Slipstream

“Jewel?”

“Shut up.”

“Seriously, though. Jewel?”

“Ugh. It’s my stage name—okay?”

“Sounds more like a stripper name.”

Felix frowned. “A stripper? …the hay is that?”

“He’s being an ass. A stripper is a person, or pony, I guess, who takes their clothes off and dances. Usually for drunk Asian business men,” Jessica added, shooting me a scathing look from across the booth. “Our nudity taboo kind of makes it a big deal.”

Jessica’s explanation earned me a swift tail swat to the arm, though the admonishment was lessened somewhat when Felix flashed me a small smile that my human companions didn’t quite catch.

We were currently sitting in a corner booth of the nightclub, so as to not draw too much attention. Warmfront had went to get drinks from the bar that ran across the opposite wall from the stage, and had somehow managed to drag a protesting Reginald along with him.

An assortment of magically powered lights hung from racks on the ceiling, most of them shining down onto a stage that ran the length of the far wall. A marble dance floor dominated the centre of the room, with several white pillars rising up from its perimeter to meet the ceiling. A DJ booth was situated in the opposite corner, behind which a white unicorn sporting a radically styled cerulean mane and tail was spinning disks and nodding her head to the beat of the music. The place was quickly filling up with off-duty ponies that had come to blow off steam, mostly pegasi.

One of those pegasi lived up to the club’s name, noisily stomping over the dance floor towards our little corner booth.

“Here we go,” Felix muttered under her breath, just as a fuming Flitter reached the table.

“You teleport me hundreds of miles away from the base, smack in the middle of the magnetic shitstorm that is the Inertia Peaks, and you expect us to just be cool?”

“You made it back, didn’t you?”

Flitter gave a loud nicker as she parked her rump in one of the booth’s empty seats. “You’d lose your stripes if I ratted you out to Spitfire,” she growled, pointing an accusing hoof at the unicorn.

Felix smirked. “Guess I’m lucky you don’t snitch on your friends, then.”

“I thought you said she was safe?” I cut in, levelling Felix with a frown.

“Oh, please. She can handle herself, Jack.”

“You owe me,” Flitter grumbled, staring Felix down with a steely glare.

The unicorn rolled her eyes. “Ugh, fine! What’s your price?”

Flitter grinned triumphantly, leaning over the table slightly and flaring her wings a little. “Stop interfering with the curriculum,” she whispered, giving a less than subtle nod in my direction. Now, it was my turn to roll my eyes.

Felix also grinned, leaning in so her muzzle was just inches from Flitter’s. “No,” she simply replied, not even attempting to disguise the derision in her tone. The pegasus scowled, pulling away with a slight blush.

“What curriculum?” Jessica, who had been following the conversation with ample curiosity, asked.

I hadn’t given it much thought up until then, but Jessica’s question suddenly made me uncomfortably aware that both she and Leanne probably had no idea of the nature of my “assignment”. I shot Flitter a look so blatantly murderous that she visibly flinched. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the pegasus that I should have been worried about.

“Flitter has called dibs on the services of your new Captain,” Felix answered, merely grinning at my exasperated sigh. This was one particular can of worms I really couldn’t be bothered to deal with at the moment.

“What services?” Leanne asked, looking just as confused as Jessica.

“Hoof shining services—I’m starting up a hooficure business,” I wildly bullshitted.

Leanne frowned for a couple of seconds, before her face lit up. “Oh, like a pedicure, but with hooves—right?”

“Exactly!” I replied, probably with a tad too much enthusiasm.

Jessica’s frown deepened. “You’re going to be a beauty therapist?”

“Yes,” I replied, making sure to look her dead in the eyes.

“You?”

“Yep. Might even open up a spa one day. I’ll call it Jackie’s Garden of Tranquility.”

“You can give me a facial anyday,” Flitter snickered behind her forehooves. I scowled at her whilst Jessica levelled me with a stare.

“What’s going on, Jack?” she demanded.

“I just told you,” I remarked, craning my neck to see if Warmfront was on his way back. Hell, I didn’t even care that it would mean sitting with Lieutenant Mushroom-Scalp again.

“What is it that Spitfire is making you do?”

I turned back to her. “Spitfire? Who said anything about Spitfire?”

