling. Her wings were just beginning to open to gain some air control when she landed on one.

“Dash!” I squeezed between the two pieces of wood that made up the fence and ran towards her. Her landing looked painful from my spot on the other side of the arena and I had to make sure she was okay.

As I ran to her, I slipped in some of the mud and debris in the ring, landing right on top of Dash.

She had landed on her back, and I had landed right on her belly. We both blinked a couple times as I pinned her to the ground, inches from her muzzle. Already I could barely speak, let alone get up, from the sheer adrenaline and speed with which it happened. Worse yet, with her body pinned under mine I wasn’t just thinking with my brain anymore.

I needed to get up and back into the crowd before anypony noticed my arousal.

“Dawn!” Soarin shouted.

I turned to face him and stood up, just as a hoof hit my face. The world spun and my ears rang as I hit the fence and tumbled into the dirt. I didn’t fully realize what had happened and couldn’t seem to get my hooves under me.

“Soarin!” Dash shouted something else and a swarm of ponies seemed to descend on us.

It took me a moment to get up, already furious and ready to tear his head off. Applejack stood between us, examining my face, and no doubt ready to match my strength if I made a move for Soarin.

“Ya okay, sugar cube?” she asked.

“The hell?” I tried to force my way past her to strangle Soarin, and she easily held me back with one leg.

“Woah, just a misunderstandin’, okay? He’s probably already disqualified, Dawn,” Applejack said.

“I knew you couldn’t keep your hooves off my marefriend!” Soarin shouted. “Jumping right on top of her like a wild animal ready to mate! Learn some self-control you pervert!”

“Celestia dammit! Shut it now, Soarin!” Dash screamed. She stomped her hoof, turning her face away so Soarin couldn’t see it. A second later she flew off towards her home, tears streaming down her face.

Soarin looked at her in shock for a minute, before chasing after her.

9. Trip to Canterlot

“Dash, wait!” Soarin took off after her.

The blow from when Soarin had hit me left a throbbing pressure in my head. I tried to control my breathing and watched them fly away as I was led off towards the farmhouse by Applejack’s and Twilight. Lyra caught up with us on the way there.

“The hell is his problem!” I shouted to no one in particular. Part of me wanted to chase after Soarin and put him in the hospital.

Twilight began to scan me for injury. “He didn’t break any bones, Applejack.” Twilight’s horn stopped glowing and I noticed a tingling sensation leaving my body. “I’ve got to go sort things out with Dash and Soarin. Dash may want to drop out, and Soarin needs to be disqualified.”

“Shouldn’t Dawn go too? You could just explain his situation and history with Dash to Soarin,” Lyra said.

“I better not be in the same room with him right now. I’m likely to break a few bones.” I rubbed my jaw and sat down at a picnic table in front of Applejack’s house.

Twilight walked around Lyra, who was smiling at me. “You told her about your situation? We’re not supposed to risk panicking ponies.”

“Not ta mention how Soarin might react if he figures out he was dating you,” Applejack added.

As the three of them continued to chat, I felt a sense of annoyance building up. I needed some time alone to cool down and relax. Already the tips of my wings were twitching and I felt the urge to fly. The sky made me feel safe, and here on the ground I was being crowded by concerned ponies.

“I’ll visit Dash and see if I can get her and Soarin to come back down. We’ll—”

“Wait,” I said. “Look this silly contest isn’t worth all this fuss. I need some time to cool off, anyway.”

“Soarin just doesn’t realize what you’re going through, Dawn. I’ll tell him you’re already in a relationship with Lyra,” Twilight sat down across from me at the picnic table and began pouring some water that Applejack had fetched into glasses.

Lyra grabbed my hoof and I turned to face her.. “Yeah, but if you want to kick his flank later, I’ll hold him down.” She smiled and winked.

“Lyra!” Twilight sighed. “You shouldn’t joke like that.”

“And Soarin doesn’t deserve an amazing pony like Dash, not with that attitude. She deserves so much more.” I sighed, letting go of Lyra’s hoof. “Why can’t anything ever be simple?”

My heart was still pounding from all the adrenaline, so I stood up and took a few steps away. Twilight was the first who noticed. “Dawn, you could have a concussion you should take it easy.”

“Hah, everything seems to give concussions around here. I’ll be fine, I just need some fresh air. I’ll be back for the rest of the contest, maybe.”

I took off into the open skies, flying high above Ponyville towards the center of town. The adrenaline and anxiety seemed to melt away as I enjoyed the fresh air. The wind cut through my feathers and cooled me down, drying off the sweat.

Before long I found myself at home taking off my flight suit. I grabbed some bits and resolved to go do something, not yet knowing what I’d do with my day off.

I resumed my flight around town. There was a train coming into Ponyville and I decided to go see where it was headed. A part of me felt bad for avoiding the whole mess back at the competition, but sometimes I needed to distance myself from a bad situation.

A large schedule was posted beside the train, and I walked up to the ticket counter. “This train is to Canterlot right? I’d like one ticket.”

The tan Earth pony looked up at me, blissfully unaware their could be anything wrong in the world. From her vantage point, we were all just ponies looking to ride a train. “Round trip to Canterlot is twelve bits.”

I reached in my bags and scooped out the twelve bits and took my train ticket in my mouth. A conductor greeted me as I got on the train, taking the ticket and stamping it, and leaving me to find a seat.

The third car was still empty so I walked into it. Before I sat down, I made use of the train’s lavatory. This time I was able to do so without creating a huge mess.

When I finished taking my seat, I saw a unicorn had taken a seat in the same train car. I sat down just as the train started moving.

As the train left town, I could see a speck of cloud in the distance that was Dash’s house. A part of me still wanted to go over and check on her. Deep down I knew she’d be fine, but just knowing she was stuck there with Soarin made it worse. I couldn’t see what she saw in him. When I had been in Dash’s body, he’d been a perfect gentleman. It was amazing how big a difference perspective made. As soon as I became a potential rival for Dash’s affection, he’d done a complete one-eighty with his attitude. With any luck, they’d break up and Dash would find someone better.

I watched the clouds vanish behind the trees as the train sped through a forest towards Canterlot mountain. There was no longer anything to stare at while thinking—it was all a blur at this speed—so I turned my attention back to the sole occupant of the car.

She was a white unicorn with a strawberry for a cutie mark. As one of the best fruits ever created, I could only imagine how awesome it must have been to get a strawberry cutie mark. Her mane and tail were blonde, blue, and violet. It was so unusual to see a pony with more than two natural colors, though many did dye in a third or fourth color to their hair. As a unicorn, she probably had a spell for that.

“Hi,” she said.

I blinked a few times, realizing she was talking to me. “Oh, hi.”

“You’ve been staring at me for a while now.”

“Sorry.” I turned my attention back out the window to the sea of green trees rushing past the train.

More time passed as I lost focus. We had moved into an open plain, and started a climb up towards Canterlot. A large tunnel blocked out the sun as the train entered it, leaving me without any distractions again.

Looking back at the unicorn, I noticed she was staring at me now. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind. I’m Holly,” she said.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Dawn, nice to meet you. I just needed some time alone.”

“Mare problems?”

“How’d you guess? Is it the fact everypony seems to be a mare?” I rolled my eyes, slouching back against the seat cushions.

“Well it’s pretty obvious you’re running from something, I figure an angry marefriend would do it.”

“Close, but more like a jealous stallion with a mean right hook.”

The train shot out of the tunnel, and I was blinded for a moment as my eyes adjusted back to the bright sunlight. We passed through the wall around Canterlot and the train slowed as it pulled into the station.

“Well, just remember this mare you two are bickering over is a pony too. While you’re off fuming, she probably needs a friend to talk to.”

I sighed. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” Even the company of one stranger was enough to send me on a guilt trip, but I felt I deserved a day away from any obligations.

Once the train stopped, I exited and flew across the town. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, so I picked out a park in the distance and glided towards it. The parks in Canterlot were much larger than the ones in Ponyville. They also had more statues, fountains, and other expensive decorations.

The scents of bakeries were slowly replaced by the smell of pine and flowers. The park was vacant, perfect for my afternoon stroll. The cobblestone path wound its way through neatly trimmed bushes. Park benches were few and far between, and unlike in Ponyville, there were no signs instructing fillies not to eat the decorative flowers.

As I walked the lonely path, I came across the statue of a rather large unicorn. His features were sharp and chiseled, and the stone had a dark shine like obsidian. Light seemed to get absorbed by his black features, except the eyes which almost looked like rubies. Even his horn had a vicious looking curve to it.

The pedestal had a small plaque, naming the statue as “King Sombra”, ruler of the Crystal Empire almost a thousand years ago.

There were two paths to choose from so I went to the right, crossing by a statue I was able to recognize more quickly. Changelings had a characteristic chitin with holes in it to improve flexibility of the otherwise rigid external skeleton. I was told that the chitin could withstand swords and other weapons, though they did much less against magic.

This one was titled “Queen Chrysalis.” It was a bit odd to me that a garden would feature villains of Equestria. According to the plaque, this one nearly conquered all of Equestria during a single royal wedding.

Around the next set of shrubbery I saw a statue that made me freeze. It was a statue depicting Discord, the one responsible for destroying my life. It was only through the action of the ponies that I’d been saved and given a second chance.

His plaque had more information on it than the others. According to this, he had been turned to stone by Celestia and Luna, using the Elements of Harmony, for a thousand years. He had escaped and turned back to stone twice, the second time occurring when I tried to sacrifice myself to empower the Element of Loyalty.

I flew up and landed on his arm, looking at his face. If they’d put him back into stone again, he might be able to see or hear the things going on around him. I wasn’t sure which was worse: being turned to a statue and trapped in your mind, unable to see, or being able to see and hear everything around you only to have nopony ever visit.

“You in there?” I tapped a hoof against his skull, and was rewarded with a dull thud. From my vantage point perched on his arm, I could see several bird droppings down his backside. “Wow, looks like you’re fucked. I don’t think they’re letting you out ever again.”

I tried to look in his mouth, which was open as if he were screaming in pain. The shift in my weight caused the arm to snap. I grabbed his neck to stop from falling, unbalancing the statue. A moment later I was falling backward, using my wings to glide out from under the statue at the last second.

Discord’s statue shattered to pieces. My eyes went wide in panic and I quickly scrambled to my hooves, only to back away in fear. Breaking the statue might have set him free, but after a minute spent in panic, nothing had happened.

His head was the closest chunk of rock to me, so I walked up and kicked it. Apparently shattering him to a hundred pieces hadn’t freed him, though I’d have to admit to someone what I had done. It looked like this was just an ordinary statue, but on the off-chance it was the real Discord, I didn’t want somepony to find the pieces and put him back together, somehow freeing him.

Or I could just leave. Nopony saw what I did. This was an empty park, after all, and nopony knows I went to Canterlot. For all I knew, I’d broken a priceless piece of art and I didn’t exactly have a job yet.

“Hello, Dawn.”

I spun around so fast that I lost my footing, startled by the voice that sounded mere feet away. When I landed on my rump, I looked up to see Celestia’s mane flapping in the breeze. She was smiling and looking at me like a parent might look at a naughty child.

“Hey, Celestia. I, uh, found it like this?” I blushed, looking away from her. This was stupid. “Actually, I broke it and for a second there I thought Discord was going to pop out and take over Equestria again.”

Celestia began to levitate the pieces back onto the pedestal, her magic fusing them back together. “There’s no need to worry. This is a temporary carving until my sculptor finishes a more permanent one.”

I stood up, brushing the dirt off my sides. “Oh, then where’s the real Discord statue?”

“Somewhere safe.” She put the final piece on the statue and fused it into place.

“The plaque says you’ve turned him to stone three times. Why not just turn him back to flesh and find out how he pulled me here from Earth? You probably could have learned lots from him, even sent me back.”

Celestia walked to a nearby bench and sat down. She gestured to the bench across the path from her, and I hurried over to sit down. “Are you not enjoying your life here, Dawn?”

“It’s not that, I just often wonder what I could have done different to get back to Earth, or if I missed some opportunity… and knowing Discord is still out there, with the power to apparently send me back or assume his own body on Earth… I can’t really get closure.”

“Well, Discord won’t be able to cast magic or do anything else of the sort ever again. Hopefully that gives you a little closure. Aside from that, tell me about the bruise on the side of your head.”

I waved a hoof, dismissing her concern. “It’s nothing. Soarin overreacted when I tripped and fell on Dash during the Iron Pony. So, what’d you do to Discord then? Lock his statue in a prison in a dark, distant dungeon? Did you ever figure out what he was doing messing around on Earth in the first place?”

Celestia lit up her horn, lowering the sun a bit. Apparently it was near sunset, and she had angled the sun just right to cast a vibrant orange glow across the garden. “I’ve made sure he’ll never threaten Equestria or my ponies again.”

There was something in the way she said it that stuck out to me. “You executed him?”

She frowned slightly before straightening out her lips. “I banished him.”

“To the moon?” I asked skeptically.

“The sun.” Celestia moved a lock of hair out of her way so she could see me with both eyes. “And I must insist you not tell anypony this. You are one of the few who would understand the need for the death penalty.”

I chuckled, a bit worried at her tone of voice. “The ruler of a nation is secretly executing threats to national security? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m taking that secret to the grave. Now, if you’ll excuse me I, uh… left my oven on.”

Celestia stood up as I did, looking down at me. “Very well. I hope you heed the lessons well of the statues in this garden. They were the lucky ones.”

To be polite I offered her a smile and slight bow, before walking around the corner of the nearby bushes. I picked up my pace significantly, eager to get out of this park. Just imagining that each statue represented some criminal or villain that threatened Equestria was disturbing. To imagine some of them had been exiled to a flaming ball of nuclear fusion in outer space was downright horrifying.

Just as I was about to take off I ran into somepony, and fell back to the ground. This time they seemed to be the one who was startled. “Dawn? What are you doing here?”

I looked up to find Luna staring back down at me. Unlike Celestia, she was closer to my size so I didn’t have to bend my neck back as far to look at her eyes. “Luna, nice to run into you.”

“How are you doing?”

“Aside from stumbling into the Equestrian penitentiary to find it full of flowers and rose bushes, and there being a toasty one million kelvin oven at the end of the green mile? Good.”

Luna chuckled, turning and gesturing for me to walk with her. “You have no idea how refreshing your lack of subtly is. Before I was banished to the moon, ponies knew exactly what would happen if they threatened the state. Now ‘Tia hides the worst of it from them with stories of turning villains to stone and banishing criminals to far away lands. I do miss the look of fear in a criminal’s eyes before we passed judgement...”

I tilted my head to look up at her as we walked. “I’m gonna ignore that last part, because it’s creepy as hell. As for hiding all this from the public, you’re okay with that? I mean, if you’re for capital punishment then by all means do it, but hiding it from the public?”

“Would telling them really be better? To know that Discord was summarily executed without trial? He had acquired dangerous artifacts from many different realities using the mirror. Half of them could have wiped out Equestria if he weren’t so obsessed with showmanship and random chance.”

“Wait, back up. What mirror?” I asked.

Luna seemed to be chewing on her lip for a minute. “Hmm, oh it’s nothing. Just one of many artifacts he possessed.”

“That let him travel to other realities, like Earth?! Why wouldn’t you two have told me that the instant I came back?”

“Dawn, please calm down. Even if we knew where Discord’s lair was, it’d most certainly be booby-trapped. Given the amount of dangerous things he could have acquired, we would gladly have found and destroyed it if we could. The mirror… is an ancient relic that has caused nothing but suffering when used. Celestia has lost pupils, evil beings have entered Equestria through it—if it still exists at all, don’t go looking for it.”

I huffed and shook my head. It would have been better to leave here thinking Discord was dead and that there was no way back to Earth. Now that I knew there's a possibility to get home, it gave my mind the liberty to concoct wild scenarios where I could go back. Even though I know it’s not feasible, I would probably lose more sleep worrying about that damn mirror.

“Look, I won’t treat you like you are naive. What we choose to tell and not tell our subjects is carefully weighed. I am more than happy to talk about it or visit you in your dreams, should you need my help.” She stopped walking as we had reached the edge of the park. “You should get back to Ponyville. I have a feeling you’ll be needed there after what happened with Soarin.”

“Thanks. So you heard about the Iron Pony contest? That’s a record for gossip on a planet with no telephones. For now, I guess I’ve got to find the next train back to Ponyville.”

She laughed loudly, her mane starting to hover as if there was a wind blowing. That’s when I noticed her horn glowing. “Oh, I should have been clearer. I’m more than happy to send you to Ponyville.”

I nodded, not really knowing what to expect. Her magic wrapped around me, numbing my body until I seemed to have lost all feeling and sense of time. A gentle but firm pressure pushed me, and the images of Canterlot dissolved into images of the road leading into Ponyville.

There was a loud snapping sound and all my senses returned. In an instant, I felt my body snap from Canterlot to Ponyville. I smelled sulfur and tasted blood as I gasped for air. My body stumbled forward a few steps and I shook my head to clear it.

The sun was just beyond the horizon and the moon had risen. It was a full moon tonight and the silver glow gave plenty of light to see by at night. Pegasi might even have improved night vision, I should ask sometime.

That teleport was convenient. Now that I’m back in Ponyville, I wonder what she meant about being needed. I haven’t checked on Dash yet, and by now the competition is over. Maybe I should stop by her house and make sure Soarin isn’t bothering her.

I smiled at the thought of breaking Soarin’s wings and tossing him off the cloud house. It was something I’d never do, but it was no less satisfying to think about.

As I turned to fly to Dash’s house, I bumped into Fluttershy. “Gah, this is getting old.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Dawn. It’s my fault,” she replied.

I shook my head and gave her a quick hug. “No, it’s not you. I seem to literally be running into everypony today. And I assume you caught the part with Soarin at the contest?”

Fluttershy reached up and rubbed the bruise on the side of my head, causing it to sting. “Oh, it looks much better now. Say, have you seen Angel or any other rabbits?”

“No, sure haven’t. Why?” I looked around and saw that her house was in the distance, and the vast fields between where I stood and Fluttershy’s cottage were empty. The birds and other animals that were always present were gone.

“Something scared them off earlier today, I’m thinking a manticore or Timberwolf. However, they haven’t ventured near my house in so long, my friend the bear makes sure of that. Most of the animals are hiding and I think maybe Angel went looking for some that went missing.”

“That makes sense. So you’re headed into town?”

“The Everfree. I have to find out what happened to them.”

I frowned. “You can’t go out there alone, it’s full of predators.”

She smiled and puffed her chest out. “I’ll be fine, the animals won’t hurt me.”

“No, I’ll go with you.”

Fluttershy glanced back at her house one last time. She began to walk towards the forest. “Okay, Dawn, let’s go find my animals.”

I followed her into the forest, slowing down a bit to let her take the lead. From back here, I couldn’t help but admire her curved flanks. Despite her timid nature, she seemed at home in the forest near her house. Fluttershy would still jump when a twig snapped, or be timid when a bush rustled; however she remained confident of her abilities despite her fears.

“You’re inspiring, you know that? Despite your shyness, you’re braving this forest to help your animals,” I stated.

“It’s the least I could do. They need somepony to look after them.” She stopped near a tree and looked around. After a moment I heard an owl and saw Fluttershy approach it and initiate a conversation. Once she was done, she headed back the way we came and turned right. “He said he saw Angel headed this way.”

“You think a bunny would be okay out here?” Beneath my hoove was a thick layer of leaves and bushes. There were also plenty of holes, however most of them seemed to have eyes staring back out at me.

“Yes, normally predators won’t come within a mile or so of town. This small section near my cottage is about as safe as the Everfree can be. Unfortunately, my animal friends can’t be out here all the time to warn me if anything gets too close to Ponyville.”

There was a small clearing, and as we entered it, a large shadow moved out from the bushes. I froze next to Fluttershy, staring at the manticore directly in front of us. A bit of venom and blood dripped from the stinger on its tail, and the mane of hair around his head had a dozen snapped twigs in it.

“Uh, Fluttershy,” I whispered. “This is the reason I didn’t want you to come out here. Now, you run and I’ll distract—”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Fluttershy took a few steps towards the manticore. “You know better than to come near Ponyville.”

The manticore roared at her, causing her hair to flap back as spittle flew out of the manticore’s mouth. I saw his tail twitch, ready to strike, so I jumped into the air and flew straight at him. Before he could strike Fluttershy, I slammed into his face with both forelegs.

There was a sharp pain as the manticore lifted a paw and batted me off of his head. I landed in the dirt and rolled into the bushes. A second later there was an angry manticore standing over me. I grabbed the nearest stick I could find and snapped it in two to make a crude spear.

Before the manticore could kill me, Fluttershy landed in between us. “I was talking to you, mister!” she shouted. “I said, you should know better than come near Ponyville!”

I wanted to get back up and attack him again so she could run, but the manticore began to back away from Fluttershy. My mouth fell open as I stared in amazement.

“You have the entire Everfree forest! Why, I even remember pulling a thorn out of your paw. I help all animals, including you, and you would try to hurt my friends?”

The manticore made some whining noises, like an injured animal. His wings folded up and his tail began to sag to the ground. Fluttershy seemed to listen to him until he was done explaining his side of things.

While she spoke with my attacker, I got up and examined myself for injuries. There was a scratch on my side, but considering the size of his claws, this was nothing. They must have just grazed the skin. My head was still sore from earlier, but I was otherwise uninjured.

