Sol 289.5 - ENCRYPTED

AMICITAS: DF calling QC - use suit DF for responses over.

ESA: QC here as requested. Provide status report. Over.

AMICITAS: DF - Have arrived at cave farm with Mark and SG, as discussed. We’ll be proceeding with the operation as planned in the next 5 minutes or so. Mark says hi.

ESA: QC - Understood, I would like to convey messages to both of them. Is Starlight not available?

AMICITAS: DF - She can hear the splashes. She was busy getting out of her suit. I’ll transcribe your messages real-time for Mark. Scratch that, he says he can pick up the gist. Over/

ESA: QC - Copy. Mark, Starlight… I’d like to thank you both for this. Dragonfly may not admit it but what you’re doing may very well keep her alive and help her to get back to me. This may be the only time you ever hear this from me but… the changeling nation thanks you deeply… I thank you deeply. It will not be forgotten. Over.

AMICITAS: DF - My Queen, I… thank you too.

AMICITAS: SG - Your kind words are appreciated, but we’re doing this for Dragonfly. Over.

ESA: QC - That brings up the other thing I wanted to convey. A warning. Don’t make this just about your worry for Dragonfly. From what she’s conveyed to me, you and Mark have the hots for each other. My thanks will be fully rescinded and replaced with my full wroth and fury if you fail to provide my subject with the hottest, steamiest, sexiest pink energy ever recorded. Over.

AMICITAS: SG - Wow. No pressure?

ESA: QC - I mean it. Let me give you two some advice. Mark, I have found that unicorn mares really like their horns played with. Especially if simultaneously done with vigorous stimulation of their clitoris. Two words: fire works. Over.

AMICITAS: SG - First off. That’s one word. Second: where are you getting this? Your harlequin romance novels?

ESA: QC - I’ve had some experience as an infiltrator. Also, Starlight… I’m not hearing a denial. Is Mark taking notes? Over.

AMICITAS: SG - ... I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Or that Mark is laughing about it. Over.

ESA: QC - As for you Starlight. I have strong reservations about your level of experience beyond anything of a solo nature. I suspect you will require extensive advice. Over.

AMICITAS: SG - Just what are you implying!? Over.

ESA: QC - Starlight, assuming that humans function similar to males on Equus, I recommend that you attempt fellatio. That means you suck his penis. Focus on the glans on the underside of the tip of the penis, which are highly erogenous zones. Long licks, like an ice-cream cone. Are you copying this down? Over.

AMICITAS: DF - Starlight stepped away to swat Mark, my Queen. He confirmed that your instructions regarding males were correct and Starlight was upset that he was encouraging you. Over.

ESA: QC - I’m liking Mark more and more. I’ll give him another tip: pony mares love nips to the neck. But do not attempt this until you are partially or fully penetrated into Starlight. Over.

AMICITAS: SG - Will you quit it? This is not helping. Over.

ESA: QC - Oh you don’t like love-nips?

AMICITAS: SG - I… I didn’t say that. Over.

ESA: QC - Have FUN. That is most important. Dragonfly can act as chaperone or director as required. Over.

AMICITAS: DF - Starlight has thrown her head up in exasperation, my Queen. But I think this helped defuse a bit of tension. Will update post operation. Out.

ESA: QC - Get messy. Out.

The three inter-dimensional sextronauts looked up at one another as the last splashes of water fell with wet splats onto the wet, warm, Martian mud. There had been a brief mention of taking their activity to one of the cave’s aft-sections, which Dragonfly had confirmed was a more common site for ‘privacy’ among the crew members (a fact which made Starlight stick her tongue out in mild disgust: she quickly resolved internally to not touch anything in those caverns), but after a little discussion, the consensus was that there was no point in restraining themselves to the smaller cave sections, especially if it was only the three of them in the farm.

Mark and Starlight worked together to spread a section of spare hab canvas over a section of the cave floor to provide an area where they would be able to ‘perform’, despite Mark’s joking complaints that he’d really been looking forward to some: ‘sexy mud-wrestling’. Both Dragonfly and Starlight had quickly groused a reminder to Mark that they had twice the number of crevices in which grit and other particles might become lodged ending any other ideas to start the first extraterrestrial mud wrestling federation.

The process of laying out the canvas didn’t take very long, however, and soon there was nothing left to be done… except get right down to it. This fact became more and more obvious, as the flight-suit-clad human looked over at an awkward and anxious naked (admittedly, she was always naked) unicorn and annoyingly grinning naked changeling (also admittedly naked most of the time) sitting in a triangle looking at one another.

Mark swallowed hard. His pulse pounding in his head. His memories flashed back to times of university dates and attempts at using various social dating apps during his time pursuing his research in botany. Neither situations had played out very well for him. Astronaut training had not been much better: it was easy to let yourself become engrossed in the training program preparing you to be launched at incredible speeds to distant planets and focus less on things as mundane as dating. It wasn’t that Mark was inexperienced or even that he was socially awkward… at his heart Mark was, and would always remain, a nerd.

