Wishing Star: A-Type

Chapters

Ch1 - Dead As Disco
Ch2 - A Passing (centi)Grade
Ch3 - Giggling Isn't Working
Ch04 - Love Tunnel (Contains Clop)
Ch05 - Pride and Prejudices
Ch06 - Roots
Ch07 - Half Bakery

Ch1 - Dead As Disco

Stretching after a long game of Kirby: Return to Dreamland (eighth play-through today, they needed to get the next one out, soon), Anton yawned and turned off his Wii. It was well into the night, and he needed to get to school the next day.

Buuut... there was a new episode of MLP on, so perhaps sleep could wait. Yeah, it could wait, ponies were more important.

Stepping over to the computer in the corner of the room, Anton flicked on the aging monitor, thankful that the computer at least was fairly new. It made YouTube searches and the like so much faster.

And, he had to admit to himself, that was one of the biggest draws: with a part-time job under his belt, he could even afford NetFlix and get the episodes only a day or two late, without the copyright infringement-related problems. Reaching for the keyboard, he stopped as a faint ‘whoosh’ noise caught his attention. It was rather like the sound the gas stove made when it was on, but nobody else was up...

“Shit, I really hope someone made ramen earlier and forgot to turn the stove off. Again.”

Standing up to check on it, Anton began to move towards the kitchen. His movement, however, was interrupted by a loud CRASH and the sound of wood and plaster being sent everywhere. It also came from behind him, still in the living room.

“Mom is totally gonna freak when she sees that. I hope it’s just another family of rats.”

Turning around to see the damage, he gaped at what he saw. A full wall of the basement had been damaged by the whatever-it-was, and chunks of the insulation and wooden beams scattered around a large hole, about a yard or so across.

What made Anton the saddest, and most likely to pull a Darth Emo and cry an elongated ‘nooo !’ to the heavens, was that the hole was right behind where his computer had been. The past tense is stressed here, because all that remained of the computer was fragments of metal and silicon, along with a couple of pieces of the ponies he’d gotten for his birthday last year scattered about.

The handmade sandstone figurines were more or less obliterated, including the one of his OC, Copy.Data. He fought back the urge to cry as he surveyed the mess.

“I... I didn’t even think the words ‘what could possibly go wrong’ this time! What the hell!? My... My collection... shit. Well, I guess... I could get some super glue... aw, who’m I kidding, I guess I’ll just figure out what did this before mom or dad does.”

Searching around the mess, Anton poked about. He found, and tried not to weep over, the broken remains of Twilight Sparkle’s front half, the back half in dozens of pieces. He also tried not to weep over the disembodied head of Pinkie Pie. He couldn’t find any other portions, and the little pony was still grinning.

It was more than a little macabre.

Finally, he found something that he hadn’t seen before. A spherical orb of some type of glass or something. Quartz, maybe. As Anton reached for the basketball-sized globe, it began to glow.

‘A big, glowing, crystal-ball-thing... maybe I can sell this to pay for the damages... and replacements... I hope I can get replacements.’ Anton’s thoughts idled on the idea for a moment, and he went to get a bag. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find any large enough. All he had available at the moment was a bunch of the bagel bags and a single half-ripped grocery bag left. Stopping to ponder who could’ve used up the piles of grocery bags, he came up blank.

“Okay, now I wanna know where everyone is, dad would have at least yelled from upstairs to say ‘Keep it down!’ and mom is not a heavy sleeper, I put my money on the glowing crystal ball thingamajig. Or aliens. Nah, probably the ball, even though aliens make more sense.”

A sudden thought struck him, and he went to check on the ball again. It just sat under the bed, glowing only slightly. It didn’t seem to have anything in it that could do anything to make people sleep, and he could pretty easily see through it. Well, minus the distortion from having a solid ball of glass between him and what he was seeing.

“Alright, I guess I can pick it up, weirdest it could do is start sparking like those electricity orb things and make my hair look like I jumped out of an anime, minus the neon dye-job.”

Reaching under, he gripped the ball firmly and tugged, earning a squeal of metal-on-stone as it slid under a support for the bed. The first thing he noted was that it felt perfectly smooth, and the second thing was that is was heavy.

“O- Okay, not glass or crystal then, waaay too heavy for those. Leaded glass? Quartz? Unobtanium? A weird meteorite that’ll cover everything with plants?”

Lifting the ball in both hands, he sat on the bed with the glassy orb in his lap. It wasn’t quite cool enough to have been sitting outside. And if it had gone through the wall like that, it should’ve left a crater.

But all it had done was destroy his computer and his ponies.

Sighing, he looked down at the ruined remains of his carefully tended Glaze figurine, now in more than a dozen pieces. Surveying the extents of the pony-figure carnage, he could identify bits of the Cadence and Shining Armor salt and pepper shaker set he had once considered the centerpieces of his collection. Portions of his Woona figurine’s wings were visible, but nothing else was.

A tear came to his eye as he thought of all the great friends who had gotten him these as presents and gifts. Even if a couple of them had disappeared lately...

“Fucking ball-thing, what are you?”

Anton tried to shake the thing, but its hefty mass prevented that from being an easy goal.

“I wonder if you can break too... Let’s find out, shall we?”

Anton went over to the home-improvement tool drawer in the kitchen and came back with a hammer and safety goggles. Several cathartic swings of the hammer later, he came to the conclusion (thanks to a broken hammer handle) that no, the ball-thing would not, in fact, break.

“Okay, we’ve tested weight, and durability, next step of scientific inquiry, does it go ‘boink’? And, how the hell do I get rid of it, I doubt I could sell it on eBay... mainly because it’d be a bitch to mail. And it broke my computer.”

Looking back at his ponies, he sighed, not getting as much happiness out of trying to demolish the sphere as he’d hoped. Lifting it higher, he huffed in sadness and effort.

“Man, I wish I could have more ponies...”

The orb in his hands lit up like a sun in a rainbow spray. The light was blinding, and he felt like his hands were being stripped apart, skin from flesh and flesh from bone.

The agony overrode every part of his conscious mind, and he felt every portion of his body come apart like a poorly-knitted sweater. As his mind faded to black, only one, barely coherent thought held through:

‘Oh, shit! It’s Disco’s Revenge!’

Anton groaned in pain, a bright light hitting his closed eyelids. Which was weird, because his room was in the basement, and the one window he had looked out at the underside of the deck’s stairs. And his room’s light was nowhere near this bright.

The light was wonderfully warm, however, which was definitely a plus.

“Okay, that’s not the sun, the sun almost doesn’t exist in Washington, I must be in Dryington. Or something.”

He stayed lying down, half of him hoping it was a dream, half hoping it wasn’t.

Something above him made a cawing noise, like an exceptionally loud crow.

“Great, nature’s alarm clock. Shut the hell up, I’m awake already!”

Yawning heavily, he slowly opened his eyes, his vision still taking time to adjust.

The first thing he saw was a brilliant, robin’s-egg blue expanse, with a disc of shining white that made his eyes want to shrivel up and crawl back into his head. Cue headache.

The second thing, or rather ‘things’ he saw, was several circling shapes far above, looking like birds.

One of them gave another of the raucous caws.

“Great, buzzards, where the hell did I wake up? Usually I’m asleep when I find a place that looks nice and is covered in predators. Or chocolate fudge, either or. Alright, might-be-dreaming brain, what do I look like tonight?”

Looking down, he first saw what he was laying on, and that being a patch of grass on the edge of a desert, or other largely sand-covered place. Maybe a really long beach with an ocean on the other side.

Then, he got a good look at himself. His front legs ended in pad-like paws, each of which had a short nail, or claw sticking from one of the four toes. There were banded sections of black and orange, pebbly scales. Interspersed at the ‘elbows’ and the ‘wrists’ were tufts of soft-looking orange fur.

Anton blinked for a moment, taking this in.

Looking further down his body, he saw that his underbelly was bright orange and scaled as well, but a twist of his head let him see that his back was, apparently, covered in black-and-orange fur.

‘This is new. I’m Gecko-Tiger Man. What else do I have?’

Finally, his gaze arrived at his legs and hindquarters. His legs were still orange and black, but this time ended in large, round hooves. He also had a tail, consisting of a long length of mostly black whip-like structure. The whole thing was at least as long as he was, and had a fuzzy tip at the end, a bit like Discord’s.

And the structure of those hooves looked almost precisely like the ones on ponies from MLP...

‘Brain, we are going to have a chat about this later, we agreed no dreams like this unless I ate expired pepperoni two hours before bed.’

Looking around again, he saw that there was desert in one direction, and a low plain in the other, terminating in lots of trees. Likely a forest, if he was to guess.

In the direction of the desert, there were some rocks, larger rocks, and more rocks. A few dry, dead plants still stood near the edge of the plain, but none farther into the desert from where he could see. He began to stand up, in anticipation of walking in one direction or another.

“Soo... where t-”

He tripped. It was more of a ‘twist’ than an actual fall, because he tried moving his ‘arms’ like arms and his ‘legs’ like legs, and mostly just spun around as his muscles refused to respond right.

“I haven’t felt like this since I last played Twister. Okay, let’s try this again.”

Carefully planting one ‘foot’ at a time in the sandy turf, Anton rose to his full height. And immediately got a puff of incredibly fine hair in his face as a breeze rolled in.

“Pthh. Last I checked, air wasn’t fuzzy. Unless it’s April and dandelion spores are fucking everywhere. Where am I... brain... yeah, I love-slash-hate you too.”

The hair in his face was midnight black, and just as shiny as his scales.

“First step of scientific determination: poke it.”

Reaching up a clawed forelimb, he gave the offending hair a tentative jab. It billowed slightly, but was otherwise unresponsive. Straining his eyes led to him actually seeing where it was coming from: His scalp.

Then, he started at the realization that he was looking at the front of his own head.

Blinking rapidly, he thought back. If he was anything like the ponies from the show (no guarantee, he’d never seen scaled lizard-tiger-gecko ponies before on MLP) then all he’d just done was cross his eyes and looked up. They’d done the same thing a few times to see their own foreheads in the show, so maybe that was all.

Or this was the weirdest dream he’d had in almost a week. Whichever.

“Okay, so I need a haircut, and to know where to go. I’d ask the natives if there were any. Now which direction, sand or plains... let’s go with plains, if I can walk, crawl, slither or whatever the hell I do now.”

Attempting a stiff-legged, slow walk towards the grassy area, stepping through increasingly tall grass. Eventually, he figured out how to walk with his knees bending, which made the walk a lot less painful and tiring. Still looked unnatural, probably.

“Come on, there’s gotta be something around here, or some kind of-”

Something rustled in the long grass behind him. Whatever it had been wasn’t in view when he turned around fast enough to trip, however. Still working on walking with four legs.

Just dark green and light green stalks of grass. Which seemed awfully darkly shadowed for the mid-day.

Anton let out an involuntary whimper.

“Hello? Don’t eat me? Or whatever?”

Nothing moved but the grass, swaying in the wind. Said grass was long enough in most places to be just shorter than his nose, and in several places it had grown much taller.

“Well, I guess I’ll just walk through this tall green grass, even though it’s too dangerous without my own Pokémon.”

He rolled his eyes and did just that.

Several minutes of walking in silence later, he heard the shuffling noise in the grass, this time from his right. He was starting to get a ‘The Lost World Velociraptor Field’ vibe from the whole thing. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell which direction he’d come from initially, and he couldn’t see the desert with how tall the grass was.

“I know you’re here somewhere, if you’re gonna hit me or something, just get on with it already, you’re not making either of us look any smarter.”

As if in response, something moved to his left. He hadn’t even heard any movement to connect the two points, so he was likely surrounded. On instinct, he held perfectly still. For the first time that day, he went to lick his lips nervously. On the way, he found that his teeth were oddly sharp, and seemed to have some bitter tasting fluid on them.

“Okay, fine, you want me to move, fine, whatever, I’ll just leave then. Don’t forget that three of my six ends have pointy bits.”

As he began moving, he glanced left and right along the way.

Then, with razor-edged abruptness, he found himself out of the grass. The tall grass was mowed almost to nothing for a good forty feet until the forest.

“Well, if those things were predatorial, I think I’d stand a better chance here where they can’t hide... well, or they’re invisible, that would suck.”

Walking as quickly as he was able on his still-shaky limbs, he started into the forest. Almost immediately, he felt cold. As if the whole forest should be covered in frost and snow and ice and everything else associated with freezing to death. The deep shadows of the forest seemed to drag the warmth from him, and he jerked back hastily into the warm, glorious heat of the sun’s light.

“Okay then, status check. Fact, I seem to be cold-blooded. Fact, I’m furry and I have scales. Fact, I have no fucking clue what I am or where I am. Yup, that’s life for ya, what a bitch. Guess I’ll go back to the grass of possible dangers for now.”

He looked down at his hooves and claws for a second.

“On second thought, how about I learn to walk better first. Yay, I can think straight-ish!”

Smiling to himself, he walked back and forth in front of the forest until he grew bored of doing that (about four minutes) and tried to run instead.

After that disaster, he went back to walking until he had that down properly.

He decided to make a game of it, such as ‘try to reach my front feet up to my chest mid-step for a minute straight’ or ‘move my back legs together when walking for a minute or so’ and other such distracting things.

Then, his stomach rumbled.

“Okay, now for dietary decisions. I am mammalian, and I have fangs, predator, obviously. But I’m sort of lizard like, do I eat giant bugs? No, let’s try that last... uhm, fruit? Yeah, none available around.”

He stood there, thinking, on the edge of the forest a little longer.

”I guess the only current option is raw meat from whatever was in the grass... Or I eat grass. Why not? It’s got fiber at least.”

He took a bite out of some stalks of grass, immediately spitting out the bitter-tasting plants. Definitely not trying that again, except as a last resort.

A small burst of movement caught his eye, and he saw a small, white-and-gray rabbit hop up nearby, looking in the wrong direction to see him. Which was kinda funny, seeing as how he was a bright, orange-and-black lizard-pony thing on a green background.

‘Hmmm... I could take a page from the book of tigers and crawl through the grass and pounce on it... rabbit sounds good, yeah, lunchtime, Peter Cottonbutt.’

He began somewhat stealthily sneaking up on the rabbit, until it turned towards him for a brief second. The fear, the utter, abject terror in its eyes stopped him for a moment, just long enough for the furry little creature to hop away and duck into a small burrow.

“Damn, it always looked so easy on the Discovery Channel... Oh well.”

He heaved a sigh, and cast his gaze about once more.

“Now what? I guess I’ll go with hunting those things from earlier. God I hope they don’t unfold or some crap and end up fifty feet tall.”

Looking back at the grass, he thought he caught a glimpse of a tiny, red dot of light before the shifting of the grass obscured it. something shuffled around in the grass, and Anton suddenly got the feeling he was still being watched, that the surveillance on him had never ended. It rather ruined his confidence.

He continued slowly into the grass, staying low and trying to be as quiet as possible. Hoping he could find a snack. If he saw that red light again, he’d probably leave and just eat grass, tasting like shit doesn’t matter if you’re dying of starvation in his opinion.

Slowly parting the grass, he heard right away another short flurry of movement off to one side.

There’s lunch. I hope... He moved toward the movement cautiously.

The movement ceased as he drew near. He still hadn’t figured out how to move silently, other than to try moving when the wind was blowing. It covered at least some of the grass’s crinkles as he stepped past.

Peeking slowly through a patch of grass into a small clearing on the other side, he saw a tree, the top broken from some long-ago lightning strike. The bark, blackened and weathered by countless rains, was just about all that remained beyond the stump. A thick carpet of decomposed bark mulch, reminding Anton strongly of home, kept the grass mostly at bay. Something moved on the other side of the tree, a slight movement of dull red.

He walked as fast as he could, running might end up in another faceplant, to the other end of the tree to see what it was, preparing to pounce it.

The shape, not one he immediately recognized, began to shuffle at the base of the tree, and he stalked forward, ready to leap as best he could. It was green, with a poof of red fur on the back.

‘Here’s hoping it’s not spiky under that.’

Lunging forward with all the grace of a two-legged stool on a sea of eggs, Anton tackled the thing, knocking the green creature to the side. It squeaked in fright, and Anton reared back to try biting it. He paused, however, jaws still wide, when he saw that it was a pony. Green fur, with variegations of lighter and darker green, perfect for hiding in the tall grass, and soft-looking red mane and tail. Also, incidentally, a mare, judging from the facial structure.

Her eyes, glowing red with black sclera, looked up at him in terror.

“Okay, I’d feel bad about it if I killed you, but I-”

Suddenly, she made a noise, a loud, evil hisss that had haunted his dreams and games of minecraft for years, and he felt the world invert with a blast of light.

Groaning as he came to, he blinked his eyes a few times. His everything hurt, and he wondered why he was waking up to a soft light, and not to his mom waking him up for his morning medication.

“Great, it wasn’t a dream, but what parts were? Ah screw it, guess I’ll make the best of... still hungry. Damnit.”