That’s when I looked at the bush I had landed in, and found a familiar looking blue flower growing around it. “Fuck.”

Fluttershy looked at me and the manticore made a whimpering sound. “He’s right, Dawn. That language is hardly appropriate.”

I dropped my face down into my hooves. “He just tried to eat me!”

“But he didn’t, and he says he’s sorry. Apparently something in the forest is agitating all the animals. He said he’ll lead me to it in exchange for letting him stay at my cottage tonight. He can’t get near it without getting so angry and hungry that he attacks anything in sight.”

“You’re going to let a manticore in your cottage?!” I glanced between the two of them and rubbed my eyes.

“Yes. Also, Dawn, isn’t that poison joke you’re standing in?”

I nodded and glanced down. “Yeah, I better get to the day spa and get it fixed.”

“They’re closed by now. You can stay at my house and I’ll mix you the antidote in the morning. It has to be applied after the change occurs,” she explained.

“Well, at least I can keep an eye on him, then.” I glared at the manticore. Fluttershy might be his buddy, but I knew carnivores only eat one thing: other animals. All the kindness in the world won’t change his dietary needs.

The manticore raised a paw to his chest and gave me an innocent, wide-eyed look as he started to purr. Fluttershy saw this, and turned back to me. “See? He’s a teddy-bear. Angel, you can come out now!”

I turned to the area she was facing and saw a small burrow under a tree. Angel and a dozen small critters crawled out. They must have been cornered by the manticore moments before we arrived.

Fluttershy went over to check on Angel, returning to the manticore and me when she was sure her pet was okay. “Alright, Dawn. We’ll go back to my house and you can spend the night. In the morning I’ll get you fixed up and ready to compete in day two of the contest.”

“Sure thing. Just promise when your friend here leads you out to find this magical disturbance making all the predators more violent, you’ll bring me and a few dozen members of the guard?”

She chuckled and shook her head. “You worry too much, I’m sure just my friends and I can handle it.”

“Alright, I trust you. Let’s go get some rest then, I don’t want anypony to see me running around as a mare in the middle of the night trying to find the antidote. Assuming it does the same thing to me.”

I followed her back to her cottage, this time keeping the manticore instead of Fluttershy’s backside in sight. At least this time I knew what to expect, and surely nothing would go wrong when I turned into a mare.

Author's Note

I update more than once a month now. Updating more than once a month is cool.

10. Wrench in the Gears

The memories of last night flooded back to me as I woke up underneath a very soft, yellow pegasus.

I had been turned into a female by the poison joke, as expected. It did catch me off guard that a different persona asserted itself this time, known as Heart. I would choose my kindness over my desires anyday when pranked. However, this did pose a problem if I kept ‘accidentally’ encountering poison joke. I would never know which personality asserted itself, or how strongly.

Yet playing with fire seemed worth it as I looked at the softly-expanding chest of Fluttershy. As she snored and rested her head on me she made a soft, almost-purring sound.

[That was the kindest thing you’ve done for her, Dawn.]

Thanks, Heart. I bet Desire is jealous as hell that you're the voice in my head right now. Now, I just need you to assure me I’m not crazy as I cuddle Fluttershy.

[Aww, I’d never let you go crazy, you’re much too sweet.]

I’m beginning to think you’ve got a crush on me, Heart.

[Well, if you, uh, want… next time you’re dreaming we could go on a date.]

Dating my own alter-ego in my dream while transgendered? Yep, I’m definitely sane. Perfectly sane here, nothing to see. Move along now.

Fluttershy yawned and stretched, poking a hoof right into my nose. She then wrapped a foreleg around my neck and pulled herself closer to me. I could feel her breath ruffling the fur on my neck, and her wing twitching against my side.

I don’t have the heart to move and wake her. Want to try and figure out when Fluttershy became so assertive? The way she took the lead last night was just... wow.

[Now you see what Desire and me were talking about? What a perfect little couple you two mares would make!]

Way to ruin the moment. You know I’ve got to go back to being a stallion for Dash… Lyra, for Lyra. So you might as well enjoy me being a mare until she cooks up the antidote.

[Aww, come on! It’ll be fun, and it’d be nice. Just look how lonely she is with nopony in her life.]

You won’t kill me with kindness, and I think being a mare that hears voices is anything but ‘fun’ and ‘normal’.

[Now you’re just being mean. You know you like us.]

I like having emotions, not having conversations with emotions.

[Hmph.]

With a sigh, I yawned and stretched myself out, causing Fluttershy to stir. She rolled over and started to wake up, and I tossed the blanket aside for now. “Good morning, sunshine.”

“D-Dawn? Good morning.” She rolled over on top of me and got comfortable on my side. “I haven’t slept that well in ages.”

“Me either.”

by Jinzahn.

Sunlight came through the window, warming us up. It served as a reminder that time was wasting, and that we had things to do.

“I hate to ask, but I need that poison joke antidote. We can’t just cuddle all day, cute as you may be,” I said.

“Oh, of course.” Fluttershy gave me a peck on the cheek and then stood up. She flew into the kitchen and I could hear her moving around pots and pans, and digging through pantries.

I cleaned up the bed by folding the blanket and stacking the pillows in the corner. The cushion had a damp spot, so I flipped it over. In the corner of the room I saw Angel talking to some of the other critters when he did the damndest thing: Angel smiled at me.

“Flutters, you okay in there? Your bunny is freaking me out.”

“No, no I’m not okay! This is horrible!” Fluttershy continued to dig through her cupboards.

I went in to check on her. “Calm down, what’s wrong?”

“I’m missing the swiftthistle! I can’t make the poison joke antidote without it. Oh, I’m so sorry. I should never have asked you to stay the night…”

“It’s okay, really. The spa was closed and I rather enjoyed spending the night here. We’ll just head to the spa and get everything fixed.”

Fluttershy flew out of the pantry and landed in front of me. “You’re not embarrassed to be seen as a mare?”

“No, I’m not. It’s just that last time this happened, I was hornier than a three-headed rhino. I was afraid of what might happen if I was left alone at my house when the poison joke kicked in.”

“At least nothing bad happened. I guess we should get going, then. The spa opens in fifteen minutes and we can get there before anypony else. Then we can go watch the iron pony.”

“Why not.” I smiled and walked towards the front door. As I passed a mirror I checked to make sure I was presentable and clean. Aside from a little bed head, which I was able to mostly fix with my hooves, I looked fine.

“Feeding time, critters.” I heard a bowl filling up with bits of food and watched Fluttershy work her way towards the door. When she finally got there she turned to me. “Come on, let’s go before the feeding frenzy starts.”

I walked out the door and heard her shut it behind me. The sky was clear today and I looked to my side as I heard something rustling in a bush. A family of squirrels ran out and darted between my legs. They entered the house through a small burrow near the front door.

My gaze wandered to the manticore, who was napping on some hay near a small shed. I had nearly forgotten that he was staying with Fluttershy for a few days. Hopefully he didn’t eat any of the critters while we were gone.

“Come on, Dawn. We can fly over there so we can get the first appointment.”

“Sure thing.” I was able to dart into the air with less effort than normal. While part of it was being female with a more aerodynamic form, I attributed most of it to the fun we had preening last night.

I was looking at the roses planted along both sides of the road—they were in bloom at this time of the year—when Fluttershy spoke to me “So, how was your trip?”

“Huh?”

“You ran off yesterday.”

I looked off towards Canterlot castle, barely visible in the distance. “It was… informative. I had time to cool down and that’s all I really needed.”

“I’m glad you feel better. We were all a little worried yesterday. After Dash and Soarin had calmed down, he apologized for punching you.”

I glanced down at the small creek marking the border of town. On the bridge was a pony fishing, though from here I couldn’t see any fish in the river. “Well, I’d rather talk about something other than him.”

[Don’t be so cruel, he apologized for it. I bet he’s really sorry.]

This isn’t a time for kindness, it’s a time for kicking his ass.

[How… how could you be so mean?!]

“Oh, well at least you’re back and feeling better,” Fluttershy said.

“Dawn!” I tilted my head to figure out the direction the voice was coming from. It sounded like Dash in the distance. A second later she swooped in next to us.

“Hey, Dawn! Wait—why were you eating poison joke again?” Dash crossed her forelegs. “I was worried you ran away or something stupid and you were just rolling in the flowers?”

“Hi, Dash, and no. I wasn’t rolling in flowers, I took a day to clear my head. Then I saved Fluttershy from a manticore and crashed at her place.”

Dash groaned. “You can’t just run away from your problems. I thought for sure you were gonna come check on me, and then you spend the night at Fluttershy’s house? Wait.” She swooped under me and came up in front of me, pushing me back. “You stayed at Fluttershy’s house? Why not your own?”

I raised an eyebrow and swallowed. “No reason, hers was closer and she had the poison joke antidote.”

“Oh yeah? Then why are you still a mare?”

Glancing to my side I hoped Fluttershy would help me out here. Instead she just shrank back slightly. I faced Dash. “She was out. We’re headed to the spa now.”

Dash looked at both of us, then flew between me and Fluttershy. I watched her nose scrunch up. “Oh yeah? I saw you two leave her house this morning, I was just giving you a chance to come clean! Hell, I can smell it on you. You didn’t even have the decency to shower!”

By NadnerbD

Anger started to rise up inside me. “It’s none of your business anyway! Shouldn’t you be off with Soarin?”

[Whoa, calm down, Dawn.]

“Hah! I almost broke up with him, because I thought maybe you were right about him. Then it turns out you’re sleeping around! I bet you never even really liked me or Fluttershy. Even without a dick, we’re all just sexual conquests for you.”

“Please,” Fluttershy whispered. “This is getting out of hoof…”

“Conquests?! After all I did for you! Soarin’s acting like a lunatic and I’m the one out to get laid. No! I think you’re just too used to him bending you over a bed to see straight.”

“I can see fine! I told you not to make moves on Fluttershy, but instead you run off and fuck her!”

[This isn’t getting us anywhere, Dawn.]

“At least Fluttershy is my friend! You’ve got a horrible attitude! All you care about is Soarin’s cock, even when he nearly knocks my head off! It’s always ‘Soarin this’ or ‘Soarin that’ or you gloating about your—”

Dash cut me off mid-rant by tackling me to the ground. I had just enough time to tense up my stomach and avoid getting the wind knocked out of me. “You no good—”

“Stop!” Fluttershy screamed. We both looked over at her. “That is enough! Both of you, apologize!”

I glared up at Dash, and she snarled. Neither of us wanted to apologize, and after a moment Dash just spit on the ground next to me and flew off. Once she was gone, I rolled over and stood up, dusting myself off.

“Did you see how crazy she was acting? She was—”

“No!” Fluttershy looked me straight in the eye, and I noticed she had been crying this whole time. The fur on her cheeks was damp where a few paths of tears had dripped down. We had been too busy fighting to notice her. “You were both being horrible friends.”

“Flutters, I’m sorry…” I tried to hug her, but she stepped away from me.

“You need to leave, Dawn. Go to the spa on your own.”

“You don’t mean that, I said I’m sorry.” I frowned and took another step towards her, yet she kept her distance.

[She needs a friend, you can’t leave her.]

I know that, now stick a sock in it!

“Go. I want to be alone.”

As she stared at me I couldn’t help but agree. It was probably best for us to all have some space right now, so I turned and flew off without another word.

My flight took me above town as I looked for the spa. I’d been there once, though I couldn’t remember exactly where it was.

[You need to go back, to apologize to both of them.]

Great, now you’re my conscience. Can’t you go find one of my other personalities and switch places?

[No, I’m not leaving until you apologize.]

Screw you, I’m not in the mood for guilt trips. Where’s Iris when I need somepony who would understand my desire to kick flank?

[Somepony called?]

There was a change in the tone of voice I was hearing in my head. It sounded like the stunt-pony persona I had met in my dream.

Iris?

[The one and only! I heard you were looking for somepony to help kick flank and chew bubble gum?]

And you’re all out of gum, fine, whatever. How’d you trade places with Heart?

[I dunno, you gonna cry about it or are we gonna go kick Soarin’s flank in front of everypony?]

I smirked. Finally I had found a personality I could agree with.

Damn straight, but I’m not gonna attack him unprovoked.

[Attack? I meant the obstacle course! Today’s the Pegasus race, and you’re totally a mare! I told you we’re more awesome at flying, and now we’re gonna embarrass Soarin by winning the gold!]

I laughed loudly, turning around and flying towards Sweet Apple Acres. The antidote to the poison joke could wait. Down below I could see groups of ponies heading towards the farm to watch the competition. It was interesting to know that none of them would recognize me, save for my blank flank. Soarin probably wouldn’t even realize it was me who had beat him in the race until I told him it was.

My flight to the farm was short, and I landed near the staging area for the Pegasus race. Above us the weather team had put together a much wider, larger obstacle course than the one Dash and I had practiced on.

After I was given my number, I saw Twilight and Applejack talking. They began to walk over to me as soon as they realized I was there.

“Dawn, are you all right? We weren’t sure if you’d dropped out of the race.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I snapped.

“We, uh… well, Soarin apologized so we let him back in the race,” Applejack said.

“Good. I look forward to beating him.”

“We’re just waiting for Dash, have you seen her?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, she can’t make it.”

Applejack frowned. “Well, we can’t wait forever anyways. I’ll go see if Ah can find her while you run the events, Twilight. Ah don’t want her sayin’ Ah only won the contest ‘cuz she skipped an event.”

We watched Applejack walk away for a moment before Twilight turned back to me. “Are you sure you’re okay, Dawn? I asked Applejack not to say anything but… you realize you showed up as a mare, right?”

“Yeah, so my sex organs are on the inside now. What’s the big deal?”

“Well, while there’s technically no rule against changing your gender to score better in an event I can’t say it’s… ‘normal’ of a pony.” Twilight was looking at me intently, examining my body as if it were an interesting book. “Plus, something seems a little off. Poison joke is usually, well, a joke, and you don’t seem too upset about it. Has it had any side effects?”

I was starting to get annoyed, as I’d come to embarass Soarin not chat about my tendency to switch genders. “Yeah, I hear voices in my head when I switch, alternate personalities emerge and I get overly frisky. You should know after invading my dreams to ‘study’ the Dewey Decimal System.”

“What?! I…” Twilight backed up a few steps, blushing. “How did you know that was me dreamwalking?”

I laughed. “You just told me.”

“I… I…” Twilight continued to open and close her mouth like a fish: an adorable, confused, suffocating fish.

“Can we start the event?”

She nodded.

“Good.” I walked over to the starting line and took a spot next to Soarin.

He was here in his Wonderbolts outfit, and took a good look at me. Soarin whistled. “Hey, you new here? If I’d seen a mare that hot in town before I’d remember.”

“Yeah, I’m a substitution for a sick pony,” I said. I looked back at him and smiled, figuring out a new way to mess with him. “Maybe you could show me around later?”

“Sure, I’m a bit busy with Wonderbolt practice but I could spare an hour or two tonight. I’ll show you around town and where the best places to eat are.”

I batted my eyelashes and raised my tail a bit. I caught his eyes darting back towards my flank. “I’d love to have a big, strong stallion all to myself for an evening.”

“Then it’s a date.”

Hook, line, and sinker. Man I’m gonna enjoy watching this bastard squirm.

[Good. Use your aggressive feelings, Dawn. Let the hate flow through you.]

Yeah! Wait, how’d you know that quote?

[You had this kick-ass Star Wars dream a few days ago. It was so cool!]

Whatever, you ready to help me do this? I’m gonna need some advice from you to win the race.

[Sure thing, I’ll give you a running commentary on which moves to pull!]

For a moment I paused and considered I was talking to myself about the need to tell myself how to fly. Then I looked at Soarin, and embraced my insanity.

Oh yeah, we’re so gonna kick his ass.

“On your marks!” Pinkie Pie shouted, high above us in a hot air balloon. “Get set!”

I dug my hooves into the ground, surrounded by a dozen pegasi participating in the race.

“Go!”

My muscles uncoiled, launching me into the air as I beat my wings. Soarin was a full pony-length ahead of me, and a pony to his right was even with me. The other nine ponies were all behind me. This race had gotten off to a good start.

The first obstacle was flying straight up, a tiring stage of the course. It was designed to test stamina and control as you fought gravity and your own body weight. Luckily, I felt a good twenty pounds lighter and was gaining on the two ponies ahead of me.

After that we banked left and dove towards the ground, flying above and under several clouds. It did seem easier to fly as a mare, and my mind began to wander.

[Bank right, ten yards!]

Iris’ command snapped me out of my daydream and I banked right, narrowly missing a wall of clouds that marked the end of the downward slalom. I had lost some ground on Soarin and grinded my teeth together.

With all my focus, I zig-zagged between the vertical slalom clouds to gain on him. He was fast, but I was also angry and the only cure was to see the look on his face when I beat him. I began to flap my wings even harder.

[Pull back a bit, legs in, roll side to side and don’t force it!]

I did as instructed and sailed past the obstacles a little more quickly. Up ahead I could see Soarin throwing his body weight back and forth, working against his own momentum. It was the only way the stallion could zig-zag this quickly. I, on the other hoof, was able to use agility instead of brute strength.

His tail was close enough I could have bit it by the time we left that obstacle. We began a free-form segment, flying through rings made of cloud. This allowed me to get neck and neck with him, and I was rewarded with a look of shock from him. Soarin clearly wasn’t used to anypony being able to match his speed.

As we exited the course we came to a straightaway, and began the sprint to the finish.

[Now, this is when you go all out! Legs back, head down, full speed!]

I used the ground as a guide as I lowered my head and neck so my entire body was in a straight line. I couldn’t see as much in front of me, but the wind seemed to slip over my body more easily.

The air broke over my two front hooves, flowed freely to my wings, and then whipped my tail behind me. The finish line was fast approaching and I realized I’d never flown this fast before. It was exhilarating.

The finish line burst into mist as we passed, and I heard ponies cheering below. I hoped they had some sort of photograph to tell who had won, because I’d been so focused on the race I didn’t even look to see if I was passing Soarin.

I landed on the ground and began my cool down stretches. Soarin landed next to me several seconds later.

“Whoa, where’d you learn to fly like that? You’re almost as fast as my ma… Wonderbolts captain.”

With a huge smile on my face I turned to face him. “Oh, really? Did you see my number?”

Soarin cocked his head back, eyes wide. “Number?” He gave a confused look at the forty-two on my flank. “Uh, hmm, I feel like I’ve seen that one before…”

With a deep laugh I pulled the number off, revealing my blank flank. To my knowledge, I was the only blank flank anypony had ever seen at this age. “It’s me, Dawn.”

“What?!” He yelled, looking at me in disbelief. “How’d you—that’s cheating!”

“Cheating? Like you were gonna do on Dash? Well how about this. You’ve wanted to know where I came from, what if I told you this isn’t the first time you got fucked by me?”

Soarin swallowed and looked around. I wasn’t sure if he was going to punch me or run away. “What do you mean? Are you a changeling?”

“Worse. I’m a human.” I advanced towards him, enjoying his fear. All my frustrations melted away as I watched him tremble. “Discord brought me here and put me in Dash’s body. Oh, it was fun for a while, and I especially enjoyed the way you ravaged me in that maid’s outfit.” I slowly turned around and batted my tail out of the way. “Look familiar?”

Soarin blinked, a dumbfounded look on his face.

“Dawn!” Twilight shouted.

I looked over and saw her galloping towards me. Her horn lit up, and I felt the familiar sensation of being teleported. Once my insides were done being squeezed through the eye of a needle, I rematerialized in the day spa.

Lotus looked at Twilight and me. Her mouth hung open and both eyes were wide in shock. The gust of air from the teleport scattered the papers from her desk. “Uh… Twilight?”

“Poison joke antidote. Spa. Now.” Twilight ordered in a serious tone of voice.

I smiled at her. “Heh, I was going to chan—”

Twilight yanked my ear with her magic, dragging me forward. “Unbelieveable! Us Princesses ask you to do one simple thing, to not incite a panic, and what do you do?”

I stumbled forward, yelping as we neared the spa. Lotus and Aloe were already pouring the antidote ingredients in it and pretending not to be watching this altercation. “I uh—”

“You use it as a weapon to embarrass Soarin! At a competition with hundreds of ponies watching! I don’t know how on Equestria we’re going to keep you secret now!”

I opened my mouth to apologize. Unfortunately, Twilight chose that exact moment to lift me with her magic and dump me in the spa. I thrashed around underwater for a few seconds, panicked, until I realized her magic had let me go.

When I surfaced for air and took a breath, I saw two blue forelegs in front of me. My body had been turned back to normal, and I was a stallion again. This left me with only one problem to face: the angry alicorn fuming next to me.

She seemed angry enough that she might burst into flames at any moment. “Look, Twilight, I—”

“I’m very disappointed in you, Dawn! I couldn’t believe what Applejack told me. Do you know what she said?”

I felt my ears fold down, and sank down into the water. “No,” I whispered, “but I could take a guess.”

“Fluttershy and Dash both in tears! And now Dash’s special somepony doing Celestia-knows what after you revealed the existence of aliens to everypony!” She let out a groan that was loud enough to echo throughout the spa.

