Poofer Ponies

The remaining five members of the Power Ponies (or, the remaining four members of the Power Ponies, plus Spike) continued on through the surreal ride, not really noticing their diminished numbers. The ride continued for another few turns through the farm section, then went through another plushy curtain and out into a quite different area.

Set up on either side of the ride's path were all kinds of entertainments, of all different sorts. The first one on the left was a play being performed, with a pony with a frilly sheep musician outfit and a pipe playing as he waddled along the stage. A dozen other ponies dressed in big silly poofy rat costumes followed him, and Twilight felt her hooves twitch for a moment as she felt a sudden urge to jump up on stage and join in.

She shook herself, realizing that it was just a performance of the Pied Piper of Ram-lin, and looked away at some of the other exhibits.

There was a set of half-a-dozen dancers doing ballet, wobbling a little from the counterweight effect of their big poofy behinds, and a little further on an artist painting on a canvas – doing a fine oil painting of a thickly diapered Nightmare Moon.

There were group dances, single dances, songs, food-sellers – it looked like all kinds of art, performing and static, were being shown off at once and combined together to create a gigantic festival that their walkway moved through.

Fluttershy stared, wiggling a little and tooting as she did, and her attention focused in particular on the display of a full orchestra off in their own little room.

There were all kinds of instruments on display there, from drums to violins to oboes and pianos, and conducting it all was-

“...Discord?” Fluttershy asked, stepping forwards to get a closer look and leaving the moving walkway behind. “What are you doing here?”

“Sssh!” Discord admonished her, waving his conducting stick at her. “I'm just visiting, and I'm in disguise anyway – don't you see my disguise?”

He indicated the waistcoat he was wearing, which included a three-note cutie mark logo on it. “I'm disguised as the famous conductor, This Chord!”

"This Chord?" Fluttershy tilted her head, looking a bit dubious. "I've never heard of a famous conductor named This Chord."

"Well of course not." Discord rolled his eyes and twirled his baton, causing a loud drumroll from the room behind him. "If everypony had heard of me they'd come up to me and ask for autographs and I would never get a quiet moment. I'm the kind of famous that nopony has heard of before they hear of me. From me. The famous This Chord."

"Oh, okay. I think I get it." Fluttershy nodded.

"And that's why you are my favorite pony." Discord pulled her into a quick hug before snaking back up onto the stage. "And my favorite tootsician. We've been waiting on you, Fluttershy, to complete this ensemble."

Fluttershy blinked and blushed. "O-oh really? But I'm not a musician... I like to sing sometimes, but I've never played an instrument before."

"Oh don't be silly, dear, save that for the orchestra pit." Discord chuckled, flicking his baton at Fluttershy and causing a crash of cymbals. "Of course you're playing an instrument. Why, you've been playing your bagpiapers all day, haven't you?"

"M-my what?" Fluttershy squeaked and shrunk back a little... causing her diaper to press against the wall and let out a long, slow paaaaaaarp. Fluttershy stumbled forward in surprise before landing on her butt with another paaarp, the sound echoing in her head and making her giggle and blush. What was she arguing about with Mister This Chord again? Something about her role in the orchestra?

She straightened up with her nose in the air to look as professional as she could, which fell kind of flat thanks to her inability to keep from wiggling her toot-tush and letting out a series of parps from her pipes. "Well, I for one think that I should be the star of the show and the first crinkle. After all my bagpiapers are by far the loudest and silliest instrument, not to mention the biggest."

This Chord stroked his goatee, holding it sitting in his lap. "Well, I can hardly argue with that. Silly does mean good, and nothing's better than a lot of noise. I do think that some of the drums and maybe the tubas are bigger than your bagpiaper, though."

Fluttershy blinked, then scrunched and stood up, wiggling her rump with a determined expression. "Well, let's see if they're still the biggest after this solo."

“That's the spirit,” This Chord declared, raising his conductor's bat on on his conductor's baton. He waved it a couple of times, shaking the bat off, then began giving Fluttershy the beat.

Watching the steadily moving baton, Fluttershy wiggled from side to side with a regular motion. At the end of each sway a little toot tooted from the pipes of her bagpiaper, each one ever so slightly louder and richer than the last.

“That doesn't sound nearly loud enough so far,” This Cord said, and Fluttershy nodded – most of her attention on the baton and the rest of it on her music, doing her best to sway harder and play louder. The toots became stronger, more resonant, and as her sway got more and more of a side-to-side sway Fluttershy heard extra harmonics creep into it as the pipes began sounding off in sequence instead of all at once.

This Chord kept a back-and-forth tick going on the baton for a bit longer, then began doing a three-note tick – left, right, up – and Fluttershy's sway continued to follow his movements. When his baton went left, her bagpiaper swayed right… when his baton went right, her bagpiaper swayed left… and when his baton went up, her bagpiaper pressed into the floor with a much louder and deeper paaarp than the toot sounds it made the rest of the time.

Air hissed in and out of the bagpiaper as Fluttershy kept working it, beginning to work in flourishes and extra notes as her confidence in the instrument grew – and as the instrument itself grew, each cycle of expanding and contracting leaving it just that little bit bigger than the last.

“That's not bad,” This Chord said. “I can see you've plaid this before.”

He frowned for a moment. “Hmm, does a pun count if you have to mispronounce it? Anyway, I think you still have a bit of a way to go… unless you can convince me otherwise!”

Fluttershy took that as the challenge it was, starting to add full bounces on her bagpiaper to her routine – wiggling left and right, then jumping on her bagpiaper and bouncing three times to produce a series of rising paaarp-paaaaarp-paaaaaaaarp notes that filled the air and made the instrument swell up all the more.

As she played, Fluttershy's focus became more and more on producing the best music possible to impress This Chord and the musicians in the orchestra. Helping with the musical performance was just the best thing she could do, and it was so much fun!