His stomach growled to confirm that, and he looked up. The shadows around him were longer, and he still looked like a lizard-tiger-pony. Looking around, he saw that he was in a different clearing, this one with sections of what looked like wood or something woven into the grass around the perimeter, with what looked to be sharpened sticks pointing outwards.

Laying on the ground not too far away, was the green pony from before. She was laying on her side in a sunbeam, her tail occasionally flopping around, like a cat’s. She seemed to be looking away from him.

He decided to try getting away before anything bad happened again. Trying to be quiet, operative word being try. Which he did poorly.

The green mare’s tail stopped moving. In fact, she seemed to have frozen still in place, like a rabbit that had been spotted. As he stared back, scared of what she might do, he got a good look at her.

She seemed to be covered in sections of something like strips of cloth, rather than actual fur for her coat, and her mane was rather dirty, the red much duller than it probably could’ve been. Each rectangular piece of her coat’s... ‘hairs’ was the closest he could come to an appropriate appellation, was a slightly different color, forming sections of darker green, lighter green, and a few spots of green so pale it was almost white.

From this distance, he could probably jump over and bite her neck open before she could blow up again...

He forcibly shook his head at the thought, wondering where it had come from.

“Listen, don’t explode, I’m just hungry. All I need is food and I’ll leave you alone, just don’t blow me to kingdom come, please?”

The mare didn’t move, barely breathing. He could see she was thin, and could see her ribs through her coat. For a moment, he thought about how that would make her easier to run down, but forced away the thought.

“Okay, definitely a predator, jeez. Anyway, uh, miss? I’m not going to hurt you as long as you don’t hurt me... deal? Wait, can you talk?”

He waited for a moment, before the mare slowly turned her head. It was almost creepy, how her head simply seemed to fluidly change positions. Her expression, though, was still one of fear. Her wide eyes, glowing pupils tiny, locked on him, and her mouth was open in a slight ‘D’ shape of terror.

“Okay, I think I kinda know what you are, I’ll just give you some space, sound good?”

He nervously stepped back, stopping suddenly when he realized he had nowhere to back up to, as his butt was against the fence around the clearing.

“Alright then, I have the feeling you don’t want me to leave. So what do you want? I guess if you wanted to kill me, you’d have done it already, so what’s up?”

The mare slowly got into her standing position, and began to back away, only to find she, too, was stuck in by the fence.

“Okay, obviously you don’t like me, so what’s the deal? Why not just leave me where I was when you blew me up?”

The poor, terrified-looking mare didn’t respond, only planted her rear in the dirt and covered her head with her hooves. It was strangely adorable. The undersides of her hooves, he saw, were a bright, glossy red. she shivered slightly in fright. He sighed.

“Okay, I get it, you don’t like me, you don’t want me around, so why’d you bring me here? I’d leave if I could. Also, I’m still hungry, if you’re going to keep me here, at least help me.”

He groaned when she failed to do anything but peek shyly out from between her hooves. Much of the adorable was lost to the menacing glow of her eye in the dark shade of her hooves.

“Great, Fluttercreep. Now what? You’re mute, and for some reason really don’t like me, and I’m hungry. As much as I-”

“Uhn-gee?”

He stopped as the timid mare spoke up, horribly mutilating the word. Luckily, his time working with his mom as a tutor allowed him to speak ‘toddler’ rather fluently.

“Yes, I am hun-gry. Do you have food?”

He asked the question slowly, trying to communicate.

“Fuuud?”

“Yes, food, to eat.”

He tried making eating motions with his front... limbs.

She held still for a moment, then pulled her head timidly out of her hooves. She nosed at the rich, black soil, uncovering a slimy mass of some sort of composting fungus. She pressed her face to it and... slurped. The grayish-green semi-solid goo made an abominable ‘splooorch’ noise as she sucked it up. She then nosed over a wide piece of bark, with more of the jelly-like mold growing underneath it.

“Okay, right, um, I’ll try and not lose my non-existent lunch? Er, how do I put this? I eat meat, not discolored pudding-vomit.”

“Fuuud. Uhn-gee. Fuud!”

She made similar motions as Anton had, looking a bit less scared.

“I thought the phrase was ‘bite the bullet’ not ‘bite the slime mold’ but, whatever, eww.”

He closed his eyes tightly as he tried to eat the goop, the vile, rancid smell of mold and rot filling his nostrils strongly enough to make him gag. It was like that smell you discover upon opening that plastic tub at the back of the fridge. You know, the one that your grandparents had when they were young, and nobody’s thrown it out yet.

His eyes cracked open reflexively before he put his face to the slime, and saw it jiggle at his presence. The glassy-smooth surface bubbled once, and the bubble popped leaving a smell ten times worse than the smell that was already there.

Eight minutes later, he finally stopped dry heaving into the grass on the other side of the clearing.

“I... have just made... the ultimate... scientific...”

He gagged and retched again, breathing deeply to clear his nostrils of the horrific smell.

“D- discovery. The one thing... more repulsive... than microwaved spinach.”

He then had a brief coughing fit.

The green mare had returned to huddling on the opposite side of the clearing from him, but he was pretty sure it was the smell from his upchuck. In spite of having nothing in his stomach, he had still poured out a lot of a yellowy-white viscous fluid that had eaten through the first inch of the dirt. It also smelled awful, even if not as bad as the sludge he’d nearly imbibed.

“Okay, I- I’m sorry, but, as I, urgh, said before, I eat m-meat. Apparently, it’s all I can eat. I can’t believe I asking this, but do you have any small, dead stuff lying around? Oh right, you can’t really understand me, can you?”

She pointed at the pile of not-quite-vomit with her muzzle.

“Fuuud?”

“No! No, I wouldn’t eat that, really.”

She flinched away as he yelled, hunching back. Her ears had gone flat against her head, and tears had begun to form in her eyes. She no longer looked scared sure, but ‘about-to-cry’ wasn’t much better in his book.

“Damnit... um, wow, er, do you... need a hug?”

He cringed, both at what he’d done and at what he said. Hug a Creeper, yeah, real smart.

“Hug?”

She seemed honestly confused with the word.

“Okay, you don’t know what a hug is, and given I’m a predator, you’d probably think I was attacking... so, dang, now what?”

The mare shifted uncomfortably in her spot on the other side of the enclosure. The day was coming to a close, and while he was hungry, he wasn't that hungry, in spite of throwing up. He looked back at his tail, so thick at first and tapering to a thinner tail at the last quarter or so. Maybe he was like a camel, but with food?

Nah, that made no sense, even for a lizard-pony-tiger-thing.

Sighing, he settled in on his side of the enclosure, looking up at the sky as it began to shift to a soft golden-orange. He was tired now, and getting slightly cold. No clouds meant a really cold night, too.

“All in all, today’s been quite a bummer, hasn't it?”

“Uhn-gee?”

“I’ll try and get food tomorrow, if I can manage it.”

A traitorous, nasty little piece of his brain insisted that she was food, and might not even put up much of a fight, if he could kill her fast enough...

Shaking away the thought, he combated it with more logic ‘If I can see her ribs, how much meat could there be? Definitely not sustainable.’ The logic didn’t help much, so he just closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

It took a long time, and he could feel the night falling. It didn’t help that she smelled tasty...

Author's Note

Nom nom!

But seriously, thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope you like this start to Anton's journey

Ch2 - A Passing (centi)Grade

Anton yawned, finishing with a clop of his teeth meeting. As he blinked groggily, he licked his sharp teeth.

‘Oh well, guess it wasn’t a dream after all.’

Something smelled rather nice, and he realized his side was warm. Blinking his eyes awake, looked over, to see what was going on. A large, rug-like mass of green felt-like strips covered his side, and it took him a moment to recognize the mare from before, now curled up next to him.

From this close proximity, he had a conflicting range of sense to deal with, including the alluring scent of her flesh, likely from the carnivorous tendencies he seemed to have picked up, and the horrid smell of her having not bathed in... well, probably ever.

On top of that, she looked very skinny, her ribs still visible, though less so at this point. On top of that, her coat was filthy, and her mane and tail were tangled and matted with dirt. As her side rose and fell with her breathing, Anton just took the moment to contemplate what had happened. It was all so... well, the only applicable word that came to mind was ‘surreal’.

‘Well, either she’s scared of people in general, or we are really far away from any civilization, I... kinda hope it’s the first one. But I gotta eat something. How do I get her to understand that I’m a carnivore... But first things first, I should figure out how to hunt like this, or I’m going to starve.’

He looked at the Creeper pony, who was still asleep.

‘I was kind of a jerk earlier, I should try and make her feel better somehow. Words don’t work... I guess I could try giving her a hug or something. I hope she understands what a hug is, or she’ll probably blow up again.’

He very carefully reached a paw around her, idly wondering if the claws were retractable, and tried to give her a hug, as lightly as possible. Scaring her would most likely end badly. Sadly, his claws weren’t retractable, but she did snuggle closer in her sleep.

‘Now let’s hope she’s aware, and won’t get surprised. I wonder how the explosion-thing works, anyway. In all my games of Minecraft, I’ve never discovered how the heck spontaneous combustion is possible. Not even after 2.6.1.’

His thoughts were broken up by the sensation of the mare waking up partly under him, shifting as she tried to figure out what was going on.

Thinking she might explode again, he decided to GTFO, clumsily rolling away towards the perimeter. In the process, he accidentally knocked her away, and she sprawled in the dirt, looking up in confusion and dismay in the early morning light.

The mare looked over at him, the hurt visible in her eyes and audible in her whimpering. It was rather chilly without her next to him, he realized, but he’d really wanted to keep himself safe if she blew up, like the creeper she resembled.

‘Self-Preservation, or not being a dick... fine.’

“I- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

The mare simply stood up, keeping her head low as she wandered to another section of the enclosure. Even as he felt bad for not being as nice as he could have in perfectly ideal conditions, he had to wonder how the heck she had put together this protective fence, or if she was maybe similar to livestock.

That second option made him feel a tad uncomfortable, like the thought of kicking a small kitten away because it fell asleep on his legs. And the comparison made him feel even worse, and his ears flattened back against his head without him noting the change in position.

He broke out of his reverie when he felt a nuzzle on the back of his neck. Almost leaping out of his skin, he turned quickly, only to see that it was simply the mare evidently trying to comfort him.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he let her nuzzle him again, though he started slightly when he felt her pull at his mane.

“I’m not trying to be so jumpy, it’s just kind of a reflex. I’ve had... bad encounters with ‘stuff’ kinda like you. You, ah, can sort of understand me, right?”

“Uhn-gee?”

Now it was starting to be cute. But hunger was definitely an issue. Now to explain that some creatures ate small furry stuff that breathes. Joy.

“Yes, I’m hungry, but I don’t eat slime. I eat... uh... rabbits. Little furry hoppy things, big ears, faster than extra-strength laxatives. You know what I mean?”

“Abbat!”

She seemed inordinately proud of the her new word, it was incredibly adorable.

“Yes, rabbit, they are food. Rabbit is food, but it has to be, er, dead.”

She cocked her head, a piece of Anton’s mane in her mouth as her black-and-red eyes looked uncomprehendingly, before chirping brightly once more.

“Fuud, abbat! Abbat! Fuud! Uhn-gee.”

“Yes. Very cute. Now we need to find a rabbit, and kill it. Let’s see, I have claws and teeth, yeah that should do it. Catching them however...”

“Abbat.”

“Yeah, do you know where we can find a rabbit? Like a hole?”

“Hole?”

She tilted her head again, looking at Anton with a small smile, happy from the interaction. Anton had to resist the urge to face-claw, at the utter lack of progress. But, it was an absolutely diabeetus-inducingly adoracute lack of progress, so that mitigated some of the frustration with d’awws.

“Heh, yes, rabbits live in holes. Find a hole, get a rabbit.”

“Abbat hole?”

“Yes, very good, rabbit holes.”

He gave her a (careful) scratch behind the ears, earning her nibbling his mane again, working her way down the length of his crest. He could feel himself relax as she worked, though he had to wonder why she was doing this. It certainly didn’t fit her previous actions.

‘Okay, short-term memory loss, that explains quite a bit. Or she has mood swings... which is worse with something that can explode? Ah, nevermind.’

Anton was totally relaxed as he felt her drape herself across his back, the action accompanied by the the sound of... purring? She was purring...

‘So... she can hiss, purr, and mimic my words, sorta like a parrot-cat-Creeper-rag mop? What the heck...’

“Okay, so we need to go and find some holes. I need food.”

“Hole-fuud!”

He just barely beat the urge to face-claw again. Instead he took a closer look at the barrier to see what he could do about getting out.

All around, he could see the lightweight wood and grass screen woven into the perimeter, with the sharpened stakes all pointing out. He was wondering for a moment how to get out, until he noted some of the stakes were missing from a section of the fencing.

But, with the Creepony laying across his back and purring, he had no idea how he was going to get over there. She may have been content to be lazy and just loaf around, but he felt the need to find food. It was a really difficult to decide between continuing snuggles and going for fixing his hungry status.

“Okay, I appreciate the snuggles a lot, but if I don’t find food, I’m going to die. Me dying is not that great for either of us, so let’s go get a rabbit. Anything in my stomach is better than nothing.”

“Snuggs.”

The words he said seemed to have absolutely no bearing on her demeanor, and she just nuzzled the back of his head more. She was god-awfully cute, but not too bright.

“Okay, I get it, you like me, but I really need food, so-

“Fuud!”

“-If you want to stay here, fine. I’m going to get a rabbit and eat it.”

“Abbat!”

With a sigh, Anton headed to exit the barrier, squirming out from under the mare. She produced a light hiss noise as she fell off, accompanied by a squeak. ‘Great, gotta add mouse to the list of combined animals and stuff’ he thought as he began to head for what he hoped was the gate.

“Uhn-gee?”

“Yes, very. I don’t know if you’d rather stay here, but I’m not, because starvation seems worse if I never actually attempted to get food. So I’m going to try and get something to eat.”

He stepped up to the ‘gate’ and saw a very simple style of latch, just a twist of bark that slipped into a loop of bark peeled from of the post holding it up. A simple nudge should push it out of the way, and let the ‘gate’ open.

Anton stepped out of the enclosure and started looking for burrows, making sure to keep the area in seeing distance. Unfortunately, the grass severely limited his line of sight, and he couldn’t find any burrows in the nearby area, just some sand.

Anton stopped for a moment, realizing that sand in the middle of hugely tall grass was a little weird.

‘I’ve played video games, and if I’m right, this is either useful for some reason, or it’s going to be a huge heap of trouble. Hmmm... Still hungry’

Anton left the sand patch, making a note to come back to it later for inspection once his stomach was full.

As he turned around, he realized he was hopelessly lost. And worse, there was more sand around. Small drifts of sand had started to drift in at some point, and he realized that the desert must be slowly encroaching on the plains... which would likely dry up that creeper-mare’s... eh... sludge-farm?

Either way, fungus like that would likely only grow with damp soil, and the desert would prevent that. And with how thin she was, that would likely make her already difficult life nigh-impossible.

‘Okay, new plan. Get back to the barricade. I think I’ve been moving in a straight line... uhh... maybe. Was I? Crud, maybe I can get a better look from the top of the dune no doubt pushing all this sand this way. After all, the grit has to come from somewhere, right?’

Heading towards the dune, he planned to get on top and see the barricade, at the very most only a quarter-mile away. Hopefully.

Finding that he had a much easier time sliding up the dune than through the grass, he quickly got to the top of the huge pile of sand, looking out at the grassy plains. The sand had slowly moved in over some unknown period of time, and much of the grass was simply buried.

Farther out along the divide between plains and desert, the grass was simply shorter, the advance of the sandy wastes likely stopped by nothing more impressive that wind channelling.

Looking back towards the plains, he could see a little circle of missing grass, the location of the-

“Uhn-gee!”

‘The- wait, where is she? And why is... oh, please don’t tell me-’

The green mare came bounding out of the grass towards him, shouting the mangled word over and over again. It seemed that she’d decided that ‘uhn-gee’ was the term for him.

He’d been nick-named ‘Uhn-Gee’.

Of course, the only thing he’d ever said in reference to himself was that he was ‘hungry’, which led to a single thought.

‘Why didn’t I see this coming?’ He face-clawed.

She practically tackled him, shouting his name as she knew it, wrapping him in a protective hug. The two tumbled from the top of the dune in a sideways cartwheel of flailing limbs and flying sand. They finally collapsed at the base of the dune, the mare partly on top of him. It momentarily reminded him of that scene in the Lion King, where the two lions had tumbled down the hill onto each other...

Which wasn’t exactly where he wanted his thoughts going.

Seeking to distract himself, he looked away from the sandy, dirt-covered pony on top of him, trying to find something to look at, something like-

Ooh, like that spider skittering away from us. Something gripped his brain and ran with it like a linebacker with the football, and he found himself suddenly bursting across the loose sand like a freight train of teeth and claws, bearing down the fleeing arachnid.

