Practice Shorts

Treble Clef was having a great day. She had woken up in the bed of her coltfriend, Night Stryker, after a long, blissful evening of bedroom calisthenics, and even managed to wring one last performance out of the big zebra/pegasus before he had been forced to hurry off to work to avoid being late. She'd then spent the better part of an hour just lazing around in Night's bed, wrapped up in the covers and enjoying the soothing warmth and the lingering aroma of the stallion on the sheets. Eventually she had worked up the energy to roll herself out of bed and throw together a bowl of cereal for breakfast. A very hot shower followed, mostly for the simple pleasure of the sensation of near scalding water soaking itself into her fur and coursing over her skin.

She didn't really need the shower to clean up, seeing as she wasn't really a small, brown on brown pegasus, but a changeling posing as such. Her photogenic good looks had nothing to do with personal effort towards her appearance, which was minimal at best. Instead she rather shamelessly abused her shapeshifting powers to ensure she always looked fantastic without needing to put in any real thought or effort towards the goal. Still, a shower every now and then was both pleasant, and did keep her from smelling funny. Changefire could only do so much about body odor unfortunately.

Thus having wrung every ounce of enjoyment she could out of her morning, Treble finally decided it was time to head home. Locking up with the key Night had provided her, by virtue of it having been left out where she could find it and not having been told she couldn't take it, she took a short flight across Ponyville to her house to see if Moonlight was still hanging around. The sky dancer's presence in her home had been a wonderful excuse to spend the night with her coltfriend, but now she found herself hoping Moonlight had already left for her morning rehearsal. Not because she didn't like the petite pegasus dancer, but rather because she liked her a bit too much.

Moonlight was something of a problem for Treble, in that she would normally be exactly Treble's type. Prior to Night, this wouldn't have been an issue, but unfortunately...or fortunately...or something, Treble wasn't exactly sure how to label it, but the point was, she was actually in a committed relationship with the big pegasus. It was something she was still trying to get used to really, after so many years of one night stands, casual lovers, and buck buddies, having just one individual she was sharing her love and affection with still felt a little off. Not that she would trade Night for anything, not even her best fantasy orgy, the entire current Wonderbolt's roaster all at once, but that didn't mean she wasn't tempted from time to time by the allure of others.

And Moonlight was definitely a temptation, with that lithe, toned, supply dancer's body and that dirty sense of humor to match her own. It was enough to make Treble wish she'd met Moonlight first...or to make her wish the petite pegasus was bi instead of a fillyfooler and that Night was open to the idea of threesomes. Now that would be a night to remember...

Caught up as she was with her self-indulgent fantasy, it wasn't until she had let herself into her house and was halfway through her living room before she even realized that her home was, in fact, not empty at all. Indeed, as she slowly pulled herself away from thoughts of unlikely but inciting positions, Treble realized that Moonlight was sitting right there on her couch. The little temptress however was looking less than her normally enticing self. It probably had something to do with the bloodshot eyes, the unkempt mane, and the greatly annoyed and possibly murderous look adorning Moonlight's normally playful features.

Also the clutch of changeling nymphs surrounding her, that definitely put a damper on the situation.

"Well, look who's home," Moonlight said, her voice a slow, unhappy thing. "And looking so very refreshed too..."

"Uh...hey Moony," Treble replied, a nervous laugh evident in her voice as she eyed the situation and tried to figure out a way to head off what was looking to be a thoroughly unpleasant conversation.

"Don't you 'hey Moony' me!" Moonlight growled, though before she could really get some conversational momentum going she was cut off by one of the baby changelings uttering an unhappy little whine. "No no no! Uh, it's okay Bitey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get upset," she quickly told the little nymph, trying hard to calm and shush the changeling with a soothing voice and gentle rocking motions.

"Bitey?" Treble asked, incredulously.

"Yeah, Bitey," Moonlight replied, annoyance creeping back into her voice even as she managed to keep her tone soft and even. "Go ahead, ask me why I named him that..."

"Is...is it because he bi..."

"It's because he bites!" Moonlight interrupted with a harsh whisper. "Oh and hey, this here is Crier, and this is Spitty," she went on, pointing to each one of the dozing little changelings in turn. "And over here we have Flailer, Drooler, and Dale."

Treble blinked slowly. "...Dale?"

"Dale's been good," Moonlight confessed in a reasonable tone, giving said changeling an oddly proud look. "Hasn't actually given me any trouble. Good boy, Dale," she added, rubbing the changeling on the head softly with a wing.