“I’m sorry…” I lowered my eyes to look at the water. After my colossal screw-up I was in no hurry for me to leave the relative safety of the spa. “I had a bad day and things got out of hoof…”

Twilight took a few deep breaths, extending one foreleg in front of herself. “Okay. I’m going to figure out how to solve all these arguments, and fix all these friendships.” She seemed to be speaking to herself as she stared at the far wall. Twilight definitely wasn’t talking to me, and the spa ponies had wisely left the room. “I’ll get Spike, we’ll plan this out. I’m prepared. I can do this…”

“Um, Twilight?”

She turned to face me. “Oh, and as for you!” I gulped and held my breath. “I want you to stay in your house until I come by, and you better be ready to apologize! Understood?!”

I nodded my head yes.

“Good!”

Her horn lit up and I was teleported once again. As my eyes opened back up I found myself in my living room. A second later, there was a large splashing noise as the entirety of the water from the spa fell to the floor.

I landed on my damp couch as water soaked into the furniture and carpeting. There was a loud meow as a very agitated, wet cat jumped onto the mantle of my fireplace.

“Great, Bagheera, I just got put on timeout by a princess.”

11. Face Your Fears

I had a lot to think about and no real place to start. Since Twilight hadn’t come back yet and the sun had set, I decided to get some sleep. Odds were she was doing damage control, or just trying to find some of the ponies I had upset. In the meantime, I could reach out to Luna for some advice. Normally I had to go looking for her in my dreams, though I had a feeling she would come to me this time.

Once I laid down on my bed I began to feel the gentle breeze coming through the windows in my room. It was a quiet night out and I could see a crescent moon in the distance, just above the horizon. My cat had curled up near my hind hooves and meowed angrily as I rolled over to go to sleep. He had the ability to fall asleep anywhere in a matter of seconds, and must have thought I could do the same.

As I tried to fall asleep I was forced to relive the memories of the day over and over. Thinking of what I could have said differently, or getting angry over each small detail. Nopony seemed to see things from my side of the picture.

I hardly noticed I had fallen asleep when Luna showed up. We were still in my bedroom, though my cat was gone along with the breeze. She had conjured up a chair to sit in near the bed, and waved her hoof towards an empty chair across from hers.

“Hi, Luna. So I guess you’ve heard or do you need the short version?” I got out of the bed and walked to the chair, noticing that in my dream my hooves made no sound on the hardwood floor.

“Indeed, though only bits and pieces from the perspective of other ponies having restless nights. You’d be surprised how much of what goes on in our days is replayed in our dreams to commit to memory.”

After sitting down in the chair, I turned side-ways to use it as a bed, propping my head and hind hooves up. “Yeah, you’re the NSA’s dream. Instant access to everypony, everywhere.”

“NSA?” Luna chuckled, shaking her head. “I had not expected your human traits to get you into trouble so quickly.”

I nodded, then stopped. “Wait, so quickly? So you figured I’d screw everything up and kept it to yourself?”

“Well, for your many admirable qualities you have just as many that are more likely to get you into trouble. Rash decision making, grudges, and a rather deep-rooted need for individuality and privacy.”

My wings stretched out as I got comfortable. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. My individuality and privacy are all I have. If I let go of that, who am I?”

Luna’s horn began to glow and the air rippled above us, beginning to play images. This one was of Applejack harvesting apples. She looked like hell, with thick-grey bags under her eyes. They were bloodshot and she seemed to stop every few steps to fall asleep. “Some ponies feel the need to shoulder burdens all by themselves, but it is not our nature.”

The image rippled and was replaced by the sight of Dash, Twilight, and Applejack’s other friends helping with the harvest. From the looks of it, they were getting a week’s worth of harvesting done in short order. “Our strength comes from our friendships, from helping one another. It does not make Applejack any less of an individual, Dawn.”

I nodded, flapping a wing to blow a gust of air at the image, causing it to vanish. “Yeah, well this isn’t so simple as picking apples.”

Luna frowned. “You can not expect others to help you if you do not be honest with them and ask for help. Would admitting your difficulty with impulse control under the effects of poison joke be so embarrassing as to outweigh the benefit of Twilight helping you fix the problem?”

“I suppose you’ve made your point, but I’m not sure confessing is going to win many of them back. What about Soarin, and shouting out how I was an alien in front of a crowd?”

“Of all the strange things they’ve witnessed in Ponyville, most thought little of your outburst. Alien conspiracies, the roar of the crowd, the fight with Soarin… luckily Twilight was able to explain you were ill under the effects of poison joke and most ponies understood.”

I laughed, causing Luna to tilt her head. “So I’m not trusting enough, and everypony else is too trusting.”

“We don’t have much time left. I’ve given you my advice. Trust them to understand and face your fears...”

Before I could reply, the dream began to fade to darkness around me. The weight of my blanket was the first feeling to return, followed by the warmth of the sun against my body. I stretched my legs and rolled over, kicking the sheets off in the process. It seemed like I had only just gone to sleep, and yet it was morning. With my luck, Twilight would show up before I’d had a chance to brush my teeth let alone grab something to eat. I went straight to the bathroom to brush my teeth in case she did drop by first thing in the morning.

Once I got downstairs I found a bagel in my kitchen to eat and then heard a knock on the front door. I felt a bit of dread, having to come clean in front of everypony about the poison joke, my feelings, and apologizing to them. Part of me wanted to blame it all on them and argue, but I knew that wouldn’t do much more than further alienate them and piss them off.

Sighing, I opened the door and smiled. “Good morning, Twilight.”

She nodded, and walked inside. Twilight had brought over all her friends, as well as Lyra, to clear the air. The princess had frayed hair and it looked like she hadn’t gotten much sleep. “Morning, Dawn.”

As the rest walked in I noticed Dash wasn’t looking too well either. Soarin was visibly absent, so at least I had that one small mercy. Applejack seemed to keep her eyes on me, like some kind of living guilt trip and lie detector.

Once they all came in and started sitting down in my living room, I closed the door and headed towards a bean bag chair in the corner. It was the only piece of furniture not yet occupied. So far my discomfort was somewhere between intervention and telling your parents you had sex with your second-cousin. It got worse as I didn’t really want to start the conversation.

“Is there something you have to say to us?” Twilight looked at me with slightly blood-shot eyes, not unlike a disappointed mother.

When it was apparent I couldn’t really put it off any longer, I took a deep breath and began. “I’m sorry for yesterday, there’s some stuff I need to tell you. Since I got here I’ve been having some trouble adjusting. Then I stumbled into the poison joke for the first time and started hearing the voices from my dreams. There were voices for all these different, um… personalities in my head. And then the second time, the voice seemed louder and I couldn’t really argue with it’s logic and just kind of went along with it. Oh, and they made me really horny until—”

Dash huffed, and began to walk towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Twilight asked.

“You wanted me to give him a chance to apologize and I did. I have to get back to weather duty.” Dash opened the door and began to walk out.

“Dash, don’t do this,” I said. I stood up and was about to go stop her, but Twilight just shook her head. The door closed behind her as the mare I’d probably hurt the most walked right out on me.

“So the poison joke is makin’ you hear voices? And you’re hearin’ em in your dreams too?” Applejack said. “Ah don’t like the sound of that. What’d Doctor Stable say?”

“I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone but Luna.” I offered her a small shrug of my shoulders. “It just didn’t seem like their business, I’m trying to figure out some stuff right now about whether I am better off as a stallion or mare, whether I could ever go back to be human,... or if some of my friends are something… more.”

“I knew he’d be happy as a mare!” Pinkie giggled, then looked at Rarity who was levitating a few bits over to Pinkie.

It appeared as if they had made a bet over which gender I would have wanted, and I didn’t really want to dignify it with a response. “I haven’t decided anything yet. I’ve just had a lot on my mind.”

Twilight nodded and came over to me. “So, you’ve been hearing voices and they seem developed enough to be personalities?”

“Yeah, you know something I don’t, like you botched my ponification?”

“No, but we have never done something like that before. The process could have given some of your conflicting thoughts and emotions their own personalities, or they could be fragments of memories somehow passed through the DNA samples we used to make your body… it’s hard to say. What I do know is, we should see Zecora about a poison joke vaccine or some way to help you avoid these effects. And visiting a therapist couldn’t hurt either.”

“Yeah, that all sounds super fun, but I think I’d rather just have some time alone.”

“We’re not going to leave you all alone when you’re obviously having some major issues to work through. You need our help.” Twilight looked to her friends who all nodded in agreement.

“Why don’t we just go see Zecora instead? I don’t want to sit here talking about my feelings all day, no offense. I mean, I’d like if you each came by one at a time to apologize to on a more personal note.”

“I think that’ll work, I’ll go first and wait outside to take you to Zecora.” Twilight, who was still standing closest to me, came over and offered me a hug.

I smiled and accepted her hug. “I’m sorry for putting you through all that. I hope nopony took the whole alien body-snatcher routine too seriously.”

Twilight chuckled. “Well, luckily poison joke is a pretty blanket excuse around here.” She let go and walked out the front door, leaving me with the next mare to apologize too.

Rarity and Applejack had come over, and it was the fashionista who approached me first. “Really, Dawn, you’ve no need to apologize to me. Though, I do wish you’d have come to talk to me, I did enjoy our spa visit and am always willing to lend a friendly ear.”

“Thanks, Rarity, I’ll remember that.” I returned her friendly nuzzle before she walked out, leaving me to face Applejack. “Sorry about causing a scene on your barn.”

“And upsetting my friends? Ah can relate to your stubbornness and wantin’ to solve problems on your own, but ya see now how that can hurt the other ponies that care about ya?” Applejack asked.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well, you didn’t place top ten in the Iron Pony, but you may get a kick outta knowing you set a record on the obstacle course. Ah figure Soarin and Dash won’t soon forget what a good flier you are.” She smirked and was the next to head outside.

“Pinkie, did I ever thank you for setting me up on a date? And sorry I missed the first one.”

She smiled and jumped on me, giving me a tight hug. “It’s okay! A true true friend helps a friend in need! You just let me know if you ever need a thing.” As Pinkie pulled back she produced a cupcake for me, chocolate with red sprinkles.

“Thanks.” I took the cupcake and ate it quickly, expecting to find a few stray hairs from her mane in the cupcake. Once again, she’d exhibited her skill at concealing baked goods on her person.

Lyra came up next, delaying the pony I owed the biggest apology to for last. “How are you doing, really?”

“I’m fine, Lyra. Like I said I’m just trying to figure some stuff out and made some bad decisions. I’m sorry for hurting you like that…”

“Hey, you didn’t upset me. Just because we had some fun doesn’t mean I was expecting you to go steady or marry me, silly. Besides, I’ve always sorta like the pegasi tradition.”

“Huh?” I tilted my head to the side, trying to recall some memory of what she might be referring too. “I haven’t heard that one.”

“Yeah, pegasi have been known to form flocks. Pegasus stallions are more likely than unicorn or Earth ponies to cultivate multiple relationships at once, some even marrying more than one mare.”

“You’re shitting me?” I sighed, while the others gasped at my language. “Sorry, I mean, Soarin was hitting on me and I made a huge scene, when that was normal?”

Lyra rubbed my shoulder with a hoof. “Hey, between you and me I think Soarin doesn’t deserve a mare like you.”

I laughed, gesturing to between my legs. “Well, feel free to stop by later and I’ll dispel this mare rumor.”

She gave me a gentle nuzzle on the neck. “I don’t think Dash and Fluttershy would appreciate that,” she whispered. “By not sorting out your feelings and making your intentions clear, you’re hurting them both.”

Lyra pulled back and walked out the doors, leaving me standing there with a dumbfounded look on my face. It wasn’t until Fluttershy almost snuck past me and out the door that I snapped out of it. “Fluttershy…”

She turned to look at me, clearly as uncomfortable as I had been. “Dawn.”

I walked over to her and hugged her. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at Dash, or take advantage of you or anything… I value our friendship too much, you’re such a sweet mare, and I thought you’d finally accept me as a mare—”

“Dawn,” she interrupted. “I accept you for who you are, not your gender. I admit I was rather, um… thrilled when I saw you as a mare. It was like something out of a dream, and I was more than willing to accept your advances. However, I would never ask you to be something you’re not just so that I could find a little physical intimacy. I also value our friendship.”

“Thanks, that’s the sweetest thing I’ve heard you say, and also the longest.” I hugged her tighter for a moment and then let go.

“Please stop by if you need a friend to talk to, or your wings preened.”

She turned to leave and her primaries flicked across my neck. After she’d gone out the door I took a moment to take a deep breath and get ready to head out and see Zecora with Twilight.

Twilight and I had an uneventful stroll through the Everfree to the house of the zebra shaman. At this early time in the morning, the forest was rather brightly lit. The sun rising in the east was able to pierce most of the foliage along this well-traveled road to the shaman. The predators and animals they preyed on were all asleep.

Once we got to the hut, Twilight knocked on the door and a minute later Zecora opened it up. “This is the last thing I expected you to bring me, is this the pony you created with a dash of humanity?”

“Morning, Zecora, this is Dawn. Dawn, Zecora,” Twilight said, giving us a chance to greet.

I extended a hoof. “Hi, nice to meet you.”

Zecora bumped my hoof and bowed her head slightly. “The honor is mine, to observe a specimen so fine. Please, come inside and have some tea, and tell me of what use I can be.”

Twilight gestured me in and lead me to a bench to sit on. We seemed to be in a waiting area of sorts. It contained a few exotic plants, such as a cactus, which weren’t seen in Ponyville. Hanging ferns, tribal masks, and some ancient artwork on what appeared to be animal hides hung from the walls. I was about to ask about the animal hides, when I remembered their homeland was on another continent. Back on Earth, remote tribes would often shrink heads or go so far as to tan leather from humans, even cannibalize them. Perhaps it would be better if I not ask from what relative or animal the hides might have come from.

Sitting on the shelves of two thick bookcases were rows of potions, each labeled with paper and twine. They listed the benefits of the potion along with the cost, and I could make out cures to every ailment from the common cold to pneumonia. One even claimed to regrow bones, though for two-thousand bits I was hard pressed to imagine who might afford such an elixir.

Zecora finally returned with our tea, and set them down on the tree-stump turned coffee-table next to us. “Please enjoy your drinks, they’re flavored with a hint of lynx.”

I looked at Twilight who was already sipping her tea, so I tried my own. It had a strange tingling taste to it, as if I were drinking the kinds of pins and needles one might feel when their leg falls asleep. The minty taste was a bit over-powering to my senses, but otherwise I felt immediately more energized and happy after drinking it. “It’s very good,” I said.

“Zecora,” Twilight began. “Dawn’s had a rather interesting reaction to poison joke. You’re familiar with how it shrank Applejack? Well Dawn also experiences physical changes. The poison joke seems to play on his identity issues to turn him into a mare.”

I blushed at how matter-of-factly Twilight laid that out there, as if turning into a horny-mare was no big deal.

“This transformation you describe is a first, but fear not for a cure as I am well-versed.”

“The antidote works fine, though by then it’s too late. He seems to become rather… clouded in his inhibitions and judgements while under the effect. I was hoping something similar to the potion you made Fluttershy to lower her voice to a baritone would help. Or perhaps a vaccine.”

Zecora hummed and began to look through some drawers full of reagents. “Even with herbs and extracts from far and wide, the vaccine to poison joke still manages to hide. A brew to control, aid, or abate his symptoms can be made, if to provide blood and tissue samples he can be swayed.”

“I’ll gladly give you a sample, if you rhyme less for example?” I chuckled and shook my head as I realized I had rhymed. “Sorry, no offense… it’s just a bit too lyrical you know?”

“Dawn!” Twilight scolded, staring daggers at me.

“It is okay, Twilight, I took no offense. It’s refreshing to meet a pony who honestly does his thoughts dispense. Sadly, Dawn, I must refuse. It is ancient tradition to keep us in touch with our muse.”

“Muse? Are you saying this is an art and not an exact science?”

“Yeah,” Twilight said. “I’ve studied it and you can’t simply combine plant A and plant B to get a certain result. Every pair of reagents has a very particular interaction, which gets more complicated with each additional reagent. While I could theoretically memorize every possible known combination, Zecora is able to quickly improvise a potion for almost anything.”

“Wow, then that is pretty amazing,” I said. “So you can just whip something up on the spot?”

“Within reason, Dawn, don’t get your hopes up. There is far more to it than crushing weeds in a cup.”

Zecora opened up the bottom drawer and pulled out a kit to collect a blood sample. It was rather basic, but at the same time not as bad as I was expecting. She had a proper needle and some tubes to collect the blood. There was a kit to scrape some skin cells from my cheeks. “So, this’ll let you fix the thing with all the voices and horniness?”

“One step at a time,” she said while sticking the needle into my arm. I yelped, and she quickly finished drawing her sample. “It’ll be as easy as a rhyme.”

I couldn’t suppress the groan at her final remark, even as Twilight bumped me on the shoulder. Once Zecora had finished, I headed outside to wait for Twilight, who requested just a few minutes alone to talk to her. I figured they were talking about me, maybe conspiring to kidnap me and sex me up in their secret laboratory or something. However, at this point that would be a rather normal and stress-free day for me. To be honest, anything would have been better than what came next. I would need to find Dash, and properly apologize to her, if she didn’t kill me first.

13. Dawn's Pardon

Somepony was knocking on my door, and judging by the time it was too early to be the mailmare. I put my book down and took my time stretching. Bagheera whined as I got up and ruined his napping place next to me on the sofa. By the time I got to the door the knocking had stopped. Looking through the peephole on the door I saw Lyra there, and opened it up for her.

“Hey, Lyra. Come in.”

“Thanks.” She walked in and headed for the chairs in my living room. Lyra set her saddlebags down and sat in a recliner.

I closed the door and went into the kitchen to get a couple of sodas from the fridge. I took them back in and set them on the coffee table, then took a seat on the couch. My cat was meowing and walking along the back of the couch. Petting Bagheera seemed to placate him for now. “So, how’s it going?”

“Same as usual, but we’re all wondering how things are going with you.”

“Eh, I’m fine. It’s nice to take a break from all the pressure.”

Lyra leaned back and floated her soda up, popping the top of the can and taking a drink. “Pressure? I didn’t realize you were so stressed out before.”

I used the hoof-friendly pull-tab to open my soda and take a drink. “Yeah, everypony expected me to be some hero or something and act all perfect. That’s why it was refreshing to spend time with you, you didn’t think of me as some important pony.”

“I think you’re exaggerating a little… nopony is perfect, your friends weren’t expecting you to be. You’ve already apologized and it’s been two weeks. You should get back outside and quit moping.”

I groaned and slumped into the sofa. “Twilight sent you, didn’t she?”

“What, I’m not allowed to be worried either? I’m flattered you still want to hang out, but you need to have more than one friend, even if she comes with benefits.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I just don’t want to face Dash yet.” I stretched out a wing and put it over my cat, who began to groom the feathers.

“Not facing her isn’t going to make it any easier. You’ve got feelings for her, don’t you? I think that’s what this is really about.”

“And you, and Fluttershy, but I guess mostly her. I don’t know, she was like family to me!”

Lyra set down her empty can of soda. “Ponies are only as happy as they make up their mind to be. I know you’ve been rubbing ponies the wrong way lately, but now that they know going pony had side-effects for you, they understand.”

“Yeah, but I wonder if I’ll always be like this, my human traits rearing their head. Everypony else seems to be perfect.” I drank the last of my soda and burped, then set it down.

“You know that’s not true, surely you’ve heard of Twilight freaking out or Pinkie getting paranoid her friends didn’t want her around anymore, more than once?”

I lifted my hooves up in surrender. “You’re right. You should meet my psychiatrist, you’re both excellent at the guilt trips.”

Lyra stuck her tongue out at me. “Well then, I’ve got a concert to prepare for so I can’t stay and chat. I brought you a few more supplies for your first-aid kit. You think it’ll help you get a cutie mark?”

“Yeah.” I put my hooves down and then went over to rummage through the bag. “I was good at it on Earth, might as well be good at it here.”

She got up and walked around the chair. “Alright, but if you stay holed up in this house much longer I’ll drag you out of here by an ear, mister.”

“Fine,” I laughed and pushed her playfully towards the door. “Go on, you had better practice. Have a good day.”

“You too.”

Lyra opened the door and closed it behind her on the way out. I took the saddlebag over to another pair of saddlebags I had in the corner. There was gauze, splints, and other simple items that I transfered over to the bags. At some point I hoped to apply to be something like a paramedic, as Equestria was far too beautiful to have another indoor job.

There was knocking at my door again and I closed the flap of the bag and walked over to the door. I wondered why Lyra would have come back just moments after leaving. “Lyra, you don’t need to kno—” I opened the door and found Twilight standing there. “Oh.”

“Dawn.” Twilight barged in and looked around.

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah, nopony has seen Dash today and I’m worried.” Twilight turned around to face me again. “Have you seen her?”

“No, actually. I’ve been avoiding her if you hadn’t noticed. In fact, I’ve been avoiding all of you… so, if you don’t mind.” I gestured towards the door.

“This is no time to be childish!”

I shrugged. “You saw her yesterday, and not this morning. Isn’t there some rule about a pony having to be missing more than 24 hours before you start a pony-hunt?”

Twilight frowned. “Fluttershy says she broke up with Soarin, at least that’s her best guess. When she went to check on Dash, her and Soarin were gone. All his belongings were packed and taken.”