If it had a voice, it would have likely been screaming in terror, as the orange-and-black carnivore ran it to the ground.

With a snap of razor-like teeth and the clop of his jaws slamming together, the spider was clipped neatly in two, the wriggling arthropod the size of his face still having no chance at defending itself. Downing the still-wriggling back half of the spider with no further chewing, Anton found himself grinning like a moron at the surprisingly good taste; it was comparable to a batch of peanut sauce and... well, he wasn’t sure, but the closest was actually like alligator (a rather awesome meal for a normal human, even though it was at a restaurant).

Licking his lips, he saw that the front half of the spider was still trying to get away. This time, he was much more in control, and had time to contemplate what he was doing... and what he’d already done.

‘That, was incredibly disgusting... Screw it, I’m hungry, it’s food, and it tastes good at the same time.’

Snapping up the remains of the spider, he happily licked his lips before a realization struck him.

He’d just charged off in a random direction, without making sure she knew where she was. While he could probably figure out to go on top of the dunes, he had to admit that she wasn’t exactly the sharpest light bulb in the hardware drawer. Looking around frantically, he realized that, in the ever-increasing heat of the desert, he couldn’t see a single speck of green at all.

“Shit, if she’s lost, and dies, it’s technically my fault. Way to freakin’ go. I don’t even know what to call her... oh man, where is she?”

Quick-timing it to the top of a dune, he resumed looking around. He’d somehow crested a dune and gone nearly to the top of the next without realizing it while chasing that spider. That eight-legged little shit must’ve been awfully fast, he realized. Thankfully, he caught a glimpse of the red-and-green mare wandering in a valley between two dunes, though she was rapidly hidden from view by the crest of the dune.

The last thing he wanted was for her to get lost, so he chased after her as best he could, finding himself surprisingly adept at traversing the sands with the help of his front limb’s wide-spreading toes and claws providing incredible traction on the soft, shifting sands.

Spying her trying to walk up a dune and slipping repeatedly, falling to the base of it with a whimper and a short cry of distress, he hurried onwards to her.

“Damnit. Hold on, I’m coming! Geez, why didn’t I ask if she had a name, or give her one? Thank you brain, and your 20-20 hindsight.”

Scampering over the dunes and into the valleys between him and the creeper. Creepette. Something. He’ll figure out- no, wait, Creepette works, at least until she can give him a better name, he thought to himself.

Finally reaching the top of the dune she was trying to climb, he looked down at the mare. Creepette was sitting at the bottom, her ears flat and eyes full of tears as she sniffled and cried at the bottom of the dune, looking absolutely miserable in the heat and sand.

In all, it was an utterly heartbreaking sight, and it made him feel awful for charging off like that. Sliding down the dune with the grace of a drunken wombat, he face-planted not too far from her, sitting up and shaking the sand from his fur and nostrils, thankful for the largely scaly front half he had, and the ridiculously impermeable mane he’d somehow lucked on getting.

Unless he was supposed to be a desert animal, which would explain his good traction in the sand, exothermic circulatory system, sand-shedding hair and coat, the vague nictitating membrane he’d found protected his eyes with his eyelids, and the lack of long-distance eyesight (he could only see colors and vague shapes at any distance past a dune or so; around twenty or thirty feet, maximum).

And, on top of all that, Creepette was crying in front of him, distracting him from his musings.

‘Is it really possible to do anything without upsetting her? This is really unfair, why is it so hard to keep one pony happy?’

Before he could try anything though, the distraught mare flung her hooves around him and gave him a painfully-tight hug, crying and sobbing.

“Uhn-gee!”

Though it was the only thing she said, those two syllables almost made him burst into tears, as the pony before him held on as if he was a life preserver in a stormy sea. Or, the only friend she had in the middle of a desert she had no way to navigate properly. Either or.

“Calm down, I’ll get us out of here... somehow. Figures that my new habitat is detrimental to my only ally. Yeah, things are just perfect.”

He continued to mumble as he tried to gently untangle himself from the mare, so that he could breathe, if nothing else. After some pulling and prying, that goal was accomplished, and Creepette pressed herself tight to his side. Helping support her as they made their way to the top of a dune, he finally got a good look around.

Spying the sea of green abutted against the sandy dunes, he found it pretty easy to figure the direction.

Setting off with a comforting pat to the now-sweaty and dusty mare’s head, he began leading the way back out of the desert.

It was a sweaty, dirty, absolutely abominable trek for poor Creepette, but it felt perfectly fine for the transformed human. The bakingly hot sun beat down on them, and Anton felt like he could carry the weight with ease. Not so for Creepette, who was panting and leaning on him for support the whole time, and he could see, with some worry, the sheer amount of sweat pouring off of her.

If this sort of desert encroachment continued, she’d likely have nowhere left to live soon. That thought made him very sad. And another thought worried him. If it became night, it would be so cold, he’d be unable to move, she might though, but he doubted she’d be strong enough to carry him, so he’d have to get back to the plains as fast as he could.

“Hold on Creepette, I’m not gonna let you melt... or worse... shutting up now.”

“Uh- Uhn-gee... Abbat?”

With a confused look, he checked around, hardly slowing his pace. What was she- he stopped the thought as he saw her point towards what was unmistakably a mid-sized scorpion scuttling across the sand away from them.

“Fuud. Abbat!”

The pony’s words were tired and sounded hard to say, but she sounded enthusiastic.

“That’s food, but not a rabbit, it’s a scorpion... big difference.”

He was kinda hungry still, but he was worried a bit. Scorpions could be dangerous, and killing it would be harder with a passenger. He decided he’d rather wait until Creepette was safe.

“Abbat, Uhn-gee. Abbat.”

She seemed very proud of herself for having figured this out, and he couldn’t bear to crush her feelings. On the upside, they’d finally reached the grass, much cooler than the blistering heat of the desert. Sliding between the stalks of grass, the two of them made it a good distance in before Anton felt Creepette slide off where she’d been leaning against his side.

“Okay, you’re good? Great. Now I think we should clear a few-”

He looked back to see Creepette collapsed onto the ground, taking shallow, labored breaths.

‘Shit!’

“Uh, hey, can you hear me? What’s wrong? This would be so much easier if you could talk... wait, no, she’s hurt, or something, stop thinking so much, brain. Alright, let’s see.”

Taking a closer look at the downed mare, he noted that her skin was bright red under her thick, layered fur-strip-things, and she had been sweating profusely, but there was no moisture on her body now. Her eyes, mostly closed, had a glazed look to them, and she blinked weakly.

“Okay, dehydration, gotta find a lake or something.”

He was a little panicked, but still looking around for some clues, fresher grass or whatever. His panicked mind kept throwing scenarios of her not surviving and what he’d do with the body. The first thing (and most awful thing) was that he’d simply eat her and go wander the desert, but he pushed that thought aside. The second idea was that he’d try to give her a funeral pyre, but he had no idea how to make fire like this. Another thought was to try digging a grave, and leaving her with some sort of marker under the rich, moist loam.

Rich, moist loam.

The human-turned pony’s mind sparked the connection. She grew fungus in the dirt because it was very moist. And underground moisture comes from a high water-table, something his geography teacher a year back had tested everyone on eight times in a single quarter for whatever reason.

Either way, that one, oddly-specific lesson was coming in handy as he ripped away the loose, soft ground with his claws, passing it beneath him and away from Creepette like a dog. The first layer, held together by the tenacious root of the grass prevalent in the area, was the most difficult.

Shredding the banded dirt and clay layers, he finally found what he was looking for: a small point where his hole began to fill slightly with water. It was several feet down, but he’d found it. He just had to hope it wasn’t too late...

He sort of carried the mare as best he could, dragging her most of the way to the deep trench he’d dug. It was almost a foot taller than him, but he got her to the bottom safely, holding her near the water, hoping she could sense it. All the while, trying not to think of her dying, and becoming dinner. Who knew carnivores’ brains were so single-minded?

Several tense minutes of silence and a lack of movement beyond the gentle swaying of the grass and the quiet noises of the insects living within it passed.

About to despair, he saw a pink tongue poke gently from her mouth and lap up some water.

‘Yes brain, calm down, she’s going to live... I’m pretty sure.’

He waited for a time, letting her slowly drink from the pool of water, trying to calm his nerves. Eventually, she stopped drinking, and raised her head with a weak smile, looking at him blearily. She muttered quietly.

“Uhn-gee...”

“We’ll talk about that later I think, you just rest.”

Laying down in the mud and muck at the bottom of the trench, he felt himself growing tired from the effort and from the cold shadows laying across the hole. He felt the warm form of Creepette press against his side, and he fell asleep with a smile.

Author's Note

Aaand chapter the 'first', in which he does something real. Comment what you think, please!

Ch3 - Giggling Isn't Working

Anton woke to the feeling of a warm form on top of his back and the sensation of cold water on his belly. It was very sobering.

“Well, this is uncomfortable. Uh, Creepette? Are you awake? I kinda need to be warm everywhere.”

A sleepy, half-muttered ‘uhn-gee...’ and a nuzzle was his only response.

“Okay, plan B.”

He tried to move his tail a bit, to use the poofy end to try tickling her or at least getting her attention. Unfortunately, his tail lacked the flexibility to do more than swish side to side a bunch, and almost reach his shoulder. It was just too fat and stiff, like a chubby guy on the morning after an exercise marathon. He stuck out his tongue for a moment in frustration, reeling it back in when he tasted dirt.

“Thank you brain, for that totally relevant comparison.”

He tried shifting back and forth to shake the mare a bit, in an effort to jostle her awake. All this resulted in was her changing position to one far less comfortable for him, with two of her hooves directly on the base of his neck for balance.

Wincing, he tried to roll over completely, and finally dislodged her. She tipped over with a hiss of confusion and a quiet ‘slap’ and ‘plop’ of her landing in the muddy patch of dirt next to the ‘pond’ Anton had excavated. She looked around in confusion before her gaze settled back onto the lizard-pony with a frown.

“Uhn-gee?”

“Yeah, sorry, I was just really uncomfortable. How about we get out of this hole?”

He started to climb before realizing he had yet to figure out how to go about climbing with four legs, in spite of doing so earlier in his panicked state. Having to actually command his limbs into position led to a much trickier ascent, his wide-splayed toes on his front legs making it easier, but still challenging.

He finally made it to the top with a headbutt to his rear from Creepette, which launched him over the last foot of steep edge and face-first into the grass all around.

‘Stronger than she looks, okay, what was I doing? Oh, yeah, English Class with a Creeper pony.’

He waited for her to clamber out, embarrassed that she did so relatively easier than he did. That is to say, without needing help.

He tried cutting some grass down to get to a patch of dirt, starting with gnawing at it, trying to slash with his claws, but nothing seemed to work.

“Uhn-gee? Abbat?”

“That is exactly what I’m trying to fix.”

“Tact-lee!”

He cringed at the horrible pronunciation, his inner English teacher really starting to go nuts.

“Fine, uh, guess I’ll try digging for more dirt, and hope I don’t look stupid.”

Scraping up another section of the grass took a lot of time, and once Creepette figured out what he was doing, she began trying to help. Surprisingly, she seemed to have a good eye for figuring out the distance needed to make it almost perfectly circular.

Several hours of back-breaking work later, the two of them had finally taken care of the clearing, and Creepette nuzzled him happily. She was so snuggly all of a sudden, even though they were both absolutely filthy.

“Okay, now that that’s done, let’s uh, get to teaching.”

He used one of his claws to draw some pictures in the dirt, his art skills looking about the same as when he was human: craptastic, but decent enough.

Attempting to start with a rabbit, he managed a vaguely lapine shape, with long, floppy ears and a circular body. She stared at it with partial interest. Pointing at it, he started his lesson.

“Rabbit.”

She looked around, before looking back at him quizzically.

“Abbat?”

He decided to explain ‘pictures’ later. He then made a spider... okay, a disfigured egg with eight squiggly things, but screw it.

“Spider.”

“Dy-der!”

She smiled broadly, and Anton prepared to congratulate her when she dug at the ground with a hoof and proclaimed it loudly again.

“Dy-der!”

‘Goddamnit.’ His thoughts echoed loudly in his head as he suppressed a face-claw.

“No, that’s dirt, the thing I drew is a spider.”

Upon hearing the new word, she dug again, making a sizable hole in the ground. Anton took a second, as his inner knowledge of the English language had an aneurysm. This was going to be difficult. Maybe he had to try something else. But what?

He tried grabbing a chunk of dirt, the crumbly material falling apart in his tentative grasp.

Holding objects up wouldn’t work, he’d have to try having the object visible, and not as a picture. He pointed at some of the long stalks of grass nearby.

“Grass.”

“Rass?”

“Yeah, grass.”

He was almost ready to give up, he decided to just label things as they saw them, just so she’d stop making holes every time he said ‘spider’. Maybe if they found a town he might be able to get the objects easier. Or find a person willing to tutor her, he didn’t know how much more example-misunderstandings he could take. If he kept this up, she might end up mistaking a tree for a rock.

“Rass! Rass-rass-rass!”

‘Okay, her going around and poking the grass with her nose and shouting ‘rass!’ is somewhere between adorable and annoying. It’s likely to tip from one to the other rather quickly.’

“So, do you know where a town is?”

He cringed, hoping against hope that she knew what he was talking about.

“Rass!”

She held up a clump of grass held in her mouth to him. He could almost swear he saw her eyes literally sparkle in delight.

“Yes, that is grass. Man, I don’t know how mom did this for so long. Anyway, a town, like with buildings?”

He tried gesturing, in an attempt to mime a large object.

She just dropped the grass in front of him and took his outstretched limbs as a cue to give him another hug. By this point, the sun was high in the sky, so he wasn’t as tired, but it was still a very sudden change from speaking to being hugged. Not that the hug was bad. Misinterpretation wasn’t all bad, he decided.

“Town Uhn-gee!”

“Okay, no. I’m not going to try anymore. Let’s just get moving and hope we find somewhere.”

She nuzzled him again, and he sighed. She was nice and warm, but she was seriously starting to smell, and he doubted he smelled much better.

“And hope they have clean water.”

He pulled away from her and started walking away from the desert, even though the back of his mind was telling him rolling in the sand would be awesome. He wasn’t going to risk Creepette like that again... even though rolling in the sand sounded nice.

After a while, he’d stopped for a break, Creepette having followed him the whole way. He knew his path hadn’t been entirely straight, having to go around the spontaneous path-blocking thorny bushes hiding in the grass every now and then. He’d walked into the first one, and had sat through Creepette pulling several thorns from his face with her teeth. she’d been really careful, and flinched any time he hissed in pain.

‘She’s not stupid, just... horribly uneducated. Unfortunately, I can’t offer much help. If only explaining things was easier. Oh well. I hope we find civilization soon. And that they speak English.’

During his rest, Anton looked around, hoping he’d see something, even with his poor vision.

‘Nnope. Grass, grass, grass, Creepette, grass, grass... wait, is that the forest I saw earlier?’

Perking his ears up subconsciously, Anton stood a little straighter and looked towards the barely-visible dark green line hanging just above the grass. The blobs were approximately the right shape for trees with fuzzy vision and only the very tops of their canopies visible.

“As cold as it is, I’m willing to bet going through the forest will get us to town... hopefully. Now I need some way to stay warm...”

He looked over to Creepette, who had perked her ears up at the word ‘town’. He grinned widely as an idea fermented in his brain, like a fine wine on fast forward. It mature considerably faster than he had, and ran to the forefront of his mind.

“I can’t get through the forest, I’m cold-blooded. But if I had someone warm-blooded nearby to offer body heat... and she is rather... rug-like I guess. Okay! New plan. We go through the forest together.”

He was suddenly struck by an interesting thought; ‘In all my life, the phrase “Hugs make everything better” has yet to be proven wrong... whodathunkit?’

Spreading his clawed arms out, he called to his friend.

“Creepette, town!”

The mare happily threw herself into his embrace, chasing away the chill of the breeze and shaded grass. ‘Now to figure out how to get her onto my back... Then, I’ll have a real coat!’ he thought to himself, chuckling slightly at the absurdity of it.

“Hey Creepette, carry?”

“Keeree?”

‘Damn, now that was close. ‘hole’ was still dead-on, though.’

He tried remembering how he got her onto his back when he tried getting her out of the desert, managing to somewhat emulate it. Lifting the squirming Creepette, he held her aloft on his back, until she got the idea and rearranged herself more comfortably.

“Keeree?”

“Yes, carry.”

She hugged him, pressing her muzzle to the back of his neck as he began stalking into the tall grass, headed towards the forest. She was kinda heavy, heavier-seeming, in fact, than before, but he could carry her.

“Fuud?”

“Where? Oh, uh, right, don’t know that one.”

Her voice was a little plaintive as she asked again, but he still had no idea where to get her more food from. He heard her belly rumble about the same time he stepped out of the grass once more into the clear area before the forest.

‘Hmm, we were in a cleared area in the barricade, maybe she can get some here? I hope so. And I hope I won’t have to smell it.’

