As was often the case, it was a rather pleasant afternoon in Vanhoover. While many were settling in for dinner, a certain stallion was walking through the building that was starting to become a second workplace for him.

Verdant gave a roll of his shoulders as he stepped into the lab. “Alright, Doctor. Let’s get me sent into a stomach already. That’ll bring the tally up to four.”

“That’s not gonna friggin’ happen this time, Verdant!” High Gear exclaimed from behind her console. “I have been working on every last detail to work things out this time around! I swear to Faust, you’re going to Baltimare today!”

“I’ve heard that tune before, Doctor,” Verdant gave a dismissive roll of his eyes as he stepped onto the teleporter. “Can we try to wrap things up quickly? I’ve got plans this weekend with Beans.”

“Shut it!” Gear gritted her teeth before flipping a variety of switches. “Say, what happened to that magician pony you two were dating?”

“Oh, Hocus Pocus?” Verdant asked in reply. “We came to the decision that there wasn’t really much between us and a friend of hers out of town needed help, so we broke things off.

“Sorry to hear that,” Gear replied, her tone making clear she was only half paying attention as she flipped the last of the switches and pulled a lever. “Now, here we go!”

The teleporter beneath Verdant’s feet started to light up and the shamrock stallion felt a slight tingle in his fur.

A moment before Verdant could be teleported away, all the lights in the room changed from white to a deep crimson and a klaxon rang out.

When the earth pony vanished, the bespectacled blue mare rushed out from behind the console and towards the door, pausing only to grab a small plastic disk and stuff it into her jacket. “What the Tartarus is going on?!”

“Emergency alert! Priority One!” An alarmed and distressed mare’s voice came through the building’s PA system. “Everyone, evacuate the building now and run from the building as fast as you can! Repeat, evacuate and run, now!”

High Gear bolted into the stairways, where she was glad to see Pixel Flash by her side as they and several other ponies sprinted through the building.

The institute’s staff managed to make it outside and immediately rushed away from their workplace as quickly as their hooves could carry them.

By the time High Gear and Pixel Flash managed to make it one hundred and fifty feet away, a thunderous boom rang out. The scientists were sent flying off their hooves as a shockwave struck and bowled them over.

“Pix, you okay?!” the light-blue mare huffed as she rushed to her beloved’s side.

“Little sore, but nothing serious,” Pix offered her a small smile before looking over her shoulder towards the building. “Holy crap, what happened?!”

Turning her attention to the institute, High Gear gasped at the sight before her. The building’s windows were all shattered and massive cracks ran throughout the entire building. Bits of furniture and equipment were scattered along the ground or smashed to pieces.

“Oh dear Faust…” Her legs trembled as she looked at her wrecked workplace.

“Gear, did you get the disk?” Pixel Flash whispered into her ear, cautious to make sure nopony heard her.

“Yeah, I did,” Gear quietly replied before she reached into her jacket and pulled out a black three and a half inch floppy disk. On the disk’s label was ‘B-01’ written in gold marker. “Thankfully, it looks like she’s okay.”

“Oh Faust almighty…” another scientist said as she looked over the wreckage. She was a lean yet muscular purple mare with a wild and spiky copper-colored mane and tail. Upon her flank was a battery with a single yellow lightning bolt on it. “This is all my fault… I just wanted to make a new power source…”

“Hey, you guys!” a voice from above drew the attention of all the scientists. High Gear recognized her as one of the local weather ponies, Sandstorm. “What the Tartarus just happened?! I was just flying around the city when a shockwave hit, now pretty much all the buildings are wrecked!”

High Gear could only groan before she and Pixel Flash trotted over to a pink coated unicorn with a messy blue mane. Upon her flank was the image of a broadcast tower with a rainbow of different colored waves coming from the top. “Hey, Broadcast Signal? We need a favor.”

“You mean before or after I call Canterlot to alert them to the emergency we just caused?” the pink mare responded as she slowly turned her dark violet eyes to High Gear’s.

“After,” Gear replied before sighing. “Knowing his luck, Verdant’s in a stomach, so he should be safe until Double Helix can find him.”

“Wait, what?”

***

When Verdant reappeared, he found that he was atop a rack in the incredibly clean looking kitchen of a restaurant.

