"Okay. There has to be a logical explanation for all this." Twilight looked between Belay and Dustin. They were all standing in the bridge area within Kiera.

Dustin and Belay looked most comfortable and relaxed of the ponies present. Each had to stop flashing the other knowing grins while awaiting Princess Twilight Sparkle's diagnosis.

Standing to one side, Night Light and Princess Luna were chatting back and forth, with Kiera interjecting now and again. Before the pair, a large display showed a hologram of the solar system Equus was in.

Princess Celestia was watching over Dustin and Belay with more smiles than Twilight wore; Twilight was almost frowning at the conundrum.

"The order of operations was that I removed all the magic from you in the same style as the world would put it in, but backwards." Twilight tapped her jaw with one hoof, deep in thought. "Then the fields of anti-magic dropped and you ran. Ambient magic should have taken much longer to reintegrate into your bodies."

Dustin's attention snapped away at Twilight's confused statement. "Uh, could it be that magic has been in us, and returns easier?"

Twilight shook her head. "That could be right, except I accounted for that with the extraction process. Your bodies were fully cleansed of all magic."

Less distracted thanks to Dustin no longer muttering, "I've got a penis," over and over, Belay tilted her head and thought on the matter. Then inspiration struck. "Wait a second. Magic is like a field, right? But also has fluid-like properties?"

Unsure where Belay was going with the question, Twilight nodded. "At its base quality, magic is a field. But taken in an environment, it has many liquid properties." She froze, her eyes widening as she stared at Belay.

At the same time, Twilight and Belay both laughed and exclaimed, "Cavitation bubble!"

As Belay and Twilight turned to the second set of control panels, science practically bubbling in the air around the pair, Dustin turned to Princess Celestia. "Is Princess Twilight Sparkle always like this?" He gestured at the pair in question with one hoof, and to his surprise the wing on that side extended as well.

"Twilight Sparkle? Only when she is working on a tough problem." Smiling at her former student, Princess Celestia turned her attention fully to Dustin. "This will take them some time. Would you like to retire for some tea?"

Heaving out a relieved sigh, Dustin turned to look at the column of titanium alloy at the back of the room. "Kiera, you don't mind if I leave this in Princess Twilight and Belay's capable hands—hooves?" He cocked a bit of a roguish grin at the slip of ponyist words.

"And leave me with a pair of engineers talking concepts I can barely understand, as well as a pair of admirers who would have me dusting off in seconds if they realized I would say yes? Oh, sure!" Sarcasm weighed down Kiera's words almost enough to make them seem complete hyperbole. "In fact, let me just slip out of my shell and join you."

Dustin stopped his planned acceptance of Princess Celestia's invite. He looked at Kiera's shell and a little worry-frown touched his mouth. "Kiera, are you alright?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. My conditioning is slipping, and I know my nutrients keep slipping out of tolerances. I thought if we could leave it would all go back to normal, but part of me was hoping to stay, too. There is something about the raw enthusiasm of these ponies that is missing back in Fed space." Kiera's voice was lowered, but she noticed Princess Celestia's ears twitch toward the speakers she had used. "I like it here, a lot, but for the first time in my life I find myself envying my brawns' ability to leave and walk around."

"Kiera…" Dustin walked forward, leaned against Kiera's column with his forehead and felt tears in his eyes. "If you could leave, if I had to do something to facilitate that, I would in a heartbeat. Let's go back to Fed, tell them to deal with me being a winged, colorful pony, and work out a contract to get you one of those remote bodies."

Kiera gasped. "No."

The word hung heavy between Dustin and Kiera.

"Not only no, fardles no. I don't care how fancy those Moto-Prosthetics things are, it would take half your lifetime to work enough of a contract to get one." Kiera felt her nutrients turn sour, a sensation that was frequently caused by what she would have called tears if she could still cry.

Kiera couldn't feel Dustin hugging her column, but she could see him, hear his soft sobs, and even chemically taste his presence. "Belay," Kiera said, but only to Belay. "Could you please come and hug Dustin for me."