“Look, Twilight, I want to help, but I’m the last person Dash wants to see—”

“Dawn!” Twilight’s features hardened for a moment before softening slightly. She was still looking at me with narrowed eyes, and I felt myself backing up away from her. “Something’s wrong, and I’m worried. We’ve all given you space to deal with it because it’s what Dash said you’d like. We didn’t come over here and force you to apologize for yelling at Pinkie because Dash apologized for you. This whole time the one pony trying to help us understand what you’re going through while you hide in your stallion-cave was Dash!”

My mouth flopped open and closed a few times as I tried to think of a response to that. “I didn’t know…”

“Of course you didn’t. We’re not mean ponies, Dawn. We’re all just worried about you, and it has been a bit of a challenge getting used to your personality. We aren’t trying to make you feel alone because you used to be a human. As far as any of us care, you’re a pony and a close friend. So, I want you to help us find Dash, and I’d very much like it if you’d start visiting us all again.”

I smiled and nodded, then hugged Twilight. “Thanks, Twilight…” I let go and headed over to get my saddlebags. “I’ll help look for her, just gotta grab some stuff.” It only took a moment to strap the saddlebags in place.

“Thanks, Dawn.”

“Who else is looking for her?”

Twilight opened the door and held it for me as I walked out. “Rarity, Applejack, Big Mac, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and knowing how much trouble they have with listening to their sisters, probably all the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”

“Wow, all because she wasn’t in her house this morning and Soarin ran off with his tail between his legs?” I smirked, he was a jerk anyway and Dash deserved better.

“Yeah, now I’ve divided Ponyville into grid squa—”

“I don’t need it, Twilight. You mares can stick to the grid, but if you want to catch an emotionally distraught pegasus, you’ve got to think like an emotionally distraught pegasus.”

Twilight closed the door to my home and raised an eyebrow. “I… can’t find any logical basis for that assumption. You’re not Dash, nor are your emotional circum—”

“Shhh.” I put a hoof on her lips. “It’s a saying.”

She used her magic to bat my hoof away. “Hmm? From Earth?”

“Elmer Fudd, famous rabbit hunter and philanthropist,” I lied. I looked at her and realized she wouldn’t get the reference, then sighed at the lost opportunity.

“Okay, if you think it’s best. If you find her, stop by the library and let us know.”

“Sure thing.” I saluted her and then flew up to the roof of my house and perched on top of the chimney to look around.

The first thing I noticed was that the sky was devoid of clouds. Dash usually kept a few hanging low over town to take naps in. That meant the weather team had already done the weather for the day without her. If she wasn’t taking a nap after her morning weather duty, then she must have left during the night.

I considered where she’d want to go to get some privacy. She could have chased after Soarin to try and win him back, possibly all the way to Cloudsdale. Knowing Dash, she was too stubborn to take him back if he’d dumped her, and odds are she’d gotten sick of him and dumped him first.

There wasn’t a possibility she was at a friend’s house or hiding in the apple orchard, as she’d have been found and no search called.

I scanned the roofs of all the buildings in town, and then looked over the Everfree forest. Despite it not being a safe place to go, I began to focus more and more on it. There wasn’t really any place in town she could go to be alone. Each building had ponies living in it, and there were plains on the sides of town not bordered by the Everfree or apple orchard.

My wings flared and I let the breeze flow other the feathers, getting a feel for the air currents. Twilight had said they were searching the town, so I might as well look around the forest. I jumped off the roof and glided forward until I felt the wind change into an updraft. I beat my wings and climbed, gaining altitude above the trees. From up here, I couldn’t see the forest floor or any signs of a pony who didn’t want to be found.

There was a clearing not far from the edge of the forest so I swooped down, circling as I descended into it. I landed amidst some tall grass that was tinted a dark green. Thorny bushes bordered the clearing I was in.

A feather on one of the bushes caught my eye. It was cyan, and most likely from Dash. She could have come out here and sat down to have some time alone to think. However, she should have come back by now if that’s all that was going on.

Taking another look around the clearing a patch of flattened grass stood out. It could have been from a pony sitting down in the grass, and after looking closer I saw a hoofprint. She could have been here, then flown through the bushes if something had spooked her.

I cleared my head of any negative thoughts about what could have happened to her, and followed the path through the bushes and into the forest. There was a small creek another twenty feet ahead. It provided a nice clear path to fly along, as the trees weren’t growing too close together.

At the water’s edge were more hoofprints, and a jagged branch had a tuft of yellow and red hair hanging off of it. It was looking more and more like she’d had to flee something, but why wouldn’t she have gone straight back to town?

I hovered over the creek and looked around. It took me a minute just to find the path back to the clearing. The trees were all so black and similar to one another, I could see how easy it’d be to get disoriented. Looking up, I tried to force my way up through the foliage. The branches were almost woven together like a net, making it impossible to just fly straight up and get out. Dash had likely flown downstream looking for an exit.

While flying along the path of the small creek I kept an eye out for signs of broken branches. For some reason they seemed to stand out to me. Perhaps the larger pony eyes offered improved vision. At the very least, my vision was definitely better than back on Earth.

A large branch was broken off of a tree and I stopped to look at it. There were several large limbs from nearby trees with a gap between them next to the broken branch. Claw marks covered the branches and the nearby tree trunk. It looked like something had gotten stuck in the branches, and had to force its way loose.

I passed the branches and noticed a skid mark in the muddy floor. After poking my hoof through some of the mud that had piled up I saw another cyan feather, a sign I was on the right path. She must have given something the slip. I continued forward, looking for another sign but not finding any.

Just as I was about to turn around and see if I’d missed something, I saw a small cave. It was nearly hidden beneath the roots of a massive, old tree. I walked towards it, realizing that whatever was in it I had no way to light it up. I’d have to hope there wasn’t a grizzly bear or something living in it.

“Dash?” I stood to the side of the cave entrance incase something burst out. “Dash? You in there?”

The silence seemed to last forever, hanging in the air, until I finally heard a response. “Dawn?”

“Dash!” I walked forward into the cave, spreading my wingtips in front of me so I wouldn’t hit my head on the ceiling. As I felt my way further inside, it opened up a little and I saw Dash sitting there. “Are you okay?!”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Get lo… los…” Dash sniffed and it sounded like she had a runny nose. I watched as she rubbed a foreleg across her eyes.

“You’ve been crying?” I sat down next to her, reaching a hoof out to touch her. “I’m sorry, this is all my fault, isn’t it? I should have never lied to you about hearing voices, and I wouldn’t have run off and ruined your relationship with Soarin.”

She continued to sob softly, as if she didn’t want me to hear it. “He broke up with me, when I told him… told him about us.”

I scooted a little closer and before she could push me back, I’d wrapped a wing around her and pulled her to my side. “Hey, it’s okay. If he was gonna break up over a little alien body snatching, the marriage would never have lasted.”

“I’m pregnant.”

For minutes I must have sat there with my mouth agape, staring at her. I hoped the awkward silence wasn’t really that long, but I had no way of knowing how long it took me to find my voice. “What?”

Dash lifted her head up and looked at me. “I said I’m pregnant. Soarin—”

“It’s okay, I get how it works. And then he dumped you? What an asshole.”

She chuckled once, then wiped her face off again. “No… we hadn’t slept together again, since you were in my body. He put two and two together, that it was you he slept with, and he freaked.”

“Shit.” I looked at the ground. “So that’s why you ran away?”

“Yeah… I needed some time to think. First I find out I’m pregnant because I was vomiting at work yesterday, and then Soarin dumps me, and you weren’t talking to me…”

“I’m so sorry, I should never have been jealous of you two. Just because I had feelings and thought you deserved better I ruined your whole life, I’m such an ass—”

Dash grabbed me and planted her lips on mine. I stared in shock as she tightened her grip, turning her head to put more of her focus into the kiss. Her tongue started to explore my mouth, even as I sat dumbfounded and unable to properly return her affections.

After a minute she let go. “You talk too much, your apology is accepted.”

I blinked. “But I mess—”

She kissed me again. This time I was able to reciprocate, my feelings for her resurfacing and not marred by so much guilt. She tasted like fresh rain, even though her fur was covered in tears and dirt. Before I could truly enjoy the kiss, she pulled back again. “Look, it’s getting late and I sprained my wing. Can you get us back to town?”

It took me a minute to respond to her, as I was still sorting out my feelings for Dash. I still couldn’t quite understand how we had gone from massive screw-up to making-out, but I wasn’t about to look a gift-horse in the mouth. “Yeah… here.”

I pulled a splint and some gauze out of my saddlebag and began wrapping up the wing she presented me. As I tended to her wound I felt a stinging on my flank, like an insect had bit it. Then the other flank as well, so I swatted at them with a free hoof. After a moment I looked back to see what it was.

“Look at that,” Dash observed. On my flank was a rising sun, outlining a medical caduceus. The yellow-orange sun contrasted nicely with my fur, which was fortunate considering that I’d have this mark for life.

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering when I’d get my butt stamp.”

Dash laughed and after a moment I joined in, the stress and tension melting. “It doesn’t look to bad, can you fly on it?”

“Not well, we should walk.”

“What’d you piss off? It looked like a massive bear was clawing its way through the trees.”

Dash shrugged. “Just a manticore. He’s lucky I didn’t break his nose instead of running and hiding in this cave.”

I laughed. “Sure he was. At least you’re okay. You ready to go?” I stood up and backed away towards the exit to give her room.

She stood up and flexed her wing a little. “Yeah, I’m ready.” Dash yawned, taking a step forward and nearly tripping. “Bah, sorry, I haven’t slept much.”

“It’s okay, come on. Let’s get out of here and get you home.”

Dash nodded, and followed me out of the cave. I took her towards the river, not even thinking about how easily my sense of direction seemed to be working out here.

“So, you’re pregnant with me and Soarin’s baby? There’s something I wasn’t expecting.” I smiled wide and looked at her.

“Hey!” She smirked and hit my shoulder. “It’s our baby as far as I’m concerned. He was nice at first, but as soon as you two met he got over-protective and kinda a jerk. Maybe it is for the best, I mean, I did always sort of—”

“You had a crush on me!” I smiled and bumped into her side. “I knew it! I can read you like a book.”

“Come on. I just mean it’s nice that I already know you so well, there’s not gonna be any surprises. You’re not pretending to be something you’re not.” Dash walked along the bank of the river and I followed close beside her.

“Whew, because here I thought I was a human pretending to be a pony.”

Dash rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“So you’re not pissed off at me?”

“I’m sure I’ll get even… but mostly I was just hurt you wouldn’t talk to me. You know I’m stubborn. I figured you’d stop by again once I cooled down.”

“I guess I out-stubborned you.” I pointed ahead to the edge of the forest. “Looks like we’re almost there.”

“Isn’t that your house?” Dash pointed to the left as we exited the forest.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Well… my wing’s hurt so I can’t go to my house, and I feel dirty… I think we should stop by your house for the night, so I can get cleaned up and rest.”

“Sure.” I put a wing over her and walked towards my house. “As long as you promise I’m not gonna wake up covered in itching powder or poison joke.”

We walked to my house and I let her inside. Part of me was relieved that for once, things were simple. Maybe it was because we’d both had time to think, or she was too tired to fight, but that’d been easier than I thought.

I watched her head upstairs into the bathroom to shower and I sat on my bed, reflecting on the day. Perhaps Twilight and my therapist were right. Once I’d actually gotten out of the house, things weren’t so bad after all.

As I lay there I could feel myself getting sleepy, and yawned loudly. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was forgetting something, but whatever it was could wait until morning. I was glad to have Dash here with me.

Author's Note

d'aww

Drawn by JinZahn, commissioned by GreenPony32

14. The Hunt for Knight-Captain Armor

I had been awake for about half an hour now reflecting on how quickly my outlook on life had turned around. Things had gone from pretty awful to pretty damn good, and I owed a large part of that to the pony next to me.

Dash was still snoring as she slept on my wing, which had fallen asleep. I hadn’t moved it since I didn’t want to wake her; it was rather nice to be cuddling with her in bed. All the tension and worry had melted away once I’d found her and apologized. I don’t recall sleeping this well in a long time, and even now was hanging onto the last bits of sleep as the sun poured through the windows.

The blanket rustled a little as she moved, finally letting my trapped wing slide out from under her. It hadn’t really occurred to me before that I could enjoy something as simple as watching a pony sleep.

There was a creaking sound as the door to my second floor balcony opened up. At first I thought it had been the wind. “Dawn, are you still asleep? We’re gonna start searching a—”

I rolled over to face Twilight, whose face seemed to have overloaded trying to find the right expression for shock, disgust, and disbelief. Her wide eyes said plenty though, and I suddenly remembered what I had forgotten last night. All of her friends had been searching for Dash and we’d forgotten to tell any of them she was alright.

“Oh, hi Twilight… I, uh, found Dash.” I smiled for what it was worth and scooted to the edge of the bed, before getting down.

Her eyelid began to twitch a little. “You found her… and instead of telling all of us who were worried sick, you brought her back here and bucked her!” Twilight took a step towards me.

I felt my heart race and some pent up frustration boiling underneath my skin, making it hard to calm down my breathing. “We forgot—”

“Forgot? Or wanted to take advantage of my friend?”

“Damn it, Twilight! Shut up!” Something had snapped and I wasn’t about to stand here and take the blame for things anymore, or be some passive observer. “It was late when I found her and she came back here to get cleaned up! We forgot to tell you, princess, and what we chose to do in my own bedroom is none of your damn business!”

I marched towards her until I was only about a foot away. Twilight may have cowered, or it could have just been the slack-jawed shocked expression, but she didn’t seem so intimidating anymore.

“Everytime something goes wrong I seem to catch the flak for it. What is it, am I too quiet? I don’t hear anyone getting mad at Fluttershy. Am I just bringing out the worst in you? Running out of the magic of friendship? What is it! Tell me so I can fix it, but don’t you dare barge into my house and start throwing accusations! Not anymore!”

“Dawn,” Dash said. I turned to see her walking towards me, wide awake from the shouting. “I didn’t know you were feeling that frustrated with how ponies were treating you. I’m sorry, and you are too, right Twi?”

Dash and I looked over at Twilight who seemed to have recovered from the shock. “Yes, Dawn… I’m sorry for directing my anger at you.” She sighed, extending her wings to straighten the feathers a bit while she thought about what to say next. “Well, I’ve never had a friendship problem like you before. Don’t think that you’re only bringing out the worst in us, because you’re also bringing out some of the best.”

My heart was slowly returning to a normal pace as we stood there. It seemed to help having Dash awake, who had so quickly apologized and encouraged Twilight to do the same. “Yeah, I’m sorry for snapping… it’s a lot of pressure adjusting to this new life. I’m never sure if I’m doing the right thing. Just because I don’t wanna argue doesn’t mean I should be the one getting yelled at, you know?”

Dash put her wing over my back and gave me a hug with her wing. “We know, we’ve all had our share of trouble.”

“So, you two are…” Twilight trailed off as she waited for an answer.

“We’re a cou—” I began.

“—bucking each others brains out?” Dash finished.

Twilight wasn’t the only one at a loss for words. Finally Dash broke out laughing and let go of me. “Same old Dash,” I muttered.

“Well, if, um… you two are finished, the next item on my to-do list was to search for my brother.” Twilight magicked a scroll out of somewhere and unrolled it. She quickly began to mark off some boxes on it.

“She didn’t notice, did she?” I asked Dash.

“Hmm?” She looked at me, her eyes quickly finding my Cutie Mark. “Heh, guesss not. Let’s keep quiet and see how long it takes her.”

“So, Fluttershy told you we ran across some magic cave thing?” I tilted my head as she made the scroll vanish in a puff of purple smoke. Some day I’d have to ask where all the things she makes vanish actually go.

“Yeah, but then we got sidetracked.” The sound of a shower starting up interrupted us. “Uh, I guess you two want some time to get ready?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, looks like it. We’ll meet you at the library?”

“No, I’ll get the girls and wait at Fluttershy’s cottage.” Twilight smirked and turned around, walking out onto the balcony before vanishing in a purple flash of light.

I turned around to go make my bed and saw Dash waiting in the doorway to the bathroom. “Hey, you coming or what?”

“Huh?” I gave her a long look as my brain put two and two together.

Dash laughed and muttered something about stallions before turning around and heading into the shower.

I followed her into the bathroom and took a look around. “It doesn’t really look big enough for two.”

“Come on, you weren’t shy last night.”

Dash pushed the curtain aside and stepped into the shower, her mane quickly getting plastered to her body by the hot water. She looked back at me and caught me with my mouth hanging open. Somehow she looked even sexier when wet, probably due to how her hair was now sticking to her curves.

“Uh, sure.” I walked over and pushed the curtain aside before stepping in. It was definitely a tight fit in the shower, but that turned out to be a good thing. It was still a bit unsettling to have Dash seemingly drop her guard so quickly. In the past she’d always seemed more guarded, more concerned with appearing cool or tough.

“Come on, you preen my wings I preen yours. That’s how this works, hot shot.” Dash had her eyes closed as she rested on the plastic bench built into the shower and shampooed her hair.

Both wings were already spread out loosely, so I took the nearer one and lifted it with a hoof. Since Dash had taught me to preen myself it couldn’t be that much harder to preen her. I began to gently bite the feathers and pull, straightening them out and getting some loose hair, dirt, and other debris off them and spitting it out. She must have gotten rather beat-up last night to still have any left in her feathers.

A few loose ones fell out and were washed into the drain guard. By the time I’d finished the one wing, Dash had finished with her mane and tail. She was relaxing under the hot water, glancing back at me. “Good work, but if you go any slower we will be here all day.” She turned around and presented the other wing.

“I guess I just had a bad teacher,” I quipped. This time I was able to see her expressions better. Preening was something that felt good, like scratching a back, but wings were an entirely new appendage to me. For a while she looked more like a content kitten than a stunt pony while her wings were being straightened and fixed.

I stood there with a blank look on my face for a moment before she got up and tilted her head. “Well? Clean yourself up. You smell like a sweaty stallion, some offense intended.” She stuck her tongue out at me.

“Yeah, yeah…” I went to the bench and got the scrub brush onto my foreleg and began cleaning both my forelegs and my mane. I definitely didn’t envy women now that I had my own three-foot long hair to deal with.

Dash grabbed my wing and began preening. She was quick and deliberate with each feather, and I braced myself against the shower and closed my eyes. It felt better than when I would do it, though scratching ones own back never compares to having another scratch it. A lot of my stress seemed to melt away and before I knew it, she was pushing my wing back against the side.

While she positioned herself to the other side I finished up with my mane and curled back to try and clean out my tail. It was hard to focus while we were both in here, and while trying to reach back to rinse out my tail I slipped.

Dash let out a soft squeak as I landed on her in a tangled heap, and we slid on the shower floor. “Hey, what’s the big idea!”

“Sorry!” I chuckled and moved my hooves to try and get off of her. One of my wings brushed across her hind leg and I heard her laughing. It wasn’t shocking to hear her laugh, but it surprised me she had a rather girly laugh. I’d barely brushed her hoof and began to smirk as an idea formed.

“Dawn? What are you doing?” Dash pushed at my chest but with us both slick with water, she didn’t have the leverage to really push me off her.

“Oh, nothing…” I brushed my feathers across her hind hooves again, eliciting another stronger laugh.

“S-stop it, Dawn! Nopony touches my hooves!”

I leaned down, pinning her in the shower with my body weight. “Oh, and why is that? You sound like such a lovely school filly when I do this.” I held her hind legs steady as I tickled her, eliciting the most hilarious laughter from her. She began to wiggle out from under me so I pulled her back and spent just a minute making her laugh, until we were both running out of breath.

When I stood up Dash was quick to wiggle out from under me and stand up. “I’m gonna get you back for that, you’ll be sorry!”

“Oh yeah?” I stuck my tongue out at her. “Do your worst. I can always tickle you some more if I need to.”

“No way! You caught me off-guard, next time I’m gonna make you beg for mercy in ten seconds flat.” Dash stepped out of the shower and grabbed the nearby towel. While she dried herself, I turned the water off and then got out of the shower.

It took a while to get dried off and there were a heap of wet towels left to hang up. Dash kept glancing at me, and I felt like she was sizing me up for some future revenge. “You know, if anything, this makes us even for last night,” I said.

“Come on, we need to go find this cave of yours and see if Shining is in it. Don’t worry, though, I always get the last laugh.” She walked towards the balcony, tail raised and waving her flanks seductively.

By the time I realized what she was doing it was too late. I sighed and went to the closet and got out my flight suit that had been made by Rarity. With Dash no doubt ready to “get even” by shaking her flank all day, I’d need the flight suit to stay decent around the other mares.

With practiced ease I slid into the flight suit and went over to the balcony, where I found Dash sitting there whistling. “About time.”

I shrugged and stretched forward on the railing. “Come on, then, I’ll race you.” Without another pause I lept into the air and took off towards Fluttershy’s house.

While I enjoyed flying there were still nuances to it that eluded me, such as how Dash could accelerate so quickly. Stealing a head start helped a little, but she still caught up to me in a matter of seconds. As she pulled into the lead I just tried to stay close, in case she slowed down, and followed her to Fluttershy’s cottage.