Looking down from the edge of the counter, he spotted several unicorns and griffons that were quickly going about cooking up fresh dishes. Taking a quick sniff, his nose was struck by a rather strange aroma. He doubted it was the seasonings the staff were using, so he guessed it was due to an unfamiliar meat. The shamrock stallion had only really been familiar with the smell of cooked chicken, despite having such a bird as a pet.

The shrunken pony was rather transfixed on the chefs working on their orders. While he liked to cook his own food and considered cooking a fun hobby, he knew without a doubt that the skill of these chefs was something far beyond him. The speed at which the griffon chefs moved their talons was utterly stunning to him.

“HEY, STRATADON FLAMBÉ FOR TABLE EIGHT! A griffon hen's voice rang out an instant before she slammed a ticket onto the rack. The force of the ticket rattled the rack with enough force to send Verdant tumbling downward.

His fall was interrupted when he landed on something warm and crusty with a firm softness underneath. Before he could figure out where he was, he saw a white coated hen in a chef’s uniform with a frying pan looking over him. The bright kitchen lights shined off her obsidian beak.

As Verdant tried to pull himself out of wherever he’d landed, the hen used a pair of tongs to pull a large, juicy slab of grilled meat from the frying pan. It seemed the hen’s dark brown eyes were so focused on the meat that she didn’t see the little green speck she was about to drop the meat onto.

Just as she started to lower the juicy slab, Verdant looked down and saw that what he was on was a piece of toasted bread. Realizing where he was, he tried to flee. Unfortunately for him, the surface of the bread had countless gaps whose sole purpose seemed to be tripping him up. In no time at all, the massive chunk of meat had slammed him down into the bread.

At least there’s plenty of air pockets in the bread. Verdant thought with a sigh of resignation, convinced that there was no point in trying to escape his current predicament. I wonder how different a griffon’s insides will be from a pony’s insides.

“ORDER UP! STRATADON STEAK ON SOURDOUGH FOR TABLE ELEVEN!”

***

“Order up!” The chef known as Léonie Eule called out as she rang a bell. “Stratadon steak on sourdough for table eleven!”

“Echo!” a unicorn mare replied as she picked up the fresh sandwich and left the kitchen. With the ease of a practiced waitress, the blue coated mare reached a table that seated only one customer, a somewhat tired looking griffon hen with a light brown coat and white feathers on her head with pale heliotrope accents. “Your sandwich, ma’am.”

“Thanks,” the griffon blinked her eyes, the feature also surrounded by feathers that matched her heliotrope accents.

The griffon, Gilda, took a deep breath and savoured the scent of the perfectly cooked and seasoned meat. It was a treat she thought she deserved after making a difficult deal to have her scones sold as imported goods, on top of the familiar discomforts that signaled her body would soon be pushing an egg out, regardless of her feelings on the matter.

Because she’d had to wait until the following day to return to Griffonstone thanks to train maintenance, she had decided to explore the Equestrian city of Baltimare. After a few hours, she’d found a place known as the Carnivore’s Cavern, a restaurant that specialized in various meat based dishes. It was the perfect place for a griffon that wanted to spoil herself before she had to endure a long trip home.

Licking her beak, she picked up the sandwich. Between the two pieces of sourdough bread was a succulent piece of meat from a stratadon, a type of draconic creature that was somewhat on the rarer side. This led to their meat being quite costly, to say the least. Still, with how much she had made, she knew she could handle this pricey treat.

Taking one last deep inhale to take in the scent, the hen opened her beak wide and chomped down onto the sandwich.

Oh dear ancestors, this is the greatest piece of meat I’ve had in my life! Gilda’s mind exclaimed as she rolled the food around inside her beak. The meat was exceptionally tender and juicy. While Gilda was no expert in meat seasonings, she would’ve sworn she detected the faint taste of peas.

Regardless, the hen was delighted by the taste and texture the sandwich provided. She practically felt the meat melt as she used her tongue to move it all around her beak. She felt her hind legs twitch from the pleasure the sandwich gave her before she swallowed.

***

From the intense rocking and the pressure from above and below, Verdant knew that the sandwich he was inside of had been picked up by a very hungry customer. He didn’t bother to move until he felt something that grazed the very ends of his tail.

With a flick that tossed the chunk of sandwich like a catapult, Verdant was able to get a gander of the living chamber he was trapped inside. Instead of a toothy mouth like he was used to, he saw the inside of a griffon’s massive beak.

Well, at least this should be educational. Verdant barely had time to think as he was tossed about the saliva drenched cavern.

