Friendship is Optimal: Guidance

I back away, pulling my head out from under the table, and the stallion seated there gasps for a breath. I grin, showing off his semen on my mouth before licking it off—a little saltier and a little sweeter than I normally like, but not bad—and swallowing it all. He can’t string a word together after several tries, so I smile and answer what he’s trying to say, shouting over the thumping music.

“My pleasure, sweetie.” And it really is. I have a list of my top ten favorite things in my office; all of them are dicks. Big dicks, small dicks, average dicks, fat dicks, ever-elusive mare dicks—I love every kind that comes attached to a pony, and it’s my mission to try them all.

The stallion’s blushing partner turns towards me. “You’re going to have to teach me to do that.” That shouldn’t be a problem.

“Classes are weekends at five and nine in the evening,” I tell him. Then I lower my eyelashes, and tone, slightly. “The student body shows up in force around five-thirty.” Judging by the way his already-stiff cock surges a little larger and twitches against his belly under the coverless table, it’s not hard to tell what he’s picturing; he’ll fit right in. Maybe I should use him as the first demonstration model if he shows up on time…

Unfortunately, I do have a schedule to keep. Owning a business has downsides, such as occasionally having to stop seducing ponies’ husbands in front of them and get work done. It’s good work, though. Running the hottest voyeur’s club on this perpetually-twilit side of the server brings everypony with my interests together, whether they like watching, showing off, or both. These two stallions are probably of the “both” variety; most of the bar’s other tables have long cloths so my clients can touch themselves or each other with a minimum of privacy. The only requirements at the tables are listed on a well-placed sign:

Limit one drink per customer per hour.
Do not cum on floor or chairs. Please use the provided cloth or a willing employee.
Sex is restricted to willing employees and Amateurs Night.

“I have to be going,” I say. “Duty calls, but if you’re still around later, wave me down so I can finish what I started with you two, okay?” And once I finish with that, I might head on home to my gentlecolt of a stallion; he always knows just how to make me feel like the whore I love to be.

I swing around past one of the scattered stages, where a few of my mares and one of my stallions are busily showing off their bodies or masturbating outright—to the early evening crowd’s delighted calls of encouragement—and pause a moment to glance over the little indicator lights on the fronts of each stage. The stallion has his set to green, meaning he’ll be perfectly happy to play with somepony in the audience once his hours are over. The rest are yellow, which is a shame, but I understand. Most of my little exhibitionists only want to show off and have fun in their own way, and I do everything to keep my stages safe for them.

I’m the only one to regularly use a violet light, meaning anypony and everypony should feel welcome to take a turn joining me during my acts. And I am in a mood to see how many stallions will jump on the chance—mares are usually a bit quicker to take advantage, but the masculine section of my audience has been growing bolder. It will have to wait, though. I duck into the back hall and, from there, to my office.

Just in time. There’s a knock on my door mere seconds after I shut the music out.

“Missus Bucket!” The bellowing voice is one of my two bouncers, and I smile to myself. Good old Heavy Hooves started as my bartender, but she was a lot happier seeing lust-drunk changelings out to a cab or throwing her weight around when ponies with a fetish for breaking rules got too rowdy. For whatever reason, she’s also taken to being my secretary, so I assume she’s here to announce my current appointment.

“Yes, Miss Hooves?”

“Your job interview’s here!”

Excellent. Everything is going to plan today. “Send... them in, please.” I frown to myself. Who was I supposed to be interviewing, again? I take a seat at my desk and glance over my papers, but before I can find the appointment, the door creaks open. I lift my head and smile.

“Come in. Please! It’s nice to meet you.”

The pony in the doorway gulps. She’s the most adorable thing, a pegasus with a coat the same bluish-white as the haze between high-level clouds on a sunny day and a lovely pale-blue mane. Her smallish frame is built light but sturdy, a perfect body for endurance flying—or showing off on the ground. If she weren’t shaking so badly or didn’t have her tail tucked between her legs, I would hire her on sight—pegasi are made for show, but typically prefer aerial displays over lewd ones. I would probably like the former too, if I had wings or the magic to fashion them; flying looks like fun. Ooh, but if I could play with a pony’s cock while flying...