Once it came into view I tried to gain a little speed by flapping my wings harder. Dash waited until we could see the white of Twilight’s eyes, then she zoomed forward to beat me there by a solid twenty feet. Apparently she’d been going easy on me, though I didn’t expect to beat her anytime soon. Perhaps one day, if I accidentally broke a few primaries preening, I might beat her. However, she was just too fast to keep up with normally.

Once I landed I headed over to Fluttershy first. She was talking with Applejack, while the others were putting saddlebags on. I hadn’t thought to bring any for myself, so I wound up not having to carry any supplies. It felt a little odd to have the women carrying everything, but the whole world could feel backwards at times.

“Hi, Fluttershy, how are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, good. I’m just glad Dash is safe. I was so worried last night.” Fluttershy smiled and came over to give me a quick wing-hug.

While she did I saw Applejack look over to me. “Dawn, Ah’m sorry if ah’ve been hard on ya, we all are. It’s been a long time since we had a new friend in our circle, and just ask Twilight how that went.”

Nodding, I offered her a smile. “I get it, defeating powerful villains is a right of passage. I forgive you guys, I just needed to stand up for myself more.”

“Is everypony ready?” Twilight asked.

I looked at her and could see the Everfree behind her. The dark green trees seemed to fade to black as they approached the ground. It seemed even more ominous now, despite the fact we were going in as a group. The contrast of the bright green meadow as it was harshly cut off by thick foliage just screamed that it was a bad idea to venture forward.

There was a chorus of yeah’s and then I nodded my head. “Yeah, ready as I’ll ever be. Guess I’m leading the way.” I glanced back at Dash who quickly looked away. For a moment it looked like she had been staring at my flanks for a change and I chuckled. If the two of us didn’t burn down Ponyville trying to one-up each other, this relationship would be amazing.

“Yes, and do watch out for poisonous vine plants, wyverns, hydras, alligators, pitcher plants, venomous snakes, grabbing thorns, and venus pony-traps.” Twilight levitated a book in front of her for another second before putting it away in her saddlebags. “Yep, that’s all of them that are active this time of year. Any questions?”

“Is there anything in the forest that isn’t trying to kill us?”

“Zecora.” Twilight stated.

I rolled my eyes and started walking towards the treeline. “Thanks, I think.” It would have been better to go into the forest ignorant to the dangers, than have Twilight spell each one out for me. I’d never even seen a pitcher plant, let alone one large enough to trap a pony.

How would a pony even fall into one?

I began to hover as it was easier than walking through the tangled brush. Behind me, Twilight was using her magic to slash and push aside the thick plants to help the other ponies blaze a trail into the forest.

Perhaps it was just the adrenaline, but I seemed acutely aware that the forest was deathly silent today aside from us. I looked back and saw the last rays of unbroken sunlight fading. Rarity and Applejack seemed to be arguing in hushed whispers about something. The branches snapped loudly under their hooves and with the forest so quiet, I could make out most of the conversation about how this was ruining Rarity’s mane.

Dash seemed to stick closer to Fluttershy. At first glance I figured it was to comfort Fluttershy, but looking at their faces only Dash’s showed any hint of worry. The smaller, shy pegasus was surprisingly more at home around animals than ponies. I could relate, as I’d always prefered the internet. That wasn’t really an option anymore, unless I invented the internet in Equestria.

Hey, if Al Gore could do it, I could…

Twilight and Pinkie were staying the closest to me. Twilight already had cuts and scrapes on her forelegs as she tried to clear a path. Even though she could fly over the thorny brambles, she chose to walk with her friends. Pinkie, on the other hoof, was easily bouncing over each bush, branch, rock, and root. Of all the ponies she was the only one without any sign of leafs or twigs in her mane.

I focused on where I was going and looked around. I had no idea where I was, and yet I knew where I was going. It didn’t make sense to me to rely entirely on a gut-feeling to guide me.

There were three spaces ahead that could be defined very liberally as narrow paths. The first to the left was a wall of brambles with a small gap near the ground. The second was straight ahead, the widest open path beneath a thick grove of trees. To the right were jagged rocks that went downhill towards a cliff.

Hesitantly I looked around. My intuition said to go left, probably the least-comfortable choice. I would much rather go straight and try to loop around but I just felt like it was a bad idea for some reason. The way all the small branches had been broken off and trampled meant something bigger lived that way.

“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, just looking at the paths we have to choose from and you’re not going to like it,” I explained.

Twilight looked around. “I just see the one path, Dawn.”

I gestured to the right. “Under that root it goes steeply downhill, but we need to go left through this wall of bramble.”

She took a good look at it and grabbed at the brambles with her magic. Twilight strained for a second trying to cut or tear them, but was unable to. Finally she let go and panted. “Wow, those are strong. You’re sure we have to go that way?”

“Yeah, I mean I don’t remember brambles last time but my gut says it’s that way. We’ll have to crawl through.”

While I talked the other ponies had gathered around, and were now staring at the easy path and the thorny path before them. “Darling, I can’t crawl through that. It’ll ruin my mane and tail. There must be an easy way around it,” Rarity said.

“Y’all are always ruinin’ yer mane and ya always fix it,” Applejack stated.

“I think it looks fun!” Pinkie bounced over and landed on one of the larger brambles. “It’s like the rock-maze we’d have every year back home.”

“Rarity, if we could go around I would but I think there’s more to this bramble than meets the eye,” Twilight explained.

“Wait, you had rock mazes? Like, stacking rocks into a maze?” I asked.

Pinkied nodded. “Yep! Then the fillies all crawl through and look for the exit with the prize, ten pounds of rock candy!”

“Alright, I just hope the spa ponies aren’t planning any vacation anytime soon,” Rarity replied.

“Me and Fluttershy could fly over it,” Dash said.

“You just stack up rocks and balance them all into a big cave-maze thing and crawl through it? Are you nuts?!” I asked.

“The trees are too thick,” Fluttershy observed. “And when me and Dawn found the cave it was surrounded by magic, maybe the brambles are part of it.”

“Nope! We just grow the rocks into the right shapes to build the maze, it’s entirely safe! In fact, the Equestrian Earthquake Safety board rated our rock maze strongest in the county,” Pinkie answered.

“A good observation, Fluttershy,” Twilight stated.

“Stacked, round rocks, in a maze, and you grew the rocks?!” I landed and stared at her in disbelief.

“You make it sound hard, all you do is add water.” Pinkie jumped down and poked a rock on the ground. “Like this one, that’s a common rock farm weed.”

“No that’s a rock!” I shouted.

“Dawn! Pinkie!” Twilight stepped between us. “This is no time for messing around. I need you to start crawling into the bramble, maybe it opens up on the other side.”

“But… Pinkie… Rocks…” I finally sighed and gave up on understanding how rocks were grown. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am, silly!” Pinkie trotted over to see what Rarity was doing. “Rarity, we’re going this way, right?”

“Yes, but Dash just flew that way to check something,” Rarity explained. She pointed down the wide-open path.

A loud roar filled the forest causing some leaves to fall from the trees. “Dash!” I shouted.

“Dawn, lead everypony into the bramble, I’ll get Dash,” Twilight ordered.

“I can’t—”

“They’ll get lost if they go in there without you, now go!” Twilight’s horn lit up and I remembered that she was the element of magic. Hopefully that’d be enough, or I’d never forgive myself.

“Come on!” I grabbed Fluttershy and pulled her towards the bramble. “Stay close to me.”

I got onto my belly as I crawled inside, suddenly very glad I had the flight suit with me. Most of the thorns and rocks glanced off the flight suit, not sharp enough to break the suit and cut my skin. As I crawled forward I kept looking back, hoping Dash and the others were okay. I could see Fluttershy, Pinkie, Rarity, and Applejack. I thought I saw a glimpse of Twilight or Dash, and heard a voice from the rear. “Keep moving, we can’t fit!”

I crawled forward, weaving my way through the thorny vines. There wasn’t time to think which way to go, and before long I thought we were going in circles. At last, light pierced through the thorny maze and I crawled out into the clearing with the cave.

Behind me, Fluttershy crawled out. We waited, but nopony else crawled out after us.

“Fluttershy, did you see any of them behind you?” I asked.

“No, I was focused on not losing track of you. We were moving so fast,” she answered.

“Crap!” I went forward and poked my head into the bramble. “Dash? Twilight?”

Fluttershy came over and pulled gently on one of my wings. “Don’t go back in, we’ll get lost. Let’s fly up and see if we can find them.”

I pulled back and saw that we were in a clearing and could easily fly overhead. However, the forest was so thick I doubt we’d see anything below.

There was a rumbling sound as something big approached us. Seconds later, the bramble shattered and flew in every direction. I grabbed Fluttershy and dove to the side.

When the dust settled, we saw Applejack dragging Rarity through a large hole she had just bucked in the brambles. “Really, Applejack, is this necessary?” Rarity asked.

“Y’all were draggin’ yer hooves and lost sight of Dawn,” she answered. “Besides, did ya want me to just leave ya in there?”

“Thank you, I’m quite fine being out here in the open again Applejack.” Rarity stood up and began to pick debris out of her mane.

I looked at the bramble and my gaze wandered until I found another opening that hadn’t been smashed through. “Stay here, I’ll find them.” Before the other three could protest I crawled in and vanished.

This time I really was wandering aimlessly, not knowing where Twilight and Dash might be in the maze of thorns. It felt like the thorns were coming alive and trying to grab ahold of me, forcing me to keep moving and try to stay a step ahead of them. As I moved faster in my panic, more of the thorns began to catch on the flight suit and a couple managed to cut my skin, leaving a burning sensation.

At last I saw a purple glow ahead and found Twilight with a shimmering bubble around her. “Twilight, are you okay?” I asked.

“The vines are trying to strangle me!” Twilight was curled up inside her sphere of safety.

I looked around, taking a moment to calm myself down. None of the vines were moving. They all had sharp thorns, but I could see now it was only my panic that made them appear to be closing in around me.

“Twilight, it’s just claustrophobia, they’re not closing in around you. I need you to drop the bubble and crawl out,” I explained.

“No, I can feel them closing in!”

I pushed a hoof against the bubble to see if I could reach her, but it easily repelled my hoof. “Twilight, take a deep breath and look at me. You’re okay. Take my hoof, and crawl out.”

She took a couple breaths and looked at me. I smiled at her, and finally she let the spell shimmer and weaken. I was able to reach through and grabbed her hoof. “Thanks, Dawn.”

“Your welcome. Now, let the spell down and come out. Trust me.” I kept smiling as she let the spell fade completely, and the imposing vines were leaving her enough room to crawl forward.

I backed up and pulled her out from the spot she had gotten trapped in. This time I kept her close by so she didn’t get lost. After several minutes I found my way back to the cave, pushing myself to the side to let Twilight crawl out first.

Once I followed her out she leapt on me with a hug. “Thank you so much, Dawn!”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I tried to pry her off of me. “I need to go find Dash now.”

“I’m right here, Dude. I leave for five seconds and you’re hitting on Twilight?”

Shaking my head, I rolled my eyes and looked at her. “I’m not the one who got lost in the brambles, Dashie. As for Twilight… she just took the long way around, so I guess I was worried for nothing.”

“Thanks,” Twilight whispered.

I nodded, and soon all of the ponies were gathering up around us to check our injuries. Rarity and Twilight had lost their saddlebags in the maze. Manes aside, they were both fine. Applejack had been cut up more than the rest of us from her feat of strength to burst through the brambles. It was impressive considering Twilight couldn’t seem to force her way through with magic.

Fluttershy and Pinkie both were unscathed. I could understand Fluttershy, since she stuck so close to me. As for Pinkie, well apparently it wasn’t the first maze she crawled through.

I looked around at all the ponies who were sitting down now. “So, should we head inside the cave?” I gestured to the unassuming entrance, which seemed little more than a hole in the ground when looked at closely.

“Yeah, let’s just relax for a minute and catch our breath,” Twilight said.

“So I can’t wait any longer,” I said. I began to take my flight suit off for a moment, until it’d exposed my flank. “Twilight crashes my little romp with Dash this morning and doesn’t notice my Cutie Mark.”

Pinkie was first to gasp and rush to my side, followed more slowly by the others. “Wow, a rising sun! It’s perfect, well for you. Personally I like cakes and balloons and—what’s that?”

Twilight leaned in. “That’s a caduceus, a symbol for the medical field from ancient times.”

“Wow, are those two snakes and wings? And this means I can throw Dawn a party for his Cutie Mark—”

“And he got saving me from the Everfree,” Dash interrupted.

“Yeah, I fought off a twelve-foot tall Manticore too with my bare hooves,” I stated.

“Well, don’t forget the hydra or the grizzly bear,” Dash added.

“Oh, you fought off a grizzle bear?!” Pinkie asked. “Did he look like this?” She stood up on her hind legs and raised her forelegs in the air.

“Pinkie, they’re pulling your leg,” Twilight observed.

“Yeah, Ah reckon you did a fine bit of work to get that Cutie Mark, Dawn, but Ah’ve seen you at the Iron Pony and y’all pegasi couldn’t wrestle a grizzly,” Applejack said.

“Oh, but I did see Fluttershy wrestle a grizzly bear once,” Twilight stated. “Flung him on the ground like a sack of rice.”

“Oh, dear, that doesn’t sound like me…” Fluttershy gulped. “I did give one a massage once…”

The conversation began to break up into separate ones as the ponies got comfortable and rested for a moment.

I nodded and headed over to sit next to Dash. While we sat and waited to enter the cave and face whatever challenges there might be inside, I began to preen her wings and get all the leaves out of them. She gave me a soft smile and I wished we had come out here on a picnic and not a search and rescue party—so we could take the time to enjoy ourselves.

Author's Note

And now you all see how horrible my self-editing skills are. Enjoy, I'm glad to be back!

15. Heart of Darkness

It was a gloomy day in the Everfree. The butterflies were flying into spider webs, where they were quickly envenomated and cocooned. The poison joke was blooming, tempting the foolish to trot amongst them. And the ponies were staring at a dark cave entrance deep in a forest full of predators created by one of the most powerful and vindictive beings to threaten Equestria.

“If this were a horror film, I’d be shouting at everypony not to go in,” I stated.

Applejack nodded her head. “Ah think that’s sound advice.”

“Well, if you’re scared I can hold your hoof,” Dash said.

I shot Applejack a glance to see her reaction when I noticed Fluttershy approaching the cave first. She seemed to be staring at something inside the cave, or perhaps just keeping an eye on the darkness for movement. After a moment she took the first step into the cave, and I quickly followed to join her.

“Look at that, us pegasi are going into the cave first when an Earth pony dare not,” I remarked. I passed the border between the outside world and the cave and found it not nearly as foreboding at it had seemed moments earlier.

The air had a gentle breeze originating from deep inside. It carried the smell of damp rocks and moss towards us. Fluttershy, Dash, and I stepped aside as the rest of the ponies came in. Both Twilight and Rarity were using their horns to illuminate our surroundings. The light reflected off the walls, casting our shadows in every direction.

“See girls, this isn’t so bad,” Twilight said. “I can definitely sense a lot of magic here, though. Hopefully with Discord gone some of that magic has faded.”

“So you think this is really his lair? His home away from home? The summer house in the Everfree?” Pinkie asked.

“You don’t need to be a unicorn to figure that out, this place just feels wrong.” Applejack tilted her hat back to help her see, and ran a hoof along the wall.

“I just hope Shining is here, I don’t know where else to look…” Twilight cast her light forward revealing a crevice in the wall that led deeper into the cave.

“Discord seems like the kind of guy who thinks a few moves ahead, so I’m sure he stashed Shining away as a bargaining chip for later,” I said. “Let’s just stay optimistic, ok?” I walked forward to the crevice and turned around, smiling “Okay who wants to go first? Narrow hole in the wall, dangerous cave, any takers?”

“I’ll go first, I’m not scared.” Dash looked at Applejack, giving her an unspoken challenge.

“What? Ah’m only half as scared as you, Ah’ll go first!” She took her hat off and stepped forward, starting a staring contest with Dash.

“Dash it’s too dangerous for you to go first, why don’t you let AJ?” I said.

Both mares turned and glared at me. Dash spoke first. “You’re the one asking us to go first, scaredy pants, now let me show AJ here who the braver mare is.”

“Hah! Ya remember the Best Young Fliers, don’t ya?” Applejack smirked as she turned her gaze back to Dash.

Dash gasped as her nose flared. “What?! You… that’s not how it happened! I just felt bad for Rarity. And what about when you—”

“Hey, Twilight,” I whispered. “Shouldn’t you break them up so we can get a move on?”

“Nah, I’ve seen this dance enough times to know there’s no stopping them when they want a ‘friendly’ competition.”

I looked over at Applejack and Dash, who were using Pinkie as an impromptu table for arm wrestling. They were both straining and staring daggers at each other. “Yeah, friendly.” I turned to the others. “Come on Fluttershy, Rarity, let’s get this show started.”

Crouching down enabled me to see through the crevice, it was only a few feet deep then seemed to open up. With Rarity lighting up the crack for me, I crawled through to the other side. Rarity came next, followed by Fluttershy. We waited for a minute for the others to come through.

“Twilight? Dash, AJ? You done bickering?” I asked.

There was a huff as Dash slid through the crevice, appearing to have been pushed through rather than crawled. Applejack came through a second later, followed by Twilight.

“You got lucky,” AJ said. “Ah expect a rematch.”

“Sounds good to me, we’ll do a best of three!” Pinkie smiled as she jumped next to Applejack. I hadn’t seen her come through the crevice.

“Hah! Anytime, anywhere. Come on, Dawn, let’s find us a Knight-Captain.” Dash trotted forward down the hallway.

“Wait, we need to stick together and go slowly,” Twilight said.

I took off after Dash. “Yeah, no need to rush ahead.”

“Come on, the only thing we’re gonna find in this cave is dust and moss.”

I heard a soft click as Dash walked forward, and without thinking dove forward and used my shoulder to roughly knock her aside. I felt a searing pain in my side as I blacked out.

I woke up at Ponyville hospital, my side sore and bandaged up. With a loud groan I felt around for a nurse call button. It was bad enough I’d blown our little search and rescue mission, but I had expected Dash, if not all of the others, to be here when I woke up.

Once I found the button I began pressing it over and over. My throat was dry and I felt like I’d been hit by a truck, I wanted to get out of here and see what had happened after I’d been knocked out.

“Come on, what is this?” I coughed and tossed the button aside, deciding to just get up and leave to find somepony. As I sat myself up I felt a pain in my side and grimace. Finally I backed up and rested against the wall, using the pillow for support.

As I caught my breath I felt a sense of dread as a being I’d hoped to never see again walked, floated, and slithered through the door all at once. “Long time no see, Don. Terrible shame you went through all that for naught, and they didn’t even spell your name right on the commemorative plaque!”

“Discord!? How? What?! Celestia said you’re dead!” I ignored the pain in my side as I stood up on the bed and tested out my wings. I wouldn’t be winning any races but I might be able to fly far enough to knock that smug grin off his face.

“Me? Gone? Why, as long as there’s chaos and disharmony I can never be gone. So, how about we strike a deal?” Discord came closer to the bed and looked down on me as if I were an ant. “I’ll let you and Dash live if you bow down to me. Swear to obey and serve me.”

“I’d rather die!” I dove forward, punching him in the nose as hard as I could with my hoof. The hardened keratin of my hoof proved more than a match for the thin bones shaping his nose, which snapped in a sickening and satisfying way.

After my tumble to the floor I turned to look back at Discord who was wiping blood from his nose. Then with a flick of his fingers his face was healed. “Too bad, Dawn. We could have done this the easy way. Think about my offer as I take away everything you care about.”

Discord snapped his fingers and the world vanished. I blinked my eyes, only to find myself in the middle of a deserted Ponyville. I was horrified as I saw the door to Sugarcube Corner swinging in the wind, and tumbleweeds rolling through the streets. It seemed almost cliche, but it was a ghost town.

I turned and leapt into the air to fly to Dash’s house, hopeful that I’d beat Discord there, but fell to the ground and landed on my face. After getting up and spitting the dirt out I looked back. My wounds had healed, but Discord had removed my wings. I was an Earth pony now, powerless to warn Dash.

Another thought struck me, if I couldn’t fly I could find somepony else that could. Scootaloo’s house seemed close enough so I raced towards it, hoping she could warn Dash. As I rounded the corners of the houses I quickly made my way to her street and raced down it.

As I approached the house I saw smoke pouring out of the front door. I froze in my tracks when I got close enough to see the source of the smoke. There, on the ground, were the charred bones of two ponies: a larger pegasus, and a smaller filly.

I could feel rage boiling inside of me and looked around for Discord, eager to break more than his nose this time. “You think this would convince me to serve you? You bastard!”

No sooner had I fallen to the ground crying, I felt a hoof on my shoulder. Looking up I saw a mirror image of myself, only with a bit more fat on his bones.

“What? Who are you?” I said.

“Eh, Laziness….” He tugged on my foreleg to help me stand up. “Come on, I don’t got all day.”

I blinked a few times, staring at my doppelganger. “No… this is a trick!”

“No, this is your dream. Now come on, we’ve got to go deeper,” Laziness said.

“Hah! A pony wouldn’t know that reference!”

“Whatever, I can go back to sleep if you don’t want the help.”

I tilted my head and remembered back to one time in a dream that’d I had seen a pony that refused to wake up. “Wait… I remember you, asleep on the bench. But you wouldn’t wake up then, why now?”