“Answer me, Jack!”

Felix idly adjusted a couple of pleats on her uniform. “Y’know, she’s going to find out eventually. Might as well hear it from you,” the unicorn observed, flashing me a “you-know-I’m-right” expression. I rubbed a palm down the side of my face as Jessica waited patiently, her expectant expression unwavering.

“Fine,” I sighed, silently cursing Bluepest and Stalker Mullet for taking so damn long at the bar. “D’you remember Windrunner?”

Jessica frowned. “The stallion that flew into the engine?”

“Yeah. Him.”

“What about him?”

“Well, it turns out Spitfire doesn’t take kindly to losing a comfort stallion. She wants me to take his place.”

Jessica blinked. “I… I don't follow… Wait…” Her mouth fell open. “Do you mean, like…”

I nodded.

“Oh god. You told her no, right?”

“Eww, that’s gross, innit?” Leanne added, having finally caught on.

Felix and Flitter shared a look, and Jessica’s face burned red. “Um… no offence…” she trailed off.

Felix smiled. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she replied, waving the hostess down with a forehoof. “After all—who’d want to fornicate with livestock, right?”

“Yeah,” Flitter chimed in. “Getting down and dirty with a dumb and filthy horse? Disgusting.”

Jessica paled at their words. “I… I-I didn’t mean…” she stuttered. Even Leanne looked like she was regretting her outburst.

The two mares burst into a fit of giggles, which culminated in a shared hoof bump.

“What’s so funny?” Warmfront asked as he pulled up a couple of ponified bar stools and placed them at the edge of the table. Reginald levitated a tray full of beers on to the table and sat down next to the pegasus, flashing me the usual poorly-disguised filthy look. I pointedly wrapped an arm around Felix, with the sole intention of pissing him off. Yeah—that’s right, you salty fuck.

“Oh, nothing. We were just experimenting with the ingrained human taboos of inter-species copulation,” Felix happily replied, leaning into my side and flicking her tail around my back so it fell into my lap.

Displaying an impressive amount of restraint on his part, Reginald levitated the cap off one of the beer bottles and took a swig, all the while giving me the most ugly grimace his over-privileged snout could muster. Whilst witnessing such epic proportions of piss-boiling butthurt was indeed entertaining, I had a feeling I was overdoing the provocation a little.

Everyone was staring at us.

“What do you mean?” Warmfront asked. He shot me a panicked look, before throwing a glance at Jessica and Leanne. I took the opportunity to stealthily remove my arm from around Felix. That didn’t stop Flitter from pouting at me, though.

“I’m just saying that Jack’s new occupation—other than being a ship Captain, of course—is a bit of a… let’s say, controversial topic for Jessica and Leanne,” Felix replied, telekinetically popping the cap off of three beers, sliding two of them to the women in question, before taking a swig of her own.

“You told them?” Warmfront yelped. “That’s supposed to be classified!”

“No, Jack told them. And Fleetfoot only told you it was classified because she decided it should be.”

“She’s a General!”

“She’s also a nutbag. What’s your point?”

Warmfront sighed at the rhetorical question, throwing an apologetic glance at Jessica.

“I understand you couldn’t tell me,” she told him, before turning her gaze to me. “So, you’re a comfort… um, stallion now?”

I nodded, opting to spare her the details.

Reginald chose that moment to grunt out a noise that sounded like a cross between a snort and a nicker. I slowly turned my head to him. “Problem?”

“Well, given we assume that human anatomy is proportional to their size, I hardly see how you could be of much use to a mare in heat.”

Did he just make a dick joke at my expense? He did. Motherfucker.

I grabbed my unopened beer by the bottleneck and slammed it against the edge of the table. Glass and suds flew in all directions, some of it falling on Felicity’s cheerpony outfit. She rolled her eyes, already siphoning the liquid out of the material with her magic.

“I’ll cut you, you pompous, rich-boy fag-”

“No, you won’t,” Felix cut me off. With another flash of her horn, the scattered glass shards vanished. “Besides, do you really want to waste that?”

She gave a nod to my raised arm. The broken beer bottle I wielded was actually a very much intact bottle of Jack Daniels. “No,” I said, my anger instantly replaced with anticipation. “Thanks,” I added as I twisted the cap, taking a swig directly from the bottle. The familiar burn cleansed my throat, bringing with it the cherished buzz. Finally, some real relief.