He tried his best to put her down gently, resulting in her rolling to the side, grabbing him desperately and dragging them both down. But, a moment later, they were standing again, so no biggie.

“Can you get food here?”

“Fuud?”

“The fungus stuff, can you find it? Where do we make the hole?”

“Hole? Abbat hole?”

“Er, no. The stuff you ate. The fungus.”

He tried making eating motions, since she had got some of the nasty slime last time he tried.

“Fuud? Dy-der fuud. Dy-der fuud!”

She promptly began snuffling near the ground, looking for all the world like a big, green rag-mop pretending to be a bloodhound.

‘Good enough, I guess. Although, the smell might not take too long to find... eww.’

He watched as the mare got close to a hollow-looking log, just about the same circumference as her head. She started to sniff inside right as he got a bad feeling about such an action.

He decided that wasn’t the best idea, lest she find a nest of some animal, perhaps a skunk or whatever this strange place’s equivalent was. ‘Maybe it sprays acid... oh shit.’

“Wait! Stop!”

His warning came too late, however, as the mare stuck her head into the log a moment before he shouted, and his shout startled her into trying to back up. The ‘trying’ is empathized because she couldn’t back up, and she began frantically pulling to try getting herself out of the log.

‘Well, it could have been worse, uh, gotta break the log or something...’

He looked around for something he could use as a tool, like a stone or something. A short ways away, he could see a chunk of rock, broken from a larger boulder with tree roots wrapped about it. The result was an impressively sharp-looking fragment of rock on one side, with a thicker portion perfect for grabbing on the other, even with his vastly reduced manual dexterity.

“Alright, perfect. Maybe my luck is changing.”

As if to spite his words, he heard Creepette cry his ‘name’ with an edge of fear or desperation to it. Looking back, he saw something crawling into the other side of the log. He didn’t get a good enough view of it to guess whether it was dangerous or not, but considering her response to seeing it...

“Hold on!”

He snatched up the stone and began hacking at the log desperately, hoping it was rotted enough to make the task easy. Unfortunately, it was just rotted enough to make the task more difficult, having turned spongy and slick with threads of mold and the tracks of wood-boring beetles.

“Come on, break, break!”

He tried to hit it with the rock harder, while looking for a seam that he could focus on.

Luck seemed to have flip-flopped for him again, and he slammed home a blow on a spot that had cracked some thirty years prior from a bear landing on it. Not that Anton knew that, but the bear had been in the midst of fighting a pegasus viking, so the story’s kinda interesting.

This action caused the top of the log to split lengthwise, allowing the terrified, crying Creepette to fall from the log, backing away in utter horror, her face an almost perfect rendition of the MineCraft creeper’s face, albeit more rounded.

She scrambled back and away, utterly silent as she huddled against the grass some twenty or so feet away, holding her hooves over her eyes.

‘Don’t worry, it’s fine. Obviously if it fits in the log, I’m bigger, and a predator, I should be fine. Right?’

His brain, deciding to be totally up-front with him this time, decided to regale him with a series of facts: Anything that small and running towards something larger either thinks it’s got a good chance of taking them on, is incredibly unintelligent, or has offspring at stake.

Also, Jackie Chan is around two-to-four inches shorter than you were and he could still kick your ass. Oh, and anything running towards predators probably hunts them.

‘Shut the fuck up, brain! Okay, hope for the best...’

Peering into the end of the log, now that the top had cracked open to let the light in, he could see Creepette’s terror.

It hissed at him, as it crouched over the adorable little kittens that ‘mewed’ at him adorably. He could understand at least two things; one, that it was entirely okay to be scared of an angry momma cat if you can’t fight back or get away. Second, Creepette was afraid of cats, just like a creeper. Definitely a connection somewhere in there.

“Okay, I’m not gonna eat your kids, we just wanna find food for Creepette, we’ll just leave you alone...”

He backed away quickly as the momma cat hissed and swung a paw at him, claws at full extension. It was a close thing, but he managed to avoid any scratches.

He went over to Creepette, trying to calm her down.

“Come on, let’s find somewhere else. I really don’t think fighting a cat over a slime mold is worth it.”

Creepette just grabbed onto him for dear life, and he had to choke off a strangled cry for help as he felt her vice-like grip settle entirely accidentally on his neck. She cried into his shoulder. ‘She’s far more emotional than the creepers I know of, that’s for sure.’

“We still need to get you fed. What was the phrase? Spider-food?”

He rolled his eyes at the phrase, noting the total absurdity of the imagined meaning and the actual one.

“D- dy-der fuud...”

She sniffled into his shoulder and eased up on her grip, keeping a wary eye on the log with the kittens as the two demi-ponies walked quickly away from it.

After about half an hour of searching, including her tummy growling loudly every few minutes, they finally located a patch of the mold, and she eagerly slurped it up. That response just so happened to be from relatively near Anton, and he gagged at the stench.

“I will never touch mushrooms for as long as I live...”

Afterwards, Creepette happily pranced over to him, and nuzzled his neck, her breath shockingly stench-free. The motion also sent a slight tingle of some sort through his body, sort of like a static shock, but without being at all painful.

“Alright, now we get through the forest. Carry.”

After some jostling and some maneuvering, he finally got her onto his back once more, the sun beginning to move to the other side of the sky, slowly. The two ponies stepped into the forest, Anton immediately grateful for the pony on his back. The forest wasn’t as cold as he had first thought, but was rather chilly.

As the dark and shadows fell over the two over them, Creepette slowly looked up and around, her muzzle occasionally brushing past his ear in the process. Each time that happened, his ear twitched, and he got a weird sensation in his chest. He had no idea what it meant, just that he didn’t mind the feeling.

‘I’m not terribly well-versed in the nature of reptiles, specifically desert lizards, but I don’t think that’s... lizard-like. Whatever, man how big is this forest?’

Stepping over a large root, he found his eyes rapidly adapting to the low light, resulting in an oddly monochrome, but more crisp view of the forest. Thick roots and very little undergrowth gave the feeling of a forest of great age. Each of the yards-thick trunks were gnarled with age, forming leering faces and sharp, tooth-like growths. Faint, glowing patches of fungus or something filled the pits and holes of the trunks, making the ‘eyes’ and ‘mouths’ of the trees seem to glow menacingly.

He was starting to see how something like what happened in S1E2 would work, but it was still creepy as heck. The slight shifting of the branches and the whispering wind gave what he hoped was the illusion of movement.

“Okay, just gotta keep moving. The less time we spend here, the less likely we are to be attacked by God-knows-what.”

“At-ack?”

Creepette’s nervous voice was a comfort in the gloomy twilit forest, and he shook off the discomfort as best he could. Eventually, the two ponies stopped once more. The forest had only gotten darker in the intervening three-ish hours, and Creepette kept circling him nervously once she was on the ground once more.

“Don’t worry, we should be fine, we just have to keep moving while staying as quiet as possible. Hopefully we’ll hear if something comes up behind us...”

After cringing for a few seconds, expecting to be jumped, he relaxed.

Creepette snuggled close to him, keeping a scared face pointed outwards in the dark forest. She was obviously keeping close for comfort, but it helped him keep thinking clearly. The deep shadows of the forest seemed to shift and move if he wasn’t looking, and it was really disconcerting.

‘Weird, for once, I feel fine walking through a dark forest at night with a creeper following me, weird feeling... not bad though. At least I can kinda see in the dark.’

Looking around, he saw that one of the tree’s ‘faces’ seemed to be staring directly at him and Creepette, and the apparent attention was giving him a really bad feeling, likely linked to it looking vaguely like it was smiling maliciously. The rest had just looked like they were snarling...

Shuddering, he hoped his brain’s first guess was very wrong. It was scary, and just messed up. Who ever heard of an Ent with rabies anyway?

He looked away, checking to see how Creepette was doing. Her slight shaking was easily attributed to the frightening atmosphere, combined with the chill pre-night air. He began to re-think his willingness to walk through this dark forest, creeper in tow or not. He almost jumped straight up as he looked back, and thought to himself, ‘Holy shit, I thought that tree was farther away than that.’

The grinning tree indeed looked significantly closer, and he subconsciously pressed closer to Creepette.

He tried to make himself smaller, but also was trying to get a better look at the tree, his damned curiosity prioritizing the dumber idea of the two.

The tree didn’t move, and the roots were securely set into the soil, the thick sections of gnarled wood forming a cage-like embrace for a chunk of stone. The gentle, blue glow in the ‘eyes’ and ‘mouth’ left its expression clearly outlined as it smirked at him.

‘It’s just a tree, a really weird tree, just take a few moments to rest, and we keep moving... or sleep. No, bad brain, not the place, jeez this is scary, just calm the heck down.’

He shook his head hard to clear the irrational fear from his mind. Looking back up at the tree, he prepared to laugh at it, dispelling the terror of the encounter, just as Pinkie Pie would want.

The laugh caught in his throat as a choke when he saw that the tree was actually closer. There was no mistaking it this time. Several of the other trees with face had also turned towards him and Creepette, and an involuntary whimper rose to replace his laugh. Realizing he hadn’t blinked in more than a minute, he blinked just from ingrained instinct, in spite of not feeling the need for it.

The trees were closer.

‘Shitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitoh!’

He’d seen Doctor Who. Even if they didn’t teleport him and Creepette into the past, they might simply be carnivores, and he didn’t want them near him. Especially after he saw that they had begun to brandish hand-like branches tipped with mossy claws.

His heart hammering in his chest suddenly, he planned to run as fast as he could, but he didn’t know if Creepette could keep up in the dark. He tried to think of something, cursing his brain once more, in an attempt to get it to work with him. A good idea had to come to him soon, or he’d be fertilizer.

A thought occurred to him and he felt his muscles seize up in fear. He’d just realized he and Creepette were snuggled up in the roots of a large tree. Glancing away from the hoard of evil trees, he peered at the tree they’d taken refuge under.

It had a face, too, and it looked like it was sleeping.

“Carry. Creepette, carry.”

His only solid plan that made sense, was to get Crepette on his back, and she get away as fast as possible. Feeling her latch onto his back with totally unbridled fear confirmed that the reason she’d been surveying the forest behind them was that she’d seen more.

Staggering to his feet/hooves, he looked up to see that the evil trees weren’t too far away now. Keeping an eye on them as best he could, he began to run. Gallop, more like, hurdling low branches and tall roots, ducking a couple of outstretched limbs in his way.

Seeing a patch of light ahead, he accelerated, feeling Creepette jostle on his back as he ran. He slid into the patch of silver moonlight, skidding to a stop as he realized he was in a U-shaped depression in the ground. He turned to escape it, but saw the leering faces of the trees and backed up. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, a thundering sound that was only matched by the panic in his mind, racing along and pushing back the sensations of pain from the harsh run and excessive heart rate.

He felt the mare on his grab him harder and bury her muzzle into the back of his neck, tears of fright soaking into his coat.

He had to do something, his brain giving the ever-present obvious hints like ‘use the environment to your advantage’ but still being a dick and not offering any ideas how to do so. He had to make his brain work, but he didn’t know how. Frantically, he looked around for anything.

His eyes snapped back up to the encroaching tree-monsters as he remembered they moved if he wasn’t watching them. Unfortunately, the leader of the group, the blue-eyed one, was right in front of him, looming menacingly at the entrance of the hollow. He could feel Creepette look up, and heard her sniffling gasp of horror. As she pressed her face to the back of his head, he could hear her whimper, followed by a soft hiss.

Wait, a hiss?!

A pulsing white light built up behind him and he felt the world tear apart around him. A sensation like being slugged in the stomach by a freight train went through him, and he caught a glimpse of a whirling, seizure-inducing tunnel of lights and rainbows, the colors muddied and mixed as they swirled past in a nauseating display.

Then, the barest instant later, they were standing on a stone floor, rough and unfinished, like the inside of a cavern. And considering there wasn’t any light beyond Creepette’s softly glowing eyes.

Then, those winked out as well, and a dull thud marked where she fell.

Author's Note

Alright, I'd just like to say that any commentary of a constructive nature is useful, and I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Unless it's useless and mean, then I don't want to hear it.
And by useless, I mean tells me nothing.

You can be mean if it's part of telling me where you think I'm going wrong in my story, that's alright.

Ch04 - Love Tunnel (Contains Clop)

Author's Note

There is clop at the end of the chapter. When you reach the point that says

--- (Ctrl+F Clop is Over to skip)

you can just use the search function to skip to the end of the chapter, searching for the second instance of Clop is Over.

If you don't like clop, then.... sorry. I did mention that it would show up, and I'm giving you the chance to skip it, so... yeah.

Ch04 - Love Tunnel (Contains Clop)

Anton looked around frantically for some sort of light to see her by, or something, anything.

“Even as a human, my night vision wasn’t this bad, at least the place is large enough to stand in...”

Anton was struck by one of his more strange ideas, and immediately thought that it was just insane. But he had no proof it wouldn’t work. If he could wake up Creepette, maybe he could use her glowing eyes as a sort of flashlight... nah. That’d be too weird.

He tried figuring out exactly what he was standing on, or at least the closest to what it felt like. He hoped it wasn’t a really tiny cave, that would suck.

The clicking of his claws on stone made his heart sink. He couldn’t see, was standing on stone, and there was no light. It was either a cave or basement, and neither of those seemed particularly good to be lost in. As well, it was getting cold, and he could feel his thoughts begin to slow.

“Well, sight is out, maybe I should try being more of an animal, given my body.”

He sadly realized his nose was not much better than it was before.

“Oh right, lizard-boy.”

He stuck out his tongue, idly wondering exactly how lizards could smell with their tongues, but holding it out didn’t seem to do anything. He’d figured it wouldn’t be too effective, but he hoped for something better than nothing. Retracting his tongue, he prepared to consider other options.

Which meant he wasn’t prepared for the sudden explosion of color washing over his senses. As his tongue had passed over the roof of his mouth, a burst of colors, like a rainbow paint bucket throwing up, flew across his vision. At the same time, it was like a taste, but also like vision.

Incredibly disoriented, it took him a few moments to realize that the flash of colors/tastes had given him the impression of something with form. In front of him, outlined in greens and cored with oranges and reds, was a shape he somehow recognized as Creepette. He wasn’t entirely sure how, but something about the shape he looked at smelled right.

Which, he had to admit to himself, was one of the weirdest combinations of sensory-based adverbs he’d ever used in a single sentence.

The image faded slowly from his ‘view’, and he paused to take stock of the new development.

“I can see an object by their temperature, by tasting it, and I can smell what things look like. And I heard acid was trippy. Okay, so now what, I probably can’t find anything that doesn’t give off heat too easily, so I guess I’ll have to hope Creepette can see in the dark.”

He yawned, and realized the cold was making him tired.

“Oh yeah, cold-blooded, I need something warm... uh... oh, right.”

He went over to where he recalled Creepette being and laid down, snuggling next to her. As he settled in, he realized that she seemed far bonier than he remembered; he could distinctly feel her ribs, and he could also feel the dip in her tummy.

The only explanation that came to mind, was extreme physical exertion seeing as how she’d eaten not too long ago. It was either too little an amount to sustain her running, or the explosion for some reason. As odd as it sounded, the explosion theory made more sense, as he was carrying her most of the way.

‘So when she blows up... it’s kinda like teleporting, hence our new location, and it burns calories really quickly, using them as fuel. Crap, I need to get her something to eat or she’ll starve! What do I do?’

A weak mutter from Creepette caught his attention.

“Uh... uhn... gee?”

“I’m here, are you okay? You need food? I don’t think we can find any here...”

“Fuuuuuud...”

Her long, drawn-out moan sounded pained, like someone with a really bad flu groaning over a toilet.

‘Oh this is really bad. I can’t find any of that fungus, but if I don’t her body could... ugh.’

He shook the ugly, and disturbing image out of his head, not liking the idea of her body deteriorating from severe malnutrition.

He felt her hooves wrap slowly around him, their gentleness more from a weakness in her muscles than from any wish to prevent his discomfort. And while the warmth was welcome, he realized that the cold stone floor was likely sapping just as much of her heat as it was his.

‘Gotta do something, uhm... a blanket? No, I can’t even see inanimate objects. And I can’t take my time, if I can’t move from the cold, Creepette’s as good as dead along with me. I gotta get help from somewhere, but where? Goddess, why do you hate me?’

Flicking his tongue nervously, he caught a scent, like the feeling of a harsh fire. ‘looking’ around, he could see Creepette entirely in spite of her being on top of him, and he could also ‘see’ the tunnel, vaguely. And it was a tunnel, now that he wasn’t blinded from his first use of the ability, with thin white outlines marking where changes in the tunnel’s walls were.

He’d never even heard of a lizard that could do this, but beggars can’t be choosers, he rationalized.

Standing up, with Creepette still on his back, her weight worryingly reduced, he began to slowly follow the weird scent down the tunnel. Whatever had made that scent/feeling, he had to hope it would help. He didn’t have room anymore for doubt, as the only other things that he could hold were either hope, or despair.