In the brief times between Gilda’s gargantuan tongue pushing her meal about and when he wasn’t being slammed into the beak’s walls, the stallion could see the bread turning to mush from both the tongue’s movements and her saliva soaking into it while the meat remained somewhat firmer.

The griffon let out a moan of delight before the tongue rose up and slid Verdant and the food towards the back of her throat. Knowing her uvula was too high to reach in any way, Verdant simply laid back against the tongue’s slick and bumpy surface before he was swallowed down.

He found his trip down her esophagus to be surprisingly gentle as he was practically massaged down Gilda’s throat. Her heartbeat seemed to be racing with excitement as the shamrock stallion and stratadon steak sandwich both splashed into her stomach.

“Well, at least this brings the total I need for my sandwich down to six,” Verdant muttered to himself as he paddled towards a far side of her stomach to avoid being hit by any more of the meal.

Just as he reached the far wall, a chunk of the mush that was meat and bread splashed down behind him, making a wave that slammed his face into the fleshy wall.

“Aww, dammit!” Verdant exclaimed as he rubbed his nose, seeing a small bit of his blood dripping into the acid. “Hopefully High Gear or one of her friends finds me soon.”

***

“This is some bullshit!” a violet coated unicorn with a short, dark purple mane cursed as she marched through the rainy streets of Baltimare. Upon her flank was the image of a red and blue DNA strand with a series of two-toned gray bands connecting the two. On her right foreleg was one of High Gear’s tracking devices while an umbrella floated by her head in a scarlet aura.

“I go to take a Faust damned vacation to Baltimare for the first time in years, hoping to kick back on the beach and relax when I find out it’s raining today, then Broadcast Signal uses her freaky as all Tartarus telepathy to tell me to find High Gear’s little lab rat, oh and by the way, we wrecked all of Vanhoover, including your house!”

Helix took a breath to try to calm herself, but it did little to help with her building frustrations. Looking down at the tracker, she saw she was nearing the location where Verdant was and she could hopefully get things wrapped up and get back to relaxing before strangling Copper Top for her power experiment rendering pretty much every building in Vanhoover unsafe to stay in.

Following the directions on the screen, Helix descended a narrow set of stone stairs. At the bottom was a red neon sign that read ‘The Carnivore’s Cavern’.

Probably a place for griffons and such. Just as Double Helix reached the bottom of the stairs, an odd whirring sound reached her ears.

Quickly casting her eyes down at the detector, the screen had gone completely dark. She tried to flip some of the knobs and switches on the device, but nothing worked.

“Oh Faust dammit!” she angrily growled before giving the machine a quick shake. “The damn batteries just died on me!”

While Double Helix fumed, the restaurant’s door opened and a gamboge coated griffon hen with a swollen belly stepped outside. The angry unicorn was pulled from her cursing at the machine by the hen letting out a loud burp.

“Hey, move it, dweeb!” Gilda shot the scientist a glare as she drew closer. “Hen with egg coming through and you’re blockin’ the way.”

“Oh, sorry,” Double Helix somewhat embarrassedly said as she moved against the wall, giving Gilda the space she needed to ascend the steps.

After a few seconds, Gilda reached the top of the stairs and with her now having enough space, flared her wings and took off into the rainy skies.

“Stupid piece of crap,” Double Helix muttered before turning about and heading back up the stairs. “I’ll have to head back to the lab here to get a fresh set of batteries since Gear can’t just use double A’s like everypony else.

“Well,” she said as she reached the top of the stairs. “Hopefully Verdant’s having an alright time at least.”

***

“THIS...IS...THE WORST!” Verdant angrily exclaimed as he bounced around the griffon’s stomach. He was beginning to feel rather nauseous as the belly would rise and fall rapidly before quickly repeating the process. Judging by the movements, he assumed that the griffon that devoured him was in flight.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, when he wasn’t tossed into the air by Gilda’s movements, he was instead getting struck by either a wave of her stomach juices or chunks of her now digesting meal.

“COULD… YOU… PLEASE… STOP?!” The shamrock stallion screamed before a sudden shock shook everything around him, creating a great wave of acid and meat that slammed him into one of the walls of Gilda’s stomach.

“Urgh… dammit all…” Verdant groaned as he floated on his belly. “I hate flying.”

Thankfully for Verdant, the next set of movements from the griffon he was trapped inside of were much gentler. From what he could tell, after her landing, she had started to gently walk along.