And just like that, Reginald seemed less of a douche. Warmfront wasn’t as annoying. Jess wasn’t as nagging. Leanne wasn’t as stupid. Flitter wasn’t as rapey.

Felix, however, was just as alluring as always.

* * *

Strong, grayish blue wings encompassed my back, whilst slender grayish blue forelegs hooked over my shoulders. The pegasus they belonged to laughed once more at my drunken attempts to move in time with her, and the constant thud of the music booming through the club. I couldn’t quite manage it, but the trusty bottle of Jacky D I still grasped firmly in my hand ensured I give precisely zero fucks.

“You really suck at this,” Flitter chuckled, pressing her barrel against my chest and periodically flapping her wings now and again to prevent the two of us face-planting the dancefloor.

“Wuz yor idea,” I slurred, tightly wrapping an arm around her for support and taking another swig of whiskey.

She had indeed asked me to dance. I politely told her to go fly into a thundercloud. She’d asked me again. I told her I didn’t dance. Dancing was for simpletons. Then, Jacky D had intervened and suddenly here I was—making a tit of myself in front of strangers again.

I didn’t care. I was comfortably fucked up, and Flitter really knew how to have fun.

The heat of the lights and the constant movement was causing everypony to sweat, it seemed. A subtle haze of pheromones hung lazily in the air as pony bodies writhed to the music. Some mares were even grinding themselves against the few stallions, and… each other, as well.

“This a gay bar?” I blurted out, snorting at the implication of lesbian ponies.

“No,” Flitter chuckled, just as two pegasus mares actually started making out a few feet away from us.

“You sure?” I nodded in the general direction of the two mares that were practically munching each other's muzzles. They could probably tell what the other had for lunch, judging by their enthusiasm.

Flitter threw a glance at them. “They’re just herding,” she explained, as though it was obvious.

I blinked, the mares going out of focus for a second. “Wut?”

“They’re scouting as a pair. That way, they have a better chance of pulling a stallion,” she replied, wrapping her wings more securely around me as a pretty green pegasus mare brushed past my legs. “Failing that, they’ll just go back to the barracks and rut each other.”

“Sounds pretty gay to me,” I chuckled, raising my whiskey bottle in salute. Good on them.

“It’s not, really. With the shortage of stallions, many mares just please each other in return if they can't get laid any other way.”

“You ever done it?” I asked, the whiskey incapacitating my already incompetent filter.

“No,” Flitter snorted, before hiccuping unexpectedly. “Felix and Rainy would never let me live it down if I came on to-… I mean… um…” she trailed off.

“Felix and Rain-”

My sentence died, it’s subject forgotten as the pegasus hastily pressed her lips to mine. For a fleeting moment, my mind acknowledged what was happening. How taboo it was. The reasoning of it being somehow “gross” or “disgusting” was immediately presented.

Then, just as swiftly ignored.

Flitter’s scent was distinctively female. Far from gross or disgusting. Her feathers were soft, her fur—even softer. And she was warm. Almost like a living blanket. My eyelids involuntarily fell as my tongue sought out hers. Her taste was so foreign to me, but far from unpleasant. It seemed sweet, yet tangy, and bore traces of the beer she’d been downing all night.

My lack of inhibition made itself increasingly more apparent as I slid my hand up the length of her back, my fingers slipping into her ice blue and white mane. Our tongues battled for supremacy, mine promptly losing against her broader, more powerful muscle. The ponies around me became nothing more than ghosts. All that mattered was the mare in my arms—nothing could steal my full undivided attention away from-

Vinyl scratched, and the music stopped.

Flitter and I broke apart. Quite a lot of pony eyes were staring at me, as well as a few human ones. Jason had joined Jessica and Leanne in the corner booth, and was grinning at us like an idiot. The girls were smiling, though Leanne’s looked a tad forced. Warmfront also had a grin on his muzzle. Reginald just glared at me as usual, and Felix was… gone.

I inwardly facepalmed. Fucking moron. An influx of conflicting feelings raced through my mind, none of which I currently had the mental acuity to deal with. Hell, I tended to avoid thinking about this particular type of bullshit when sober, nevermind blind drunk.