Several minutes of padding down the rough corridor, his rear legs making rhythmic ‘clip-clop’ sounds to accompany his foreleg’s ‘clickety-click’ of claws on stone. The pads of his feet felt raw and painful, the hard stone also making his hooves ache.

He’d been doggedly following the scent, but Creepette had gone limp a little while ago, fast asleep on his back. She felt so frail, and he worried about her, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching him. Worse, his hearing had seemed to go a tad downhill, and he still thought he kept hearing something every now and then. It made him honestly think of his time in Minecraft, sorta similar to the noise that spiders made on stone.

Tasting the air again, he stopped in time to realize the ‘smooth’ section before him was actually a drop, the lack of ‘outlines’ for the tiny outcroppings of stone actually indicating that the fissure continued downwards.

What really intrigued him, though, was the slight breeze from down there, wafting gently towards him from the depths. The breeze smelled of things burning, and smelled like bad eggs. ‘Bad eggs, plus burning... bad eggs, plus burning... bad eggs = sulphur, burning means fire, or...’

His thought cut off as the realization hit him about the same time as the puff of warm air and the oncoming light.

‘Lava tubes are smooth-sided and incredibly level, until a short drop before the magma chamber... how far down did we go?!’

Turning and running back along the gentle slope of the tunnel, he could feel things beginning to heat up. It was slow at first, but building.

‘Can’t slow down, just gotta hope it subsides before I hit a dead end. Keep moving, oh crap this is not going to be easy...’

He kept moving, trying his best to gauge when the magma would go back down, but since running was more important, not much effort went into the thought. This, combined with the lack of information with which to gauge the magma’s stopping point, just made fear the most prominent of feelings.

Taking a quick look back, he could see the tiny speck of the dull-red magma, glowing only slightly as it advanced. The fact that the air was becoming very warm, but not uncomfortably so just yet, simply meant that ‘cool magma’ was a relative term.

The tunnel continued to slope oh-so-gently upwards, but Anton realized he was definitely at a steeper angle than before. He’d likely passed the point they’d started from a little while ago, but he wasn’t stopping yet.

He could feel the sweat begin to pour off of Creepette, and he also realized that he wasn’t sweating, nor particularly uncomfortable yet, but the situation was similar to the desert.

The main problem was that he was running out of room to run, and he almost skidded to a halt as he ‘saw’ a wall ahead. Not having the time to stop, however, he simply plowed into it. Laying in a crumpled heap at the bottom, Creepette whimpered as she lay on top of him.

The heat had stopped increasing, but at this rate, the oxygen in the cave wouldn’t last forever, either.

‘What do I do, come on, there’s gotta be something. Can’t bust through another wall, it hurts too much. Think of something.’

His brain, however, was running a million miles a minute, and any possible ideas were quickly swarmed by fear. He had to calm down somehow. Focus. What is available? He gave a quick ‘look’ at his surroundings, hoping for some kind of way out.

About this time, Creepette had curled up close to him again, this time under him, evidently wanting to be held. Distracted, he couldn’t quite process the information he received.

‘Can’t risk shouting for help, oxygen would be used up faster, and I doubt it would help. Just need to think of something. Oh screw it. I’ll just take the damn hug. At least it’ll be a better way than most people, usually all they get is “Mind that bus.” “What bus?” Splat!’

Pulling her closer, he felt Creepette nuzzle him, shivering slightly. She felt so fragile to him, and she just wanted his attention. He could feel her heart pulse gently in her chest as she lay her head on his shoulder, the two of them laying on their sides.

‘Yeah, you win, Life, you bastard. At least I’m not going out completely miserable. Get it over with.’

He felt Creepette cuddle closer, and realized she was practically reverse-spooning him at that point. She was still soft, even if she was a tad bony.

‘Awkward. Really awkward. Not entirely unwelcome, but really really awkward. Is she doing this on purpose? Now?’

He stifled a shout as he felt her nip at his neck. It wasn’t unpleasant, but he wasn’t entirely sure of what to make of what it did feel like.

‘Okay then, um, I guess there are lots of other worse ways to die. But there are definitely safer places to be doing this... not like we’d get much choice on ‘later’ though. Eh, who wants to die a virgin anyway?’

As he debated on what exactly to do, he felt her continue to gently nibble him, disrupting his thoughts repeatedly.

‘Okay, uh how do less... er, evolved species show affection, uh... lick her nose? Wow I’m an idiot. Oh whatever, if I mess up, it won’t be very awkward for too long.’

Pushing her away a little, he tentatively licked her on the nose, earning a startled ‘eep!’ from her in the process. Then, he just held her, trying his best to make her understand why he did that, and trying not to make things weird. He had no idea how creepers, or creeper ponies did this kind of thing.

“Uhn-gee?”

Her voice, soft and mildly plaintive, sounded hurt. He could practically see her ears go flat, even in the dark, and could easily imagine the sad look on her face.

‘Crap, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do! Oh man. How do I fix this when I can’t talk to her? This has got to be the most horrible form of sexual awkwardness in the universe. Great, uh...’

As he sat there, pontificating wildly, he could feel her shift next to him, tensing up. He could almost sense her beginning to cry.

‘Ah screw it.’

He gave up trying to be ‘correct’ and just hugged her, trying to get across the fact that he liked her, but was absolutely clueless about the procedure. It seemed to at least forestall the tears, and he felt her nuzzle his neck again, pressing against him as hard as she could. Admittedly, that wasn’t very hard, but he could feel her trying. And, she had started nibbling him again, similar to her attempts at grooming him, but... different somehow.

He quickly decided that thinking about what to do just made things worse, so he just did his best to emulate what she was doing, and hoped he was supposed to do that. Minus the nibbling, his teeth were very sharp, and he didn’t want to injure her. This was by far the most unforeseen outcome he could imagine. He didn’t want to screw it up, because she had obviously been looking forward to this.

His first return nuzzle, tentative as it was, seemed to spur her on. She pressed her muzzle to his neck for a moment, breathing deeply, before he felt her muzzle drop a bit lower, to his chest. He wasn’t sure about what to do, or where to put his legs, until he felt her gently shift him onto his back. She was laying on top of him, then, and he realized he could see her vaguely, her eyes glowing a vibrant crimson as she nosed his chest again.

‘Okay, uh, I think I know what she wants... but what do I do now? Do I lay here, wrap my forelegs around her? This is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.’

It seemed she was taking the initiative, now that he’d given her ‘permission’ or something, and he could see her eyes traveling further from his face. Which meant closer to his...

He gulped slightly in anticipation as the realization hit him.

‘I really hope it doesn’t look all mutated. What if I got a fish dick or something? Oh God, just don’t think about it, and hope for the best...’

Interrupting his thoughts was an odd sensation, similar to when he would get an erection, but a little different. Looking down and tasting the air, he got a glimpse of an arising length of warmth, most definitely his... ‘member’.

--- (Ctrl+F Clop is Over to skip)

With a spike of fear, he check again as he felt the length of it rise from his belly, as his ‘scent vision’ only took still-frames.

The length of it was a brighter orange than the rest of him, though it was difficult to see it well compared to the background heat of Creepette. But he could tell that she was staring at it directly. He could even feel her warm breath along the tip of it, gusting across and sending a flare of interesting sensations throughout him.

“Uhn-gee?”

The words were said as a question, like someone asking ‘please’. Anton paused for a moment, not sure whether he wanted to proceed or not... and it seemed that he still had a chance to back out.

‘Oh well, not like I’ll get another chance.’

“Uh, yeah, go ahead?”

He felt a brief tickle of her breath, before the sensation of her lips touching the tip of his spire made him draw a hissing breath. The feeling of her mouth slowly enveloping the end of his shaft forced his back to arch as he felt every nerve ending there explode with sensation.

‘Wasn’t expecting that! But not complaining... man this is weird... eh whatever, I should at least enjoy this before I end up extra crispy.’

He shuddered at the entirely new range of sensations he was experiencing, overwhelmed by the newness of the whole act. Sure, he’d watched porn before, be he’d never actually...

He gasped again as he felt her tongue come into contact with his tip. The appendage stroked it lightly, caressing him gently. It was, to put it simply, intoxicating. As he felt her begin to slide her mouth onto him, embracing his shaft with lips and tongue, he felt his clawed forelegs begin to move towards her. He wasn’t even entirely sure why, just that it felt like she was moving too slowly. He wanted to... to speed her up. Move her onto him further. He... he wasn’t sure why, but it felt right for some reason.

As his forelegs met her head, he pressed gently, and she obliged willingly, assuaging his fear that she might not like it. But she seemed to enjoy it, and even grew more vigorous with her motions.

The flat, scale-like portions of her tongue sent sweeping rushes of feeling through him, and he could feel her hum slightly around the blockage of his meat in her mouth.

He wasn’t entirely sure how to express his feelings beyond trying to stroke her mane as he felt her begin to bob slowly up and down his length. Something was building in him, and it felt incredible.

Suddenly, he felt himself jerk involuntarily, his forelimbs forcing her further onto him than before, as a tidal flood of his seed spilled from him. He could tell she was trying to drink it; he could feel her swallow around his tip, the muscular contractions making him cum even harder.

--- (Clop is Over)

Finally, he was spent, exhausted and finished. He lay back,, not a drop of sweat on him, as he felt her slowly pull herself off of him. He winced slightly at the overload of sensation as she crawled up to lay on him, snuggled on top of him like a blanket.

Breathing hard, he could only lay back, and hold her.

Ch05 - Pride and Prejudices

Anton yawned broadly, and caught the scent of something musky and weird-smelling, along with the unmistakable smell of sulphur residue. The warm shape sprawled across him resolved into the form of Creepette, laying on him in the slight gloom. She was sleeping, peacefully, her side rising and falling gently with every breath.

‘Wait, why aren’t I dead? Wasn’t the lava rising? What made it stop? I hope I’m going to like the answer, though I doubt it would be good, what can stop lava?’

Looking around, back down the tunnel, he saw that the light from the molten rock had disappeared. Blinking, he realized he could actually see the sides of the tunnel. It was gloomy, dark, moody even in lighting, but it was lit. Barely, but lit.

As he was turning and looking around for the source of the light, Creepette squirmed slightly in her place across his chest and belly, murmuring ‘Uhn-gee...’ under her breath. Obviously still asleep, she just curled her limbs around him tighter.

‘Awww. Okay, yeah, I’m pretty darn lucky. That’s adorable.’

Anton kept looking around for the light source, though doing his best not to disturb the mare laying on him. It was still a bit odd with his new physiology. Finally spying a broad crack in one wall with a light barely filtering through it revealed that there was something of a side-passage to the tunnel, produced by a section of the wall being split vertically by some ancient seismic activity.

The light wandering in through that crack was not direct; instead it seemed to have been let in around a corner or bend, reflecting barely from one wall to the next.

‘Well, we need to get out of here, but would it be possible to open the crack more? I don’t know how strong I am, but I’m fairly certain I can’t break a stone wall...’

He lay there for several minutes, debating how he could get to the crack to see how big it was without disturbing his... marefriend... so that he could see if they could escape through it. The biggest snag he was running into so far was the moving Creepette without startling her phase.

He decided to try nudging her slightly, to wake her up, but not scare her or anything.

This resulted in her nuzzling his paw, and wrapping a limb around his in an impressive display of flexibility in her joints. She buried her face in the soft fluff of his chest, just above his scaled belly.

‘Okay... uh, how do you wake someone up without them getting spooked?’

Trying to pull his forelimb away did him no good, as she had both the grip and the leverage to hold on without effort. A particularly sharp tug resulted in her rolling slowly off of him, the direction pulling him on top of her. She didn’t seem to mind the change of position, other than shivering at the cold of the floor.

He decided to try waking her up by talking to her, because physical motion got him nowhere... in a way.

“Creepette? Wake up. I think I found a way out.”

The mare just wrapped all four limbs around him in a fashion that would be disturbingly intimate if they hadn’t already ‘done something’ the night before. In the process, she ended up with her mouth next to his ear, and was nibbling gently on it.

‘Really affectionate, not that I’m complaining, but man she’s a hard sleeper. How do I wake her up?’

This train of thought continued, not many options were left to wake someone kindly. He decided to try just standing up with her attached to him. If it didn’t wake her, then he’d be out of ideas aside from jostling her.

Pulling himself creakily to his feet/hooves, he heard his back pop a few times from the weird position he’d fallen asleep in and the fact that he had a full-grown mare clinging to his belly. Or, at least, up until she fell off of him with a dull ‘thump’.

She was, rather immediately, awake at that point. Flailing a bit, she successfully knocked Anton to the ground, scrambling back to her hooves as she looked around in mild panic.

“Uh- Uhn-gee?”

Her voice, terrified and a little loud, echoed through the tunnel as she looked around. At last, her gaze settled on where Anton was laying in a crumpled heap from her sudden bout of movement.

“Uhn-gee!”

She practically squealed the last syllable, grabbing him and pulling him close to her, leaving him extremely battered and disoriented.

The whole event had taken less than a minute.

“Ugh, ow. Calm down, it’s alright, I’ll be fine. Stop squeezing so hard, it’s hard to breathe!”

She just nuzzled him again, and gave him a small nip on the ear. He was having some difficulties figuring out if the action was sweet or annoying, and he couldn’t decide. He still wasn’t hungry, in spite of having eaten at least several hours ago.

Now that Creepette was awake and no longer on top of him, he moved closer to the crack, hoping he might be able to squeeze through.

As he got closer, a gentle draft of frigid air wafted through, sending a shiver down his spine. Anton peered through the crack and turned his head sideways to let it fit. Squeezing in, he felt an odd, almost painful sensation and heard a double ‘pop’. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he could rather suddenly move mostly flat, like an actual lizard.

“I really hope I didn’t break anything...”

He did his best to slide all the way through without any more odd sounds that might be bad.

Unfortunately for him, he heard a few more pops and snaps as he rounded the sharp corner in the crack. From behind him, he heard movement, likely Creepette trying to follow him or something.

At last, he found the end of the crevice. It exited out onto a hill, or a cliff. As he pulled his head free, he heard another loud pop, and looked down. Upon doing so, he instantly wished he hadn’t.

He’d seen lizards, like geckos and iguanas, more or less flatten themselves to get under doors and stuff, their stomachs mashed flat against the ground. He’d also seen snakes part their rib-cages, allowing them to slip under or through thin cracks.

Right then, he was looking at the back half of his own body, flattened like a piece of roadkill, half out of the crack in the ground and dirt. There were several large, un-bleeding gashes along his belly and back, and he’d have to see to them soon, but for the moment, every human instinct in him was telling him to get to a point where he couldn’t see the points of his ribs splayed out like that.

“When this is all over, and if I survive, I’m calling Ripley’s.”

He pulled himself free, and heard those double pops again, and saw that it was his rear legs re-aligning with what he’d now forever call ‘walk mode’. He just hoped he’d never again need ‘flat mode’.

As he pondered his new-found state as potential living silly-putty, he heard Creepette calling out from inside the tunnel. She sounded frantic, and he realized that she probably couldn’t follow him through the crack in the stone.

His first thought was to look around for a tool he could use to widen the crack.

His first real look at his surroundings shocked him. He was on a massive, short-grass plains, the forest some distance away. At least, he assumed the block of dark green on the horizon was the forest. Even at this range, though, he could still see the golden-brown of the desert behind it, stretching off even farther than his severely reduced eyesight could tell.

On top of that, a brown-and-gray blob took up a section of his view on the plains, though he couldn’t tell if it was just a cliff, and outcropping of rock, some sort of town, or maybe a massive storm cloud just chillin’ with its groundwater buddy, or what.

The biggest thing he noticed, however, was that the hill he stood on had something important on it. Or rather, an important lack of something.

That something lacked being the presence of anything useful for digging.

A thin carpet of grass and dirt covered much of the stone, but the top of the ‘hill’ was just bare rock.

“Damnit. Come on brain, help me out here, be useful. What can I do?”

He did his best to calm down so he could think clearer, hoping some form of idea came to him. A distant cry of ‘Uhn-gee!’ kept sounding from the cave. Since it seemed that her teleporting was very hard on her, having her attempt to blast a way out of the tunnel wouldn’t work.

He went over to the hole, to see if there was anything he could do, hopefully it wouldn’t involve sliding back in there.

The crack was mostly vertical, and barely wide enough for his head to get through. The sides of it were rough, even jagged in some places. The very edges, where it met the outside world, were smoother, likely from erosion.

He backed up a bit, realizing that this wasn’t helping much. That angled section partway in precluded much he could do.

Another call for him made him sigh.

Just to see if it worked, he flicked his tongue at the cave, and ‘tasted’ the air. All that returned was a glimpse of the fields behind him, most of it in cool blues and a few tiny dots of vague orange.

Growling in frustration, he smacked the ground, only to shake his paw in pain as he got confirmation that punching stone doesn’t work out well.