"...well alright then," Treble said, slowly making her way to the chair opposite the couch. "Uh, sorry about them. I honestly wasn't expecting the eggs to hatch for another month at least."

Moonlight let out a long, tired sigh. "Just...okay, just tell me...are they yours and Night's? I mean, I guess I don't actually know anything about changeling breeding, but I can't remember you looking like..."

"Ha! No! No no no!" Treble giggled. "I assure you, if Night ever knocks me up, I'll be letting everyone know about it as soon as possible."

"Okay then...but then why did you have six changeling eggs in your basement?" Moonlight asked.

Treble shrugged. "Because I rescued them, of course."

"...right, of course..." Moonlight stated dryly. "Rescued them from whom?"

"From the bitch queen's hive," Treble replied, slouching back in her chair. "They were being shipped over seas into gryphon controlled lands. Most likely they were supposed to be used to help set up a new sub-hive over there. It's why they were so loaded up with excess love."

"Right...that makes...sense?"

"Heh, sorry," Treble apologized with a chuckle. "Sometimes I forget what is and isn't common changeling knowledge. Uh, it's part of a process by which you can force a changeling to grow to adulthood in mere months. Good for when the hive needs new bodies in a hurry. However it's not done too often because it's costly. It takes a lot of love energy to pull off, like three times as much in total as it would take for a changeling to grow up at a normal rate. And you're trying to feed all that love into them over a very short period of time, so it's only even doable when the hive has a large stockpile of love to use. Plus you also need more energy for the mentalists to use."

"Okay, and you need mentalists because?" Moonlight asked.

"Because otherwise you'd have full grown changelings with the minds of foals," Treble explained. "The mentalists have to artificially accelerate their mental development and copy several years worth of memories and training into their minds over the few months it takes them to grow up."

"Wow...that sounds intense," Moonlight remarked.

"Yup," Treble agreed with a self-satisfied smirk. "So saving these guys not only kept them from having to be slaves to the hive, it also effectively stole a whole lot of spent resources. Very costly losses."

"Okay, well I can certainly get behind that," Moonlight said with a nod. "But, how come you haven't told anyone about this? Or, have you and I'm just out of the loop?"

"Uh...well..." Treble hedged. "See, the thing is...if I told anyone about them, then my sisters would want to hear the details...and if I had to tell them the details, I'd have to explain to them why it was I chose to do something really, really stupid that I promised them I would never ever under any circumstances do..."

"Oh...so, basically, you're about to be in a lot of trouble with Radiant and Goldie, huh?" Moonlight asked. She made a thoughtful noise. "So, how exactly were you planning on keeping this from them after the eggs hatched?"

"No idea, I figured I had another month to come up with some kind of excuse," Treble admitted. "But now that they're hatched, even if you keep your mouth shut...by the way, please please pleasepleaseplease!" She suddenly begged, before going back to her normal tones. "It won't be long before they find out."

"Relax, I'm not going to rat you out," Moonlight said, a smile crossing her face at the look of relief on Treble's. "But you're right, there's no way you can keep this hidden for very..."

The rest of Moonlight's sentence was cut off by the sound of the front door lock turning, and before either mare could react, Night came walking into the room, the large pegasus/zebra holding a pair of brightly colored bouquets of flowers under each wing. He skidded to a halt as he spotted Treble, his eyes going as wide as her own shocked expression.

"Oh! Whoops..." he muttered. "Uh, I was really expecting you to still be back...at...my...place?" He trailed off slowly as he caught sight of Moonlight, half buried in a mound of baby changelings on the couch. He just stared at her for a long moment. It was clear his mind had just thrown a gear, and was busy trying to get things back into working order.

Treble sighed, facehoofing. She then glance at Moonlight, shrugged in a 'well, what are you going do?' kind of manner. Underneath the casual surrender to fate though, Moonlight saw a glint of mischievousness light up in Treble's eyes.

"Hey honey," Treble started in a overly reasonable tone of voice. "So, surprise! You're a father!" she declared with enthusiastic brightness and a huge grin.

Night blinked at Treble, the resulting mental 'crunch!' of his mind's machinery imploding on itself practically audible in his expression.

"Oh...father...ha...haha..." the big stallion managed. Then there come a soft, double 'fwoomp' of the flowers dropping, followed by the much more substantial 'thud' of Night's unconscious form hitting the floor as he passed out cold from shock.