I took another swig of whiskey, my drunk logic deciding that more alcohol was needed. Time to go find Atom Flank!

“Hey… I gotta go do a thing,” I slurred at Flitter, who was staring at the stage, mouth slightly agape.

“Alright, everypony!” came a loud voice that practically oozed charisma. I flinched at the sudden projection, taking a few seconds to realise the unicorn DJ with the rad mane was speaking into a microphone attached to her booth. “Time for the moment all of you fillies and colts have been waiting for. Give it up for for our very own Jewel of the Wonderbolts!”

Felix stood center stage behind a retro style microphone on a boom stand, her muzzle bearing a mechanical smile. The sapphire embedded in her collar began emitting a blue glow of seemingly exponential intensity, causing her outfit to shine as the overhead lighting dimmed.

I watched the glow get ever so slowly brighter, as did every other soul in the room. They were waiting for something, and I knew what it was. I was waiting for it as well. Flitter dropped down to her forehooves as Felicity’s eyes briefly flashed over me. My stomach dropped. The feelings I’d been trying to ignore burst back into the forefront of my mind.

For the past month, I’d been happier than I could remember. I’d always tease Felix about her ridiculous bed mane on those early morning starts in the hangar. Moreso, seeing as she could fix it in seconds if she wanted to. I was positively intrigued that a mare such as her could be so focused on the task at hoof, that she often ended up coated in engine oil by the time she finished the job. I remembered our lunch breaks, where we would often swap stories of the major engineering projects of Earth and Equador. She still had a hard time believing the avionics systems Skyland Corp was famous for were able to function without magic…

Music began to play. Not something new to me this time, though. This particular track was one I’d heard many times before. I had no idea how she’d got it off my laptop…

“Notice me…”

My eyes burned. What was wrong with me? While it was true that weird things happened when Felix sang, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to feel like getting stabbed in the chest with an iron stake.

But, that kiss with Flitter… That hadn’t meant nothing, either. If that much was true, then why was I regretting it so damned much?

Verse after verse, the unicorn sang. She couldn’t have even heard it that often, with it being only one song among hundreds. I didn’t even recall playing it at all in the past month, in fact. But she was singing it perfectly…

Nopony’s gaze strayed from her captivating performance. Nopony knew of the inner turmoil raging inside me. I didn’t even feel drunk anymore. It was as if Felicity’s influence had sobered me up, forcing me to deal with the fact that I wanted her. I needed her. Nopony, or human other than her would do…

With that epiphany, came a new feeling. I had to get out of there.

It was too much. I tore my gaze away from her and stumbled towards the door, my blood alcohol level rearing its blurry head once more. This was not a question of her species, but of the sheer desire. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Every step I took away from her hurt.

But I kept going.

I’d known this pony a month. Why the fuck did it feel like I was hopelessly, irrevocably in love with her?

Her smile was infectious. I’d never been a morning person, but never once was I late to the hanger. Because, I knew she’d be there, head and forehooves already raking around beneath the open engine bay door. She’d hear my footfalls on the cloud, and smile as I brought her a coffee.

Then, I’d smile. See? Infectious.

I didn’t know where I was going, but I still had half a bottle of whiskey left. I took a big gulp. Big enough to make my eyes water. The pain lessened somewhat, but I still needed to move.

Batting Gloria’s wing away, I nearly walked through a rope barrier on my way out of the club. I could have sworn I heard a stanchion fall over, but that wasn’t my problem. I took another gulp of whiskey, revelling in the searing burn it left behind. The street wobbled from side to side, but I managed to hobble haphazardly in the general direction of the barracks.

The airbus loomed in the distance, partly obscured by a thickening fog that had rolled over the mountaintop. “Yes!” I suddenly yelled, raising my bottle at the magnificent bird.

I needed to put some distance between myself and the unending stream of bullshit that had taken place this evening. What better way was there to do that than utilising a jet aircraft?

“I’ve done it once! I can do it again!” I yelled, earning a couple of confused looks from a passing group of mares. I payed them no mind, setting off towards the aircraft.

Ten minutes later, and after getting lost a couple of times, I walked straight into the nose gear.

“Oww!” I muttered, rubbing my flattened nose. Aircraft tyres are hard.