Belay's ears turned, despite her not needing them to hear Kiera. "Hold on a second, Twilight." She turned to look for Dustin, and was already moving. "What's wrong, Kiera?" she subvocalized, keeping her words just for Kiera.

Raging at herself—for pushing Dustin to his present state—Kiera couldn't respond. She watched as first Belay, then Princess Celestia pulled Dustin into a hug. Her nutrients were see-sawing, and she knew she needed to do something to get herself under control. Setting one of her basic AI to regulate her nutrients, Kiera administered a sedative to herself.

Dustin didn't even see who it was hugging him. Legs, wings, and even some blue magic gave him gentle but firm squeezes. "Kiera, I'm sorry." His subvocalization went without reply. "Please don't—"

"Kiera needed some time to calm down. She programmed a mild sedative." The voice was more stilted than Kiera's, though it came through the implant in Dustin's skull. It was one of the AI, no one else could have access to that comms.

Rallying his faculties, Dustin opened his mouth. "P-Princess?"

"Yes?" Celestia held the foreign pony just as tenderly as she would one of her own ponies.

"Can we have some t-tea now?" Dustin barely got the words out, the strain of saying them too much. He was meant to support Kiera, to help her get through their missions. He closed his own eyes, trying to forget what the AI had told him.

"Dust?" Kiera's voice was soft, hardly the bold and sure tones she normally used. "Dustin? You're almost awake. I want to apologize. I shouldn't have put you through that."

Warm, cozy, and with somepony pressed against his back, Dustin was slowly pulling his mind from sleep. He couldn't remember drinking the tea with Celestia, but there was a sense of tea still in his mouth, like it was the last thing he had drunk.

She had drugged him. He hadn't been as sensible as Kiera, or had he? "Kiera? You're still there, right?"

"Like I'd leave you behind and zoom back to Fed space." Kiera did a systems check on her engines, and let them give a puff of thrust—it was the closest to a sigh she could get. "Besides, nowhere else has ever made me want to leave my shell this much before. I don't know if I can leave, Dust."

"I am pretty sure it was a one-way trip, Ki. This is morbid talk." Moving ever so slightly, Dustin tried to work out who was in bed with him without looking down and seeing what color the legs were around his shoulders.

Just as Dustin started to get an idea it was Night Light, the stallion lowered one of his hooves to stroke at Dustin's chest. Dustin felt a shiver of heat run through him. His mind pulled free of the last vestiges of sleep, and he felt arousal trying to get his attention.

"How are you feeling now?" Pressing his muzzle into the ruff of fur that was Dustin's mane, Night inhaled the other stallion's scent while his hoof kept slowly stroking down Dustin's front.

More than anything, Dustin wanted to just melt into the attention Night was paying him. His body seemed putty in the other stallion's hooves. "I was just talking with Kiera. She's awake." The massage stopped, and Dustin was both thankful for Night's sensitivity and felt like his mind was betraying his body's needs. "Kiera, what should we do?"

"'Should'? Dustin, we should do exactly what you suggested. But we aren't." Kiera inhaled—cycled her engines to take in atmosphere—and then breathed out with a blast of fire behind her. She didn't need to burn fuel so wastefully, but it was a good way to relax. "We let Princess Twilight and Belay work on their project, and if they manage to turn you human again for longer than five seconds we skedaddle out of here to tell Fed about this place."

"Then we come back?" Dustin tilted his head back and got a kiss on the cheek for his trouble. "Could we come back? It would be a prescribed planet."

"Of course we come back, but not until after I have talked with someone about my nutrients and… desires." It wasn't hard for Kiera to interpret the sounds coming through Dustin's mic, she could tell that there was another pony with Dustin, and that they were close. "It's what the regs would allow, mostly. We would have to sneak back, of course."