She was going especially high on one bounce when This Chord swung his baton around, making her try to swing the opposite way on reflex. With a small squeak and a big paaaarp she wobbled and bounced out of control, landing with her rump stuck in something hard and wide.

"Oh my, it looks like our star musician intends to play every instrument today." This Chord grinned and swished his baton around, making a small metal pipe snake around in front of Fluttershy.

She blinked in confusion for a moment, going crosseyed in the attempt to inspect the mouthpiece in front of her before a particularly loud blast of music from the orchestra made her lose the thought. She giggled and wiggled, leaning forward slightly to reach the mouthpiece and blowing into it.

Nothing happened except for a bit of a tighter feeling on her rump for some reason. She frowned at the uncooperative mouthpiece and took a deep breath, then took an even deeper breath, deep enough that her pipes were paaarping in reverse and her plaid plush belly was swelling up.

With a determined look she leaned in again and blew all the air into the mouthpiece, feeling the tight feeling behind her grow until with her last breath the tuba she'd been stuck in suddenly shot her into the air with a massive sound, sending her flying and flailing and giggling as she landed rump-first on one of the massive drums, bouncing from one to the next and back again with a silly melody of parp-thumps, the rest of the orchestra following her lead with their music.

She finally landed again, on the floor and on her rump, dizzy and giggly, with the orchestra around her spinning and only getting sillier as Discord conducted it. A series of trumpets moved in without warning, going into her ear and out the other one with a loud sound that blasted all the non-silly thoughts out of her head. She stumbled forward and into a giant triangle, bouncing around the sides for a moment before dropping out and landing on a cymbal, only realizing what it was in time for the other cymbal to come down with a crash and squeeze all the air from her pipes. It slowly pulled up again with her plaid body sticking to both of them, playing a few bars as Fluttercordion before she peeled off again and fluttered off the side, eyes spinning.

“Bravo!” This Cord announced, applauding. “Bellisimo! Random words in Neightalian!”

Fluttershy took a deep breath, inflating back up to a more sensible size, but before she'd had time to do more than that the conducting draconequus waved his baton again. That resulted in an oom-pa-pah from the orchestra pit, and Fluttershy felt dizzy all over again.

She staggered back and forth as she tried to find her footing, crinkling and parping as she did, and Discord steered her over to what turned out to be an absolutely enormous piano.

It took only a moment of puzzling for Fluttershy to work out what she was meant to do, and she jumped for one of the keys to play it – bouncing off from it onto another, and then another, making her smile more broadly with each note as she led the orchestra in an unfolding silly symphony of sound…

Back on the moving walkway, Pinkie was staring with amazement at all the bustling entertainment around her. It looked astonishing, and a great deal of fun, and she took a few steps forwards – nearly leaving the moving walkway, before turning and walking in a different direction as she saw something else that looked just as amazing.

“This looks like so much fun!” she said, pouting a little. “How come I have to stay on this boring platform?”

“We're trying to find out what's going on here,” Twilight replied, distracted herself by the dizzying splashes of colour and sound around them.

Pinkie nodded, satisfied with that answer for about half a second, then caught sight of something else and did a double-take.

It couldn't be real! Or if it was, how come nopony had told her about it before?

A parade marching down one of the streets… and the ponies were throwing candy everywhere!

For a Pinkie Pie who was already feeling peckish, there was nothing that would interest her more. Pinkie stepped off the walkway, eyes fixed on the flying candy.

Coming closer she realized that some of the candy really was flying, bonbons flapping the little twists of their wrappings like wings and bobbing through the air at just the right level for a pony to snap them up on the walk.

They also had really cute and eye-catching designs printed on them. Some had swirly spirals in various colors, some had colorful rings that seemed to dilate and shrink as they bobbed up and down in the air, and some had multi-layered hearts in various shades of red and pink. Whenever Pinkie focused on one she just couldn't look away until it was flying right in her face, the pretty print on the wrapping filling her whole view and her whole mind, and then it was suddenly gone but not-gone; the candy in her mouth and the spirals and swirls and rings and hearts in her head, making her moan in delight, swallow the candy with a gulp that seemed larger than the candy had looked at first, and let her tongue flop out, drooling a little as she looked for the next tasty candy.

She was slowly walking forward as she ate, going against the flow of the slow-moving parade. Distracted as she was she didn't notice the group of ponies carrying a large piece of fabric in between every section of the parade, at least not until she suddenly found the curtain thrown over herself. She blinked through the soft rustling darkness and suddenly she was out the other side dressed in a marching band outfit complete with a drum and cymbals.

Pinkie blinked in confusion for a moment, noticing the marching band trotting along around her, then noticed the candies still flying around everywhere. She giggled and began to beat her drum in a slow rhythm, licking her lips as the candies slowly drew together and gathered in a line, bobbing up and down like parasprites and flying into her mouth in a steady stream as she slowly munched her way through the section. Two thirds of the way through she noticed a drum that looked a lot like hers roll away down the street, but the candysprites were still obediently flying into her mouth and she could still hear drumming, so it couldn't be hers surely. She giggled and looked ahead at the dancing ~~candies~~ spirals and swirls and rings again, drumming her big plump candy belly in a steady beat as she walked.

There was a vague thought in Pinkie's mind that maybe she shouldn't be taking part in the parade, but that was a silly thought anyway and she didn't want any of it! She was a premier party pony, so she could be a premier poofier plumper pink parade pony too!

Besides, the candysprites were so nice and tasty, it was hard to argue with them… especially when she was so important to the parade! They couldn't do without a drummer, could they?

Her steady march, sustained by sweetie spirals, brought her up behind a parade float – one where half-a-dozen clowns capered about, doing silly antics and tricks for the audience. One of them unrolled a red carpet on a ramp, laying it down in front of her, and Pinkie waddled her way up the ramp and along the path it lay out for her on the float… even though the path wasn't straight in the least, but weaved back and forth along the top in all sorts of silly ways.