I squinted through the darkness, looking for the rope I used to climb up to the cabin. Somepony must have kindly attached two more ropes, because I found three. ‘How thoughtful of them,’ I pondered, grabbing one of them. It jumped out of the way, no matter how many times I grabbed at it.

Ultimately concluding that that particular rope was being an ass, I grabbed the one in the center. That’s better.

A couple of close calls later, I crawled into the cabin, panting in exertion. The darkness was making my head spin almost as much as the booze. “Cold and dark,” I muttered aloud, stumbling to my feet. Once my eyes had adjusted enough for me to see where I was going, I made for the stairs.

And managed to fall up them. Twice.

Hissing curses and grabbing my bruised knee, I hobbled into the cockpit, slamming the door so hard it merely bounced off the frame and swung open again.

“... Cold and dark,” I repeated to myself, holding onto the back of the pilot seat as I groped around for the correct buttons on the center ceiling console.

The battery switches I was searching for eluded me for a full minute before I managed to hit one of them amidst my mindless button pressing. No sooner had the control panel backlighting illuminated, a barrage of alarms rang through the cockpit.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!

“Shut up!” I yelled at the centre console. When it ignored me, I groped around for the master warning switch, eventually managing to silence the alarms.

“Wuz it nut workin’ for?” I rambled aloud, before remembering that engine one was currently hanging from the rafters of hanger three. Oh.

The sound of muted hoofsteps ran through the cabin, followed by a flap of wings. I span around to the cockpit door, hastily grabbing the First Officer’s seat back to stop myself from falling over.

Grayish blue mare. Ice blue and white mane and tail. Lilac eyes. “Flitter!” I exclaimed. “Help me git her afloat-a—BARP—loft. She’ll fly on three but she won’t take off without a fight.”

The mare’s eyes narrowed in disgust. A small nicker escaped her muzzle as she stepped into the poorly lit cockpit.

“Hey, wu-wurrs yor bow?” I pointed at her head, where her usual accessory was indeed missing from her windswept mane.

“Haven’t you killed enough ponies?” the irate pegasus spat.

Confusion clouded my brain for a few moments, until it dawned on me. “Wait… Yuurr that angry one!” I slurred, rudely pointing a finger right between those lilac orbs. “...Well, shit.”

While I tried to remember what the contingency plan for running into Cloudchaser was, the mare turned, bucking my legs with her hind hooves. I hit the deck faster than a pony in stilettos.

“Oww! Y’fuckin’ crazy horse!” I yelled, rubbing my thighs. They were bruised, along with my pride, but I was otherwise unhurt.

“That was for Windrunner,” Cloudchaser hissed.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! D’you really think I wanted to kill him? I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HE WAS THERE!” I shouted, my anger sobering me up a little. My bullshit limit for the evening had been surpassed.

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t been drun-”

“No! It wouldn’t have mattered either way,” I spat, staring at her with intent. “Believe me when I say—I’m sorry he’s gone. I know that’s not good enough for you, but it’s all I’ve fucking got. I’m the first to admit I’m a drunk, useless idiot—and, you know what? That’s probably not gonna change,” I shouted, gripping the bottle of poison so hard my knuckles turned white. “So go ahead and kick the crap out of me, if that’s what you came here to do.” I took another swig, every drop of whiskey fuelling my self loathing.

All the beatings in the world couldn’t compare to the regret I was left with.

Cloudchaser glared at me indecisively for a few tense moments. I glared right back. “I hear Spitfire’s having you trained as a heat tamer,” she calmly commented.

I paused. Of all the things she could have said, that threw me off guard. “Yeah. So?” I croaked, still unsure if she was going to start attacking me again.

Cloudchaser took a step forward. “I also heard you’ve been doing everything you can to avoid it.”

I shuffled as far back against the cockpit wall as I could. “I’ve been busy with stuff.”

The unruly pegasus took another hoofstep toward me. The anger was gone from her face, but it had been replaced with something much, much worse. “What’s wrong, Jack? You scared?”

I made to get to my feet, but Cloudchaser had already pounced. Her forehooves found my chest, pushing me back into the cabin wall. Her hind legs fell to either side of my waist, and she let her weight bear down on my crotch. Her powerful wings clamped down on my arms, thwarting my drunken attempts to push her away. With a fair amount of struggling, I managed to free one of them. I had no intention of hitting her, so I did the only other thing I could think of.