“You stopped being lazy, stood up to Twilight. Figured I owed you the same.”

I finally got back to my hooves and looked at him. “So this is a dream?”

“I’m too lazy to explain, so yeah let’s go with that. We’re in your head.”

“Hmm.” I rubbed a hoof on my chin. “So I need to unite the fragments of my personality to defeat a personification of evil and unrest in my mind to free myself? I feel like I’ve heard this one before.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Nope. Let’s go kick some ass!”

“Good. I think Desire is still in the park, we’ll start there.” Laziness walked forward towards the park.

I trotted to catch up to him and then followed alongside, noticing his wings. I glanced back and tried to will my own wings back. Nothing happened and I frowned. “If this is all in my head why can’t I have my wings back?”

“What am I, the cliff notes version to your life? How would I know,” Laziness said.

“Fine, fine, no need to be a smart-ass about it.”

“Hah!” Laziness stopped to laugh a few more times. “Coming from you, that doesn’t mean much.”

I huffed and walked ahead of him towards the park, wondering what else I might find waiting for me there. The world around me seemed to brighten up and get more colorful in the park. For now there didn’t seem to be any manticores or hydras to block my path.

Hanging below a tree was a pony in suspension rope bondage. Her colors were like mine, only reversed, and I recognized her as Desire. “Why doesn’t it surprise me to find her like this?”

“We had to keep her tied up, she was determined to take control of you again and get you laid. Surely you’ve heard her voice when you’re clo—”

“Gah! I get the idea, just help me cut her down.” I shook my head and sighed. “Besides I’ve got to figure out how to make peace with her. I don’t think it’ll be as easy as not being lazy was.”

We undid the knots quickly and had soon lowered her to the ground, then took the gag out.

“Oh, come on! I was just getting to the good part. Tell ya what, we’ll go behind that tree for a quickie!” Desire said, grabbing my foreleg to pull me forward.

I shook her off my leg and stood my ground. “No. I need your help to get out of whatever this,” I waved my hoof around, “is. I don’t need laid, I’m happy with what I have.”

“Aww, but why settle for Dash? Imagine the kinky three or four ways you could have? And that night with Fluttershy?”

I rubbed my temples with my hooves, feeling a headache coming on. “No, just no, okay? I’m seeing Dash. I desire her, and you need to join my team here. Save all the kinky stuff for Dash, deal?”

“Hmm…” Desire sat down and mulled it over for a moment. “Well, I still say you should have picked Fluttershy, the quiet ones are always the kinky ones. Are you at least open to that whole flock idea?”

“If it’ll get you to co-operate sure, I’ll start a flock and the entire town of Ponyville can be in it!”

“Aw, no need to be a smart-ass,” Desire said.

Laziness burst out laughing, winding up on his back and struggling to breathe as his eyes watered.

“The hell’s with him?” Desire asked.

I just turned and started to walk away. “You mean what the hell’s wrong with my mind,” I sighed. “Come on.”

The three of us walked away in no particular direction. I figured since it was my mind I’d either run into the next pony or the next hazard without having to think too hard about it.

As we walked along I saw several shapes flying around in the air. It looked like a stunt show at first, then I recognized Iris. She seemed to be my pride, need to show off, and Dash rolled into one. She was fighting off three ponies in black flight suits all by herself.

“Quick, we’ve got to help her!” I ran forward, quickly remembering I had no wings. I looked back to the others for help. Laziness was waving me forward, and Desire had taken to the air to help. “I guess one out of two’s not bad,” I mumbled.

Desire seemed a bit out of place trying to tackle one of the attackers. Iris hit one in the wings and they came crashing down to the ground. They rolled through the dirt and hit a tree, so I ran over to see who these mystery attackers were.

As I got close I could see it had no face, just a black flight suit and a white, furry sphere for a face. While I stood wondering what it was, it sprung to life and leapt on me. I felt a sharp pain as it kicked me in the groin, and I doubled over in pain.

By the time I had recovered and stood up, I saw Iris and Desire tying the three ponies to a tree with some rope. Laziness had finally gotten up and came over, offering to help tie the final knot.

“Glad to see you, Dawn. You saw how I took all three of those attackers by myself, right?” Iris asked.

“I saw Desire and me helping,” I replied.

“Hmm, I guess you could call that help. If you actually had wings, maybe were a mare so you could out-maneuver them…”

I nodded and approached her. “Yeah that’s sorta why I’m here, to convince you that dicks are awesome.”

“Yeah!” Desire quickly added.

Iris rolled her eyes and laughed once. “Yeah right, the poison joke changes you and Zecora took samples! You could probably turn into a mare anytime you want!”

“And I’m saying I don’t want to, and you need to accept that, okay? Being a mare was fun, I’m not knocking it, but I’m happy as a male and with Dash.”

“I guess… but you’ll still do stunts and stuff, right?” Iris asked.

“Yeah, the point here is I’m not gonna change who I am, I’m just gonna be awesome as me.”

“Okay, I respect that. You should have said so earlier, me and Heart have spent weeks planning out the kind of lingerie you’d buy.”

I shrugged. “Better luck next time? Now come on, there’s apparently a couple more of you to find and then I can kick this joker Discord out of my head.”

“Come on, then, I’ll show you where Heart is.” Iris flew towards where Fluttershy’s cabin would be in Ponyville. Even though this was my dream, it seemed to match the layout pretty well.

As we got closer I saw Heart sitting on the bridge in front of a cottage, but I also saw Discord sitting there beside her. He had his tail wrapped around her, pinning her wings and forelegs to her side.

“Discord!” I sprinted towards him, followed by the others. I didn’t make it within twenty feet of him when he snapped his fingers and froze me in place.

“Dawn, how nice of you to join us. I was just telling Heart here how mean you are. It’s a flaw of all humans, really.”

“That’s a lie!” I struggled against his grip, focusing on the fact that this was my mind. I’d be damned if I let him push me around here, and slowly I was able to inch forward towards the two of them.

“Wars, starvation, disease, crimes… Humans seem inherently evil and not fit to live in Equestria. Just surrender, and I may forgive you.”

“You can’t generalize like that. Heart, I’ve done plenty of kind things! Helping the sick, teaching Scootaloo to fly!”

“But you’ve also been in fights with Soarin, or yelled at Twilight. And what about poor Lyra? You didn’t even properly break up with her,” Heart said.

“Yeah, you tell him, Heart. I wouldn’t betray you like that,” Discord said.

“Look.” I struggled forward the last few feet towards Heart, fighting Discord’s control until I had reached her. “I’m not perfect, but I’m always trying to better myself, to be kind and a good role model. Isn’t that all we can ask for? To try our best?”

Heart smiled and looked at me. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“No, you’ll regret this, Heart. He’s wicked,” Discord said.

“No, you’re evil, Corrupting me, hurting ponies, I’d kill you if I could.” I focused my efforts on getting rid of him, of making him go away. After a few moments of straining, of telling myself this was my mind not his, Discord finally sighed and flicked his fingers, vanishing.

With him gone, I hugged Heart. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, he’s just misunderstood,” Heart said. “He’s a part of—”

“No, he’s no part of me. He’s evil, that’s all. Now let’s find the last bits of myself, I’ve got to get back to real life and make sure everypony is okay.”

“Did someone call?” I saw the pony personifying my loyalty land next to me. She looked the most like Dash, just missing a cutie mark. Next to her was a pony I recognized as my love, both platonic and romantic.

“Great, so now that we’re all here what do we do?” I asked.

“Well, you’ve already proven your loyalty and love through your actions, and you seem to have made peace with the others to some degree,” Loyalty said. “We just need to bring Discord here.”

“Crap, I just ran him off. Maybe we can go find him again and blast him to bits,” I said.

“You can do it, Dawn,” Desire said.

The other ponies surrounded me as I focused on bringing Discord back. A part of me reminisced about The Matrix as I tried to control the world around me. It became like a lucid dream and I felt my wings return and the cottage in front of me vanish, until I was standing in an empty field.

Discord appeared, but this time he didn’t appear so threatening to me.

“Well, I see you’ve figured things out. Bravo, but the show must go on,” Discord said.

“You’re going to leave now, Discord, and never come back. Me and my friends,” I turned to gesture to the seven ponies I had found, each representing an aspect of me, but they were gone.

“Oh, they seem to be gone.” Discord chuckled. “What a pity.”

“No, they’re not gone…” I finally begin to understand what their connection to me truly was. “They’re all part of me, everything here is part of me.”

“Hmm, yes so many little bits and pieces went into making you. A little Fluttershy for kindness, a little Dash for loyalty, a little Rarity for generosity… truly you’re the most realistic golem I’ve ever seen,” Discord said. “Too bad you’re not real, just a phantom of the old Don. The only reason they tolerate you is they feel bad.”

His words cut deep as I felt alone and abandoned in my mind. I thought back to my personas, how each did tend to represent not only a part of me but a strength from my friends. As I looked up at Discord I knew there was no way he could be part of me. Then I realized one pony I hadn’t seen around, the one in the trenchcoat that hid her identity.

Discord tilted his head and looked down, finding a pony next to him that had nothing visible but her face. “Oh, in a little denial?”

She stepped forward. “Dawn, you aren’t perfect. You can’t pick and choose to only have the good aspects of yourself. You need to stop denying us, Dawn, to stop denying some of your flaws remain.”

I looked at her and recalled just how long I had been in denial. First I hadn’t wanted to accept there was no way back to Earth. Then I hadn’t wanted to accept being a stallion, when being a mare seemed so much fun. I was even now denying that something evil like Discord could be any part of me.

“You’re not Discord, are you.” I looked at him, realizing he was just another aspect of me. “Sure, maybe some remnant of Discord exists out there, somewhere, but you’re just my mind putting a face to an emotion. My greed, anger, whatever you want to call it… you’re my negative emotions.”

Discord gave me a slow golf clap. “And here I thought I could keep you trapped here forever. You always were a pain in the ass.”

“Maybe I can’t get rid of you, but I can control you. Thanks, Denial. I think it’s time I got back to my friends.

I watched as the two of them vanished and felt a pain in my chest and a bright light blinding me.

I gasped as I woke up, back in the dark cave full of moss and despair. However, that despair had little effect on me now as I had made peace with myself and was with my friends.

“Dawn! Are you okay?” Dash grabbed me and hugged me with both forelegs.

“F-fine…. c-can’t… breathe…” I muttered.

She released me, and I got to my hooves. I looked around to see all the ponies watching my every move. “I thought you’d died.”

“Well, more accurately been put into a coma,” Twilight stated.

“What exactly happened? After I saved your ass, Dash.” I stuck my tongue out at her.

“Hey, I coulda… I mean, thanks, Dawn.” Dash blushed as she stood there and brushed some of the dirt from her mane.

“You two triggered a trap. I’m not sure what it was supposed to do, but you weren’t responsive for several minutes. You were just laying there, like you were out cold,” Twilight said.

“I see. Well, I’ll tell you all about it sometime but why don’t we focus on finding your brother? I’m alive and that’s enough for now.” I smiled and gestured further down the cave. “Perhaps this time somepony else can go first?”

Twilight nodded and looked around. “Having discharged that trap, I now know the spell and the magical signature to search for. I should be able to disarm them all as we walk further in.”

“Great news. Still, somepony else goes first,” I chuckled.

“Sure, sugarcube,” Applejack said and trotted forward. “Always knew us Earth ponies were braver, anyways.”

Dash laughed and put a wing over my back, walking forward alongside me. I brought my wing under hers and over her back.

The cave didn’t seem so bad after that. It got a bit colder and darker, but the unicorns kept our path lit. Twilight seemed to be on point now, disabling any traps that may have been here so quickly we hardly noticed. A faint flicker of light was the only sign that Twilight had disabled yet another trap.

We’d only traveled maybe fifty feet and entered a large chamber. Immediately I heard Twilight squee in joy and run ahead of us, towards a statue of a stallion in the middle of the room. “Shining!”

Everypony rushed towards him and began to look at his statue. "Can you fix him?" Pinkie asked.

"I think so, I just need some time to concentrate, girls." Twilight's horn began to glow as she focused.

We all began to fan out and look around the small chamber while Twilight worked.. “Don’t touch anything,” I said. There were some books, a few obvious artifacts, and a mirror. Seeing nothing dangerous looking, I decided to check on Twilight.

She was currently concentrating on a spell, her purple aura surrounding the statue of Shining. I didn’t want to interrupt and risk ruining the spell. Slowly from his hooves upward, the stone turned to flesh as the imprisonment spell was lifted.

I turned to check on Dash, who was examining the mirror. I walked over to check on her. “Hey, checking your mane?”

“No, this mirror is familiar… We’ve seen it once before, it’s a link to another world,” Dash explained.

Rarity saw us and decided to join us at the mirror. “Yes, darling, this is probably how Discord crossed worlds. When it’s active, he probably could go through or pull things through it.”

“So… this could send me home?” I asked.

“Probably, but that’s more of a Twilight question, darling,” Rarity said.

Dash looked at me with a small frown. “Go back?”

“Stand aside, Dash.” I nudged her gently to the side. In one swift motion I spun around and bucked the mirror with both hooves, hearing a satisfying crack as the mirror shattered and fell to the floor. “No, I’m not going back. I’m staying here with you, and whatever other horrors Discord may have known aren’t going to be coming here anytime soon.”

Dash smiled and hugged me and I relaxed to enjoy my victory. Finally things had worked out, and I had ensured there wouldn’t be anymore surprises. By the time I’d pried her off, Shining was examining his hooves and his horn was glowing.

“Shining, glad to see you’re okay!” I smiled.

“Um, do I know you?” Shining asked.

“Wait, you didn’t tell him, Twilight?” I walked forward and looked at her, shaking my head. “I’m the guy banging your sister!”

Twilight’s mouth fell open and she blushed to the point that her face matched Pinkie Pie’s. Behind me I heard Dash and Applejack laughing pretty loudly.

Unfortunately, Shining really didn’t recognize me, since he’d been imprisoned before I’d been removed from Dash and given a body. His first instinct was to knock the smile off my face. It was only thanks to Twilight, who was quick enough to use her magic to push me back, that I didn’t lose half my teeth.

“Whoa, brother, it’s a joke! That’s Dawn!” Twilight walked in between us, shooting me a nasty glance. “I’ll get even for this.” She then turned back to her brother. “I’ll explain later. He was joking, a tasteless joke, but I think we should get you back to Cadance. She’s been worried sick.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Shining,” I smiled and walked up to shake hooves. “It was a tasteless joke, almost as tasteless as being aroused by the Dewey Decimal—ouch!”

I yelped as Twilight used her magic to pinch a pressure point at the base of one of my wings, cutting me off before I revealed her ‘love’ of numeric labeling systems.

“The, uh, what?” Shining asked.

“Nothing,” I said and finally got a hoof shake from him.

“So, girls, ready to head home?” Twilight asked. As she looked around she noticed the mirror, rushing over to it. “Oh my, the mirror portal.”

I nodded and walked over to it. “Yeah, I sorta broke it, I hope I don’t get seven years bad luck—wait a minute…” I looked at the mirror and there were no longer any cracks in it.

“You can’t destroy an artifact that powerful by kicking it, Dawn. I’ll send it to Celestia to destroy,” Twilight stated.

I bit my lip, recalling how Celestia had lied to everypony about imprisoning Discord when she’d actually incinerated him on the sun. Would she destroy this, or just save it for a rainy day? “Can’t you just do that here?”

“Well I could collapse the cave, without any room to step through the mirror, nothing should be able to come through. At least it’ll work until Celestia can come destroy it.”

“I like that option more.”

Dash tugged on one of my wings. “Hey, come on, let’s get back home. You just saved my life, found Shining, and destroyed the link to another world to stay with me. You know what that means?” She batted her eyelashes.

“Yeah, we’re big damn heroes,” I replied.

She rolled her eyes and I could hear somepony giggling in the background. She gave me a firm push on my rear with a hoof and I realized what she was implying. “Oh, yeah, we better get home quick, Twilight!”

“Bleh, lovebirds. Nothin’ worse, right Rare?” Applejack asked.

“You should try it sometime, darling, maybe tonight at nine?” Rarity smiled and walked a little closer to Applejack.

“Sure, you got a mare friend to set me up with?”

Further back, Pinkie turned to Fluttershy. “Wow, and I thought Dawn was dense.”

Fluttershy nodded and smiled, her eyes still fixed ahead on Dawn and Dash. “Yeah.”

Author's Note

Thank you all for coming along for the ride. Feel free to run for the hills, or if you're interested in the sequel, read the Epilogue for a hint what comes next.

p.s. insert obligatory "I self edited this" comment here.

p.p.s. Thanks again for loving Dash of Humanity so much :D

16. Welcome Home - Epilogue

Author's Note

Someone mentioned I sorta skipped a lot of character interaction in the finale and they're right. It's fun to have them interact, so here's a little extra to add to the ending.

16. Welcome Home - Epilogue

It hadn’t taken Pinkie long to hang streamers from every corner of Twilight’s library. By the time the ponies in town had heard of our return, thanks in no small part to Pinkie, the mare had even baked a cake.

I stood in a corner with Dash as ponies streamed in to congratulate Twilight on finding her brother. “You know, Dash, I bet Pinkie’s passed out cold by eight. She’s been running around non-stop for at least an hour.”

“I’ll take that bet, she doesn’t sleep. She waits.” Dash pointed at Pinkie, who was taste testing the fruit punch. “That’s got enough sugar in it to keep her up all night.”

“She’s gotta crash sooner or later.”

Before we could get to the small details, like the stakes, we saw Shining and Twilight heading over towards us. Dash elbowed me in the ribs “No jokes this time.”

“Ow, come on I’m not that bad,” I said.

Shining reached us and smiled. “Twilight’s filled me in on most of what happened while I was gone. Thanks for helping rescue me, Dawn.”

“Oh it was nothing. The alternative was going to Dash’s Daring Do book club so I thought, why not?” I moved my hoof just in time for Dash to miss stepping on it. “Anyway, I’m glad to be fitting in around here now, your sister was a large part of making that happen.”

“It was the least I could do, Dawn.” Twilight blushed and looked at her brother.

“You know, the guard could use a pony like you, Dawn. I hear you’ve got some skill at tracking.”

I tilted my head in confusion for a moment before recalling my cutie mark, which appeared during the hunt for Dash. “Oh, right! Yeah I guess I do, but I’m not much of the enlistment type.” Given my knack for finding lost things, and the bit of medical knowledge I retained that was still useful, the mark seemed fitting: a yellow-orange sun rising over the horizon to outline a medical caduceus.

Shining nodded. “Well the Royal Guard is just one part of the law enforcement. There are ponies we contract for other jobs based on their talents: explorers, search and rescue, medics. I just want you to know I’ll put in a good word for you.”

“Thanks, I’ll think about it.” I smiled and offered him a hoof to shake. “Now why don’t you enjoy this party before Pinkie force-feeds you some cake?”

He chuckled and shook my hoof. “Sounds like a plan.”

There was a knock at the door which was out of place, considering every other pony here had let themselves in on their own. “Oh! I almost forgot!” Twilight rushed over to the door.

We stood and watched as the door opened and Princess Cadance stepped in. Most of the ponies who actually heard her enter, over the noise of the party, stopped to bow. Shining rushed over to meet her. “Cadance!”

“Shining!” The Princess began to cry in joy as she rushed to embrace him.

While they began to catch up, I gestured over to the snacks and punch. “Hey, why don’t we pay a visit to Applejack?”

Dash smirked and got a gleam in her eye. “I think we should.”

As we walked over I noticed Rarity watching us. I also noticed that Applejack seemed to be trying to look away from Rarity, which let us sneak up on each side of her.

“So, AJ, what’s this about you and Rare? I never knew you were into mares!” Dash said.

“What?! Rainbow Dash, you stop right there missie!” Applejack blurted, her cheeks beginning to blush.

“Or maybe she swings both ways,” I added. “Hard working farm ponies have to blow off some steam like the rest of us.”

“But… Ah…” Applejack looked between the two of us and chuckled nervously. “Ha! Ah’m not gonna let you two mess with me that easy. What ah do with my love life is none of yer business.”

“Oh, we weren’t trying to make it ours… I mean, I’m sure you slipped and fell into that shampoo and had to clean your mane to get it out,” Dash observed.

I took a sniff of Applejack’s mane and it did smell of spiced cider. “Yeah, I haven’t even had time to preen and you show up to the party all dressed up, relatively speaking?”

“Ah’m not gonna run around filthy! It’s not like I did it for anypony,” she added. Applejack glanced at Rarity for a second, who was grinning ear to ear. “Did Rare put you up to this?”

“So it is Rarity!” Dash giggled and bumped into Applejack, putting a wing over her back and whispered. “You know, I’ve got a friend that could teach you a few moves.”

Applejack’s face was red as one of her apples and we finally had her at a total loss for words. She just blinked and stared at her reflection in the fruit punch in front of her.

“I think that’s enough, darling,” Rarity said. “Why don’t you two find another pony to pester before I sic Pinkie on you.” She pulled Dash gently off of Applejack, and I followed suit, backing away from the pony.

“Aww, sorry there AJ. It’s all in good fun,” Dash said.

“Yeah, you’d make a cute couple… I mean, if you had a special somepony… crap I’m just gonna shut up now,” I added.