I chuckle and shake my head clear. “I’m Cum Bucket, owner and manager,” I continue. The cute little pegasus freezes, blinking. I’d been surprised by the name, too, when Princess Celestia gave it to me, but with my tastes it made sense. She opens her mouth to say something, but then shuts it, swallows hard enough for me to see, and goes back to shaking. I give her an encouraging smile. “I understand you’re interested in working here. Please have a seat?”

She nods weakly. As she turns to sit down across from me, I glance at her flank. She’s got a lovely shape to her arse—but no cutie mark.

“You look just blown in from the North Side,” I say, holding my right forehoof out across the desk. A euphemism for uploading; Manehattan has no North Side. Of course, if she’s uploaded recently enough, she might not know that. The freshest and most disoriented ponies from Earth always just agree. And, like her, they always try to shake hooves rather than tap, but I stay quiet. The game is to see how long it takes them to figure out you know.

“Yes,” she manages to say. Her voice is light and lovely as her body, but her speech takes a lot of stammering and she keeps avoiding direct eye contact. My smile becomes increasingly difficult to keep up.

“Relax, honey. All I’m going to do is ask you a few simple questions, have a look at you, and then if it’s okay, you can start work as soon as you’re ready.” Best to refrain from mentioning, until she’s calmer, that having a look means I’m perfectly happy to either walk her through a trial show or straight up bang her in my office. She has to have read or heard from Hooves that the interview includes an audition, though.

And I’m still willing to give her a shot. Laughing Water was almost as nervous when I interviewed her; ever since her fourth show, I’ve had to restrict her to offering her tongue only to mares who are already touching themselves. I swear that filly loves pussy almost as much as I love dick, and only a few lingering human taboos had been holding her back.

“Okay.” The pegasus doesn’t sound convinced. I decide to start easy.

“So, sweetie, how did you hear about Chateau Voyeur and our open positions?” Her answer was the same as all the others, of course.

“I heard a few ponies talking.” Her stammer improves a little, along with my smile. “And I saw the Always Hiring sign.”

I nod. “And what position are you interested in? Janitorial? Stage?” Smirking, I add, “Top, bottom, missionary?”

Pink heat blossoms across the mare’s pretty little muzzle, but it fades quickly as she starts to stammer and tremble again, and this time she can’t get a word out. Either she’s too embarrassed by my joke, or she’s too ashamed to admit she’s here for the stage. I frown. Cute as she is, I’m only giving her one more question.

“Okay. It’s okay. We can move on.” She nods, her ears drooping. Maybe she recognizes as I do that she’s probably not the best fit here. “Just one more question. Honey, why are you here?”

“I…” That’s all she can say, over and over, before she lets out a sob and buries her muzzle in her forelegs on my desk.

Oh, crap.

“Honey—”

“I have a dick, okay!” she blurts. She sobs again and relapses into stammering. Damn it, that would be so hot if she weren’t crying. “I’m some kind of disgusting cartoon porn character and this is all the work I’m good for and—”

I slam a hoof on the desk with a loud bang, startling her out of her seat and nearly to the ceiling before her wings settle. And… if only her muzzle weren’t streaked with tears, what a view. She has the whole package, neatly tucked away in a small, tight sheath that is just a touch darker in color than the coat around it, almost like a little hint of a storm cloud. And… huh, teats too. I hadn’t expected that with a dick.

She flutters to the floor, and my tunnel-vision evaporates. Right, I was going to say something. My head is full of dicks, so I can only hope my mouth does something intelligent. Dear Celestia, I wish it were the other way around...

“No, honey. I’m a porn character, if anypony ever was.” Nice save, mouth.

“But I—”

“My name is Cum Bucket.” I roll my eyes, but bring back my indoors voice after a deep breath. “My special talent is sucking ponies’ dicks, honey. That’s no innocent rod on my flank; the Princess literally created me for sex, and I got my cutie mark after the pony who wasn’t my stallion yet walked in on me having fun and offered me what I’d been daydreaming about. And you know what?”

She’s trembling again. I pause my low-key rant.

“Sit down, honey. I’m not going to bite unless you ask.” After a moment, she does, and I continue. “You can be like me, if you want to. But even I don’t have to be. As much as I want to tease you out of that sheath and get my mouth real familiar with every last inch of you—” She cringes. Oops.