“How does it feel, Jack? To have a pony grind herself against your-ahhhhh! Ooooohhhhh!” Cloudchaser’s wings shot out in an instant, impacting the walls of the cockpit. Her intended cruel taunt morphed into a slew of pleasured moans. I blinked in surprise, keeping a tight hold on the handful of windswept mane I’d just grabbed.

“B-Bucking asshole…”

My crotch was damp, courtesy of her pulsating sex. My dick began to harden, for the same reason. I twisted my fist, the white strands at the base of Cloudchaser’s neck pulling taught. The pegasus groaned in reluctant bliss, grinding her hips against my crotch and throwing a string of pony curse words at me. Her ears and tail twitched erratically as her forehooves captured my shoulders.

Push her away, Jack. Now’s your chance!

It was a miracle I even had a voice of reason at this point. I should have listened to said voice of reason, but a potent combination of alcohol fuelled inhibition and shameless lust had me holding the mare close. I took in her scent. How could such a pretty pegasus hate my guts so much?

Her little plan wasn’t working. Deliberately barking up the wrong tree to get a reaction? News flash, Cloudy—this tree is swingin’ your way. What I didn’t understand was why she was so into it. Her ears, wings and tail were having mini seizures, and she’d already made quite a mess of my pants. A peculiar scent made its presence known. It was an unrecognisable, but strangely pleasant aroma that seemed to make me a little light headed.

Or, maybe it was just the whiskey.

“Bucking… B-Buck… me,” Cloudchaser whispered, her forelegs firmly clamped over my shoulders as she continued to grind her nethers on my dick. Her tongue rolled out of her maw, and she licked the full length of my cheek.

“... ‘Kay, what has gotten into you? One minute you wanna kick my ass, then the next, you’re DTF?” I asked, slowly rubbing my palms over her shooting star cutie marks. “I don’t get it…” Her fur prickled against my skin, almost as though it craved my touch…

* * *

Adoration poured from all directions, as it always did when Felicity sang. The rapt, undivided attention of every mare and stallion in the club, along with the exotic new additions of man and woman, was upon her. Felix would be a liar if she said she didn’t enjoy it. She thrived on attention. Fed off of it, even.

It was, of course, her nature to do so. If she took it upon herself to eschew every aspect of her kind for some silly noble cause or sense of righteousness, she would become so weak and frail that she would no longer be of any use to the Wonderbolts. Plus, it would make her mother cry. Celestia knew her mother had suffered enough.

Instead, Felix compromised. She fed, taking her fill, but always kept a level head while doing so. After all, it would be awfully cliché for yet another graduate of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns to go on some mad power craze.

The sapphire pendant around her neck grew hot, pulling her from her musings. She could feel every heart in the nightclub soar as they listened to her voice. Their adulation permeated the air—a subtle blue haze, only visible to those with an eye for such things—drifting toward the stage. A rich variety of emotion, reverence, exaltation, lust… even jealousy. Her pendant always had a choice of what to consume.

It promptly discarded the majority, once again desperately searching for a particular signature. Felix inwardly rolled her eyes as the treasured memory ran through her thoughts for probably the hundredth time that day…

It’s like you make angels sound like X-Factor rejects or something…

Felix neither knew, nor cared what an ‘X-Factor’ was supposed to be, but the potent concoction of explicit desire that cascaded from Jack’s heart in that moment had left her speechless, and… more reciprocative than ever.

It hadn’t been just that one incident, either. That was merely the most recent of many. The dark creature of the depths that dwelled within her had taken quite a shine to Captain Jack, and Felix knew that there was no such thing as a “passing fancy” to a siren. A suitor was either a consort, or a nothing.