The continual little pulses of sugar and the spirals, hearts or colourful patterns contained in the sweets made her even more willing than normal to accept the silliest of things, so when she marched into a little clown-cart she didn't question it in the least. When she came out the other side, though, she blinked and shook her head a little – wondering why she was feeling so dizzy.

Then she looked down, and realized she was carrying a pie in one hoof, wearing a colourful outfit and with her hooves stuck in four big red shoes… of course!

How silly could she get? She'd forgotten she was supposed to be a clown!

Pinkie Pie'd giggled, hefting her pie and tossing it straight into the face of the pony next to her. With a giggle and a bounce she waddled forward in her big, red shoes, each step making a loud sound. Each left shoe making a paaaarp and each right shoe making a honk that echoed in her ears as she tried to follow the trail of candies along the twisting, dizzying trail that led through the crazy maze that was the float.

Occasionally she would stumble and trip over her big shoes, rolling around comically and landing on her rump, only to bounce the next couple steps on her big clown butt. Other times she'd come across other clowns or random other ponies, stopping to pull a pie from behind her back and pie them in the face. All in all she was having a lot of fun, confident in the knowledge that she was the clowniest clown that ever clowned, not to mention the biggest and bounciest one, and that she could pie any pony before they could pie herself.

At least that's what she thought until she turned a corner and suddenly found herself face to face with another clown that looked incredibly big and silly and clownish, already holding another pie at the ready. Pinkie narrowed her eyes and drew faster than her own shadow, tossing the pie she'd prepared right at the other clown's face, only for the sneaky silly-butt to open her mouth comically wide and snap the whole pie up in one bite, swallowing it almost without chewing.

Pinkie gasped in shock, then narrowed her eyes further, knowing that she had found her one true adversary. The other clown threw her pie and Pinkie snapped it up just like her rival had, gulping it down without a second thought and licking her lips menacingly. They both froze, glaring at each other before their legs and mouths flew into motion, pies flying every which way and being gobbled up without fail.

It only took a minute before both of them were sitting on their padded butts, rubbing their big swollen bellies with satisfied groans and the occasional burp. Pinkie looked up to offer her rival her respect, only to see two clowns carrying away a large mirror. She blinked at the strange sight, then dismissed the thought and strained to get back to her hooves, wobbling and waddling along slowly towards the end of the float, hooves barely able to stay on the ground around her big pie-filled tummy.

The crinkly plush suit Pinkie sort of forgot she was wearing half the time helped out a lot, cushioning her and making it easier for her to waddle her way to the ramp off the float, and she moved down it in a daze – not really paying any attention to her surroundings at all. Other ponies in the parade bumped into her, directing her one way and then the other, and Pinkie sort of drifted in the direction they were sending her overall.

It looked like there was something cute up ahead, too! And not just a little cute, but really-super-extra cute!

A whole collection of animals, in not just one float but three or four really big floats in a line! They looked so fluffy, too, and Pinkie giggled at the sight of the lion roaring before shaking its crinkly butt.

Any thoughts about how similar the animals looked to being ponies in puffy, crinkly costumes went unnoticed, and Pinkie waddled her way closer to get a better look at one animal after another… a tiger, a lion, a big silly manticore, all of them big and crinkly and looking happy ~~and swirly~~ in their plush-sided cages.

As she got right up to the float, though, she noticed something very sad.

There was an empty cage! It looked like one of the animals had gone missing, the elephant by the looks of it…

Pinkie looked around, hoping to ask somepony where the elephant could have gone, when she noticed something even better. A large bundle of grey fabric was lying near the cage, and for some reason she was absolutely sure that that must be where the elephant was hiding. It just made so much sense.

She giggled and waddled over, pushing her head into a hole in the fabric and calling out for Mr. Elephant to come out again, and if he didn't want to hang out with all his friends. Getting no response she wiggled her butt before pouncing, crawling and squirming deeper into the fabric in an attempt to find the elephant that was sure to be inside.

It took a good bit of wiggling and squirming, but finally she came to another hole, blinking at the sudden light as she got back to her hooves again and looked around. Had she maybe missed the elephant? She looked down and gasped in delight at the proof that her Pinkie Sense had come through again.

Looking down and back she could finally see and appreciate ~~herself in a massive grey sleeper, the backflap stretching over her crinkle-tush, hooves stuck in thick grey plush legs and a hood covering everything but her mouth and her eyes~~ a big, grey, puffy-fluffy-crinkly elephant just as huge and heavy as an elephant should be.

Of course Mr. Elephant hadn't answered when it was actually a Mrs. Elephant. Pinkie giggled and blew a happy note through her big plush trunk, then turned and waddled back to her cage to hang out with all her crinkly animal friends.

Pinkie had a lot of fun crinkling about with the rest of the animals, listening to the zookeeper ponies explaining things about zoo-animals to everypony who came near. The lion was really a bit of a softy, it turned out, and the tiger's crinkly rump wiggling back and forth could be all confusing to ponies or animals who looked too closely!

She kinda zoned out after that, staring at the stripy tiger-butt as it crinkled and wiggled back and forth, but she thought there was something about how elephants were easily distracted? But it could have been something else, she wasn't at all sure…

Finally one of the zookeepers came up to her with a hose, and told her that elephants had to be blown up nice and big and that that was why they had trunks! It sounded really silly to her, which was worth a giggle as the zookeeper hooked her up.

The air came on with a whoosh, and Pinkie immediately started getting bigger – puffing and plumping up, feeling soft swollen plush all around her swelling faster and faster. It made her feel kind of light-headed, as well as feeling kind of light generally as the air pumped into her… her suit, that was it!