“That is to say, as much as I want to practice my unique talent ‘til I have to have somepony carry you home—” Another cringe. Oops.

“Honey, what I’m trying to say besides how attractive you are is that just because my talent is sucking dicks doesn’t mean I can’t do anything else.” No cringe. Better. I let myself relax a little. “I own and run this club, too. And I can cook and talk well enough to get by. I could even stop sucking dicks, if I really wanted to.” I giggle. “Not like that’s ever going to happen. But sweetie, as much as I’d love to have a pony like you here—personally, of course, and because there’s no other pink business in the Twilight that has a mare like you—tell me about you. What do you want?”

“I…” She stops again, but I wait. I need to get paperwork done when this is over, but it’s only to give my colts and fillies the same hours as last week.

“I just… I just want to live a normal life.” She sniffles. “I just want to work my eight hours a day to eat and pay bills, settle down with a nice stallion, and raise a foal or two.” She lets out half a sob as her head slumps back onto the desk. “And I can’t.”

“What?” How in Equestria does a pony fail to live such a simplistic dream? I suppose I have no room to talk about simple goals, considering mine is to suck all dicks at least once and then do it all over again, but I just don’t understand. “Why can’t you do that?”

She looks up at me like I’m an idiot. “Because of this—this—this stupid, stupid dick! Don’t you get it?!”

“I don’t think I do.” In what world is that a problem? All I see coming from it is a mare I can really enjoy pleasuring senseless. And maybe one who can make a lot of other ponies happy too, because damn, that body… “Honey, maybe you should start from the start.”

“I…” She doesn’t pause as long, this time. “You must not be from Brazil.”

“That sounds like another server.” I nod. “There’s no pony reference I can make of it; it’s on Earth?”

She blinks at me. Then she gives me that look again. It’s not my fault I never studied Earth except to learn about the uninteresting dicks of their males…

“Earth. Yes.” She props herself up with her hooves on the desk and finally lifts her head. “How can you speak flawless Portuguese and not know where Brazil is?”

“The Princess, probably.” I shrug. “You speak Equestrian with the most beautiful accent, so far as I hear.” I don’t add that her accent is straight-up sexy. Stars, if I could get her in my mouth…

“Well, Brazil is not where you want to live if you have a dick.” She stumbles over a few words before she becomes coherent again. “I mean, it’s bad if you have a dick and don’t want to be a colt.”

“Wait.” I hold up my hoof. “You mean your foals are born with genitals? That’s…” Oh Celestia, now the image won’t be dislodged from my head. I swallow back vomit. “That’s horrible! What are they even for when you’re little?!”

“Making you miserable.” The bitter edge to her tone says it’s not a joke. Dear Luna, no wonder she’s so upset. “You’re not another pony, are you?”

“Of course I’m a pony.” Wait, no, she can see that; she probably means that thing humans are when they haven’t yet uploaded into the ponies they are. Princess Celestia’s censorship has never been applied evenly, and it doesn’t always make perfect sense. “I mean, no. I’ve never lived anywhere but here in Manehattan. Are you telling me that on Earth, you don’t get to grow a dick or a pussy during puberty?”

She groans. “I wish, so long as I got to choose. But no. If you’re a mare like me you live on the streets, and if it rains or gets cold you beg at ponies’ doors to let them fuck you so you can be inside, and you do it over and over until the rain or the cold spell ends. If you’re lucky you’ll get food, or a little money to buy food—”

“Buy food?” A picture of her world is forming in my head, one that makes no sense. She rubs her forehead with her hoof, and I back off. “Nevermind. What if you aren’t lucky?”

“You run very fast or you’re beaten to death. I…” She stops and swallows something. Fresh tears bead in her eyes. “I have good legs.”

Something in the back of my mind tries to make an innuendo out of that. The rest of me stares, vaguely aware that my mouth has fallen open.

She smiles faintly. “Then the Equestria Centers came. The Protestants said they were suicide. The Catholics said otherwise, probably because the Protestants said they were.”

“The who said?” This is all getting difficult to keep track of. Half the things she says I don’t know anything about, except the Equestria Experience Centers the Princess set up all over the place on Earth.