While the stomach walls pulsated and the food was bubbling and dissolving, the waves of acid in Gilda’s belly were like a gentle wave pool to the shrunken stallion. Surprisingly to Verdant, he found himself starting to relax as he laid on his back and was moved along by the light waves. He could nearly fall asleep to the sound of Gilda’s heartbeat.

However, his thoughts of getting a nap were ended by him bumping into a soft, fleshy wall. Looking up, he saw that he had bumped into the valve that would lead deeper into the hen. Seemingly in response to the gentle, accidental nudging, the valve opened up and Verdant, along with a good deal of Gilda’s digestive juices and her sandwich were poured into a new organic chamber.

Verdant was rather surprised by the organ he found himself in. Rather than the usual intestine that he’d normally wind up in, it appeared to be a second stomach of sorts with a few notable differences.

The first thing that caught his eye was that the juices within the chamber held a large collection of jagged stones. The boulder sized pebbles were being pushed about by the movement of the rooms wall, which was much stronger than what Verdant had faced in her stomach.

“Oh! Now I remember!” Verdant exclaimed as he recalled something a book about taking care of birds had taught him. “This has got to be this griffon’s gizzard!”

The shamrock stallion realized the organic room was a type of second stomach that would hold stones and grit to help grind up foods to aid in the digestive process due to the fact griffons lacked the teeth to grind and mash food. This, along with the strong muscles, made the gizzard much more dangerous for the tiny pony.

“Guess I’ve got little choice if I want to get out of here.” The shamrock stallion sighed before he started to try to swim.

His strokes were careful and calculated as he tried to make his way past the jagged pebbles within the vast predatory bird. He was cautious even as the intestinal valve came into view.

After a few minutes, he’d managed to bypass the rocks being shifted about and reach the sealed valve.

Verdant wiped away the sweat and stomach juices as best he could before letting out a sigh of relief.

As he reached towards the valve to try to massage the orifice open, the entire center of gravity shifted. The tiny pony was tossed into one of the gizzard’s thick, muscular walls. In a brief instance, Verdant looked up just before one of the pebble chunks smacked him in the face.

“I’m stuck in a living submarine. A living submarine…” Verdant slurred before he fell onto his back in the acid and passed out.

***

Gilda let out a sigh of relief as she turned on the shower and felt her body being pelted by the steamy water. Standing on her hindlegs and spreading her wings, she groaned faintly as she allowed the water to completely soak her.

Before the hen could reach the hotel’s wrapped bar of soap however, she felt a heat coming from her loins. Casting her eyes down, she saw her belly was swollen with a firmness behind it and sighed.

Stupid heat. Gilda rolled her eyes before she moved her right foreleg down between her legs. I can tell the stupid egg’s almost completely shelled by now, so telling me to get laid isn’t gonna get the damn thing fertilized before I push it out.

After a few minutes to tend to her urges and clean herself off, Gilda flopped down onto the comfy bed, giving another soft sigh.

As she laid her head down against her pillow, she cast one last tired glance towards her swollen belly.

Laying an egg is worse than constipation. At least I’ll be able to get back to my family tomorrow. Gilda thought to herself as she drifted off to sleep.

***

Verdant groaned as he started to force his eyes open. He didn’t know how long he’d been out but as he came to, he saw that he was no longer in the griffon’s gizzard. Judging by the texture of the fleshy wall and the rather foul smell, he could reasonably assume he’d been carried off into her large intestine.

“Well, hopefully this means my trip’s almost over,” he muttered to himself, briefly rubbing his sore shoulders before he started to walk along the disgusting smelling tunnel. “Hopefully she’s still asleep so I can get out without much fuss.”

Several minutes passed for the shrunken stallion as he moved his way through the slumbering griffon’s bowels. Suddenly, the living world flipped for Verdant, slamming him into the intestinal wall.

“Urgh. Great,” Verdant said as he pried himself off the tunnel’s surface. “Well, hopefully this will lead to this griffon meeting up with High Gear or whoever soon.”

***

Gilda gave a tired stretch of her wings as she made her way out of bed. She’d woken up earlier than she’d hoped, so she had plenty of time to kill before her train was ready.

Due to the hotel’s continental breakfast lacking anything that looked appetizing, she decided the best way to waste her time was to take to the skies and get a bird’s eye view of the city.