At last, he was ready to give up, perhaps even crawl back in and hug Creepette for comfort. He took a step back, getting ready to try flattening himself again, when his hoof went through the soft turf.

Sinking into the unexpected hole, he grabbed for the edge with both paws, digging his claws. Not much to grab a hold of, he simply fell back with a scream. He felt himself slam back and forth down a sort of rough chute, finally coming to a stop in a pile of dirt, small roots, and grass, looking up at a mostly-straight tunnel heading to the surface. Looking around, he had enough time to see and hear Creepette heading for him at what he could’ve sworn was close to mach one before she hit him.

“Oof...”

There was only enough time to utter a single syllable of response before all the air in his lungs was pushed out with the force of a rather noticeable impact. The green missile might’ve killed him. How lucky he felt to have such a sweet, adorable, caring, clingy, dependant marefriend who looked like an anorexic.

Actually, now that he got a good look at her again, she looked less twiggy than before. Maybe she’d just been needing some protein...

‘Great, I’m a food dispenser.’

“Uhn-gee! Town, Uhn-gee.”

‘Sure, whatever. She’s like a child. A really big, adorable child.’

He thought that idea over for a moment.

‘On second thought, that would make this whole thing weird. She’s like child with all the parts of a grown-up. Still not getting rid of the creepy. Ah well, comparisons are for losers. Or something.’

He sighed and leaned into her embrace, and she stroked his mane tenderly. He didn’t mind her odd quirks, but she was a bit... ‘much’ at times. He sighed, and disengaged from her hug.

“Okay, now we have to get out of here, earlier on the cliff I think I saw a... populated area.”

He was going to avoid certain words until he could clear a few things up. At least she was brighter than the kids he went to highschool with, those were downright morons.

“Opol-ted?”

“A place with people. Oh forget it, I’ll deal with it when we get to it.”

She just stared at him quizzically, unsure of what he meant. He looked around for an exit, then remembered the tunnel he’d slid in there by. Looking up it, it didn’t seem so steep from this angle, he’d simply been caught off-guard.

Gritting his teeth in determination, he proceeded up the chute, towards light and fresh air.

Laying, dirty and disheveled, at the top of the chute, he paused to catch his breath. It was much more difficult to climb stone without opposable fingers, and he’d had to come back down from the halfway point to carry Creepette up, who couldn’t climb at all with her hooves.

“Man, this is frustrating. Okay, now we need a way to the gray-splotchy-thing.”

Creepette just stared towards the gray spot in the distance. Whatever it was about it that fascinated her so, he still wanted to get there and figure out if it was something good or bad. Since Creepette hadn’t freaked out about it yet, he felt he could safely assume it wasn’t dangerous. Her ‘Fight or Flight’ instinct seemed to be stuck on ‘Flight’.

He checked around him, looking for an easy way down, like a path or something, though he doubted he would find something that simple, he could hope for something close.

No amount of looking seemed to bring anything into resolution, but at least he’d gotten closer to the object, which was slowly coming into focus. It was definitely a town, with short stone walls topped wood of some kind. He could vaguely see some sort of flag or pennant flying over what he assumed to be the main gate, considering it was attached to the one road he had found.

What looked to be a shallow river went through the town, originating somewhere within said town. He could see it sparkle prettily in the sunlight, as a cool wind blew by. The river branched nearly a dozen times, forming a half-moat, protecting the ‘front’ half of the town before running to the distance.

He approached the gate, hoping the people there wouldn’t kick him out for looking weird. Or worse, a zoo. Or worse yet, try to hurt Creepette. She trusted him, after all.

Looking around cautiously at the stoneworks now in view, Anton looked at the massive archway. Well, not massive. Mostly wide, he realized, as the actual stone of the walls and gate were only about twice as tall as he was now, and the top of the ‘gateway’ was made from wood. Two large, crude wooden doors, like something from an old-west fort, stood open as he walked up.

“Halt and state your business.”

The voice came from his side as he began walking through the gateway, making him jump. He turned to see a pony with a gleaming green coat, shining like a gemstone or a piece of polished green glass, in a suit of metallic armor. The armor appeared to be a simple ‘breastplate’ styled design, with leather ties and metal clasps. The metal appeared to be bronze.

“Oh thank goodness you speak my language. Sorry, this is th-”

“Just state your business, so I can do my job, sir.”

It sound like he was a guy, and also very bored.

“Also, please be sure to keep your... mare... close to you. We don’t want any incidents.”

“Sorry, we’re just looking for a place to stay, is that alright? She won’t cause any damage as long as she’s not scared.”

“I don’t really care, just keep her out of the way. There’s a couple of inns in town. Neither’s particularly expensive. Just make sure that doesn’t get loose.”

The colt gestured at Creepette, who was busy hiding behind Anton and shivering. Anton glared at the guard for a second before continuing on.

“Alright, where are those inns? A place to sleep should be our first priority.”

“Just down the road. And no eating the townsfolk, alright? This may be a boring post, but I don’t want to have to clean up a mess like that.”

“I eat insects and arachnids, not anything much larger than a rabbit at least in the case of mammals. Thanks for the directions.”

“Well, then, I still say don’t eat the townsfolk. I know a few of them are bugs, but they’d better stay off your menu.”

“Fair enough, have a nice day.”

Anton left with Creepette, heading down the road towards the inns. Hopefully they’d be able to find a way to afford at least one night. Everywhere he went, he saw colorful ponies and a few that looked almost like ponies, some of them with clothes and some without.

“At least I fit in. That’s a plus. I wonder what other kinds of people live here anyway...”

Looking around, he noticed that he and Creepette had a fairly large area in which folks had stopped coming closer. Taking a squint at them, he saw that most of the ponies around were earth ponies, some with noticeably brighter coats than the others, and some ponies with visible insectoid features, such as chitin in place of coats, and a couple had features like spiders or scorpions.

Ignoring the odd menagerie of townsfolk, he kept going down the road, in search of an inn. Something he noticed was that he couldn’t read the signs on the corners of the streets. They were obviously in words, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of the triangles, bars, and circles.

“I can read Matoran, Unown, and even Wingdings to a point, and I have no clue what the hell that is. Great.”

He shook his head, looking around for the inn. Thankfully, he found what appeared to be a sign displaying a tankard of foaming beverage with the background of a bed.

“Alright, good enough. Hopefully I can get an English to Whatever dictionary or something.”

Anton trotted towards the hopefully-an-inn, Creepette in tow. He continued to get odd looks, including the odd sidelong glare. Shrugging them off, he stepped up and pushed the door open.

Inside, it was a bit darker, and also warmer. There was a bar in the main area, set up like a restaurant or something, and a set of stairs heading towards the second floor of the building.

He decided to walk up to the front desk-bar-thing to inquire about a price. Hopefully not too expensive.

As he walked onto the dirt floor of the main room, he felt the distinctly uncomfortable sensation of being watched, and realized that every pair of eyes in the room beyond his and Creepette’s were on him.

Stepping nervously up to the bar, he prepared to ask how much a room would cost for the night when the bartender, whom he noticed was a grizzled old earth pony stallion, glaring at him.

“Uh, hello sir, I’d like to know how much a room is, if you have an op-”

“No vacancies for you.”

He spat out the words quickly, cutting Anton off mid-word.

“Um, okay, do you know anywhere I could stay?”

“Stay in the manure bins.”

The gruff, rude comment seemed aimed more over Anton’s shoulder, towards Creepette, who had gotten closer to Anton and was shivering with fright. Every single set of eyes was glaring at her, and Anton wasn’t sure why. But it was not making him feel any better.

“Okay, any particular reason you don’t like me? Or do you just hate Creeper ponies? And I’d-”

“Shut it. If you’re going to be dragging a mare around outside, you should have the common decency keep the damn thing muzzled.”

He gave the bartender an odd look.

“What’s wrong with mares?”

“Everything but their damned cooches. Ought to stay in the bedroom or the laundry room.”

Anton just sighed. Even as a guy, he thought that the equal rights for women movement was a good thing, everyone’s a person after all.

“Whatever, I guess I’ll be going then.”

“Keep that thing out of the way, if you know what’s good for you. Valuable property gets stolen some times.”

Disgusted at the idea of suggesting a living being was ‘property’, Anton left, thinking to himself, ‘the whole town couldn’t be like this, right?’ It was sickening.

He left the inn, now noticing that there weren’t any mares in the crowd, just colts and stallions. Anton hustled to the next building with a sign he could identify as an inn, and got turned away in a similarly rude fashion.

It happened a third time further down the road, and felt honestly disgusted with this seemingly bright and happy town.

The part of town he was in now seemed like it had been built on top of itself, as if one building had been constructed on the previous in order to have more floors, resulting in ‘second story’ rooms sticking out several feet in one direction or another.

He sighed, and continued towards the other side of the town from the main entrance, hoping to find another inn to try, or something. He looked about and saw what looked like a sign for an inn, with a picture of a bed with an ivy leaf on it, inside an alleyway. If he’d stopped to look around two steps further back or further along, he’d had missed it.

Anton and Creepette, the latter practically in constant contact with the former from how nervous she was, went towards it.

This time, as the door was swung open with a gentle creaking, he noticed that there were no patrons this time. Stepping in cautiously, he looked around. The previous innkeeper had tried to take a swipe at him, and all of them had been at least mildly hostile.

“Hallo, folks.”

Anton stifled a squeak and flipped around to see a pony sitting behind the dimly-lit bar. He couldn’t see much of the pony, but the voice was, interestingly, feminine.

“Hello, we’re new in town. Any idea why everyone is a chauvinistic ass?”

“Because this is supposed to be a ‘progressive’ town, where the mares are not in charge as they are elsewhere. Hmph, all it’s led to so far is the males being as bad or worse than the mares ever were. Not by much sometimes, I’ll admit. But often enough, it’s a far worse life.”

The mare sighed, and began wiping down the bar.

“So, seeking a place to stay, are you? I have a few rooms, and no customers, so feel free to take one of the ones down that hall. I’m afraid they aren’t very spacious, but they’re something. Perhaps we could talk when you’ve settled in? Get you at least a little accustomed to what you should do around here, to try fitting in.”

A pair of tentacles or something slithered up in the gloom, one holding a ring with a key on it and the other with some sort of sheet. The rough, dry-looking tentacles withdrew into the floor as he took the items, disappearing with a sound like settling dirt.

“Well, thank you. How much is it for one night? I’m-”

“Your mare bears no bruises or burns. That is enough for now.”

“I’m glad someone believes in equality, rather than one-upmanship.”

The mare simply chuckled, and another tendril popped out of the wall to point at a door, the first on the right down the short hallway. After it had gestured, it retreated back into the wall.

“That’s the room that key is for. If you would like a different one, just ask.”

“Anything with a roof is good enough, ma’am. Thank you.”

Anton nodded to the mare as he headed to the room, to see just what her idea of ‘small’ was.

Author's Note

So.
This is what happens when a 'let's fix the inequality!' movement goes so far as to simply tip the scales int he other direction.

Yeah.

Comments, as always, are welcome.

Ch06 - Roots

Anton and Creepette stepped into the room and looked about. It was, simply put, small. About twelve-by-twelve, it had what was approximately a twin-sized bed, a small wardrobe, and, as if just to fill the room up some more, a small desk. The door had just enough room to open, with a four-by-four section of the floor open and covered by a small rug. The rest of the floor was compact dirt.

“Well, it’s better than no shelter, and it was free. I guess we just take what we can get.”

“Fuud...”

Creepette looked up at him with big, sad eyes, with a faint rumble from her belly. Her ears were flat back and her lower lip trembled. It was like looking at a larger version of a sad CMC member.

“Oh, right... I don’t think digging up the floor for fungus would be ideal... uh... maybe I’ll ask the barkeeper and hope she has something.”

Anton left for a moment to inquire about any spare slime molds that were available. Creepette just sat in the open part of the floor looking sad.

In the main room, Anton went up to the bar, but couldn’t see the owner anywhere.

“Hello?”

“Hello, again.”

The source of the voice made Anton jump, and he spun around to see that the owner was standing behind him, with her hood up still. He could just make out the edges of her gentle smile as she regarded him.

“Was the room satisfactory? I know it isn’t very big, by the standards of many, but it’s the best I have.”

“Oh the room is fine, but I was wondering if you had some sort of food for the mare I was with. She uh, eats fungus.”

The mare nodded once, and spoke again in her quiet, strong voice.

“I know of her kind’s diet. I will see about finding something she can eat. I’ll send it to your room when it’s available.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate all your help, really. I hope that it won’t be too much trouble.”

She chuckled.

“Nonsense. I’m glad I could help. I haven’t left this town since it first sprang up. I’ve seen it descend into the madness it now festers in, and can do nothing about it. And if helping keep a single small spark of kindness from guttering out costs me a little bit of my time, then so be it.”

She sighed wistfully, before shaking her head.

“Really, it’s no trouble at all.”

Anton didn’t really have much to say, but he still had a few questions.

“I’d like to ask you a bit about this town, in the morning of course.”

“Absolutely. A little civilized conversation on a topic other than trying to burn down my home and drive me out would be a great refreshment after the more common speeches the rest of this town delivers to me. I’ll see you in the morning, then?”

Anton gave a small nod

“Yes, I’d like to try and do something. Where I come from, people respect other genders a lot more than here. I’ll ask why this place is like this tomorrow.”

She nodded, and Anton then headed back to the room, and told Creepette that she’d get some food, but stopped when he saw she was already happily slurping up a bowl of what looked like a thick soup.

‘Well, she works fast, or she has help... that tentacle thing maybe? I’ll worry about that later, I’m going to enjoy this bed.’

Climbing into the bed, he groaned at the mild soreness of his muscles and the comfort of the bed. It wasn’t much more comfortable than the ground, but it was warmer. After he finished settling down for a moment, Creepette finished her meal and clambered up onto the bed with him, snuggling down on top of him. She was warm, fuzzy, and very much a cuddle-bug.

‘Nothing wrong with that at all.’

Wrapping his ‘arms’ around her, he felt himself drifting off to sleep, the last thought occupying his mind being, ‘Her breath smells like new england clam chowder now...’

Anton woke up with a bad case of morning mouth. Thinking back, he hadn’t eaten in a day or so, but he still wasn’t hungry yet. It was also, nominally, morning.

Creepette had, sometime in the night, rolled off of him and was laying, belly-up, on the bed next to him, her breathing steady and regular. It was a bit like looking at a cat or dog laying on its back, with her legs partly up in the air and tail swishing side-to-side every few moments.

After taking a few minutes to wake up fully, Anton realized the light he was seeing wasn’t sunlight coming in through a window, but rather a patch of some kind of greenish material, threaded through with brownish veins. The patch was growing in the ceiling, and provided a nice, low level of light that coincided nicely with his preferences this soon after waking up.

‘Wonder what that’s made of, I’ll ask about it after I’ve gotten a few answers about this messed up world.’

Rolling carefully off the bed, so as not to disturb Creepette’s slumber, Anton landed on the rug, taking a moment to stretch like a cat and pop his spine and neck in many places. Stretch done with, Anton padded out to the main room once more. For the second time, the barkeep was not visible behind the bar as he came out, and he had to wonder where she was and how she got around so silently.

“Hey, uh, are you awake?”

He tried asking quietly just in case she wasn’t, he didn’t want to wake her up so rudely after she’d been so helpful.

“Indeed, I am awake. How did you sleep, last night?”

Again, the voice from behind trick was impressive, because he’d been sure there was nobody behind him, just a blank wall. Sure enough, turning around showed her standing behind him, barely lit by the glow the green light sources that illuminated the room just enough to be comfortable. He’d decided at some point to see if they gave off heat or something, as he had no idea how anything could glow like that. Other than glowsticks, of course. Complex chemical reaction, then?

“I slept well, much better than I did on the ground the last few days. So anyway, who decided that gender should be so heavily discriminated against in the first place?”

“Ah, to the questions already. I suppose the answer to your question is ‘nature’. My name is Asphodel, by the way.”

“Right, uh, my name’s Anton. Didn’t mean to be rude, I was... tired last night.”

He rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. Asphodel just shook her head.

“It’s alright. I understand that you were tired. Anyways, did you have any further questions? And would you like some breakfast?”

“Yes, some food would be nice. And I do have further questions after we’ve eaten and Creepette has woken up.”

“Alright, I’ll bring the food to your room, then. It should be ready shortly.”

“Thank you. I just find it hard to believe that a kind, helpful, accepting person is the minority. How does a society like that function?”

He decided to go back to his room and get an answer later. He needed something to get rid of the taste in his mouth.

Turning away, he started to his room, pausing for a moment to ask how she got around so quietly, only to see that she’d already left, no trace at all that she had been there.

Shrugging, he just shook his head and went to the room, figuring he could just ask her later.

He got back to the room to see Creepette still asleep, her belly up and her legs tucked in. It was, quite frankly, adorable. He had to wonder how she could be so serene, and calm so much of the time, then switch suddenly to being terrified. It mystified him to an extent, and he thought about it as he settled onto the bed himself, in order to be next to her.