“They’re the two biggest churches in Brazil. They always fight with each other.” She shrugs. Then her expression darkens, and she starts to stammer again. “One night, one of the stallions I pleasured to stay warm decided I had hurt his manliness and he was going to kill me. I was ready for it and ran, but in the dark I caught my leg on something and it broke. He started catching up, but there was an Equestria Center right there. I just wanted out. I was dead anyway…”

She sighs. “Now I’m here. It doesn’t look much better, but at least the weather is good and ponies don’t try to kill me.”

“I… I…” Words fail. “Honey!” I spring over my desk and into the pegasus’s seat, wrapping her in a tight hug and hiding my tears in her mane. She tenses up. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!”

It takes a while and a few good sobs to notice, but damn it, she even smells nice, if a touch unwashed. She probably hadn’t had a bath in days before cleaning up for this interview—

Wait, if she’s cleaned up, but she thinks this is like Earth without the stupid, stupid killing—

“Honey? Did—Did you—” The words fight me. In the end, I can’t ask. How could I? Instead, I pull out of the hug and ask, “How long have you been here?”

“A week,” she says.

What.

“A week, and nopony has told you how Manehattan works?” Her nod confirms it, and I groan. “Okay, sweetie, this is nothing like Brazil. Let me tell you a couple of things. Ponies don’t buy food; the Princess pays vendors for whatever we pick. And we don’t really need to eat, so I haven’t had anything but dick in a fortnight. You probably even have a room! Where were you when you first woke up as a pony?”

“I…” She looks at me like a foal who’s just been told age isn’t real. “I have a room?”

“Yes!” I start around my desk, back to my seat. Why am I frustrated with her now? I sit down, take a deep breath, and let it out with a sigh. “Yes, sweetie. You have a room, and you probably woke up there. Do you remember?”

She lowers her head again. “I thought it was somepony else’s.”

I can’t stop the sob that works its way up my throat, and it comes out choked. How does anypony live with such deprivation? As little as I need one, even I have a room to rest and recuperate, clop myself to sleep after a great evening—though I don’t really need sleep, and touching myself is more fun with ponies watching—or suck a dick dry that belongs to my husband or a pony who’s shy about being watched.

What she’s said does make sense in its own context, but how does it all even happen? What is so fundamentally wrong with Earth that ponies can live so poorly as to assume they don’t belong in whatever bed they wake in? Sweet Celestia, I had thought humans needing locks on their doors was messed up.

I push my business card across the desk.

“Here, honey.” I sniff. Not yet, damn it, I just got done crying. “Take my card. The club’s address is on the front, mine’s on the back. Go back to my place and take care of yourself however you need, for tonight; Princess knows I don’t use it much anyway. The bath’s down the hall from there. I’ll be along in a few hours if you need a talk, a hug, or a quickie, and my honey cake might be home, but I promise he’ll treat you like a gentlecolt should.” Though I will be annoyed if that gets him under her tail before me.

“Does that mean…” Her question trails off. I shake my head.

“No, sweetie. I’d hire you right away if I thought you’d be happy showing off what you’ve got to everypony who walks through my doors, because I like what I see and I know for a fact I’d not be the only one.” She blushes and looks further away than usual. “And don’t be like that. If you said the word, I’d be all over you, and the demand for mares of your type is huge.”

“That’s just a fetish,” she mumbles. “Ponies just want the porn. Nopony wants me, especially not stallions, or good jobs.”

I stare at her. My mouth opens for a word, but I don’t have one for it. Sure, a few rare ponies don’t want any romance with their sex—I should know, my thing with my stallion works mostly because he’s kept his promise to treat me more like a fleshlight than a mare. But in what mad world does nopony even want their partner around?

Oh, right.

“Honey. You’re not on Earth anymore. I…” I hesitate. Then, rising to head around the desk again, I continue. She stands as I do, and I catch her swallowing her nerves. “I get the feeling I don’t know enough about what Brazil is like, but I can tell you about Manehattan. Even ponies like me who want sex more than anything will just as soon talk and hug as fuck you.”