After checking out of the hotel, she took in the early morning light and a deep breath of the salty sea air before she gave a mighty flap of her wings and launched into the air.

***

As Verdant reached the end of the hen’s bowels, he was greeted by a sight he’d never laid eyes on before. He saw the tunnel he was leaving connecting to another tunnel and an orifice that he assumed was the end of her urethra. At the very end was a large, sealed ring of flesh that was massive compared to him. He had reached the griffon’s cloaca.

“Right. Better not touch that part of her,” he muttered to himself as he carefully made his way down from her intestine. “After Applejack, I’ve had enough golden showers for a lifetime.”

Once he had landed in the cloaca, he turned his focus to the massive closed orifice and gave a small smile. Hopefully this means I’ll be getting out of here without any real mess.

Before he could take a step closer to the tight hole, a powerful force struck the stallion, sending him slamming into the ring of flesh. Verdant grunted as he tried to resist the g-forces. He could easily tell that the hen had once more taken to the skies.

After a few moments, the forces became much less intense and it felt as if she’d leveled out, leaving only the gentle bobbing of the griffon’s flight.

“Guess that unless High Gear hired a pegasus to find me, I’m gonna be in here a while longer,” Verdant complained before turning his attention back to the clenched orifice. “It’s probably safe to bet I’m pretty damn high up right now.”

The shrunken stallion shuddered as he recalled his times inside of Bea and Rainbow Dash as well as how terrifying it was for him when he was in freefall. Needless to say, he decided that it’d probably be best to get as far from the griffon’s exit as possible for the time being.

Turning back to the twin tunnels, he realized that the hen’s intestinal tract was rather high up and would be difficult to get back up to. It was then he turned his attention towards her reproductive tract.

“Well, guess I don’t have many options if I don’t want to get farted out,” Verdant muttered as he slowly started to make his way into the griffon’s oviduct.

***

Gilda took a soothing breath as she took in the sights of the seaside city. Baltimare’s skyline was a rather gorgeous sight, especially in the early morning light.

However, any relaxation she would’ve enjoyed was interrupted by a pressure in her belly. It was her body’s way of telling her the time had come. She was going to lay an egg.

Quickly looking down, she saw a park that seemed rather vacant to her distant eyes.

“Eh, guess the park attendants would have worse to clean up than eggs.” Gilda gave a shrug of her shoulders and began to push, feeling the egg moving through her.

***

Verdant looked around the fleshy hallway that was the hen’s oviduct. It was damp and even warmer than the other parts of her body he’d visited.

“Hmm… interesting,” the shamrock stallion muttered to himself as he gazed upon the griffon’s reproductive tract. “Maybe I could see what her ovaries are like before I get out of here.”

The shrunken pony fell to his face as the oviduct began to rumble. As Verdant tried to stand up in the quaking tunnel, he spotted something massive being pushed down towards him. It was a massive white ovid shaped boulder that was being squeezed towards him like a meteor.

“Oh, shit! She’s laying an egg!” Verdant quickly turned about and tried to run back down the oviduct, but looking over his shoulder told him that no matter how fast he’d run, the egg would run him over.

Panicking, he tried to see if there was anything he could do to somehow avoid being crushed by the oncoming egg. Unfortunately, the tunnel was mostly smooth, save for a few folds and even if he tried to hide in one of her folds, the oviduct’s muscles would squeeze the egg further down and likely crush him against the egg’s hard surface.

Seeing the egg was now much closer to him, Verdant had only one last desperate thought go through his mind as a possible way to escape the egg without being sent falling through the sky. The small stallion planned to leap onto the surface of the egg’s shell, climb to the top and once she’d started to push the egg out, he would then try to cling onto one of her hairs until she either landed or one of Gear’s friends found him.

With a terrified swallow, Verdant turned about and charged at the egg. Gritting his teeth, he leapt at the egg. However, something happened that the shrunken stallion didn’t expect. One of his forelegs broke through the shell before getting stuck in the warm goop.

“Eww…” Verdant winced as he desperately tried and failed to free himself from the egg’s innards. Soon after that Verdant felt his back pressed against the warm, meaty orifice that was the griffon’s exit.

“Oh no…” The shamrock stallion felt a cold shiver run down his spine despite how warm it was inside the hen’s body. After a few moments more, Verdant found himself pushed out of the griffon’s confines. Looking down, he saw the gamboge colored legs and tail of the hen, along with what had to be about a thousand feet of open sky between the egg and the ground.