As me and Dash walked away, I heard Rarity complimenting Applejack’s hair. “You really think they’ve got a thing, Dash?”

“Well they already bicker like an old married couple, so yeah,” she replied.

“I guess that makes sense.” I saw Lyra across the room and she immediately walked over towards us. “Now it’s your turn not to make any dumb jokes, Dash.”

“As if.” She rolled her eyes and decided to stretch out her wings. “Oh, hi Lyra.”

“Hi Dash, Dawn. I haven’t gotten to see you two around much. I just wanted to say how happy I am for you two.” Lyra smiled.

I recalled our time together and her good looks and attitude. “Thanks you’ve been a great friend to me. You know we could always hang out sometime, if Dash doesn’t mind.”

“What, me? Why would I mind. I’m way cooler than Lyra,” Dash said.

Lyra nodded and looked at Dash. “Sure, but I bet I could still teach you a trick or two. Maybe you and Dawn should invite me over for dinner some night.”

I turned to look at Dash, not trying to get my hopes up. Sure, it was one thing to fantasize but everypony knows you don’t just suggest a three-way to your mare friend. “Uh, Dash, why are you still stretching your wings?” I asked.

“What?!” Dash fluttered her wings, having subconsciously spread them. “They’re just stiff from rescuing your ass, I mean Shinings ass, gah!” She blushed and pulled her wings into her sides at last.

“Well, you two think about it, it wouldn’t be the first time.” Lyra winked and used her magic to give Dash a barely audible slap on her flank, which caused her to flinch.

“You’re so cute when you’re flustered. I think I’m gonna hire Lyra full-time just to watch you blush,” I stated.

Dash glared at me. “I know where you sleep!”

I flapped my wings to hover and put my hooves up in surrender. “Hey, I know where you sleep too. Truce?”

“Oh, a truce?! What are we playing? Risk? War? Chess?” Pinkie bounced between us from the side and looked back and forth, smiling widely.

“Uh, nothing yet, Pinkie,” Dash said.

“I’ve got the largest board game collection in Ponyville, just say the word and I’m there! I’m the Equestrian champion of Monopony.” Pinkie pulled a small gold trophy out of her mane to prove it.

“Wow, great work, Pinkie.” I looked a little closer at the trophy. “But, uh, why does this statue look like the pony is flipping a table?”

Pinkie shrugged. “Well not everypony is as happy as me and some like to flip the tables when they lose. It’s become something of a Monopony tradition! That’s how I got this!” She pulled out a second trophy with a more prominently flipped table. “But I only placed third in table flipping.”

“Yeah, I’ll stick to real trophies like Best Young Flier or most sonic rainbooms,” Dash said.

“Don’t be shy, Dash. I remember when you first moved here you won the Pegasi and Poltergeist championship! You rolled like, a hundred natural twenties!”

I laughed and looked at Dash. “Yeah, I’m sure she won because of luck and not being the only filly among a bunch of maturing colts.”

“Hey! It’s not my fault I’m awesome at everything I do. Besides, it’s not like you have any trophies, Dawn.”

Shrugging, I looked between them. “Well maybe not here, but I totally had a trophy back on Earth for uh… first place karate...thingy…”

The two mares laughed and I gave up trying to come up with some believable lie. “It’s okay, you’re number one in my book, Dawn!” Pinkie shouted. “And Shining is number zero point nine!”

I glanced back at him, to see Shining, Twilight, and Cadance still chatting near the door. “Well, everypony seems to be having a good time. How about we sneak out and head home?”

“Before pin the tail on the pony?” Dash said. She pointed over to a large cutout on the wall. “Nah, I want to see you stumbling around blindfolded first.

“All right, but if I win you’ve got to try and fly home with the blindfold on.”

We walked over towards Pinkie, who was starting to gather ponies up for the game. It was good to be home, with things back to normal. I decided to enjoy the moment as much as I could, surrounded by happy friends. Everything was finally at peace, most importantly with myself accepting my new life.

17. The next day - Epilogue

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1. For a New Dawn

Ammonia.

The first thing I recalled smelling was ammonia. It permeated the air, as if the janitor cleaning my hospital had spilled it again. My nose was being stung by the insulting fragrance, and there was little I could do about it.

Or can I?

My efforts to move proved sluggish and futile. A weight hung over my body, pinning me down in the bed. As my awareness of my surroundings returned, I noticed soft linens covering me. A puzzling realization came to me as I felt my heartbeat.

I was alive. But how?

A steady beeping caused me to try covering my ears, which made them twitch. The last thing I remembered was fading to black inside Dash’s mind. I had picked a happy memory and let it absorb me.

Like a factory being turned on at the start of a workday, my body seemed to be turning on one step at a time. Smell, touch, hearing, and my taste returned. My tongue and throat were parched, most likely due to the length of my hospital stay. But if I was in a hospital, did that mean they’d found a way to send me home?

My eyelids felt like they were crusted shut, resisting the efforts of my weakened muscles to part them. Blinding white light assaulted them as they opened, causing them to water and further blur my view. I opened them slowly until they had adjusted so I could take a look around.

Sore muscles throughout my body protested, but finally obeyed, as I commanded them to move. The lead weights that had pinned me down earlier vanished, replaced by mental cobwebs that made me sluggish. It felt like I hadn’t used these muscles in weeks, which might very well have been the case.

An ugly, tan privacy curtain was pulled around my bed. The only things I could see in the room from here were that curtain, the ceiling, and a white bed sheet. I moved my arm up to find the nurse call button and ask for a hand getting a drink of water.

An intravenous catheter pinched my elbow, and the tape pulled at my hair.

Of course they’d slap the silk tape over my entire arm. Probably took the LPN ten tries to find a vein, too.

Going more slowly this time, I freed my arm and wiped the crust away from my eyes with my fingernail. It proved highly effective—too effective. Somehow my nail was covering my entire eye, neatly scooping out the gunk that had accumulated.

Not again. . .

Blinking my eyes brought the room into a clearer focus. Hovering in front of me was a cyan leg, covered in fur, with a hoof at the end. I mentally berated myself for hoping, even for a second, I was free of Dash’s body.

Hey, Dash, what happened?

My cracked lips were aching so I tried to lick them. Judging by how crappy I felt, I’d likely gone into a coma. However, I wasn’t dead or in prison, so I was guessing we‘d beaten Discord.

Dash?

Both wings began to ache, and I pushed them outward a little. My limbs began to move clumsily, shifting the bed sheets around and knocking the call button off of the bed.

Shit, so much for getting a nurse.

Something inside me felt wrong, as if I were wearing a body that was the wrong size. I hadn’t felt like this inside Dash before. Whereas she was agile, I was struggling to get my foreleg back under the blanket. Whereas she was coordinated, I had to focus all my attention to slide myself up against the pillow and prop myself up.

There was a table next to my bed with water on it. I considered reaching for it but wasn’t sure how to pick it up with a hoof. Next to it was something that looked an awful lot like a birth certificate, with my name in bold letters.

Dawn Seeker

I groaned, annoyed that they misspelled my first name. Given the tendency of ponies to make cute-sounding names, I wasn’t surprised they’d gone ahead and slapped a new last name on there for me.

While I kicked around under the sheets, I felt something twitch and begin to grow. It was not an unfamiliar sensation, having spent my life as a male, but the size and speed of it alarmed me.

Beneath the sheet I began to pitch a tent, one large enough to dispel all notion that I was still in Dash’s body. I lifted up the sheets with my hooves to glance at the monstrosity known as stallionhood.

The sheets slipped and I tried to lean forward and sit up. The sound of hooves clicking on the tile floors reached me, and they were heading in my direction. I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was, or who was coming. To make matters worse, I was about to have a visitor walk in while I was at full mast.

Shit, shit, shit!

I hit my growing erection with a hoof, trying to “shoo” it away. A jolt of pain shot down it, doing nothing to aid my situation. The hoofsteps stopped next to the curtain, leaving me with little time to improvise. I rolled to my left to lay on my side and hide my problem.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough bed left for me to do so.

The world spun as I toppled to the ground, my flailing limbs doing little to slow me down. I landed on a wing, yelping in pain. The cold air against me let me know the blanket was gone and I was fully exposed to whoever my visitor was.

My eyes clenched shut as I willed my visitor away, or to not see me laying on the floor like this. It was unexpected enough that I was a pony, let alone alive. I was not looking forward to the explanation of why I was not back on Earth. Having them tell me how they’d saved me while I was exposed like this was less than ideal.

The softness of the nearby hoofsteps caused my ears to point themselves towards the source of the sound. My visitor was only a couple of feet away now. Faint breathing reached me, and whoever was enjoying the peepshow didn’t say a word. I heard the blanket rustle, then fall down over my prone form, covering me.

A pillow landed next to me with a soft thud. “Hey,” a familiar voice said. It was one I had worn for a week prior to today.

Exhaling in relief, I opened my eyes and looked over at Rainbow Dash. “H-hey.” I coughed, my throat dry and aching from trying to speak.

Dash smirked and looked at the glass of water on the nightstand next to me. She reached down and lifted my head forward to slide the pillow under it. Then as she was about to step over me, she flapped her wings and flew to the glass.

I waited as she lowered it and held it to my lips, allowing me to drink. The water was refreshing and eased my sore throat, allowing me to moan in relief.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem, Dude.” Dash was about to sit down when we heard another set of footsteps approaching.

“Crap, don’t let the others see me like this.” I gestured towards my groin, and Dash nodded. Thank god she was in a good mood and covering for me, though I suppose I’d earned that much.

She stepped outside the privacy curtain. “Hey, what do you want?” Dash asked.

“Oh, I’ve come to check on the patient,” a nurse explained.

“Yeah, well we’re busy and he doesn’t want visitors.”

“Excuse me?” I could hear the hostile edge in the nurse’s voice. “Visitors do not give orders to the hospital staff.”

“Hah! I’m Rainbow Dash! Nurses do not give orders to the mare that saved Equestria four times. Now give us some privacy.”

The nurse stomped a hoof. “The doctor will hear about this, so will Celestia!” The pony left the room, letting her hooves echo loudly off the floor.

Dash returned to my side and sat down next to my head, leaning back against the bed.

“Thanks again.”

“Stop thanking me; we were a team. We did it, Dawn! We saved Equestria from Discord,” Dash explained. “I’m so excited to see you, I thought you were dead!” She gave me a quick hug before pulling back to make sure I saved what little dignity I had left.

“How? The last thing I remember was clinging on to that feeling of loyalty, and letting myself fade into your memories.”

Dash shrugged and looked over at me. From this angle I got a good view of her mane, and realized I’d never really appreciated just how many colors it had. “Same way we always do. We blasted him with the Elements. It was a real shame we had to put them back in the Tree of Harmony a few days after that. Sure was a hell of a time trying to solve Twilight’s plant problem.”

“No, I mean, this.” I moved a foreleg up and down my side. “You seemed to have made me a body and given me a new name.”

“What do you mean? Your name is Dawn?” Dash asked.

“Yeah, but spelled different, and that isn’t my last name.”

“Well to be honest, I had no idea how to pronounce or spell it, and it wasn’t a very pony sounding last name. . . of course, Celestia would be happy to change it if you ask her later.”

“And why do I feel so clumsy? I could fly when we were joined together, and now I feel like a foal.”

“Oh! Twilight told me how to explain this. For an egghead it was pretty cool!” Dash jumped up and flew over to the empty glass, and the full pitcher of water. Once they were in her hooves she returned and set them down in front of me.

“Really? She’s got you explaining this stuff now?”

“Hush! Just because I’m awesome doesn’t mean I can’t know a thing or two.”

I shrugged. “Well, I’m not going anywhere, so give me a little magic lesson, egghead.”

Dash’s wings fluttered and she seemed to blush a little, but it was short lived. She poured a glass of water into the cup. “Okay, so this glass of water is you, and the pitcher of water is me. Now, when Discord sent you here, he poured you inside my head. So imagine you’re this cup of water. If I got another cup, I could pour the water in it and it’d be pretty much the same.”

She lifted up the cup and dumped it inside the pitcher of water. “But now that the cup and pitcher are mixed together, could you get the glass of water back out, using the exact same bits of water I just poured in?”

Fuck. So that’s what happened.

“No, it’d be nearly impossible to get all the exact same water molecules out of the pitcher and back into the glass.” It made sense in a way, that the two of us had been blended together. How on Earth, or I suppose Equestria, they could sort the two of us out was beyond me.

Dash stared at me and blinked a couple times, muttering “Show off” under her breath. “Ahem, yeah. So, Celestia, Luna, and Twilight pretty much spent a week trying to scoop you out of my head, but only the right bits. I was rather persuasive, demanding that they look harder, telling them you were still in there.”

“What, they didn’t want to rescue me?” I asked.

“It’s not that, but you were just memories and fragments all across my brain. They were afraid of what could happen to me if they went fishing around, but I convinced them to do it. They found a large enough piece in my subconscious to start attaching all the others. Next they did some fancy magic stuff, and voila!”

My thoughts drifted to my life, my real life, on Earth. I could remember most of it and almost feel the pieces of my memory that hadn’t returned. Yet, even if Dash got to keep some of my memories, I wasn’t ready to just abandon my entire life on my home planet.

“Why didn’t they send me back to Earth, then? Or just let me die in peace?” I asked.

Dash gasped, taking a moment to choose her words. “You. . . would really want to die? We worked really hard to save you.”

“No, but I mean, my life on Earth is dead. If I’m here, it means they couldn’t send me back there.”

“Yeah, they, uh. . . Well, you’ve been in a coma for a week after they saved you. It took them days to do that. Then there was the time you spent in my body. . . By now, you’re—you would. . . We couldn’t send you back if we wanted to.”

I felt emotions well up in my stomach, feeling a bit nauseous, as I realized that all I had ever known had died. Gone—never to be more than a passing memory. My eyes began to water, so I blinked a few times to clear them.

“Dawn, I thought you’d be happy. . . They made you a body. It’s never been accomplished before! And you got to keep some of my best traits: wings, cyan fur, uh… well, not the hair, but still! It could have been worse. Pinkie was adamant you’d rather be a mare than a stallion.”

I chuckled softly, picturing myself as a mare. My time as the other gender, with all the benefits that it entailed, had passed. Being male was the only part of my old life I still had to hang onto, and I couldn’t imagine being female once the curiosity passed.

“It’s not that,” I explained. “Thanks. I just. . . died. On Earth. If I’ve been gone for weeks, there’s really nothing left to go back to. Everyone will have buried me and would be trying to move on with—with—”

I was choking back the tears and trying to maintain my composure in front of Dash. There would be time for this later, when nopony was around to see me cry like a foal.

“It’s okay, Dawn,” Dash said. “I think we know each other better than any other pony ever could. Your secret is safe with me.”

Tears ran down the fur on my face, tickling it slightly as it got wet and stuck to my face. I looked at Dash, who was sitting down with her tail across her lap. She gestured at her hind leg, and I rolled over.

My muzzle buried itself into her lap, surrounded by her hair, and I wept. I wept for my death on Earth, and the end of my life. I wept for the family I’d never see again, the culture I had lost, and the way of life that was but a dream.

Her hair soaked up my tears, and I felt her hoof stroking my neck. All my pretense was thrown aside as I continued to cry, letting my emotions pour out. Even though I had succeeded in saving Equestria, doing so had imprisoned the only being capable of sending me back to Earth. Now, I’d been brought back, but even if Discord somehow changed his mind from his stone prison, I had nothing to go back to.

For the first time, Equestria felt more like a prison than an odd vacation. I was one of the ponies now, though as my sorrow gave way I realized it might not be all bad. Dash and her friends would be there for me, and I could start over and find a job. There would be plenty of ponies there to support me.

Dash ran her hoof down my neck again. “Better?”

I sniffled, still feeling a little insecure but safe nonetheless because Dash was here. It was true that being forced to co-exist inside her mind had made us close, like siblings. We had each seen past the persona we put on for others and learned a great deal about each other. “Yes, thanks.”

“Want a hoof getting back into bed?”

“Can I just take a nap, like this? I don’t want to be alone.”

Dash began to stroke my mane again, parting the light brown hair. “Of course, Dawn.”

I woke up with a yawn, finding myself back in the hospital bed, alone again. For the first time I could look at myself rationally, and take in this new body. I was about Dash’s size, and clearly a stallion. The somewhat-messy mane was a shade of light brown with a pink highlight at the root. I could move my tail around under the sheets and imagined it was the same.

I lifted the sheets clumsily with my wings, noticing I had no cutie mark. It made sense, because I had no ‘special talent’ like most ponies. I had just been born, so to speak.

Both ears pivoted towards hushed voices outside the curtain. They began to twitch from the unfamiliar sensation of having flexible ears.

“He just needs some more sleep. He’s doing awesome!” Dash said.

“You shooed the nurses away, Rainbow,” Twilight stated. “And Celestia is on her way anyhow to talk to him. Why won’t you let anypony see him?”

“Because he. . . needs his sleep!”

Twilight moaned, and I found myself grateful Dash had been willing to run interference for me while I dealt with the shock of my death. “Dash, you keep saying he needs more sleep. He’s been out cold for a week. Then he wakes up and you’re all. . . fidgety.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Hey, Twilight,” I interrupted. “You can come in.”

“Thank you, Dawn.” The alicorn walked through the curtains followed by Dash.

“See? He’s doing just as awesome as I said.” Dash hovered in the air, forelegs crossed as she stared down at Twilight.

Her personality seemed a bit different from when I’d been inhabiting her body. Perhaps this was closer to what she was like before I barged into her brain.

“Celestia and Luna are coming up to thank you, and the rest of my friends want to see you too. Are you up for it?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, I can probably come up with some questions to ask them when they get here. You know, the whole ‘what the hell am I supposed to do now?’ kind.”

Twilight’s horn lit up and I felt her magic creeping over my skin, creating a tickling sensation. I could also feel it invading my mind, causing me to clench my eyes shut and try to block her out. “Hey!”

“Oh, sorry, I got ahead of myself.” When I looked back at her she had a sheepish grin on her face. “I’m just so used to using my magic on my friends that I forgot to ask your permission. Can I check to see how you’re doing?”

“Sure.”

The magic crept over me again, though it felt a lot less invasive when I was expecting it. My body felt like a deck of cards being shuffled as she probed her way through all of my organs. It was unlike any medicine ever practiced back on Earth, and immediately reminded me of the MRI machine.

“Did you just take multiple pictures of my insides by slicing them into pieces with magic?” I asked.

“Yeah! You know about unicorn magic?”

I sighed and shook my head. “Twilight, I’m from Earth, remember? The only thing I know about magic is—well it’s. . . magic.”

“Oh.”

“We do have machines that do something similar though. So, tell me, Doctor Twilight, how long do I have to live?”

My question caught her off-guard, sending both eyes wide open while she searched for a response. “But I—you’re not dying! Who would tell you that?!”

Dash laughed with me at her expense. “No, but seriously how’d you save me?”

Twilight squee’d, filling the air with an infectious joy as she took a deep breath. “I thought you’d never ask! I helped Luna search through the forbidden section of the library, digging up research on golems. We invented a whole new branch that combines magic and alchemy, the likes of which hasn’t come close to being studied since the Lunar Rebellion. Using Dash’s genetic sequence as a base template—”

I rolled my eyes and moaned. Despite not being from around here, I’d learned quickly there were two things you never wanted to do: launch Twilight into an explanation, or get caught mentioning “party” around Pinkie. Dash was laughing at me, enjoying the verbal assault that Twilight was passing off as an explanation.

Apparently, from what I could pick up while Twilight pantomimed and gave me a brief history of the universe, she and Luna had created a living body for me. I was some sort of golem, only instead of animating an inanimate object, they had used Dash’s DNA to create a real animate object. Then, through some magic mumbo-jumbo, they took a melon-baller and scooped me out of Dash’s brain.

“—stopped me before I could give you any enhancements. I was really hoping to make you faster, stronger, better—” Twilight said.

“And sexier,” Dash added.

I glanced over at her. She was giving me a seductive grin. My mind immediately went where every male mind goes when within spitting distance of a woman, and I began pitching a tent.

“Dammit, Dash! And I just got rid of that.” I crossed my forelegs and groaned.

Barbara Streisand, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, John Boehner—wait, why are politicians always so damn ugly? Ah, who cares, it seems to be working.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight scolded.

I listened to the two whisper back and forth, picking up bits about it being a ‘harmless joke’. Luckily my situation was resolving itself quickly.

Celestia and Luna opened the curtains wide only moments later, allowing much more sunlight into the room. Thankfully, a royal catastrophe had been averted, leaving Dash to laugh it up while Twilight gave her a furious look.

“Good afternoon, Dawn.” Celestia smiled and the room seemed to brighten up as the partly cloudy sky outside cleared up.

“Hey, how’s it hanging?” I asked.

“How is what hanging?” she replied.

Dash and Luna chuckled, seeming to understand the saying, though the “eggheads” in the room didn’t.

“Nevermind. So, uh, thanks for not letting me die and all.”

“The thanks lie with Luna and Twilight,” Celestia explained.

“Oh yeah,” Dash said. A second later she punched me in the shoulder with a hoof hard enough to elicit a yelp of pain. “That’s for trying to sacrifice your life to save Equestria!”

I stared at her a moment. “Well? Next you’re supposed to kiss me for saving Equestria. I’ve seen this in movies plenty of times.”