‘Oh well, she’s safe now, that’s what really matters.’

He briefly wondered if he should rub her tummy, but there was a 50/50 chance she wouldn’t like it.

‘Screw it, she’s adorable, and fuzzy.’

Reaching out with both paws he began rubbing her belly, making her kick feebly and wake up giggling. The positive reaction resulted in her grappling his limbs, but he was alright with that, as he didn’t mind being pulled halfway over her for a hug. She snuggled him close to her, rubbing her cheek against the top of his head as she pressed his face to her chest. She was certainly a lot less bony than before, and her warmth made him sigh and relax into her grip.

‘So soup is good enough, saves me the trouble of having to find nasty slime. Maybe things are starting to look up. Aside from the weird misogynist town. I hope I can fix that. I’ll worry about it later.’

Snuggling close to her for a while longer, he heard her murmur ‘Uhn-gee’ happily into his ear. It wasn’t the worst nickname he could have, that was for sure. He was a bit startled when he heard Asphodel’s behind him, at the entrance to the room.

“Hello, Anton. Your food is ready.”

“Fuud!”

Anton was almost flipped over by Creepette’s sudden movement, and he landed on the floor, facing towards the two of them. The bowl had been set on the desk, with a small tray that had a dish on it settled next to it.

Asphodel was sitting in the dirt in front of the open door, hood up but smiling softly.

“It seems your compatriot likes my cooking.”

“Yes, it seems she does. You must be good.”

She shrugged and a faint blush worked to her face.

“I suppose. It’s just some soup made from the fish that live in the river and some cream. Along with some mushrooms and spices, it makes a tasty stew. Anyways, I made you some eggs and a fillet of the river fish. I know that your kind eat mostly red meat, but I hope the fish will be satisfactory.”

“I used to really like fish a lot, not sure if I do now... I’ll uh, explain later if you want.”

“It is alright. Please, help yourself. I have already eaten.”

“Alright.”

He took a bite of the fish, and hoped he still could eat seafood, it was one of his favorite kinds of food.

The fish was a bit flaky, very warm, and tasted faintly of butter. Other than that, he couldn’t taste it very much, and the texture didn’t seem to be as good as he remembered. He could eat it, but it wasn’t the wonderful experience he remembered from being human. Looking next to the fish was what appeared to be a cheese omelet.

‘Oh well, at least I can eat fish still. Please may whatever Gods there are let me enjoy eggs.’

Taking a sniff, he could attest that at least they still smelled incredible, and he took a cautious bite.

He was not prepared.

He couldn’t have prepared.

He was nearly knocked to his feet by the sheer amount of delicious flavor, the smooth texture of the cheese, the rich taste of the eggs, the wonderful way it nearly overrode his every sense just to focus on how awesome these eggs were.

He blinked a few times, and realized that he’d eaten the entire thing, and couldn’t remember doing so.

Slowly convincing the probably stupid expression to leave his face peacefully, he realized that both of the mares in the room were staring at him.

Flecks of fish-meat decorated much of the room, along with bits of egg. Apparently, he’d lost all his table manners while devouring the delicious eggs.

He burped once, eliciting a giggle from Creepette, who apparently found the entire situation entertaining.

“So... was it any good, Anton?”

How Asphodel managed not to even laugh a little bit as she held that same calm smile while she asked the question, Anton would never know. But he could tell it was a struggle for her, judging by the twitch the edges of her lips had spontaneously acquired.

“Best. Omelet. Ever.”

The smile dawned on Asphodel’s face at last and she laughed. Anton found himself joining in, and Creepette did, too. Once the three of them finished their laughter, Creepette nuzzled up to him, and he felt her start gnawing and nibbling at his mane and coat.

“I am glad you enjoyed it. Now, I believe you had questions still? You may ask them, if you wish, while you are groomed.”

“Uh, sure. So, what is the purpose for all the prejudice? There has to be a reason, right?”

“As I stated before, nature is largely to blame.”

“Well, I understand that not everyone has to get along, that’s normal, but why the utter hate? I mean, from what you’ve said, extreme physical torture is... not uncommon.”

“Not... not torture, per se, but certainly abuse. In this town, many of the common perceptions have been... ‘reversed’, if you will, and then amplified. Judging by your apparent point of view, I would assume you are not native to these lands, then?”

“Yeah, I’m from pretty far away, that’s... accurate. But is there any reason for being so violent? Getting even and being worse doesn't fix the problem, it makes it worse. I understand being mistreated, but the point should be to resolve the mistreatment, not reciprocate it. Right? So why do the stallions want to make things more difficult for everyone, rather than easier for themselves?”

“Because, for many, it started exactly as you describe; several families came here, near the edge of the Living Woods, to have an equal life between them. But sometimes, the abused become the abusive, and a great number of the stallions who had come from herds that had not treated them even as sentient beings came into power.

And that is when things changed. It is easy to convince yourself that if you do not see it or hear it, it does not happen. Perhaps the inequine races do not find that to be so, but most of the myriad races of ponykind fear the outsider and refuse to interact beyond their own communities, their own families.

I- I’m not sure where or when the change happened, exactly, but it was quickly made that mares were brought to the point many stallions suffer elsewhere, or worse. From there, things have only gotten worse in the last century of their reign. And on top of that, simple miseducation has made it harder to find level minds in this town any more.”

As Asphodel finished her speech, Creepette looked up from where she’d been nibbling at the back of Anton’s neck.

“Town?”

Anton winced, and he tried explaining as Creepette looked back and forth between him and Asphodel.

“Uh, let me explain. Creepette isn’t very... cultured. In fact, I met her in the wild. I tried to explain what things meant, but words got misunderstood... I was hoping for a place I could take her to help this issue. Unfortunately, given your descriptions, that won’t happen here.”

“Indeed? Does the word she spoke tell of danger, then?”

“She thinks it means ‘hug’, it’s not... bad, just uh, very, very misinterpreted,”

Asphodel nodded, and gestured to Anton to continue his questions.

“Alright, so I know I’m just one person, but I’d like to make a point to these people. That not all stallions are stupid or useless, and mares aren't evil. That nobody deserves this treatment. Who would I talk to to get my point across?”

“I cannot think of anyone in this town with both the power and the sympathetic point of view you would need for that. But I can point you towards a baker’s shop, whose owner is kind to his herd and shares your views of equality. He might at least be able to send you on your way, when you are ready to leave.”

“So, if there’s so few ponies who care about equal rights, why do you live here? Is there nowhere better?”

“Many places would be better, but to tear up my home and leave would be... impossible at my age. My roots run too deeply into this town for me to simply go.”

“Roots? So how long has your family lived here?”

“Oh, my family does not live here. My mother lives many months travel to the north-west, across the mountains, and the two sisters I know of have settled into the forests in the earth-mistress’ realm. I meant ‘roots’ literally. I am a maredragora, or a plant-mare as some would call me. Or ‘firewood’, as some of the strikingly less sensitive and more imaginative townsfolk would call me.”

“Th- That’s sick! Why would they do something like that?”

She snorted derisively, obviously not thinking much of the threats.

“It is not that they have tried anything since the early days. It has been nearly seventy years since they last tried to remove me, and I tore down half the town in response. Admittedly, I still have not fully recovered from my retaliation on them, but it has made them wary of trying to remove me.”

“That doesn’t make it right, who is so twisted to consider a living being a resource!?”

“It is an old insult, similar to calling one of the elven kind a ‘stilty’ because of their legs. I have weathered worse storms than the winds that even those blowhards can produce with words alone.”

“Yes, I know racially insulting slang, but that doesn't make it any better. I wish you could come with me, I just... want to make things clearer, don’t they realize that abuse won’t make you better than anyone else, it just turns you into a bully?”

“I doubt it. Very few of the ponies away from the capitals and the major cities receive more than a cursory education.”

“Damn, I leave a really messed up place, and end up in a place almost completely worse. Can you tell me anything good about this world?”

“There is much good in the world, but most of it is far from here. But acts of kindness still abound in this place. They are simply less... overt. Such as the postmaster’s daughter, who has learned to paint false bruises on herself so her father doesn’t have to beat her just to retain his position. Or the Baker of which I told you previously, who still provides food to those who would otherwise not be able to afford it. Just because the good is not immediately visible, does not mean it isn’t there.”

Asphodel sighed and looked around for a moment.

“But we are all trapped here by circumstance. For many, they have nowhere else to go, and taking their family and their possessions would be impossible. And in this world, no money will often mean no supplies, and no chances in the wilds between cities.”

“I know what you mean. Creepette and I had a rather... interesting experience in the forest. Not too easy for anyone anywhere, I take it?”

“I assume you speak of the reasons why the forest is known as the Living Woods, then?”

“Yeah, real nasty. If it weren't for Creepette, we’d be dead. And due to previous struggles, I’ve helped her out, so I see us as equal. I just wish people would stop judging others before seeing what they are actually like.”

Asphodel nodded, and Creepette gave Anton a hug. He looked down at himself and saw that all the bits of egg and fish had been worked out of his coat, and his fur looked almost glossy, his scales clean. Apparently, they didn’t shine even when clean, but that was alright.

“I take it you have control of what goes on in this place, which is, if I’m not mistaken, part of you?”

“If you refer to the building, then yes, it is a part of me. Or, rather, I am a part of it.”

Asphodel pulled her hood back, revealing a largely pony-like shape to her head and face, but the entire thing was nothing but vines, leaves, and bark-covered wood. Her mane looked like it was a fall of green leaves, and her eyes were nothing but a pair of flowers, each of them with pale cream petals of the asphodel plant, fittingly.

In all, she looked kinda like a timberwolf, but pony-shaped, and without the glowing bits.

“My... original form was a bit more cohesive, but in the end it was sacrificed for continued growth when I first put down roots here nearly three centuries ago with my lover at the time.”

She sighed and looked into the distance nostalgically, obviously reminiscing about times gone by.

“I just wish he’d been able to pollinate me fully, I would’ve liked to have daughters while he still lived. Oh well, even earth ponies don’t live long enough.”

“I wouldn’t say they don’t live long enough, I’d say that you just live much longer. It’s still sad though, I bet your daughters would be cute. But raising them in a town like this...”

“Oh, they would’ve scattered to the winds long before this happened. Gone to find their own hills or brooks to live by, perhaps finding love or perhaps simply bringing about another generation in solitude.”

“Yeah, I just don’t understand why ponies think being abusive in response will make things better. I definitely understand self-gratification and getting even, but that doesn’t make it right. I just hope I meet others who would like to see change, and maybe we can do something about it. Wishful thinking it seems, though.”

“Hmm... perhaps not. But it will take a few generations of the shorter-lived kine to turn this slow vessel about.”

“Town, Uhn-gee?”

Anton gave in and gave the green mare a hug, thinking idly to himself ‘And a way to help you with your word issues.’ as Asphodel laughed.

“If you wish to leave this town peacefully, you may stay here a night, and go to the Baker in the morning. His name is Fresh Loaf, and he will be able to get you out of the town with some basic supplies; a simple club and some loaves of travel bread, most likely.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to be very good with a club, and why would a baker have a wooden club?”

“In this town, why not?”

“Tact-lee!”

Anton looked at her with surprise. He’d only used the word once, and she got it in the right context. Maybe it won’t be as hard to-

“Tact-lee! Tact-lee!”

Fuck. What does she think this means? Anton readied for another faceclaw. The mare simply said the word, repeating it happily. It amused Asphodel quite a bit.

“I am not sure what she means, but it seems she is quite entertained by the word.”

“Tact-lee!”

Anton sighed and just placed his paw across his muzzle.

“Yes, yes she does.”

“I am sorry you will not be able to leave this day. Also, I must ask you a question.”

The mare summoned forth what appeared to be a large plant bulb from the ground, on an incredibly thick stem, almost twice as big around as his new wrists. The flower on top looked like an asphodel flower.

“Uh... sure; but, what’s this for exactly?”

The flower opened, revealing a blue-and-orange checkerboard painted onto the wooden base. Sixteen carved, wooden pieces were arranged on the board.

“Do you know how to play chess?”

The mare had an excellent endgame. It also helped that she generated the pieces for her own side, always playing white every game. Still, he’d beaten her once, with a barely remembered gambit.

Later, they’d had some fresh fruits and vegetables, along with a really tasty, meaty soup of some kind; she called it ‘Steakroot Stew’. Apparently, there wasn’t any actual meat in it.

“It’s been so long since I played chess with anyone, thank you for the game. I don’t even mind that I lost almost every time.”

“It is no trouble. I get lonely, and not many would deign to play such an intellectual game with me.”

“It only proves that books are judged by their cover much too often.”

The mare smiled thinly and nodded. Anton took a moment before remembering the key portion of most books. Paper.

“Oh... uh, did I just make a mistake? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult.”

“It is no problem. I understand your needs for material resources, and it is exceedingly rare for any sentient race to be used in such materials. But all things alive deserve the respect they have earned for their places in the cycle of life. As such, politicians live somewhere below redundant species.”

Anton merely chuckled, cracking a grin once more.

“Isn’t that the truth.”

The mare agreed, as Creepette yawned hugely, revealing dainty little black teeth. The young mare ‘murr’ed and crawled from Anton’s side to the bed, flopping down onto the comfortable mattress. Anton found himself yawning similarly moments after.

“Ah, I see you have tired. I will wake you in the morning, if you do not on your own. I will also provide another breakfast. Sleep well, friend.”

Anton merely gave her a tired smile as he got into bed by Creepette’s side. The green, mat-furred pony snuggled in close to his side, pressing her muzzle gently to his neck, sending a thrill down his spine.

She felt so warm, and so... his...

Author's Note

So, what do you think of things?
Tell me, so that I may tell you things right back.

Constructive criticism is always helpful. Meaningful comments are always helpful.
Money is always helpful, no matter who you are.

So, yeah, donate your words please.

Ch07 - Half Bakery

Author's Note

Sex at the start of the chapter; sorry if that bothers you. Ctrl+F to search for [Sex if Over] to jump past it if you need to.

Anyways, comment on whatever int eh chapter catches your attention.

Ch07 - Half Bakery

Anton yawned hugely, waking to the sensation of Creepette nibbling his ears. It didn’t help that he, apparently, had a minor... ‘stiffness’ issue to work out. Preferably alone.

Crap...

He needed to do something, but his mind was more occupied with what could go wrong. One of the more outlandish possibilities involving something exploding somehow.

Okay, what can I do... bad choice of words, there. Damnit.

His bleary gaze swept across the small room, peering at each of the possibilities. They were, as he saw things, his hooves; his own mouth if he could flex that far; and Creepette. And she was still nibbling his ears, which continued to make the... ‘issue’ ever more noticeable.

Nervously, Anton reached under the covers to take the issue into his own paws... quite literally. He was doing his best to be discreet, but he had no idea if his efforts were enough.

“Uhn-gee?”

Creepette’s worried-sounding voice piped up from next to his ear, prompting him to startle. His paws, rough and unsteady,hadn’t been doing much for him anyways, and the startling only made it worse; half mast was still enough to be embarrassing, but not enough to be easily hidden or discreet.

He could easily feel the shift in her movements as she curiously peered over his shoulder towards the part of the sheets where he was presently trying to hold the doubled lengths of his stallionhood at bay, or at least holding them away from tent-pole position.

“Uh...”

He was having a hard time coming up with what to say, especially since she probably didn’t fully understand what he was doing. He’d have to think fast, but that was difficult with his mind focused on two things: getting ‘finished’ and what to do. His half-focused brain didn’t help at all, leaving him with one option. Babble like a ninny.

“Uh...”

The green mare nosed at the sheets, then gripped them in her teeth. With that accomplished, she began tugging the bedding towards herself, turning in a circle atop the bed and dragging the whole length incidentally across his dual shafts, the sensation a cross between an electric shock and a dull burn. After several seconds, she stopped turning, leaving him still largely covered, and her inside of a large cocoon of quilts around her as she peeped out. She’d left a small hole through which to look out from, her huge, dark eyes glinting brightly in the half-light of the room.

The only thing he could think of aside from his current predicament was, Oh good Goddess that’s fucking adorable! The last thing on his mind however, was what would happen next, he couldn’t possibly fix the problem by himself at this point, and it was beginning to get slightly painful from being up so long. That twinge of pain made him realize how long he’d been awake, at least.

He remembered what had happened earlier in the magma tunnel, but she couldn’t possibly be willing to do that again. Also, even if she was, how would he ask her to? She didn’t have a word for ‘sex’ in her mental library.

The mare continued to stare at him, her muzzle slowly poking further and further from the blanket bundle. After getting her own ears out, she reached, in slow-motion, for his ear once more. Instead of nibbling again, though, she seemed to be drawing him towards the cocoon.

Ooookay, what’s she doing now?

As his forelimbs wrapped around her, she returned the gesture, topping it off with a deep whiff of his neck, sniffling dramatically into the base of his mane. Like a moray eel snatching prey, she yanked him into the cocoon, licking his nose before squirming up beneath him.

