Fall of the Rightful King

Chapter Nine

Alan

Things were pretty murky in my head when I woke up. Got God-awful sleep with these fucking legs and hair everywhere. Yeah, sure, I’d probably get used to it, but it still fucking sucked.

Wait… where am I? I heard a girl ask. My body moved on its own, which moved me all the way to DEFCON 1 because somebody was moving me and it wasn’t me. That’s not ok. I felt myself start to stand up, but this time I stopped it. My body tried again.

“Hey, quit it!” I snarled. Well, ok, I was a girl pony (there’s probably a word for that) so it wasn’t the most impressive of snarls.

Wait, what? The girl’s voice said. I realized that it wasn’t coming in through my ears. I could hear it in my head.

THERE WAS A FUCKING GIRL IN MY HEAD.

Aaaaah! There’s someone in my head!

Glad we agree. Super, great relationship starter with the alien invader.

This is my body! You’re the alien! Get out of me!

“Hey, wait,” I started to say, when I heard banging on the door.

“Alan, we gotta go! It's storming again!” She banged on the door again.

“Um, just a second!” I said. I had to take care of this thing in my head.

This is my head!

Nuh-uh, I was here first.

But where… this isn’t my house! Where did you take me?

I didn’t take you anywhere! What the hell…

Oh, Celestia, what the hay happened?

Wait.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaait.

No. No fucking way.

“Hey, um…”

Don’t talk with my mouth!

“Hey!” I yelled. “I have had a really fucking bad couple of days. I started turning into a fucking horse and lost my dick and now you’re sitting in my head yelling at me. So how about we both calm the fuck down and talk about this!”

I could “hear” her start crying, but it sounded weird. Kind of like she was trying to stifle it. Wait, she could hear my thoughts. Could I hear hers?

I tried it. It wasn’t like I could hear what she was thinking (I guess that worked only one way, lucky me,) but I could feel like how she was feeling.

She felt like shit. She was scared and freaking out and trying to get a handle on things. Awesome. Two of us, then.

“Look, um, sorry. I’m just fucking scared and confused right now. I started turning-”

Yeah, you already said that, she snapped. Bitch. Oh, shit, could she hear that?

She didn’t say anything. She just tried to get control of my body. I tried to stop her, and we kind of wrestled for a few seconds. Suddenly one leg went one way and the other went the other, we were falling, and then we were lying on our back with a headache.

“Oookaaay…” I said slowly. “Can we try the talking thing now?”

She was quiet for a while. Finally,

How do I know you’re telling the truth?

You are literally in my fucking head, I said. Not a lot of room for lies here.

Not a lot of room for anything in here… she said.

Hey, fuck you.

But you’re right. So you were a… she struggled for the right word.

“Human?” I asked.

Yeah. Human, and then you turned into a pony?

“Pretty much,” I said, standing up and stretching out my neck.

And then you just woke up today and I was here?

“Mm-hmm.”

Ugh. I’d just got home after a date and now I wake up and I’m on some other planet and there’s some colt in my head!

“Hey, at least you still got all your bits,” I said. “I’ve had to deal with looking like this.”

Hey!

“Yeah, sorry, that sounded bad. Look… ah, fuck it. Can we just figure this out?”

She tried to take control again, but this time it was like she was tired or something, because nothing really happened.

“Pony girl?” I asked. She didn’t answer.

Someone knocked on the door. I immediately felt pony girl start freaking out again.

Oh, Celestia, don’t let anyone else know I’m here!

“Come in,” I said. Nick walked in. He glanced at the bed, then back at me. I looked back, which meant looking back over my body (which was fucking weird,) and saw that I’d left the bed looking like someone had a wild night in it. Damn hooves and weird backwards legs.

“Are you ok?” Nick asked.

“Yeah, there’s just a pony girl in my head, but she won’t talk to me.”

Nick’s eyebrows went up. “A pony girl?”

“Yeah, I guess she’s from fucking Equalia or whatever.”

Wow, that pissed her right the hell off. It was pretty fucking weird feeling someone else get so angry.

“Um…” Nick said, but whatever brilliant thought he was going to follow that up with got cut off when he got a phone call. He left and I went into the bathroom.

Well, if pony girl wasn’t going to talk to me, I was going to ignore her. I can be a five-year-old too.

Nothing? Damn.

Well, anyway, after taking a piss (which I don’t want to talk about, but God damn these hooves make cleanup a bitch.) I stepped into the shower.

Not going to lie, it felt fucking amazing. I thought it’d be all weird and shit, but it actually felt incredible. Hot showers were the shit. You know when you stretch and the muscle relaxes after? It was like that everywhere, except I had muscles fucking everywhere that I didn’t even know I had. I mean, I guess I really never had them before. I actually gasped when the water poured over my back and down my legs, and then I felt myself smiling.

I just stood there for minutes, slowly turning around. I realized I needed to actually clean myself, though, and looked down at my hooves, then at the sponge thing. I knocked a shampoo bottle on the sponge and pushed down on it, then took the handle part in my teeth (yugh) and started washing myself. I wasn’t any good at it and managed to drop it twice. The third time I went to pick it up, I felt this tingling energy run into my horn and… fuck, I don’t have words for this. Pony girl picked up the brush and started to wash us off. Ok, hooves sucked ass and suddenly being a chick was a pretty fucking big surprise, but if I could use magic…

I turned the shower off (thank God it was a lever and not a knob,) rubbed myself against the towel on the wall for a bit, giving up on my mane and tail after just a few seconds, and then drying any part of me I could reach with the towel.