Pinkie giggled at how ditzy she was feeling today, then giggled all over again as the big grey sleeper she was wearing started to stretch at the sides. The crinkly pink outfit she was wearing underneath it was getting bigger and bigger every moment, straining the elephant-sleeper fabric and making it start to rip at the seams – but the hose kept pumping air, plumping her pink posterior more and more...

Pinkie squeaked and creaked and huffed and puffed. The ponies around her were taking down the cage around her now, the buttons of her sleeper popping off and the flap falling open to show a big pink crinkle-rump with a puffed up pink curly-tail popping out from it.

She giggled and felt lightheaded as the sleeper strained more, until it finally popped like a bubble, leaving her big pink form with a hose in her mouth, wobbling back and forth with uselessly flailing legs that couldn't reach the ground anymore.

One of the ponies around her pushed some clips into her ears just before they plumped up with air, leaving her listening to cheerful parade music, with a quiet mantra in the background speaking of big, plump parade balloons, of cute pink piggies and how Piggy Pie was always the bestest and most popular balloon in the whole parade.

Piggy Pie giggled and huffed and puffed, her body bouncing and wobbling and finally lifting off the ground slightly. One of the ponies pulled the hose out of her mouth and replaced it with a big pacifier made to look like a big plush pig snout from the outside, strapping it over her muzzle and mouth so she didn't lose any air and always had something to suckle on. Then they pulled her down again and began to go over her sides with big brushes and rollers, making her squeak and wiggle as it tickled her.

Finally they all let go of her, leaving her to flap her legs to stay a foot or two off the ground. On both her sides each were the words "Piggy Pie" drawn in big, bold black letters, surrounded by doodles of fat piggies, huge candies, silly balloons and of course swirly spirals.

“This is a kind of odd ride,” Spike said, sitting down on the moving walkway with a loud crinkle from his diaper. “It's… well, I can see why ponies would like it, but it's kind of busy? Visually, I mean...”

“Yeah, but we're not here to enjoy the ride,” Twilight replied, blinking a few times. “We're here to… something, uh – oh, that's right, we're here to catch Trixie!”

“Right, right,” Spike realized. “I'm just saying...”

“I do understand what you mean, darling,” Rarity agreed, flirting her sweet-smelling tail without thinking about it. “But since it's been different for different areas, perhaps it shall be different again shortly?”

“We're not supposed to be enjoying the ride,” Twilight repeated. “But, well, I guess we'll find out what's next...”

None of them really noticed that they were the only remaining passengers on the walkway, and Spike stood up with a wobble and a crinkle as they approached the third of the curtains dividing one area from the next.

As the curtain slid away, the trio of padded-up heroes got their look at the ride area.

“That's… a house, right?” Spike asked, looking at the layout. “And… well, there's a garden too, I guess...”

“That's a pretty big garden,” Twilight replied. “And a pretty big house. It's almost like… the opposite of a dolls house? Scaled like a real house would be if we were much smaller.”

She shrugged her wings, the motion taking some effort with her crinkly outfit. “I guess it's entertaining for somepony?”

Behind them, Rarity marveled at the large house for a moment before she was distracted by all the colors around her, looking around and raising her nose to sniff around. She closed her eyes and smiled softly, stepping off the walkway to follow the scent to a patch of colorful plush flowers surrounded by a faint haze of shifting scents.

She opened her eyes to look at the patch, giggling and drooling a little bit as she let her eyes wander over all the colors, sometimes divided between individual petals and seams and swaying in a light breeze. All of it gave the whole patch the appearance of a large, shifting and moving swirl of colors seemingly going on forever while the cloud of intoxicating scents wafted right into Rarity's face.

She hummed and drooled a little more, leaning forward to bury her face in one of the large flowers and enjoy the plushy feel of it while taking deep breaths of its aroma. After a moment she pulled back again to stumble into the flower patch, wading deeper into the flowers until she was completely submerged by colorful plush and a thick rainbow mist of dizzying aromas.

She didn't know or particularly care how long she was stumbling around surrounded by soft, faintly crinkly plush flowers, feeling some of them stick to her plush suit fur and weighing her down more. Eventually she found the flowers parting, however, to come face to face with a cute little plush deer.

The deer stared back at her for a moment, then tilted her head and stepped back, smiling and asking, "Flower?"

Rarity blinked slowly, mind swimming in a haze of scents and colors as she tried to catch up with what was going on. Did the deer think that she was a flower? That was just silly, as much as she wanted to, surely she didn't smell as wonderful as all these flowers yet. And it wasn't her name either, her name was... uhm...

She blinked again as she struggled to remember her name, then smiled back at the deer. "You can call me Flower if you want, darling." Flower certainly wasn't a bad name, and it would always remind her of her goal, her goal of one day being as wonderfully plushy soft and aromatic as all the flowers around her. She would be Flower the Skunk, the most generous and most fluffy-plushy skunktail, out to share her scent with everyone in the garden~

“Great!” the deer said, smiling, and bounced a little on her plushy hooves – the hooves squishing as she bounced. “Come on, you've got to meet the others!”

“The others?” Flower repeated, following as the little fawn trotted off into the garden – leading her through a flowerbed made up of a tangle of brightly coloured flowers all of different types, the scents sending her all the more confused and foggy with every little sniff.

“The others!” the deer repeated, leading her into a clearing with a plump plushy bunny. Rarity blinked for a moment, wondering if she recognized the bunny from somewhere, then shook her head – of course she did, it was ~~Suri~~ Thumper, just like the deer was her friend ~~Coco~~ Bambi! And the cute little hedgehog with the plush spines waddling out of the undergrowth was ~~Sassy~~ Prickles!

Flower giggled, waving her tail about, and Thumper gave her a spontaneous hug – the two actions sending more sweet scents into the air, making Flower feel all the more dizzy and happy and bubbly.

It was so nice to be with her friends!