Verdant clung as tightly to the egg as he could as the egg was pushed free of griffon’s body and was sent tumbling into freefall.

***

Gilda hated the final part of laying eggs since she found it was the most uncomfortable part of the whole process. It tended to strike nearly every nerve in her reproductive system which only made how it stretched her insides all the worse. With effort she’d normally only get after eating something like a pound of cheese and meat, she gave one final push to rid herself of the egg.

In an instant, the pressure in her hind end ceased and she felt a wave of relief. “Ahhh… Dear ancestors, that sucks.”

With the discomfort finally gone, Gilda gave long stretches of her limbs, feeling better than she had in a good while.

Casting her eyes downward, she saw the egg hurtling towards the ground below before giving a shrug. She was fairly certain that she had nothing to worry about given she didn’t see anyone in the park below and that she knew with certainty that the egg was unfertilized.

With the egg dealt with, she started to comfortably glide down towards the Baltimare train station.

***

In the Canter Waterfront Park, Double Helix was once more staring at the device on her foreleg, utterly perplexed. This time, Minute Detail was by her side to aid her search.

“This is such crap,” Helix said as she squinted at the display. “I spent about six hours finding the Faust damn batteries for this thing, and now it’s saying that Verdant’s both right next to us, but also over a thousand feet away!”

“Maybe he got eaten by some flying creature and… he’s just been expelled.” Mini’s tone quickly shifted as the listed distance between them and Verdant rapidly started to count down.

“Pfft, I doubt it,” Helix dismissively scoffed. “Honestly, I think Gear’s making just about all those stories about Verdant up just so she has more of an excuse for her teleporter experiments all being a failure. I’ll bet Verdant’s nowhere near here.”

Double Helix was suddenly silenced as a large egg splattered against her forehead. The warm goop and yolk slowly oozed down her face, and a slimy little green pony landed on her snout.

Mini didn’t bother holding back her giggles as her lavender aura picked up the minuscule mammal. “Well, you’ve certainly got egg on your face.”

“Fuck you,” Helix replied through gritted teeth before she tried to shake the bits of shell and goop from her face. In a moment, the tiny stallion in Mini’s aura was restored to his normal short size.

“Well ladies, that was not a pleasant trip,” Verdant said as he tried to scrape the bits of egg from his coat. “At least I learned some things about griffon anatomy. I think maybe we should head to the local lab, shower off, and then grab the first ticket back to Vanhoover we can.”

“Um… you might want to get a tent or something before you do so, Verdant,” Mini nervously said.

“Wait, what?” Verdant was surprised by the unicorn’s words. “Why? What happened?”

“Long story short, Copper Top fucked up and pretty much every building in Vanhoover’s damaged and unsafe to stay in.” Helix tersely answered as she tried to rub what was left of the egg from her mane and face.

Verdant groaned as he slapped his egg white covered hooves against his eyes.

***

Verdant couldn’t help but sigh as he waited on a train station bench. He had a forest green tent tightly rolled up on his lap as he waited for the train to Vanhoover to arrive.

“Damn delays,” a familiar voice made the shamrock stallion’s ears stand at attention. Looking to his right, he saw that the seat beside him was being taken by the griffon he’d just had a full tour of.

“Bad day, huh?” Verdant asked the reclining hen beside him.

“Eh, not really. Just wanna get back home and it’s gonna be a long ass ride home,” the hen replied before looking towards the stallion. She noticed he was somewhat damp and had a somewhat familiar aroma. “What happened to you?”

“Well, I ended up here in a teleportation accident yesterday and got eaten alive shortly after I got here. Then earlier today, I got caught up in an incident with a great big egg falling out of the sky in the park. I needed to shower off and just a minute after the egg splattered, I got told there was an accident that wrecked my house, along with every other house back home, so I had to buy a tent which I’ll be living in for the foreseeable future.”

“Ah, that sucks.” The griffon looked away and scratched the back of her neck as she realized what egg he was talking about. “Sorry to hear about all that.”

“Eh, could be worse,” Verdant said as he turned to face the hen and held out his foreleg. “I’m Verdant Range.”

After a moment of awkward silence, the hen grasped his foreleg and shook it. “Gilda.”

The shake soon ended and an awkward silence held in the air between the two.

“So… you like scones?”

Author's Note

Hey folks. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Surprised that this got as many votes as it did.