Oh... well she may not have a word per se, but... is that really what she thinks it means? Maybe. At this point, he gave up being embarrassed, if she was going to fix his problem, damnit, let her!

He felt her settle in against his body, back pressed in tight against his chest, her mane in his face. The stuffy confines of the bundle made it hard to see, but he could sometimes see the visible red coals of her eyes providing faint light in the dark. He could also smell something else, but it didn’t feel important.

What did seem important was the she had positioned herself, but he couldn’t decide why. He could feel her tail wrapped around his own, a surprisingly strong grasp from it holding him tightly near her.

Had he been in his right mind, he might have pondered how strong her tail was compared to her upper-body strength, but his mind was too clouded with arousal to care about details. He needed his problem fixed. And soon.

His mind clouded further when he realized that she was, ever so slightly, pressing against his groin with the underside of her own tail, her forelegs holding close to the ground. The notion sent a jolt up his spine, once more feeling himself grow harder than ever before, and he pressed back eagerly.

He briefly wondered how to get her to understand the phrase ‘hurry up already’ before remembering he was trying to be different than most of the current town’s population. But she was making it difficult with all her teasing.

As his muzzle pressed to the back of her neck, he felt himself twitch, and could feel one of his tips, he wasn’t sure which, press against something tight. The touch made her shiver as well as him, and he could feel her press back against him slightly.

He tried thinking of a way to calm her down, convey that it was alright, so he tried what she’d done for a while now, and started nibbling a bit on her ears, hoping it would get a positive response.

The faint ‘yipe!’ and subsequent ‘hisss...’ seemed a mixed-bag response, added to her physical response of relaxing against him, her matted fur brushing coarsely against his own coat and scales. Her head tilted back, her spine arching as she seemed to try pressing her head into his face, hissing softly as she did.

Realising that this hiss didn’t signal death or explosive teleportation, which confused all his gaming sensibilities, he managed to relax. Positive that his heart had resumed beating, he continued, trying to figure out what to do in the meantime, which was hard.

As if to answer his unasked question, he felt her hips move back slightly, pushing his questing tip against the tight entrance he’d found, gathering yet another short hiss in the process.

Getting rather impatient, he tried pushing forward slightly with his own hips, hoping that she wouldn’t get offended. The slight quiver of her muscles as she felt him enter her, just ever so barely, made him prepare to GTFO if she hissed louder, until she pressed back with equal fervor, and he felt himself slide into the tight, slick passage he’d discovered. He gasped, accidentally biting harder on the captive ear, drawing blood from the half-dozen pinpricks.

His immediate response was to move his head back, though the movement was rather restricted by the confining covers, and tried to give his best ‘I didn’t mean to, honest!’ face. The last thing he wanted was for her to be mad at him, because that would end badly. Plus he wouldn’t have a traveling companion to keep him warm at night. He then cursed himself for his mental selfishness, despite it being right, he’d probably have frozen to death without her.

Instead, she just mewled, slamming herself down his shaft and completely knocking his mental abilities out the metaphorical window. Almost on instinct, he licked at the tiny wounds he’d caused, as a silent ‘I’m sorry’ as his body began to fall into a more natural rhythm, and he heard a slight ‘slap-slap-slap’ accompany her gyrations. A moment later, she stopped, pausing and leaving him gasping, before reaching back a little ways. He felt something, but he wasn’t entirely sure what in his fugue state, until he felt the tip of his second shaft press delicately against her entrance.

The only thing his muddled head could form into words was This is gonna be awesome!

As the sensation of his mare beginning to rut him filtered out all his coherent thoughts, he found himself only responding, his teeth caught in her coarse mane. Their sweat mingled, and his consciousness faded to the sound of bodies meeting...

------------------------[Sex is Over]------------------------

Anton felt sore. He was also pretty sure he had already woken up, but he was waking up again. And he was sore. Thankfully, it was a pleasant soreness, but soreness all the same. And was it mentioned he was sore?

With a heavy groan, he tried to get out of bed, operative word being ‘try’ as his hooves were weighed down by Creepette’s gently breathing weight. A strong smell filled his nose, but he wasn’t sure of the source, and his eyes snapped open only to find darkness and a thin shaft of light. The light slid across Creepette’s form, her layered, matted coat warm as it pressed against his chest. As he finished waking up, an odd sensation and a wet ‘slorp’ as he felt himself exit the mare in his arms.

It was a strangely satisfying sensation, until he realized he couldn’t remember anything after she had stopped and started again.

Doing his best to remember events that had happened after he blacked out, he figured that he had fallen asleep and she kept going. That was a better result than what usually happens when a guy falls asleep on a girl.

And yet, he could smell the sex, an almost spicy after-effect in the scent. He’d actually never experienced it before, but he rather liked it, as long as it didn’t get any stronger. He wasn’t the biggest fan of ‘spicy’... and now he was hungry.

Shifting a bit to try moving towards the pale green light, he found himself actually crawling over Creepette, one urge taking precedence over hunger, tiredness, soreness, and even the urge to snuggle: the urge... to urinate. He hadn’t gone since he had gotten to this strange new place.

Scrambling out of the quilted cocoon, he poked his head into the chilly air of the room, feeling the temperature difference with a severe level of distaste. Peering around the room, he only saw the small desk, the bed, Asphodel, the door, the wardrobe, the... wait, Asphodel!

She’d know where the restroom is!

“Uh, hey there, so uh, do you have anywhere I could pee, do you?”

“Anywhere you wish. But you will need to bathe before you go, you have a very... strong odor.”

A muffled call of ‘Uhn-gee?’ was heard from the bundle.

“Heh, yeah... okay. You don’t mind that we, uh, y’know...” Anton trailed off, blushing hard and rubbing the back of his neck with a paw. The maredragora simply smiled, and shook her head.

“It is an entirely natural thing, so do not be ashamed. But it is still impolite to wander places smelling like you just did. I have already drawn separate baths for you and her.”

“Of course, thank you Asphodel, you’ve been a great help.”

Another muffled ‘Uhn-gee!’ sounded from the bundle, its shape changing as it toppled slowly off the bed. A squeak accompanied the movement, along with Creepette looking utterly bewildered, as if gravity itself had betrayed her.

Anton merely chuckled, looking at the adorable display, remembering the times he had tried getting out of bed and ending up meeting the floor rather quickly.

“Heheh, c’mon Creepette, let’s get a bath, okay?”

“Bath?”

As if to clarify, Asphodel gently grabbed both of the ponies by their ankles and lifted them straight towards the ceiling, rapidly closing with the solid wood of the roof...

Which parted like a veil right before they reached it, flying up and dropping in a short arc directly into a pair of tubs, Asphodel already waiting for them.

“Okay, that was weird, but totally awesome.”

Asphodel chuckled and smiled with him. As she reached out with a veritable forest of tendrils, she added her own response.

“I thank you, but it wasn’t all that special.”

Turning to Creepette, she focused much of her attention on the young mare, while tendrils bearing large white bricks came for Anton.

“Now dear, this is a bath. It’ll get you all clean...”

And the maredragora did just that, scrubbing and stroking and wiping away the combination of sweat, trail grime, volcanic dust, and sexual juices, Anton finding himself suspended often and without warning in the relatively freezing air that wasn’t the warm water of the bath.

However, he had to admit, the cleaning was very thorough, and included having his mane brushed by a creaking wooden comb.

Meanwhile, Creepette was giggling, shrieking happily, and playing in the water. By the time Anton was settled down for the soak before the final rinse, she had acquired a magnificent bubble-beard. And finally, a wooden bucket of water was upended onto the two of them, rinsing them off.

“Alright, now step out of the tubs.”

“Got any giant leaves for towels?” Anton chuckled, then stopped. “That... wasn’t in bad taste, was it?”

“No, I use woolen towels, like everyone else. Now hold still.”

And with that, she proceeded to vigorously rub them both down, the soft, wooly towels fluffing their coats and buffing his scales. At the end of it, he had the barest beginnings of a sheen on his scales, and fluffy hair, while Creepette’s ‘pixelated’ mats of fur looked more crisp, the hairs less disorganized. Her brightly colored mane was a brilliant shock of red, the bottom faded to a slightly lighter shade.

And her face practically shone. Her normally terrified expression was replaced with a gentle smile and half-closed eyes, giving her the impression she was trying for angelic. It wasn’t quite spot-on, but it was close enough for him.

“I took the time to gather a saddlebag. To prevent yourselves from arousing suspicion, I would suggest that she wears it at least until you have left the town. After that, you could switch off, or she could keep it if she wanted. In the meantime, let us get you moving in the right direction. This way, please.”

The mare’s form melted into the wall, as a staircase going down formed into the same wall, the wood pulling apart like a curtain to reveal the passage. It led to an underground tunnel. The way was lit with the same bioluminescent structures, the corridor bathed in pale green light.

“Just follow the lights. You will come to a cellar. Just knock twice in any pattern, then knock three times quickly to announce yourselves. Be safe, you two, and may your lives be happy.”

The planty pony waved goodbye to the duo, and they walked down the hall, Creepette staying close to Anton’s side. His nose twitched when he realized that she smelled like strawberries.

Behind them, where they couldn’t see, the opening closed shut, not a single seam to announce the passageways presence.

Definitely a bakery.

Anton walked up to the door and rapped on it with his front paw, two times, then three more in quick succession as per Asphodel’s instructions, wondering what the sequence meant.

A few moments of waiting after, Anton heard the latch of the door turn, and then the door opened on a sight he almost couldn’t believe.

It was a pony, that appeared to be made of layered cake or donut, with a faint orange coloration to her translucent mane and tail, with a similarly-colored glaze along her back.

Anton had to quash the sudden and damned-near overpowering urge to lick the pony’s nose, which also appeared to have the shiny material on it.

"Holy crap, you look delicious!"

Anton paused, eyes wide. The mare in front of him quirked a frosted eyebrow.

“I did not mean to say that, I’m not a mindless idiot I swear. Can I try that first impression again, please?”

“Uhm, why don’t you just come inside... My dad’s waiting for you.”

The mare motioned towards the bakery proper, and Anton got a good whiff of the main part of the place, filled with the scent of caramelizing sugar, baking batter, simmering soup, fresh loaves of untold dozens of types of bread, and the mouth-watering smell of icing flooded his senses, and he found himself drooling.

And that’s when he realized he hadn’t moved his gaze from the food pony, who was now looking more than a little scared of him.

“Damnit, I can’t win today, can I?” He asked rhetorically as he faceclawed once again, sure it wouldn’t be his last.

“Uhm, yes? Ah, my dad’s on the right, past the ovens. Try not to hurt yourself.”

The mare pointed, then began to back quietly to the other ovens, turning to do... something, Anton wasn’t sure what.

“Thanks miss... sorry for bothering you.”

Anton headed to the right, hoping he still had a chance to not seem like an idiot. Well, a complete idiot at least.

Shaking his head and sighing, Anton followed the instructions, the bakery well-lit from numerous glowingly hot ovens, the temperature rising.

“Uhn-gee...”

Creepette moaned softly, and Anton saw that she was already sweating profusely. It was a little confusing, because he didn’t feel it much at all, but maybe it was like back in the desert-ish area.

“Maybe we can ask for some water to help cool you down, I hope. Plus we shouldn’t be too close to these ovens too long.”

He decided that until they found the baker, he’d stand between Creepette and the wall of ovens, hopefully able to block some of the heat. Creepette still looked miserable, but perhaps a bit less so.

Finally, the two exited the main kitchen, and entered into what was likely a prep room. After the heat of the ovens, the fairly normal air seemed almost freezing to Anton, though Creepette seemed to come alive.

A stallion and two mares were at work in the kitchen, the three of them earth ponies. As Anton stepped in, the male turned to look at him. Talking a bit loudly to be heard over the bustling mares cutting, dicing, and mashing ingredients before mixing them or dusting them onto the tops of some of the loaves, the stallion told the two to move to one side so they could talk.

Anton obliged, wondering what he should ask first if the baker, he presumed to be Fresh Loaf, didn’t speak before he did.

“You’re the two Asphodel talked about, aye? I’ll be the one ta get you some food, and you’ll be movin’ near the evening. My wives will keep working while I get you ready, but I gotta come back soonish, alright? You’ll be kinda stuck fer the time being, but I think you’ll be fine, alright?”

“Uh, sure. Asphodel said you’d have a club or something? Also, my friend here is rather sensitive to heat, do you have a place for us away from an oven?”

“Aye, that can be arranged. As fer the club, that’s an old joke between us, I think you’ll be fine, as is. This should be routine enough. You wouldn’t believe how many I’ve had to sneak out of this city. This place, it’s like a poison fer the soul... Bah, I’m just ramblin’, sorry. Anyways, just follow me, you’ll be in the serving area. Just hang tight, and we’ll send you on your way come sundown.”

“Thank you, sir. Frankly, the way this whole society is set up is... unnerving. I’m used to, er, mares and stallions being equal. Eh, everywhere’s got their own customs I guess.”

The stallion shrugged, and led them onwards. The two of them were sat at a nice booth, Creepette squished against a wall to hide what gender she was. The two were brought sugar-coated pastries of some kind, each in the shape of a leaf. Half an hour or so of waiting later, Anton noted he could hear a faint thumping noise. It was rhythmic, four beats, two almost matching. He didn’t recognize it, but it seemed to be growing louder. It was almost like marching, but with too many footsteps, like each person had twice... the...

Peering out of one of the glassless windows, Anton saw something that scared him. A mob of ponies was marching toward the bakery, and several had torches.

“Uh oh.”

Anton muttered the phrase as no other option came to mind other than trying to look inconspicuous.

Fresh Loaf, followed by the younger mare from before, stepped out from the back of the bakery, and the two looked at the oncoming mob.

“Oh, what’re they doing? This is bad. This is really bad. You two, change of plans, you’re taking m’daughter with you, and you’re going to be getting out, now. The back of the bakery sits against the town’s wall, we’ve made a tunnel leading out. Get through there, Orange Glaze can show you. Glaze, honey, you’re going to have ta trust ‘em. Grab your emergency bag, and go.”

“B-but, dad, what ab-”

“No buts. You two. If my daughter is hurt because you did something or failed to do something, I’ll hunt you down, alive or no.”

“Y-yes sir!”

Anton was trying not to be intimidated, but failing, hence the waver in his voice. He was fairly sure two of his legs were quivering.

“Don’t call me sir, I’m no knight.”

“Uh, okay. Thanks for helping us, I won’t disappoint you. I hope.”

The last was merely a thought, and yet Anton was still nervous, hoping that the stallion couldn’t hear it.

“Good, now go, you three. Me and my wives’re going ta end this problem. One way, or another.”

Anton only saw the baker’s face in profile at that moment, but it was a face of cold resolve. Anton could tell that the stallion didn’t expect to come out of this alive.

“Good luck.”

Anton figured he’d at least offer something before heading to the tunnel and essentially deserting him.

By the time he’d turned around, he saw that the baker’s daughter, apparently named Orange Glaze, was already all ready, a canvas saddlebag on her back. It appeared to have something rolled up and strapped to the top, and she was motioning to Anton for him to follow. Creepette was starting to look nervous.

Anton merely grabbed Creepette’s front hoof and ran to Orange, hoping she’d have an idea of what to do once they got outside. The two quickly reached Orange, and the trio ran. They went into the kitchens, and Orange hauled what appeared to be a large, unused furnace out of the way, revealing it to be hollow.

The three of them went in, the sound of thudding coming from the front door.

Muffled, some words filtered back to them.

“Hey bring us the outsiders!” “We know you have them!” “We may not be able to burn down the kindling, but we can burn you down.”

“So nice to see you, mayor.” “Loaf. I do hope you’ll be cooperative. But if not, my dungeons are rather empty right now...”

Then, the furnace was slid back into place, and a latch sealed from their side. Orange pulled the other two resolutely onwards, stopping only to grab a taper candle to light their way, and snuffing it once they’d reached the exit.

During the quarter-minute trip, she said nothing, though that could be attributed to the candle in her mouth. After she had slipped the cooled wax rod into her saddlebag, though, she just opened the exit door, and stepped out, leading the three of them away from the city.

Seeing nothing else to say, and the previous silence getting to him, Anton spoke up.

“So uh, where to now? I personally have no idea where I am at all. Like I said, I come from... somewhere else.”

The mare failed to respond, continuing to trudge on. Twenty minutes passed without a response, Anton giving up eventually. He was rather unprepared when she stumbled, then fell to her knees, sobbing.

“Uh, Orange? Are you... well, no, you probably aren’t okay... Is there anything I can do?”

The mare continued to sob, curled up slightly on the ground, dust catching in her sugar-based mane and tail. As she cried, Creepette trotted calmly over, and embraced the other mare, who clung tightly to the greenish pony’s form.

Seeing not much else was available for actions, Anton decided to do the same, and hopefully calm the mare down.

The mare leaned against him, and he and Creepette continued to console her as she let it all out.