Twilight was following the command she had been given earlier, making her way to her library where she found the Maneiac already waiting for her.

"You are such an obedient thing." Mane rushed forward, sliding along on her tentacles and closing the door behind her own little princess. "Has anypony else suspected?"

"Most of my friends are away at the moment. I don't think anypony I met suspected." Twilight gave her report, thankful that nopony else was dragged into this. She looked up at the villain. "If you were nicer about this it might actually be fun."

Shock, terror, and panic hit the Maneiac. "Fun?" Heroes were not meant to enjoy being controlled and played with! This was all kinds of wrong. She brought out the watch, the simple watch, and started it swinging. "See the nice watch swinging? See it sway back and forth." Focusing was almost as hard for Mane, what was up with this mare that being messed with was fun to her?

Twilight relaxed and looked at the pendulum's motion, it chased all the pesky noise in her head out and had her calm; she had, after all, been told to come and get hypnotized again. She gently nodded her head, but not so much that it would cause her to lose sight of the swinging shape.

Mane's confidence returned at the sight of the willingly blank mare. She grinned. "You will follow my commands, you will know everything I am ordering you to do but you will not be able to resist doing them. You must not tell anypony of it. You can only think of yourself as my pet, my toy."

Feeling a tendril probe at her back-door, Twilight smiled happily. It squirmed and wriggled in and she could appreciate that the Maneiac was actually rather gentle about it. "Pet will do everything you ask her."

"Where is your husband? Do you think he will do everything I ask of him?" Mane felt the mare's rump squeezing at her tendril again and again, it only confirmed what the princess had said. "You really do enjoy this, don't you?"

"He was waiting in our bedroom and I think he will do anything to keep me safe." Twilight blushed a little and nodded, not answering the last question with words. The tentacles were both similar and different to Gel. Not worse, not better, different.

Mane was a little unsure how to use all this information but her night had been planned. "If anypony sees us going to your bedroom, would they think it strange?" She watched the mare smile and shake her head. "But they will think it strange if I have a tentacle shoved in your rump." She drew that shape out, halting the pendulum.

Twilight giggled. "They might make mention of it, but nopony would think it strange, not at all." She lifted her tail and trotted for the door. Somehow, the alicorn just knew she had won a little battle here.

Following along, her face creased in a confused frown, Mane tried to put together all this information, and failed. She couldn't be lying, but she surely couldn't be this… this… odd? The master bedroom of the castle was not far away, not being too far from the library, Mane followed Twilight in and couldn't see Gel anyway. "Where is your-" Her question only barely got started when she was hit with a dollop of goop dropping from the ceiling.

Gel fell on the Maneiac. He covered her body, flowed around her and squeezed down tight on the pony who held his wife hostage. With tendrils pushed down into her ears, Gel rushed down into her mouth to silence her. "Welcome to my parlor."

"Oh! That looks like fun!" Twilight clopped her hooves together, watching as her tormentor was quickly trapped inside her husband's grip. "Now tease her, I want you to work her up so much she can't help but use her tentacles on me."

Maneiac froze. What did she mean by this, how was she this into tentacles? Her question couldn't be asked, not with her throat sealed. Then she felt probing at her back passages and she almost melted in place, she hadn't had a stallion, properly, for far too long.

Plunging himself into this crazed mare, Gel forced more and more of himself into her until her belly started to swell just like his wife's. He began to undulate the shape. "Twilight?" He spoke with the trapped villain's voice.

"Gel?" Twilight got a nod from her mate. "I sort of like this, but she is a little overbearing with the…" she couldn't say anymore, the binding hypnosis halting her words. She shrugged. "Maybe if we pleasure her enough, she will be nicer?"

"That could work. Using a different kind of friendship on her." Gel smiled with the trapped mare's mouth. His next words were right into the ears of the trembling Maneiac. "Now you are going to play with Twilight, you will be gentle with her. If you play nice, I… I will let you go."

Thoughts and plans ran through Mane's head and then fell apart. If he just kept her like this he wasn't hurting her and yet she wouldn't be able to renew the hypnosis. She reached forward with her tentacles and easily lifted up Twilight, supporting her with her amazing mane and working the mare to her back.

Twilight writhed around in the grip, loving the feel of so many things stroking and caressing her, when the tip of one tentacle got too close she leaned forward and kissed it, then gave a little suck on the tip. It didn't hesitate, pushing into her mouth and giving her much more to suckle on.

Most of Mane's tentacles were just squirming in the air, she had never felt so full or so pleasured before. She tried to struggle against being passive, she reached out to Twilight's other end and worked on thick tendril into her rear. The squirming, pregnant mare looked to be in complete bliss. "You are doing well. I love my wife very much, to see her having so much fun makes me much more predisposed to like you."

Maniac was confused, she wasn't meant to be making the alicorn happy, this was meant to be revenge. But if it was revenge, revenge felt very good.

"What do you mean we can't get control again?" Silken looked at the comic panels she had finished coloring. "She should be blissfully unaware that… uh Spike, is slowly undoing her hypnosis."

"I mean, Spike isn't there, Maneiac has the Princess under her full control and seems to be unstoppable!" Blitzing sounded in a panic. "She isn't doing anything I write her to do!"

"It's because she isn't in the comic anymore. When we setup that comic the first time, the Princess and her friends ended up IN the comic, so we had control. Of course they did what we wanted." Fillalee looked down at the comic in progress. "We are in so much trouble…"

Twilight looked from Sleek, then to Cherry. "I can take an easy guess as to why you care so much for changelings, but from what I have heard you are taking quite a proactive stance on them."