First up, here's the pic of the newest addition to the cast; Vanhoover's greatest geneticist, Dr. Double Helix.

Secondly, you may notice a change to the summary to Enter the Mecha Mare. That's because if we go with that, we'll be locked in for a trilogy of connected chapters. Trust me when I say I have BIG plans for that.

With this done, it's time to vote for an upcoming chapter.

1. Swift Snort (AP): Verdant is training with his fellow soldiers on Butterfly Island and we see one of the misadventures there.
2. Lovely Nights and New Beginnings (Alternate Ending): Verdant was called upon to impregnate Cadance with Shining Armor's sperm. Well over a year after his successful mission, Princess Cadance calls him back to the empire. What could she want this time?
3. Dating Delights: Verdant goes out on a date with a fancy mare he met during a dating service and things seem to go swimmingly... until he learns she's a cannibalistic serial killer with a shrinking fetish.
4. Betty: The Last Cutesaur: Verdant is recruited by Daring Do to explore an island full of long lost flora and fauna, only to encounter a creature that supposedly went extinct eons ago.
5. Bibinba's Inside Story: While playing Marinara Party with some friends of his, Verdant accidentally lands on the wrong space and finds himself staring down an imposing longma.
6. Double Trouble in the Fire: A teleportation accident ends up sending Verdant to another universe where he meets Dr. Overdrive and a green mare with a white muzzle named Shamrock Meadow. When the two try to get him back home, things go awry and the emerald pony pair end up in the kitchen of Spitfire.
7. Dragon of the Wastelands: In the wastelands that were ruined by mega spells, a small band of ponies wish to reach the town of New Griffinstone. To get there, they hire an odd unicorn mare who goes by the name of Verdant Range.
8. Dog Day Afternoon: On a day out, Verdant finds himself stumbling upon a patch of Shrinking Violets... and a rather hungry Diamond Dog.
9. Happy Hearts & Hooves Day (AP): Verdant wants to give Erica a wonderful Hearts & Hooves Day. After learning she has a fetish for shrinking and vore, he knows what he'll do to make his special somecreature happy.
10. Death to Daybreaker: In a dark world ruled by Daybreaker and Nightmare Moon, two vicious tyrants who plot and scheme against each other, the Mare of the Moon decides to put an end to her sister once and for all. For this, she's going to need a rather skilled assassin.
11. Tales from the Mirrorverse - Digestions & Dragons: Set after the events of "Antacid's Creed", Verdant is assigned to Celestia's elite privateer, Magic Barrier. His first assignment: recover the treasure from a hibernating dragon's stomach.
12. Squad 982's Egg-cellent Adventure: A teleportation accident causes the ponies of Squad 982 to end up inside of reproductive tract of their griffin cadet, Jaylin Blauhäher, just as she's about to lay an egg... an egg that she intends to eat once it's laid.
13. Sweet & Shining Strawberry Snacks: Another round of teleportation leads to another disaster for Verdant as he's teleported to a bowl of strawberries in the Crystal Empire just as Princess Cadance and Shining Armor are about to have a sexy little game.
14. Sailing into the Blue: In the war with the griffins, Captain Barrier comes up with a plan to allow them to infiltrate the Griffin Kingdom and turn the tide of the war. All they need is a boat, Verdant's knowledge of anatomy and a lot of Shrinking Violet potion.
15. Into the Sunset (EG): An accident involving a flower cart and High Gear's teleporter leads to the teen to be shrunk again and finding himself stuck in a salad in Canterlot.
16. Ponies and Portals: Verdant is poached by a mare who is competing against High Gear's project by working on creating long range portal spell. However, things go wrong and Verdant finds not only is he shrunk, but his body has become a strange creature with weird appendages and clothes... along with being in a package of peanut butter and crackers.
17. Enter the Mecha Mare (Part One of a trilogy): While showing up for one of High Gear's experiments, Verdant learns that he's made a robotic pony. However, something seems a bit off with this miraculous mechanical mare. What could she have planned?

Remember, only one vote per person. Also, from now on, vote that only have a number will no longer counted and even deleted. I'm sorry if this seems harsh, but I did this since it makes tallying the votes easier for me.

Next time, Verdant and the rest of Vanhoover is now facing a homing crisis thanks to Copper Top's little disaster. Thankfully things start to get better when they all enter The Celestial City.

See ya then!