“Hey, uh… where did Rarity go?” Spike asked.

Twilight looked around, and did a double-take – then turned around to look more closely, her suit crinkling around her. “What the – where did everypony go?”

She paced back and forth a bit. “Spike, did you see where they went?”

“Uh… not really,” Spike replied, as the ride passed through another curtain into the interior of the house.

“Well… we'll have to work out what to do about this,” Twilight said. She tried waddling back along the route of the walkway, Spike following as quickly as he could in his own plump plush outfit, but their movement was so restricted that they couldn't quite keep up with how fast the walkway was moving.

“Maybe we'll have to go until we reach the end?” Spike suggested. “There has to be a way to loop back around to the start.”

“That… might work,” Twilight admitted, and turned around. “Okay, we'd better head to the end of the ride as fast as possible – and keep an eye out for our friends!”

Spike nodded, looking around at the oversized house.

The first thing he noticed was that, unlike the rest of the ride, this house was really kind of poorly kept up. Everything looked okay, he guessed, except for the dust – but there was so much dust, it was actually kind of amazing.

He shuffled back and forth a bit, remembering that dusty areas had to be cleaned up. And he was a maid, after all, so… surely he should be cleaning the area up?

The dust just seemed to get worse the further in they got, not that Twilight seemed to notice. The final straw however was when Spike spotted a large ornate mirror covered in dust, with a purple blur just barely visible moving behind all the dust that might be his reflection. He stared at the mirror for a moment, not realizing that he'd stepped off the walkway to get a closer look, nor thinking about it as he pulled out his trusty feather duster and began to clean it up.

It was certainly a big mirror with a lot of dust, and he had to shake out his feather duster twice into his diaper before he could finally see that the mirror was not in fact a mirror but rather a glass door, and the purple blurs on the other side had been big purple dragon dolls swaying from padded claws on ropes along what seemed to be a production line leading through another curtain deeper into the manor.

Spike frowned and tilted his head in confusion, not quite sure why there would be a production line inside a manor. Then again, he had left the public area of the ride, and maybe they were making their own prizes for the carnival games behind the scenes.

Whatever else theories and deductions he might make were cut short, however, when he noticed a whole pile of glittering, eye-catching dust on a weird cluttered desk. His eyes gained a ~~glazed over~~ determined look as he waddled forward, scooping the dust right into his diaper with wide sweeps of his feather duster and not paying any attention to whether the desk was really a control panel and what big buttons he was pressing or shiny levers he was cranking all the way up with his sweeps.

The machinery of the production line twitched with a chunk sound, more dust cascading down from overhead, and Spike followed the trail of dust out from the desk to the side of the room – the powdery dust hazing the air making him feel dizzy and silly and giggly as he did his job as a maid-

-until suddenly something grabbed him and picked him up, lifting him into the production line in a space where a purple dragon doll was missing.

“H-hey,” he protested, wiggling a bit, but the movement just produced more crinkly sounds. “I, uh…”

Blushing, he tried again to get free, but the machinery kept moving – pulling him through the curtain he'd seen into the depths of the back-stage area.

Spike couldn't see much from his constrained perspective on the line, but he could see some kind of assembly machine ahead – and as soon as he reached it it scanned him with a flashing red light, before shunting him off on a chute to the side.

His first attempt to get free was foiled as he fell over on the slippery floor of the chute, and after that something shiny appeared in front of him and he couldn't help but stare.

This is a plush toy production line.

You are on the plush toy production line.

You are a plush toy dragon.

The words pulsed into his mind all at once, and he kept staring as the shiny light tracked back and forth – barely noticing as hands supplied the deficiency in plush he was suffering from, taking his feather duster before suiting him up in a thick plush Spike-the-dragon suit.

Headphones in the suit continued repeating the same ~~subliminal messages~~ facts as he moved on, towards the next machine on the side line.

Spike blinked slowly through the faint swirls set into the lenses of his plush ~~suit~~ body, smiling like any good plush toy dragon should. The claws picked him up again to carry him a bit further down the line, various parts of his outfit coming down on more hands to dress him up further.

Another diaper was brought in to cover the already thick and crinkly rump of his plush body, with the words "WET CLEANER" printed onto the front and "I <3 DUSTING" on the rump.

Next came a large and exceedingly poofy maid dress in black and white, but with a lot of pink frills and accents and a large red and pink swirled heart on the front of his apron underneath the words "#1 MAID", his feather duster tucked carefully into a side pocket. A large pacifier with a ruby bulb was looped around his neck on a string and a frilly pink and white maid's bonnet was tied securely onto his head.

Next came a pair of long white socks with small red and pink hearts, as well as a pair of long white gloves with a swirly heart each on the back of each hand. The outfit was rounded off by a pair of thick, fluffy pink booties on his feet, fuzzy and soft enough to pick up any dust and dirt his feather duster might have missed.

Finally a short string with a ring at one end and a soft pink magic glow was threaded through a hole at the back of his dress, attaching itself right between his shoulder blades with a soft tingle. One claw gave the ring a tug, pulling the string out and making Spike open his mouth without even thinking about it. "Maid Dragon loves making everything sparkly clean and pink, teehee~"

With a rattle and a soft flumph, Spike the Maid Dragon slid down a chute into a big display box with a clear plastic front that showed him off for anyone going past.

Hidden by the front of the box, a swirly screen traced spirals of coloured light that held him captivated – keeping him happy, dizzy, waiting patiently to be picked up and let out by anyone who needed a plush maid dragon.

As Spike sank into plushy bliss, however, one of the other unintended consequences of his absent-minded dusting came to a head.

“And now Spike's gone missing as well,” Twilight sighed, sitting down on her padded rump with a crinkle and a sigh. “What am I going to do?”

Her next thought was interrupted as the walkway suddenly went to triple speed, making her wobble before falling over on her side with a yelp, and as she got unsteadily to her hooves the walkway bore her through an area depicting a series of castles at great speed.