"Kiera, what does Belay think?" Dustin didn't hesitate in offering his neck for Night to nuzzle against, being male again seemed to have turned around his worries about close contact.

"Belay is in love, Dust. Can't you see how hard she has fallen for the Princess?" Kiera let out another sigh—she was now pulsing her jets regularly, counting out factors in the back of her mind as she did. "And besides, you're technically my brawn. Belay is just a crew-member."

"She almost passed those tests and you know it. She is as much a brawn as I am." Dustin had to lift his voice from the subvocalization he had been using. "Night, I need a moment to finish talking with Kiera."

"Do you want me to leave?" Night was as close as one stallion could be to another and not be sexually engaged. With his body pressed firmly against Dustin's, and his shaft hard and sandwiched between them.

"Dust, don't you dare use me as an excuse. I'll keep doing a full systems check to find out why my nutrients are so badly balanced, and you have some fun. Even with one of my AI driving it, things had been badly tuned." Kiera's tone implied as much finality as she could. She injected a little blast of static, and turned off the comms line.

"Sorry, Night. She—Kiera's like a sister to me. Maybe closer." Dustin wanted to forget his problems for a few moments, and with the promise Night Light made with his body, Dustin had a pretty good idea of a way to do just that. "Some brawns fall in love with their partners, others keep it strictly friendship."

"But you two found something else. I can understand that. What's a remote body?" Realizing he had Dustin's full attention, Night Light went back to stroking and teasing his special friend.

"What?!" Dustin almost pulled out of Night's grip. "When did you hear about one of those?"

"You talk in your sleep, Dusty." Pulling Dustin back down to the bed, Night kissed Dustin's neck until he let out a sigh and relaxed. "So when you say you have to talk to Kiera, and it is important, I believe you. Family is always important." He licked up from Dustin's jaw to his ear, and then nibbled on said ear.

Dustin had had enough foreplay. Using his hooves, he scooted forward a little. His mind was still thinking "mare" despite how fully his subconscious had welcomed the return to maleness, so rather than consider taking Night, he instead offered himself.

"You foalish stallion. You know the drill." Night's horn lit up as he cast a simple spell no adult unicorn should be without: prodigious lubrication. His hips twitched and pushed, and thanks to the spell Night Light took Dustin again.

Letting his higher thoughts be distracted in the hormones of lust, Dustin felt those strange new additions to his body start to wave: his wings flapping weakly and inexpertly. Each thrust brought Night Light deeper, and when Night began rubbing Dustin's chest again, he quickly lost himself further.

The world faded, all of life's problems narrowed down and seemed nothing. Everything that Dustin needed to focus on was Night Light's body moving inside his own. He groaned and puffed, and his own shaft was rock hard and jutting out under his belly.

A hoof took hold of his member, and Dustin almost squealed for joy. Each slow, teasing stroke on his penis belied the hammering Dustin's rear was getting, but neither was an island unto itself; the pleasure spread and mingled, and all too soon Dustin lost any hope of keeping back the hurricane of pleasure.

Kiera had lied, a little. She listened to Dustin's pleasure, tracked his body's vitals, and smiled to herself when she heard and sensed his peak. He hadn't told her to shut down the link, so according to rules and regs she was fine—or, so she told herself.

An odd feedback caused Kiera to run more diagnostics. It seemed her problems would be solved soon either way: from what she could tell, her shell was failing. Kiera wouldn't even survive the trip back to Fed central—where the only medical services existed that could correct problems with shells—for repairs.

Author's Note

Twilight/Belay: Kiera doesn't serve much purpose as a ship anymore, really. Perhaps a phylactery can be made for her? We know a certain Bolo who would gladly share some designs...

"But she will be leaving with Dustin and Belay soon. They will need her to fly the ship." Twilight turned to Belay. "Right?"

"Yeah. The ship can't be flown manually; a shellperson is just too heavily integrated these days. If she were, somehow, removed from the ship..." Belay heaved a sigh. "It wouldn't be a ship anymore."

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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