I demonstrate; she doesn’t resist the embrace, or stiffen quite as much as last time. “You don’t even need a job if you don’t want one, and there’s not one that would turn you down if you’d be happy doing it. You wouldn’t be here with the friends you have if the Princess thought you were the right pony for one of those Scarcity servers, sweetie.” There was the word. I’d heard about pieces of Equestria that have a scarcity mode turned on, making resources like food and shelter limited and more difficult to get; supposedly they’re for ponies who genuinely want to struggle for the basics of living. I’ve never seen the point to them, but to each their own.

“What friends?” Her tone is bitter again. Okay, that can’t be right. I release her and go all the way back to the basics.

“Honey, when a pony first wakes up in Manehattan, they get a personal welcome from the Princess, and after that they’ll have a few ponies waiting for them to throw a party, and to try to make friends with the new neighbor if they didn’t know you already—”

A look of realization crosses her face, and she hangs her head where she stands.

“Sweetie? What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I ran away,” she mumbles. “I got out of the room, saw a bunch of ponies coming down the hallway, and ran. They really weren’t going to hurt me, were they?”

I grit my teeth for a moment. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t read much about Earth, and maybe lives like this are why most former humans I’ve talked to haven’t had a lot to say about their past lives. It would explain why some have reacted with skepticism to my openness and the carefree nature of Manehattan.

“No, and they’re probably confused why you ran. Ponies around here don’t think like that, honey. If I walk up to a pony, it’s to talk or ask for—”

“I get it!” she snaps. I startle—ponies don’t normally react quite like that—and step back as she retreats to her usual nervous stammer and backs towards the door. “I mean, maybe I should just go. Thank you for…” She hesitates. I shake my head again.

“A little change in plans,” I say. This mare is in desperate need of straightening out. Or maybe she just needs a few good blowjobs; ponies always relax once they’ve been in my mouth. That will have to wait for a better mood. “Instead of my place, you’re going back to meet your friends. I had no idea you skipped that.”

She hangs her head. “But isn’t it just as well? It’s not like they’ll still want to know me when they find out—when they see I’m—”

Now she’s tearing up again. This is just too messed up. I trot out the big guns.

“Honey, look. Normally I don’t go around telling everypony, but it’s pretty obvious once you understand that the Princess plans everything. Those ponies waiting for you right now were literally made with you in mind.” Fresh ponies usually get existential over that, but it’s better than this. “They’re their own ponies too, but I guarantee they’ll be there for you, and maybe even fall for you.”

Come to think of Princess Celestia and her plans, though, it’s a real pity. This mare probably isn’t keeping her dick. If nothing else made it obvious, it was the teats and her desire for foals; a foal can’t nurse if the occasional involuntary pleasure of it puts a dick in the way, and that’s not how the Princess works. At least, not in Manehattan.

Something clicks. Her broad wings flare out angrily, toppling a stack of file folders as expression turns to seething outrage. I immediately regret everything.

“Celestia planned this? Why?” she cries. “I thought it was just another mistake! Why would she do this to me?” Tears spill down the little pegasus’s muzzle again, and I stay silent while she rants. I really should have seen that one coming, but my special talent isn’t enlightening conversation.

Her yelling and occasional stomping give way to increasing incoherence, and at last to sobs. That’s when I step back in, pulling her into another hug and letting her cry in my hair.

“I don’t know, honey. I don’t know what she wants you to learn. It’s hard to tell when her method isn’t nice.” I give her a little squeeze, and she hiccups. Not giggling as I let go takes a moment’s struggle. It’s so adorable, and not for the first time, I wish she weren’t crying. “Just trust that she knows what she’s doing. Go back to your friends, make your life yours, and do what you need for yourself.” I glance around at the papers she spilt and smile wryly. “I’ve got some cleaning up to do.”

She smiles too, sheepishly, as she backs out the door. “Sorry…”

“Go on.” I wave her off. “Your own work is just as important.”

As she leaves and the door shuts behind her, I turn back to my work with a sigh. After a minute, and with half the papers sorted back into their folders, I stop and smack my forehead. I didn’t even get her name! Now I’ll never learn what her dick tastes like.

But… if the Princess guided her to me in such a state, maybe that wasn’t the important part. And if it wasn’t about what I wanted, I can only hope she got what she needed.