One of them was a lot like the Royal Sisters' castle, another was occupied by knights, but Twilight could barely see what was going on as she was zipped through on the accelerating walkway. Finally it reached a sharp turn just as she got back to all fours, and she toppled off with a yelp – flapping her wings as hard as she could to try and control herself, but just managing to raise a storm of crinkly plushy sounds as she rolled to a halt inside one of the exhibits.

“Who dares enter the castle of The Enchantress, the Great and Powerfoal Trixie?” a familiar voice demanded, approaching along with the sound of more crinkles.

"Trixie!" Twilight jumped up at the sound of the voice, looking up to see... well, mostly the room spinning around her. "I'm going to-! Going to... w-well, first I'm going to sit down for a moment and wait for the room to stop spinning." She plopped down on her rump with a crinkle-squish, blushing a bit and holding her head with a soft plushy hoof.

"But after that I am going to stop you and help all my friends!" She blinked and shook her head a bit, then woozily tried to get back with her hooves.

"You really need to work on your dramatic entrances." Trixie clicked her tongue and shook her head slowly. "Trixie almost pities you, really she does. But mostly she pities herself for having to face someone with such lack of grace and stage presence. Here, let Trixie show you how it is done."

Before Twilight could do more than shake off the last of her dizziness and look up in confusion at Trixie, the showmare was already waddling behind her throne to hide. There was a moment of silence before a rather impatient Trixie called out from her hiding spot. "You'll need to cue Trixie in, you know? Really, it's like Trixie is working with a complete amateur..."

Twilight blinked and blushed, although she was not completely sure why. Still, she did her best to straighten up and stutter out an announcement. "Show yourself, uhm, Enchantress. I-I'm here to defeat you!" She tried to stomp her hoof, but managed to get nothing more than a loud crinkle-squeak.

"A-hah! The Great And Powerfoal Trixie accepts you challenge, poor misguided foal! She will- oop!" Trixie jumped out from behind the throne only to step on her ~~blanket~~ cape and trip, only barely catching herself and straightening up again with her blanket billowing behind her... only facing the wrong direction.

"Hello? Poor, misguided foal? Show yourself, coward Sparkle!" Trixie leaned forward to look closer for her rival, her blanket flapping behind her and making the swirls and cutesy images on it like diapers, plushies and pacifiers stretch and shift around. Occasionally it flapped up high enough to show her swaying and waving rump with a thick diaper covering it, adorned with a glowing glittering picture of her magic ~~rattle~~ wand.

“Trixie, uh...” Twilight began, only for Trixie to jump – her blanket fluttering in the breeze – and turn around with a cough.

“Ahem, that is… the Great and Powerfoal Trixie knew you were there,” Trixie said unconvincingly.

“Sure,” Twilight said. “So, um… are we going to get on with this duel now?”

“Of course!” Trixie declared. “And, as the challenged mage, The Great And Powerfoal Trixie will set the challenges!”

“That's not how magic duels work,” Twilight protested.

“Pah!” Trixie snorted, her hoof squeaking as she brought it down, and flourished her enchanted rattle. “You challenged Trixie, so Trixie will have her say!”

She paused, waving the rattle back and forth, and Twilight's eyes focused on it a little despite her efforts to keep up a strong face against Trixie. “But perhaps Trixie will be magnanimous, and allow her clearly less well trained rival to set some of the challenges instead.”

“That's… um...” Twilight mumbled, distracted, then shook her head. “I, uh… I guess that sounds like a good idea – I mean, well-”

“Good!” Trixie declared. “Then the first challenge is Trixie's to set! Only a true crinkle-mage can be the best at rump wiggling!”

“Rump wiggling?” Twilight repeated. “Crinkle mage? I'm not a crinkle mage!”

“Ah, you admit it!” Trixie crowed. “Then Trixie wins by default-”

“Not so fast!” Twilight countered. “I… fine. Sure, rump wiggling… I guess...”

"Excellent! As little of a challenge this duel might be for Trixie, winning without a single contest would be even more disappointing."

She spun around again without warning, tossing her blanket away and over Twilight's head. Twilight squirmed and pawed at the blanket, getting lost in the toys, swirls and stars all around her for a bit before she finally managed to pull it off her head. When she did however, Trixie's rump was right in her face, wiggling and swishing and filling her vision with the sparkly print of Trixie's magic wand, and her nose with the dizzying smell of foal powder.

Twilight squeaked in surprise and fell onto her rump, blushing as her eyes darted left and right to follow the wiggling rump, her ears twitching as she almost heard a soft rattling along with the crinkling. Her eyes glazed over and her head felt fuzzy, everything outside the sparkles and swirls fading away.

"Hah! The Great and Powerfoal Trixie wins again!"

Twilight snapped awake, blinking away spots and sparkles in her vision. "What...? H-hey, wait just a second! I didn't even get my turn!" She blushed and jumped up, trying to wiggle her own rump but just ending up stumbling and almost tripping over herself.

"You had more than enough time. It's not Trixie's fault that you were too awed and intimidated by her butt-wiggling prowess to even attempt an attempt to compete." Trixie posed and flipped her mane with a confident smirk. "Either way, Trixie won the first round so it's only fair that she choose the next competition."

Twilight blinked and swayed a bit, then shook her head. "Now wait just a moment, even if you say you won, it's my turn choosing the next challenge!"

"I do say I won. Or can you honestly say that Trixie is not the best butt-wiggler in Maretropolis?" She spun around and wiggled her butt again, watching over her shoulder with a grin as Twilight's eyes glazed over. "But very well... Trixie is exceedingly fair, so she will let you choose bottle-suckling as the next challenge and only demand that she gets to pick an assistant from the crowd in return."