And nerds tend to overthink things. Especially when the situation calls for less thought, and more action.

So it was, that Mark’s internal dialogue ran something along these lines: ’Alright Mark, you can do this! You’ve got this! You’re about to experience the fantasy of every red-blooded male since the dawn of time… OK well… any red-blooded sci-fi geek since the dawn of the Star Trek series, but still! And all you need to do is be decisive! Be a MAN! Swallow up your damn courage and walk over there, grab Starlight by her shoulders, tilt her sideways in her arms, say some cheesy line like: ”Here’s lookin’ at you, kid. and start kissing. Ready? GO!

...OK you didn’t even move. No problem… second attempt… on three… 1… 2… 3…

…

“S-so…” Mark mumbled not moving an inch.

’Nice, dumbass.’

“So.” Starlight replied, her gleaming eyes betraying that she was undergoing a similar internal monologue.

Silence descended once again over the strange meeting.

“Guys. Seriously?” Dragonfly sighed, turning away and rooting through a pouch on her nearby discarded suit. “I really thought we’d gotten past this, but at this rate… all three of us are going to starve waiting for you guys to get busy.”

“Give me a minute, alright?” Starlight complained, “It’s not like I’ve pr-”

“Here.” Dragonfly turned back to both of them, holding a pair of small test tubes she had repurposed from the hab as a container for some type of suspicious green liquid. “Take this, and it should help get things rolling.” She tossed one of the plastic tubes to Starlight, then turned and tossed the other to Mark.

“What… what is it?” Starlight asked, fumbling the tube between her two hooves and looking at it suspiciously.

“Changeling secret.”

Mark frowned, shaking his tube slightly only to see how distressingly low the viscosity of the strange goop was. “Uhhh… no… nope… that’s not gonna fly, you little bug-porno-director… no way I’m ingesting something without knowing exactly what’s in it.”

Starlight had popped off the top of her tube, just to get a small sniff of the substance inside, before flinching and holding the tube away from herself. “BLERGH… gross!” She quickly capped the tube. “I’m with Mark, just what is it?”

Dragonfly shrugged. “Fine. It’s a changeling anti-inhibition compound. We don’t like to admit that we have them… sort of a relic from the ‘bad old days’...”

Mark’s eyebrows raised, and he tilted his head while crossing his arms. Dragonfly and Starlight had long ago understood this to be the standard human body-language for an extremely skeptical ’seriously?’ posed with the maximum amount of derision one could muster. It was not dissimilar from the pony body-language version, which Starlight Glimmer was also demonstrating.

“So, you were about to give me and Starlight the equivalent of a GHB dose?” Mark did NOT look happy.

Dragonfly found herself suddenly on the defensive: the emotions from Mark were NOT happy. “Why are you so upset suddenly? I don’t even know what that is! I was just trying to help smooth things along.”

“It’s a date-rape drug on my planet.” Mark shook his head. “Messes with mental facult-”

“No!” Dragonfly shook her head, waving her arms. “No, it isn’t anything like THAT. It just makes things easier, like alcohol but more focused on dropping your social guards… you both just seem so… uptight about this, I was just trying to make things easier!”

Mark’s emotions softened a bit. Maybe he’d been a little bit harsh to immediately jump to one of the worst conclusions, but a green-glowing vial of mystery chemical tends to associate itself with more nefarious substances. “Hmmm. Well, I don’t know about it. I still thi-”

Starlight looked up at Mark with a bit of resignation. “I think I understand, Mark.” Starlight shook her head a bit sadly. “I guess Dragonfly is able to taste your emotions pretty well, and she was just trying to help… but to be honest I’ve even been able to see it myself over the past day.” Starlight looked down and kicked her hoof against the hab material. “It’s… I’m weird. I get it… I’m not saying anything about you, it’s just hard-wired for you is all: I’m not attractive to you physically. Hay, I probably look like a weird horse to you. You might NEED that to even- Mark… are you?” Starlight stopped in her diatribe, caught off guard by the fact that Mark had just uncapped the tube.

The human lifted the potent chemical up toward his face, briefly sniffing it and flinching… before holding it away from himself and pouring it out onto the earth. “I don’t think I need some weird bug-juice drug to be MORE physically attracted to a beautiful girl like you, Starlight. Don’t ever think anything different.” Mark smiled across the canvas at the pastel pink pony.

’Nice!’ Mark’s internal dialogue metaphorically fist-pumped, ”... a little bit corny, but still nice!

Starlight lifted a hoof to her muzzle to cover her smile. It had been one of the things she’d been most concerned about for the past Sol. No mare likes to think her partner might find her unattractive… least of all a mare who still sometimes found it hard to believe anypony could love her after the things she had done in her past. With small tears of silly happiness beading in her eyes and a chuckle beginning to form in her throat she uncapped her vial and upended it as well. “Well after that little speech, Romeo… I know I won’t be needing this”

Both now sat across from each other, goofily and sappily grinning.