Dash’s mouth flopped open while she searched for the right retort. She finally gave up and landed next to Twilight. “Well, I’m dating Soarin, so there won’t be any of that going on.”

“It’s not ‘cheating’ if it’s for saving an entire country you know.” I was about to continue when I saw Celestia raise an eyebrow. “But we’ll talk about that later. So, Princess?”

“On behalf of Equestria, thank you, Dawn. We owe you more than we can repay, though I hope this commemorative plaque will begin to show our gratitude.” Celestia levitated out a golden plaque with my name on it, and the hoofprints of her and Luna.

“You realize that’s not how you spell ‘Don’?” I asked.

“Hmm? You said your name was Dawn,” Celestia replied.

“He spells it differently,” Dash added.

“Yeah, D-O-N. Don.”

“What an odd name for a pony,” Luna answered. “The whole time you were stuck with Dash you kept pronouncing it ‘Dawn’.”

“Just because they’re pronounced the same—”

“Indeed. Dawn is a beautiful time of day and a fitting name. You are at the dawn of a new life, seeking a purpose. I came up with the name myself. Or, perhaps you hate my beautiful sunrises?” Celestia asked, with a mischievous grin

“No! It’s just a little. . .” I twirled a hoof around, “girly.” Luckily, I was no stranger to sarcasm and ignored Celestia’s quip.

Dash laughed loudly. “Girly? You spent an entire week in my body trying to get laid! That ship set sail a long time ago.”

Unsure what to say to that, I just returned the discussion to recent events. “Anyway, thanks for bringing me back. But why didn’t you just send me to Earth?”

“We would have if we could, but that is a power only Discord seems to understand,” Celestia stated. “Had so much time not elapsed we would continue to look for a way, but I fear you will never have a way back to Earth.”

“And you’re okay with that?” I asked. A bit of the anger from earlier resurfaced inside me. “You’ve imprisoned Discord tons of times, and you couldn’t just free him long enough to send me back? No, you can’t just take everything from me and tell me I can never go back.”

“Dawn—”

“No, Twilight,” I interjected. “I’m here with three of the most powerful beings in the world, and the first thing I hear from Dash when I wake up is you’ve all written me off for dead!”

Celestia walked over to the bed until I could feel warmth radiating from her body. She looked down at me and spoke softly. “Dawn, I did not wish to rob you of a chance to return to Earth. Instead, we have given you a gift of a new life, and a second chance.”

I felt a lump in my throat and attempted to swallow it. Crying in front of Dash was one thing—I knew which drawer she kept her sexy socks in. Breaking down in front of the rulers of Equestria was another story. “Yeah, still sucks. Can we move this along?”

“There’s no need to be rude,” Twilight chided.

“It’s okay, Twilight.” Celestia turned and walked back over to stand with the other ponies. “We have completely removed him from the comfort of his old life to give him a shot at a new one.” She turned back around to face me. “As such, Dawn, we will procure you a house in Ponyville. If there is any way we can make your transition easier you need only ask. We can not, nor will I, use Discord to try and send you back. To do so would invite disaster down on all of Equestria.”

She returned her gaze to the exit of the room and walked out of it, letting the oak door close gently behind her. For the first time I noticed how cozy the hospital room was. Unlike the barren tile rooms I was used to, this one felt like a log cabin. Wood paneling on the walls, hardwood floors, and plenty of sunlight made me feel at ease.

With the source of the bad news gone, I was left with Luna, Dash, and Twilight. Doubtless as soon as they left, Pinkie Pie would be on her way to throw a party. Then I’d have to figure out this whole “life as a pony” schtick and have a ton of work ahead of me.

“Are you alright, Dawn?” Luna asked.

“Of course he is. He’s part Dash!” Rainbow stated.

“Just how much ‘Dash’ am I? Are we, like, siblings or something?” I asked.

“No more than Twilight or Pinkie are her sisters. Her DNA was merely the template onto which to put your humanity.” Luna spoke and I followed her gaze over to Dash, who had taken a keen interest in staring at her hooves.

“Props on that, by the way.” I sat up and stretched, causing my stomach to rumble and the realization of how hungry I was to hit me. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful. You seem to have gotten most of my memories out intact. I don’t suppose you can bring me some food and let me get some more rest?”

“Of course,” Twilight replied. “I’ll get you some salad and jello from the cafeteria.”

“Scratch that, just bring me jello. Lots and lots of jello,” I said.

“Aww, but you need to eat your veggies to grow big and strong.” Dash flew above me and began to tussle my mane with her hoof. “Who’s my good little colt?” she cooed.

“I’m not above hitting a lady.” I glared up at her.

“Try it, tough guy. You’ll find out why they call me the fastest mare in Equestria,” Dash said.

“Hah!” I rolled my eyes. “Me and Soarin already know why they call you that!”

She grunted and began to blush, quickly flying back over to Twilight to try and hide her embarrassment from me. It would seem I still knew how to push her buttons.

“Come on, Dash. We have some more work to do before heading back home,” Twilight said.

“I must go as well. You would not believe how much paperwork is involved with the night court. Sometimes I think Celestia deliberately saves it all up for me.” Luna gave a small bow before turning and leaving.

“I’ll catch up, Twilight,” Dash explained. After Twilight and Luna left, she walked up to my bed.

“You sure do act different now that I’m out of your head,” I observed. “I almost asked you to cuddle, but I figured the answer would be no with them watching.”

“Yeah, I do have a reputation to uphold, and I can’t blame the annoying human in my head anymore for my odd behavior,” Dash explained. “I just want you to know if you need anything I’m here for you. I’m not that good at the mushy stuff, but we already know each other really well, so I figure it can’t be that hard.”

“That’s sweet. If I ever need tips on creative use of a shower head, I’ll give you a call.”

“You do realize you’re playing with fire?” Dash stared at me for a moment before chuckling. “Well, I can’t exactly start pranking you until you’re out of the hospital, but if you keep that attitude up I will get even.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Author's Note

v1.1 Edited for some clarity.
+ name change was to help him fit in, in addition to the pronunciation in 'Murica being the same for both Don and Dawn.
+ description of size/mane/lack of cutie mark
+ Dash more excited to see him
= the 'descriptions' of how they saved him remain unchanged, as each 'pony' describes different aspects of it (and obviously, it won't come up in conversation again so consider it world building and not repetition.)

12. Melancholy

I laid down on the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. There were redwood shelves full of books on the wall and a lush brown carpet. The sofa was soft enough that I sank a few inches.

Doctor Stable took a seat on a recliner and levitated a pen and notepad. He’d been briefed by the Princesses and was supposed to help me cope with all the recent changes. “How are you doing today, Dawn?”

“Fine.” I could think of a dozen places I’d rather be but most of them were pieces of furniture in my house where I could nap.

“It’s been a week since I saw you, after you and Twilight returned from Zecora. How has it been?”

“The same as always. I sit around wondering why I’m alive, what my purpose is in life, and how everypony is just going to leave me.”

He adjusted his glasses and leaned forward in his chair. “Why do you say that? Have you not been able to find Rainbow Dash yet to apologize?”

I shifted my wings and rolled my head over to look at him. “It’s like she has a sixth sense for avoiding ponies. I gave up after the second day. None of them are stopping by anymore. Every time they stopped by they were just so cheerful it annoyed me.”

“Wanting to withdraw when hurt is a normal, but you shouldn’t keep out ponies who want to help forever. You’ll need to talk to Dash eventually, even if you think she doesn’t want to.”

“I just don’t see what good it’d do now. Whether I’m spending a week causing trouble or a week skimming books wistfully in my house, nothing changes. I’m not making any difference here, I’m a useless pony…”

Doctor Stable took a few notes and thought a moment before replying. “So what is it that makes you happy? What do you enjoy doing?”

My neck was starting to kink from looking at him so I rolled over onto my side and spread my wings out behind me. “I don’t know. I used to be a nurse and figured helping people was a good job, something I could be proud of. Everything is different here, I don’t want to go through all the schooling to learn all the differences in anatomy. Reading books just gets boring, and I get tired of going out and being around other ponies.”

“Everypony needs something that gives their life meaning, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Maybe you just aren’t ready to admit it to yourself yet, but I think the fact you’re this upset after hurting your friends is because they’re the ones you’ve found meaning in. Perhaps they’re the first ponies you’ve ever really opened up to. Were you ever this close to people on Earth?”

I shook my head. “It’s different there, people aren’t ever that close really. I’d grab drinks with coworkers from time to time, but with the internet you don’t have to leave the house to chat with someone.”

“And now you can’t avoid interacting with other ponies. To do anything here you have to be able to leave the house and talk to them, and you seemed to be doing fine before your outburst at the Iron Pony competition. What changed? Why are you avoiding your problems now?”

“Now? Did I ever really face them? I avoid my problems because I don’t have the energy to face them. Trying to use sarcasm and wit to keep ponies at hoof’s length didn’t work so well. I got stuck pushing not just the strangers away, but my best friends.”

Doctor Stable levitated a glass of water over to the table for me, and then took a sip of his own. “Have you been exercising then, or just staying indoors?”

“Thanks.” I took a drink of my water. “Just staying inside. I want to go do stuff, I just never do it.”

“Are you too tired?”

“Nah, just I can’t seem to focus on it now, all I can think about are mistakes I’ve made or things I’ve lost. I believe you that exercise would help me feel better but I just can’t be bothered to go out and do it.”

“As much as I want to help, nopony can force you to live a healthy lifestyle. I can give you advice, but I can’t strengthen your social skills for you. A lot of this change has to come from within, when you decide you’re tired of living this way.”

“That’s the problem with medicine, Doc.” I took a few gulps of my water. “There are limits to what you can do, and in the end it all comes down to me. At the same time, I just don’t have the willpower to do anything about it. So, here I am. Here I’ll be next week when nothing changes, then a week after that.”

“You can’t let that cycle of negative reinforcement continue. You feel a little down so you don’t exercise and you shut ponies out. Then you feel bad that you’re all alone and feeling so tired all the time. Maybe you eat a little junk food, but in the end it doesn’t change anything, and you withdraw further.”

“Well unless you’ve got a spell for that, I guess I’m just stuck here until it fixes itself then. But what about after that? I’ve got no job, no talent, I’ve barely got any friends and the life I knew for nearly thirty-years on Earth is gone, leaving me here as a month-old stallion in a new world.”

“You can only take these things one step at a time.” He flipped to another page in his notepad. “For now, let’s tackle the small things. Have you heard any more voices this week?”

“No.”

“Any dreams with the other ponies in them?”

“Not really, all but one of them seems to be keeping their distance.”

“Oh? And which one is that?”

I shrug. “Never got a name, Doc. She’s just as lazy as me, I’ll dream about taking a nap or something boring back on Earth, and she’s there laying on my couch. Never talks and I never bothered to try and wake her.”

“Alright, so have you heard back from Zecora yet? Alchemy has produced some amazing results in fields where our magic has met its limits.”

“Just a letter, that she’s made great strides in understanding the workings of poison joke. She’s also started brewing fertility and gender changing potions like the zebras in her homeland do. Zecora never really saw the need to study that field of alchemy until I showed up.”

“Okay and there’s one more question I have to ask.”

“Why? You in a hurry to get me out of here?”

He sighed. “You’ve got as much time as you need, Dawn. Now, have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself or others?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Still no to that one. Unless I can kill myself on Equestria and wake up on Earth we’re in no danger of that happening.”

“You shouldn’t take it so lightly, a lot of ponies care about you, even if you’re shutting them all out.”

“If they really wanted to, they could come check on me.”

He flipped to another page of his notepad to review some notes. “It says here you got tired of Pinkie bringing you cupcakes to cheer you up and closed every door and window into the house”

“That’s different, she’s Pinkie.”

“And when she found a way in through the attic you picked her up and threw her out the front door?”

I put my hooves up. “Hey, threw is a strong word. I just helped her out.”

He went back to the empty page of his notepad and jotted something down. “And would you have thrown her out a week ago? Wasn’t she the one who helped you meet Lyra?”

“Yeah she was, so I guess not.”

“You can’t have it both ways. You want everypony to leave you alone and let you do your own thing, but at the same time you’re seeking approval from them. If you could just help me figure out what changed, why you’re having this social anxiety now and not a week ago.”

I groaned and rolled onto my back to stare at the ceiling once again. “What changed? You mean aside from making one of my best friends stop talking to me and realizing I’ve got nothing of worth in my life and am not contributing to this wonderful little utopia you ponies have built up here? Well, I suppose I did start using a new mane conditioner.”

He raised an eyebrow and stared at me, as if waiting for an apology I was in no mood to give him. “I’m here to help you, Dawn. You may think things can’t go back to normal or you won’t be able to find a place here but that’s just not true. Do you think sulking is going to make Rainbow Dash feel any better? You’re not just avoiding your problem you’re trying to avoid living your life out of paranoia that things can only get worse.”

“I’m a realist, so far, things have only gotten worse. I’d be a fool to bet against the odds that I’ll just wind up ostracized for being the freak human.”

“I think for this week you just need to hunker down and think about what you want for your life. Think about what gives it meaning, what you want to do with it. I know it isn’t easy but it’s really only for you to decide. It’s not uncommon for ponies to have doubts and uncertainty. Just because I got a stethoscope on my flank didn’t make eight years of medical school any easier.”

I gazed down at my own flank, where my blank check on life was. I could really start over as anything I wanted to do if only I had the will to do it. However, I just couldn’t be bothered right now. “Yeah, I’ll think about it.” I rolled off the couch and stood up, stretching my wings for the flight home.

“Six next Friday sound good?” Doctor Stable stood up in preparation to shake my hoof.

“Yeah, sure. Thanks, Doc.” I shook his hoof and turned to leave. Once I was through the door of his office I was back in the linoleum halls of the hospital. Redwood was replaced by white paint and green highlights. Carpets were gone in lieu of easily sterilized tiles.

I managed to make it out of the hospital without running into anypony who would stop me and try to make small talk. In a way, the incident with Pinkie had pretty much insured none of the ponies in town bothered me. While I appreciated being left alone, it was true it made me feel painfully alone. Not to mention, Pinkie had probably taken my rejection of her efforts to cheer me up pretty hard.

Once outside I looked up at the cloudhouse that had been on my mind so often. I could fly up there to check on Dash, and find out just how bad it really was. Maybe she wasn’t actually angry at me, and she was just avoiding the issue like I was. I thought I saw something in one of the windows but decided not to bother, as she’d be long gone by the time I got there anyway.

Instead I flew towards Fluttershy’s cottage. Since she worked at home it was a sure bet she’d be there to chat. Despite all the mistakes I’d made, she’d never lost faith in me.

Her friend, the manticore, was still camping outside her house. It had taken up residence in one of the branches above the second floor. I was fairly bored and figured if I was going to be dragged out of my house to exercise and socialize, maybe it could be with Fluttershy to go find this disturbance in the Everfree.

Once I landed at the front door and knocked, it only took a minute for Fluttershy to appear. “Oh, Dawn… is everything okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m just getting out of the house for a change. You, uh… haven’t heard from Dash, have you?”

Fluttershy frowned. “No… I mean, I saw her but she didn’t do more than greet me. She’s been taking as many extra shifts as she can, helping weather teams as far as Canterlot.”

“Hmm, well I thought we could go out with your manticore pal to find out what’s upsetting the animals in the Everfree.”

“I don’t know if it is safe with just the two of us.”

“We’ll have a manticore with us, plus I could totally go for snapping something in two right now if it attacks us.”

Fluttershy chewed her lip as she seemed to think about it for a minute. “Well, I do want to see you out of the house more, and we haven’t gotten to spend much time together. Okay, give me a minute to get ready.”

I nodded and went to a small bridge over a creek that ran past her house to sit down and relax. From here I could see the several green hills dotted around her cottage and the many small animals that lived under them. They were running around without a care in the world, safe from predators and having only to worry about their next meal.

Fluttershy took the time to fly up and talk to the manticore before our trip. Once she was sure he was ready, they flew down to the bridge to get me. “He’ll show us where it is at, but then we’re coming back. If it’s something we’ll need help to fix I don’t want to get hurt trying to be a hero.”

“Sounds good to me.” I got up and walked up to the manticore. “Hey, who's a good manticore?” I tried to pet behind his ear, but he turned and growled at me. “Sorry, I have that effect on animals.”

As I backed up, Fluttershy stepped forward between us. “Now, that wasn’t very nice. Dawn just wanted to say hi.” I chuckled until I noticed Fluttershy giving me a stern look.

We walked towards the forest which seemed to be darker than should be possible for the late afternoon. The foliage was thick enough that I didn’t see any light coming through the leaves. There were so many bushes that I couldn’t see any tree roots, and there were just a few narrow paths from where Fluttershy or her animals had gone into the forest.

“It’s always darkest before the dawn,” I muttered.

“Hmm?” Fluttershy looked over at me as we stepped across the boundary into the forest.

“Oh just a saying, this forest is so dark but that just means it’ll be that much brighter if we fix whatever is wrong with it.”

“Oh.” She turned her attention back to the path in front of us and the manticore guiding us deeper into the forest. Whether she realized it or not, she kept getting closer to my side as we walked, until I couldn’t take a step without feeling her rub against my side.

“Nervous?”

“Um, a little. I usually don’t go this far in without my friends.”

I put a wing over her back to try and calm her down. If she freaked out, I’d lose the only pony who could convince a potential predator to not eat me. “Hey, I’m your friend. We’ll be fine, just a quick look and then I can say I did something useful this week.”

“Oh, but you’re always useful. I haven’t gotten to make a new friend in a while and I was so happy when you agreed to move into Ponyville. I was nearly as happy as Dash—” Fluttershy gulped and turned her head to hide behind her mane as I looked at her. “S-sorry…”

“Hey, it’s no big deal.”

“So you’re feeling better?”

“Yep,” I lied. I looked at the thorny bushes that were closing in on the narrow path. Nopony had been this far in for a long time if the trail had overgrown. The air even felt a bit heavier and more humid.

“Oh, I’m glad to hear that,” Fluttershy said.

The guilt ate at me as I lied to her. “I mean, I’ve spent most of the week in bed or looking for a book to read. I feel awful because I messed everything up and I have no purpose in life.”

Fluttershy carefully stepped into the thick brush and looked back at me. “Sometimes I’d wonder what good it was to take care of animals when other ponies were saving lives or harvesting food. If a rabbit is sick or healthy nopony notices, unless it’s a filly’s pet.”

I stepped into the thick brush and heard twigs snapping. My head shot forward and I saw it was just the manticore trying to clear us out a bit of a path. “Yeah? So what’d you do?”

“I realized not to compare my purpose in life to other ponies. What I do is important to me, and to each animal I help, and that’s enough. You just need to take time to realize how you’re affecting each pony around you. Even if you don’t have a job or talent, you’ve already made life better for everypony in town.”

“Thanks.” I smiled and followed her into a clearing ahead, and felt my fur tingling. The manticore was growling in agitation and Fluttershy wouldn’t take more than one step into the clearing.

I stepped further into the clearing. “Dawn…”

“What? We’re here and I’m going to look around.”

“Be careful, we don’t know what’s in here.” Fluttershy’s wings were clenched tightly against her side, a clear sign of how nervous she was.

“I can see right across the clearing, there’s nothing—” I felt my face hit something cold like water, but my momentum carried me straight through the invisible barrier. My whole body shivered as it passed inside and I found myself looking at the opening to a cave. It was dark inside, yet I could see a faint shimmering within. “On second thought, I think she’s right.”

After taking a few steps backwards I felt the barrier once again, though it resisted a bit more as I tried to leave. Finally I pushed my way out of the barrier and fell onto my rump in the clearing.

“Dawn!”

I felt Fluttershy grab me and drag me back, then hug me tightly. “I’m fine—” She could hug tight as a vice grip when she wanted to. “Easy.”

“You vanished! I thought for sure something awful had happened.” Fluttershy let go, and turned her attention to finding the manticore, who had decided to flee the clearing.

“There’s some kind of spell and a cave. You’re right, we’ll need Twilight and your friends to look into this.” I stood up and looked around. Aside from some broken branches signalling the direction we entered the clearing from we could have easily gotten lost.

“Can you get us back to town?”

“Yeah, this way.” I pointed between two trees.

“How can you tell?”

I pointed at the broken branches, and a scratch on one of the trees from the manticore’s claws. “Can you not see the signs?”

“Oh.” Fluttershy blushed a bit. “Well now that you point it out, I can.”

“Hmm, sorry. I thought it was more obvious.” I took a couple steps into the brush to make sure. “Yeah, there’s even some prints from his feet.”

“I didn’t know you had such keen eyesight.” Fluttershy walked into the brush alongside me, then we continued down the narrow path.

“Thanks, I guess I never really bothered to find out. We should get back to town soon, and I think we can go find Twilight in the morning. I’ll be able to lead us back here, and I doubt anypony but Twilight will be able to track down Dash. We’ll need all the help we can get before we go in that cave. Something felt so… wrong with it.”

We made the rest of the walk back to Ponyville in silence, both glancing around to ensure nothing snuck up on us. Luckily there didn’t seem to be any predators around and for once I seemed to have made it a day with nothing crazy happening. With a little luck, I’d get some sleep and think of a way to apologize to Dash, and get some normalcy in my life.