"You... uhm..." Twilight slowly blinked herself awake as soon as Trixie's rump was turned away again, blushing lightly. "That, uhm... sounds fair, I think? Yes, I get to choose... choose the next challenge and you get an assistant..." She blinked and frowned a little, then nodded to herself to confirm her own logic to herself. It certainly did sound exceedingly fair.

“Well?” Trixie asked. “What challenge do you choose?”

Twilight blinked, wondering what would be a good challenge for a moment, then nodded. “Oh – of course! The best challenge would be for me to challenge you to bottle-suckling!”

“Excellent!” Trixie declared. “Trixie accepts your challenge!”

She waved her magic wand, producing a rattling noise, and hummed for a moment. “And Trixie picks as her assistant… that foal there!”

Twilight turned to look, then did a double-take at the sight of Applejack – but Applejack fully dressed in the plushy cow suit that had been developing on her for a while already. “Wait, she's one of my friends!”

“And?” Trixie asked. “Trixie was allowed to pick an assistant from the audience, was Trixie not?”

Twilight nodded slowly. “I… yeah, but...”

“Butt?” Trixie repeated, wiggling her own. “That was last challenge, keep up!”

Twilight nodded again, finding it surprisingly easy to just agree with whatever it was that Trixie said. It made so much sense, and she took her position opposite Applejack as Trixie provided them with two oversized bottles for bottle-suckling.

“Trixie is sure she will have to remind you of the rules,” Trixie informed Twilight loftily.

“H-hey, no you don't!” Twilight replied indignantly. “I can… um...”

She actually couldn't remember the rules, now she thought of it… she was sure she should have been able to remember them, if she'd heard them before, but…

“Well, Trixie will be kind and explain them anyway,” the other unicorn said. “The first one to drink the entire bottle is the winner. They must not take the lid off the bottle, as otherwise it would not be a test of suckling!”

Twilight sucked her lip slightly, wondering how well this was going to go. Applejack had done a lot of suckling already, so she must have a lot of practice at it...

"Say, what exactly do y'all need me to... mooooh~" Applejack trailed off as she noticed the large bottle Trixie was holding. "Are y'all gonna drink all that?"

"Go right ahead." Trixie smirked, holding the bottle out as well as you could hold out a bottle that size.

"Don't mind if I mooooo~" Applejack grinned sleepily and grabbed the bottle, pulling it over to herself as she sat down on her thick, padded rump and hugged it to the front of her uddiaper.

"Ah, but before you start... see your friend there, Udderjack?" Trixie swished her butt a bit as she pointed at Twilight.

"Moooo?" Applejack blinked and glanced over before smiling and waving at Twilight. "Oh hey Twi. How's your big fancy mooooel going?"

Trixie smirked. "Well, we're taking a small lunch break right now... but before we stopped she claimed that she could suck more bottles than any other foal. Can you believe it?" She waved her rattle in AJ's face.

"What? That..." Applejack stared at the rattle for a moment, eyes swirling before she blinked and shook her head before scrunching at her friend. "Well, Ah'm mooooghty sorry, but y'all are wrong. Ah'm the best bottle sucker on all of Sweet Padded Acres and Ah'm not afraid to prove it." She picked up the bottle and latched onto the nipple, leaning back a bit as she quickly started to drain the milk and leaving Twilight to flounder as the foalicorn tried to follow.

Trixie just grinned and watched, levitating a series of increasingly big and full milk bottles towards the moooooelists.

Twilight's attention was getting pulled in all directions, making it hard for her to keep up. Some of her focus was being pulled away to the suckling, which was surprisingly hard to do properly – she couldn't just do a single powerful pull, she had to let off every so often to catch her breath, and then there was the problem where she had to work out when she was getting close to finishing a bottle so she could be ready to move on to the next one… it was all very complicated, a lot more complicated than she'd expected, and Applejack… Udderjack? No, definitely Applejack… seemed to be a natural at it.

Another part of her concentration was on keeping an eye on Applejack to get an idea of how fast she should be going. Frustratingly, it seemed as though Applejack was sucking just as fast no matter whether she was doing it with a lot of effort or without seeming to put in any at all.

And, as if that wasn't enough, there was that wand Trixie had, which just drew all her focus every time she saw it – it made it awfully difficult to tell what to do…

Twilight blinked, and suddenly realized she'd been suckling on an empty bottle. She wasn't sure how long she'd been doing it, but Applejack had just finished yet another big bottle and it looked like that meant…

“And it looks like I win,” Trixie announced with a smirk and a wave of her wand-rattle. “It looks like I'm better at bottle suckling than you.”

“But… didn't you do it with an assistant?” Twilight asked. “I, uh...”

“Well, Trixie clearly won the challenge,” Trixie replied. “And that means Trixie is better at the subject of the challenge, which means Trixie is better. It is logic even a foal could understand!”

“Moo,” Applejack contributed.

“So, now it is Trixie's turn to pick the next challenge,” the Great and Powerfoal mage went on. “And, of course, as Trixie is sure you are aware, that means she gets to pick an assistant from the audience.”

Twilight blinked. "You... wait, what? But you already... you already got an assistant for the last challenge..."

"Exactly." Trixie swept her rattle around in a grand gesture. "Trixie got an assistant in the last challenge, so of course that same rule applies for this challenge as well. You wouldn't demand any special treatment and have the rules changed just for you, would you?" She raised an eyebrow.

"W-what? No, I... of course not. I'm not trying to..." Twilight stumbled back and shook her head insistently, trying to gather her wits. Between Trixie's rattle floating here and there, Applejack swishing her tail as she slowly waddled her big milk-filled belly back to the stands and Twilight's own twitching legs as she tried to keep from wetting her diaper after all those bottles, she found it increasingly hard to focus. All she knew was that she'd always try to keep ponies from giving her special treatment as a princess. "I-I don't... don't want special treatment..."