Dragonfly took a moment to sip from their connection before clearing her throat. “Ahem… yeah, hi…” Dragonfly crossed her arms. “First off, thanks for pouring out all those super useful reagents I could have used on other things… oh by the way, those potions are not toxic or poisonous to plant life or soil, thanks for asking Mr. Super Botanist.”

Mark stiffened suddenly. “Oh… oh wow, I really wasn’t th-”

“Wasn't thinking. I know.” Dragonfly tried not to let her mild frustration show. “That brings me to my second point: that was a touching little moment. Lovely amuse-bouche actually… but you guys are still six feet separated distance-wise… the goal is to get that separation factor down to about minus four inches.”

That comment took a moment for Mark to process. “Woah… wait, it’s more like minus eight inches. Alright?”

“Minus seven and three-quarters.” Starlight piped up from the other side of the canvas. When she caught bemused stares from both her cave-mates, she shrugged. “What? I’ve got a good eye for eyeballing measurements….” before she added under her breath: “still freakin’ huge…”

“Anyway,” Dragonfly continued, “because this EVA can’t go on forever… I’m going to propose that from here on out… you guys follow my direction, OK? We’ll take things nice and slow, and I’ll be able to sense if anything is getting uncomfortable or weird… it should let me … tune things just right so that we ALL have the best possible experience here.”

Starlight looked over at Mark for a response, who shrugged with a grin. “So, you really are gonna be a little bug-porno-director? Nice! I always wanted to star in an adult perfo-”

“Mark.” Both Starlight and Dragonfly growled at the same time.

“Sorry. Yeah… that… that works for me. Is that okay with YOU Starlight?” Mark asked looking over at his partner.

Starlight smiled and nodded, looking up through her bangs at Mark. “Y-yes.”

Dragonfly clopped her hooves together and grinned. “Yezzzz!” She couldn’t keep the happy buzz out of her voice. “Now… I do like the idea of director… that describes things perfectly…. And so… without any further ado…” she looked from Mark to Starlight with a grin that would be best described as naughty.

“...action!"

Author's Note

OH MAN. I am so sorry. I promise you that this was an unintentional marination.

I totally DID mean to get into the sex-scene this week. But as I started to go through things in my head, I realized I had built up SO much tension that needed to be defused. I’d also left hanging plot threads about the anti-inhibition compound that needed to be tied up.

I’d originally included that plot device so that I’d have an out to go full-ham with the sex and character dynamic if I wrote myself into too much of a hole. But recently some close friends and longtime editors have pointed out that I’m using these sorts of things as crutches, especially things like going into heat, going into rut, or getting drunk on some magical potion to make my sex become wild and feral. Thought those ARE my favorite kinds of clop-scenes… I’d like to challenge myself to step out of my comfort -zone a little bit and write something that at least starts off a bit tender.

I also wanted to find a clever way to transition from Rover to Cave to sex. Nothing particularly fun was coming to mind, until I decided that Chrysalis might decide to give a little call for both a ‘thank-you’ AND a pep-talk. A funny pep-talk of course.

Finally, when approaching the sex-scene itself, a mystery in my head was always going to be how to ‘fit the pieces together’ (pun intended). With Dragonfly in the mix, I was always wondering whether it would be her just sort of drooling on the sidelines, drinking in the excess lust-emotion… or taking part in the activities herself.

I’m not dropping any spoilers about the latter potential, but one thing that immediately jumped out at me was the idea that she could act as a kind of ‘guide’ to the whole affair. This makes her a little more active, even if it is just Mark and Starlight (again, no spoilers on if that stays the case throughout) ... it is also something that she is perfectly suited to perform: as a changeling, she’ll be sensing each participant’s emotion real-time. Their fears, excitement, love, comfort etc. will all be laid bare to her… plus with her experience as a CAPCOM, she’ll be able to relay the perfect instruction and the perfect time to yield climactic results. She DOES want to make this as efficient as possible for herself as well, after all.

Though I promise she won’t be giving instructions in a CAPCOM cadence or manner…. As much as I’d like to make a ‘Go for docking’ pun in there, I don’t think even Dragonfly is THAT mischievous.

Anyway, as I reached the end of this section, and started to go into the actual smut, I realized that things would become a MASSIVE chapter. Part of my goal with this little project is to keep things light and fun for myself, as well as to mimic Kris’s style of shorter chapters, even sometimes filler chapters… so I’m going to push this one out this week, and we’ll start things off (promise) with smut next week.

With that, I’d love to hear from readers what fantasies you’d like to see fulfilled by our two main participants! Things will be very vanilla (the way I’ve written things - I don’t they’ll be getting too kinky) ... but I’d still love to know what turns my readers on!

Would you like to see Mark nip Starlight? Should Starlight treat Mark more like an ice-cream cone… or a popsicle?

Let me know in the comments!