It was as much a question as a statement and Cherry took a deep breath and reached a hoof across the table, to have it touched by her wife's. "They saved me, they brought me back the love of my life. When guards were trying to drag me away from them, Prince Gel himself stepped in." Cherry looked only into Sleek's eyes. "They are as much family to me as my parents were."

There was silence at the table, even the waiter delivering more tea for them kept quiet.

"So, when I see one of my sisters finding happiness, yes I am willing to reach out and give her all the support I can to stand tall." Cherry suddenly had a pair of dark forelegs wrapped around her as Velvet caught the pegasus up in a tight hug.

Twilight Velvet was smiling, that was just about the most perfect reason for all this. She had been a little wary, though she didn't want to be, not of the nice mare who helped bring Velvet into her life. "I think this calls for a little celebration then. They do a lovely cheesecake here, I hear-tell that Princess Celestia orders out to them for her own supply." Everypony knew of their leader's love of sweet deserts, to be able to try one would prove too much for any to resist.

"Cheesecake sounds good." Cherry gave Velvet a last squeeze before turning and looking to Sleek, who was already nodding. "That makes both of us, you too Velvet?"

"It's my celebration, isn't it?" Velvet tried to don the air of dominance she used in the bedroom, only partially succeeding. But it at least made her feel a little more stable.

Twilight grinned wide and nodded. "It is, so let's get you… oh, four of your finest cheesecakes." The waiter had practically appeared from nowhere, a sixth-sense letting him know his customers needed him.

"Of course." Bowing deeply, the stallion glided away again.

"I won't get used to that." Cherry shook her head. It got a giggle from Sleek. "What? I can't, it is unnerving to have ponies be so… self effacing like that."

"You would be a terrible changeling." Velvet reached out a foreleg and put it behind Cherry's withers. "You have to take everything in stride, you can't let anything… bug you."

Cherry tried to keep her giggles in, but when Velvet and Sleek both snorted at the same time she lost it. "First… first rule of employment. No puns."

Velvet's ears tucked back and she looked hurt. "What about, well, about a dozen a month?"

"No!" Cherry was confused by the begging but had to assume there was something worse coming.

"I tried this back with Vicious. I used to keep to around a dozen puns a month, hoping to raise her mood." Velvet looked around the mares, her timing letting her know just when to continue. "But no pun in ten did."

The groans at the joke faded as the desert came out.

Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship and, unofficially, Nookie, had become somewhat comfortable over the week. Maneiac was behaving herself, she didn't try to impose too much and, to the alicorn's surprise, even seemed to be more sane than usual.

That didn't stop her from going to the villain every night, staring eagerly at the spiral or pendulum, welcoming the words that would tell her how to act. When Mane was done with the hypnosis, she noticed Twilight looking at her oddly. "You are different." Twilight reached a hoof out to pet one of the tentacles that slithered close to her. "Not quite… well, as crazy as you were in the comic."

"I feel very different." Mane slumped onto her tentacles, teasing around Twilight's mouth with one. "It is like a fog that was inside my head, has lifted. I don't… I don't even know why I am still here, except I don't know anything else to do."

"It's okay, this is fine for now." Twilight kissed the tentacle. "Take your time. What exactly got you out of the comic? Maybe it did something?"

"That's just the thing, I made some kind of contraption to rip my way out of those pages and then… I was real." Maneiac pressed another tendril into the heavily swollen mare's rump, thin, but tapered to swell out. "Was it a setup? What is happening to me?"

The voice of the mare who had tormented her, sounded so scared to Twilight that she reached out, grabbing the startled Maneiac into a hug. It took a moment before the villain was hugging back but she felt like she knew Twilight a lot better than she knew herself right then, so she clung on for all she was worth.

"I could make these numbers match better." Velvet looked down at the columns of digits before her. She titled her head up to Cherry. "See if I shifted them to here, we could-"

"That is called creative accounting, Velvet. We don't do that. That is against the law." Cherry giggled though, the look of innocence on the changeling was priceless. "We are good ponies, we keep to the laws and, if they aren't fitting, we have Blueblood ask about changing them."

Velvet blinked at that. "But… okay, so why don't we get him to change the laws about 'creative accounting' then?"

"If it were legal, every business would do it and, even if we were the best at it, it would give the others an advantage against us. There is a better way, anyhow." Cherry lifted out another book and opened it. This had no numbers in it, just names.

"What is this one?" Velvet looked over it, seeing many very odd names in there. "You have three of the Element bearers in here!"

"This is our little book of favors. When we need something done, we consult this for a pony who owes us a little something. No tax, we get what we want, they got what they want." Cherry trailed her hoof down the latest page, pointing out 'Twilight Velvet and Night Light' were third from the bottom.

"My contract?" Velvet thought on it. "So if, say, you needed somepony to talk to Princess Cadance about something, you could ask Twilight to do so?"

"I would ask Twilight to introduce somepony to her that would do so. These favors should only go so far. Or, for example, if a particular Equestria-famous party planner wanted to have a relaxing weekend, I wouldn't ask for much, but of course I still paid you for that."

Velvet blushed a little, remembering that day. She saw now just why this book was far more valuable to the business than the one full of numbers.

Author's Note

A little bit more reason why the Maneiac is acting how she is gets revealed, and we see a little bit of time pass.

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