"That's good. Trixie wouldn't want her future familiar to be an arrogant self-entitled bratty-foal. That is Trixie's job." Trixie puffed herself up proudly. "Anyway, as the next challenge Trixie chooses a nesting contest, and Rainbrawk Dash as her assistant."

"A what?" Twilight shook her head again. "What is a nesting contest? Ponies don't nest."

"Well, that sounds like a personal problem to Trixie. Trixie's assistant assured her that she is the very best at nesting." Trixie smirked.

"That's right. Rainbrawk Dash is the very best at nesting." Twilight turned her head and watched as another of her friends came on stage. Rainbrawk's old wings were pressed snugly to her sides by her soft fluffy chicken suit, while her forelegs in thick plushy chicken wings were flapping furiously in an effort to keep her in the air, leaving her bobbing up and down about a foot above the stage. Her plush-taloned orange hind legs were dragging a large golden plush trophy with "#1 CHICKENBUTT" on it after her.

Rainbow wobbled back and forth in the air for a moment, before giving a mighty flap with a loud "Buck-braaawk!" and landing with her butt inside the trophy's cup, panting lightly through a large orange plush beak as she looked at Trixie and Twilight. "Cluckdet Rainbrawk Dash is... ready for duty, bok brok. Just point me at the padding."

“But… w-wait, this isn't something that I have the first clue how to do,” Twilight protested. “And… um...”

She had something else to say, some kind of objection about how Rainbow was dressed and how she was calling herself, but it just… didn't want to come to mind…

“R-right, okay,” she said. “So… what are the rules?”

“A good question, for once!” Trixie said, waving her wand idly back and forth. “You will have five minutes to make the biggest nest.”

Twilight waited, wondering when there was going to be another rule, then blinked. “Hold on, uh… is that it?”

“Trixie explained all the rules,” Trixie said reprovingly. “If you were not listening then that is not a Trixie problem.”

“But there was...” Twilight began, then her gaze went up to the rattle again.

She blushed; maybe she'd lost track of time while watching the wand, and missed all the rules? That was a very embarrassing idea-”

“Begin!” Trixie announced.

Twilight yelped, then looked over at Rainbrawk Dash to see what she was doing – hoping to get some kind of hint about what to do.

There was a pile of wrapped-up diapers and plush eggs, foal powder, big stuffed 'sticks' and plushy toy feathers all over the back of the stage, and Rainbrawk Dash was already starting to pick bits of it up – her ~~forelegs~~ wings flapping wildly as she pecked and shifted the bits around to form a big circular pile.

Twilight's horn lit up as she began to move things herself, but Trixie rapped her sharply on the muzzle with her rattle. “Ah ah ah! Rainbrawk Dash isn't using magic, and if you used magic you'd be cheating! Didn't you listen to the rules?”

“Um… s-sorry,” Twilight blushed, not wanting to admit she had missed the rules. “I'll, um… r-right...”

She began picking bits up in her mouth and her plushed-up hooves instead, unwrapping the diapers and getting them woven in with the plush feathers and sticks. It was quickly very confusing, powder floating up into the air and confusing her with the scent, and she shook her head a few times as she tried to focus on constructing a good-looking nest.

Whatever she was doing, it obviously wasn't quite the same as what Rainbow Dash was doing. Twilight looked over at her friend only to stop and stare incredulously. "What... how...?"

While Twilight had ended up with a slightly flayed pile of diapers, plush and powder, Rainbow had somehow woven everything together to end up with what seemed to be a single big, thick, slightly circular white diaper with feather-and-stick frills, several large and small plush eggs arranged on top of it and a considerable pile of foal powder filling up the rest.

Twilight was snapped out of her stupor when Rainbow stopped her last adjustments and flapped over to her to bend over Twilight's nest instead. "H-hey, what are you doing?"

Rainbow glanced up before leaning down again, swaying her fluffy, feathery butt with the egg-shaped swirl on it. "Helping you, of course," she mumbled around a few sticks and feathers in her mouth. "We're friends, silly, and friends help each other have the biggest and comfiest puffbutts they can."

Twilight blushed and smiled at the display of loyalty, thinking about what a good friend Rainbrawk was and staring at her swaying... wiggling... swirly rump. She blinked and jumped as Trixie called out the time, watching Rainbow jump and flap her wings with a loud buk-brawk as well.

"Alright, the five minutes are over!" Trixie walked up to them. "As great as that display of sportsfoalship was, now it's time to see who actually won the challenge."

"O-oh, right, uhm..." Twilight blinked and blushed, looking at the two nests. "So, how are we going to compare them? Do you have a measuring tape, or...?"

"Don't be silly." Trixie giggled. "Rainbrawk, show her how the Wonderbrawks do this."

Twilight felt like she should say something about those names, but was quickly distracted by Rainbrawks butt again as her friend waddled and flapped back to her own nest. She watched as Rainbrawk plopped her rump down in the middle and leaned down to grab the sides of the nest with her wings and mouth. She pulled them in and stood up, her orange chicken legs poking out of two holes that had been hidden under all the foal powder. There was a sound of sticky tapes as Rainbow worked and before long she was waddling and stumbling around while flapping her wings, wearing a massive white diaper with white-and-brown frills all over and several big white plush eggs poking out of the waistband at the top, the fluffy diaper-nest reaching up almost up to her wings and all the way down to her ankles and losing large puffs of foal powder with every movement.

“Well, that looks unbeatable to Trixie,” Trixie said proudly. “But of course we should find out how well Trixie's future familiar did as well.”

“Hey,” Twilight said, pouting a little to object to the peremptory title. “I may not be as much of an expert at you are – I mean, as Rainbrawk Dash is – but I've still done okay, right?”

“Well, maybe with that last minute help you've at least got a scoring result,” Trixie said critically. “But Trixie will be the judge of that.”