Jack sure as Tartarus wasn’t a nothing to her. Whenever Felix laid eyes on him, the creature purred in approval. Every joke he told, even if it was awful, was granted a chuckle. She had even become so distracted by her siren pining for his attention that she’d started making mistakes at work…

~~~

Vouloir Jack, the siren whined.

No. We’re busy, Felicity thought in response, her magical aura highlighting the massive engine fan, all of its blades intact.

Vouloir Jack.

No. We need to balance these fan blades before sun down.

Regardez vers lui.

She looked, cursing herself. Jack was sat at his usual perch on his favourite bit of scaffolding, typing away on his laptop. His brow was furrowed, broad shoulders hunched, eyes scanning the screen in concentration.

Vouloir lui.

He does not want us, Felix replied. A fair assumption, if past experience was anything to go by. Felix was used to stallions falling at her hooves at the flutter of an eyelash—something that Jack seemed to have an admittedly irksome immunity to. Normally, such a reaction—or lack thereof—would be a welcome change, but like her siren, the unicorn had grown accustomed to Jack’s company.

Vouloir, the siren demanded regardless, her ignorance matched only by her stubbornness. Felix sighed, relaxing the telekinetic hold she had on the engine fan. The blades promptly fell out of alignment. Ponyfeathers. Between her lack of productivity, and her darker half throwing a temper tantrum, this day was turning out to be a long one.

Vouloir!

Shut it! The unicorn scolded, attempting to maintain her composure as she stepped around the hanging engine to take yet another glance at the earth-pony reference blueprints laid out on the workbench. Unfortunately, she failed to spot the toolbox planted right in front of her hooves.

“Ouch!” the unicorn yelped, nearly face-planting the cloud floor as she stumbled over the box. She’d barely fallen to her haunches and began rubbing her bruised forehoof before Jack was at her side.

“Picking a fight with a toolbox, eh? What’d it do to you?” he joked, sitting on the floor, pulling her into his arms and taking her injured hoof into his hands to inspect it more closely.

Felix laid her head against his chest, willingly falling into his embrace and letting her eyes do the talking. The siren purred in delight, relishing in the physical contact with the object of her affections. If only such contentedness had lasted.

Prétendre lui.

Choosing not to dignify such foolishness with a response, Felicity settled for nuzzling his chest. Any pain in her hoof had long since been chased away by the delicate touch of his dexterous appendages. After all, fingers were amazing, and just thinking about the sheer potential of their application instigated a burgeoning warmth in her nethers.

She could see the indecisiveness in his eyes, could tell he had a desire for a greater level of intimacy, but something was holding him back. Probably some silly taboo from his home world, if she had to guess.

Moments passed, turning into minutes, those minutes stretching past a quarter of an hour and beyond. Both pony and human sat clinging to one another, with no agenda other than enjoying the close proximity. Neither of them broke the silence. The siren, on the other hand, wouldn’t shut up.

~~~

Through all of the raw emotion, the pendant filtered. It recognised Jack’s desire, locking onto it, feeding from it. Such a satisfying meal was his need for her, it made her lightheaded.

Flitter had eyes for him. That much was clearly evident, given her insistence on following him, not to mention what happened on the dancefloor. He’d also more than likely fallen onto the radar of a much higher ranking mare, as well as a couple of other Wonderbolts. No doubt, Felix would have to share him.

Mine! hissed the siren, clawing at the edges of her mind.

Felix wasn’t overly keen on the idea of sharing, either. But, considering Jack’s secondary occupation, exclusivity was never going to happen anyway. Don’t fall for a Colt Slut, Spitfire had warned, all those moons ago on the first day of basic. It’s the fastest way to getting your heart broken.

Felix smiled as she continued to sing. Such advice had been simple to follow, up until now. All she could hope is for Jack to do his duty as a comfort stallion, but come home to her waiting hooves every night. The siren growled, glowering through the unicorn’s eyes at Flitter. Yes, sharing would indeed be a hard pill to swallow. But, Jack was worth it.

He was also leaving.

Follow.

We can’t leave. We have a performance to finish, Felix thought, as she watched Jack stumble drunkenly towards the exit of the nightclub. Flitter didn’t seem to notice he’d wandered off, still too entranced with the music.

Protect!

Protect? Since when do sirens care about protecting anything?

Follow.

I can't. Dropping Vinyl in a barrel full of horse apples was not something Felix wanted to do, but the thought of Jack wandering around blind drunk and vulnerable on a military base full of oestrogen fuelled mares set her stomach churning.

We’ll finish the set, then we’ll go after him, the unicorn compromised, hoping Jack didn’t stray too far.