When I was done, I sat and looked at myself in the mirror. We have a long mirror in the bathroom that goes to the floor, so I could see my whole body.

It was more than fucking weird to see myself. I still didn’t think it was me – it was some pony girl with brown hair and green eyes. I did have a tramp stamp of two books now. Still, I thought, as I stood up and turned around, if it was me, I could do a lot worse. She had a good body and was really fit. Her eyes made her look like she was smiling. I mean, just thinking about this, sure, I was probably going to get out of this body and be normal again. I just had to convince a fucking wizard to turn me back. No big deal.

Stop looking at me!

Fuck you, you stop looking at me.

Still, there was the problem with pony girl. She’d need to go home, and apparently this was her body. Maybe her body was still hanging around back home, just comatose and shit. Or maybe this was her body and my body. Which was a problem. I was not going to just step aside and let her take control of my life. Fuck no. But it wasn’t going to be ok for me to just shut her up and do whatever. Maybe someone would learn about magic enough to get us separated. Course, if that wizard wanted me to be like this, it’d be a hard fucking sell.

My horn started glowing and tingling again. The towel picked itself off the rack, dried off my mane, and started working on my tail. Maybe we wouldn’t be able to convince him to change me back, but maybe he’d pull us apart. So… I’d still be like this?

I looked back up at myself and turned my head slightly to the left. My left ear flopped down, but my right stood up, and I couldn’t help but smile. Not to say that ponies were cute or anything, because that show was still for little girls, but if any pony was cute, I sure as hell was.

Real masculine thought there, big guy.

I opened the door and turned the light off. Maybe I was overreacting yesterday. I mean, I can still get places, I can still talk. I had a pretty great body. This didn’t have to be the end of the fucking world.

Pony girl? Nothing. Look, we got off on the wrong hoof here. I’m Alan. I’m a… I used to be a human guy and I run a podcast for other conspiracy buffs. Waiting. Waiting. Damn. I’ve got… actually, I guess I had heart problems. Fuck yeah! I punched the air with one of my front legs. I could feel she was starting to warmup, a bit. I’ve always had girl problems because I was fat and told the truth too much.

She didn’t say anything, but she was suspicious.

Ok, I… I suck at talking to girls. I never really had any friends in high school. Except for the spookbusters, they’re my podcast audience, and Nick, I still don’t have a lot of friends. I just fucking suck at dealing with people and so now that you’re in my head I had no fucking idea what to do. Especially because I’m a girl and a horse now. I’m really fucking scared.

I’m afraid of heights, pony girl said. And stop calling me ‘pony girl,’ human. I’m Paper Back.

I’m sorry. I’m… this is scary for me too, she said, a bit less pissy. I really want to go home. Um, I’m a martial artist and I teach a class for fillies and colts.

Martial artist, eh? That gave me an idea.

I trotted downstairs to the basement. Maybe having pony girl, sorry, Paper Back in my head was helping me walk.

“Paper Back, I don’t know about you, but is this going to help you cool off at all?”

I was looking at a punching bag the last people to live here had left attached to the ceiling. Nick and I had used it maybe once or twice, but it mostly just hung here. She didn’t say anything for a long time, but I felt her emotions start boiling.

Don’t you dare stop me.

“Nope,” I said, and let my body relax.

It didn’t. This mare used her body like an instrument. My leg muscles suddenly exploded with energy and we were flying at the bag, hind leg forward. We connected and my leg felt like steel. Suddenly my horn was glowing and we were running along the wall, jumping back at the bag, this time hitting it with our front legs. It was amazing. The energy from magic pulsed with my heartbeat. Every move felt so natural. It felt so right. Sweat beaded and matted our fur. There was no thought – only anger and frustration and fear and homesickness all getting channeled into crimes of violence against punching bags.

We were a fucking machine. We were like a force of vengeance. This piece of stuffed leather was responsible for everything wrong in our fucking lives and we were going to make it pay. Every hoof hit like a hammer. Magic wrapped around us, making us jump higher, move faster, and hit way the hell harder. The punching bag never stopped moving from the time we started. I felt something change inside her. I don’t know what it was but somehow our emotions got so much stronger. We fucking flew at the punching bag. One of us was screaming, but I don’t have any idea who. Our hind leg connected with the bag so hard it broke off the ceiling and hit the floor with a smack. We stood there, on all fours, panting and grinning like a demon.

Oh that feels so good! Paper Back said. After a second, she started talking. “Thanks. I… I can tell you’re trying to help. I’m sorry, I just got scared when… you know.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I get it.”

“Were you really a colt before you turned into me?” she asked, smiling.

“Well, basically, yeah, and the sooner I get my balls back the better.”

“Eww! Being a mare is so much better. You’ll learn to love it.”

“Hey, Paper Back,” I said, “I don’t want to spoil the mood or anything, but you know I can tell how you feel… and you’re not really this happy.”

“I… yeah. I just always tell my fillies and colts that they need to be strong. Now it’s my turn to be strong.”

“So you have kids?”

“No, they’re my students. I teach martial arts back home, remember?”

I felt my throat tense up and my eyes start to water when she said that. It wasn’t my emotion, though – it was hers.

“So… we don’t have to talk about this,” I started.

“No, it’s ok.” Magic started buzzing in my horn and we lifted the bag off the ground and leaned it on a wall. It took a lot of effort to even drag it. Then we turned around and saw Brittney standing there, looking at us like we were crazy.

“Um…” I started, putting one of my hooves behind my head. “So… introductions. This is Paper Back…”