Sibling Switcheroo Setup!

by Shrinky Frod

Rating: mature
Tags: Romance, Ocellus, Comedy, Starlight Glimmer, Sex, Thorax, Flower Ponies, Pharynx, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 5139

Daisy, Roseluck, and Lily are as close as three sisters can be. If only they could tell each other how close they want to be!

Lily loves her sisters. Really, she does! It’s just hard to show it when the way she loves them is really not family reunion approved. But it’s not like she can just move out and leave them!

She just needs to figure out how to tell them. Then they can let her down, and she can keep up her appointments with Counselor Starlight, and get her head all out of this mess. That’s why she’s set up an appointment to practice her confession in front of two of the best actors the Counselor knows - Thorax and Ocellus!

They… are acting... right?

CW: Smut, Incest, F/F/F, M/M, Shapeshifter Sex, Voyeurism, Masturbation, Secret Crushes, Identity Confusion, Impregnation, Gender shifting, Devious Bookbugs

Written for the April 2019 Siblings Incest Contest (of course). Pre-read, and cover-art, by Snow Quill.

Now with Ko-Fi link!

Published 2019-04-30 16:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-04-30 16:20:01 UTC

All According to Plan?

The School of Friendship, like all schools in Equestria, was prone to occasionally shutting down for prolonged holidays. The summer vacation was the longest of these, though some students maintained contact with friends made during the year, both amongst the student body and the faculty. That did not, however, mean that the school was entirely inactive. While the teachers and students might be attending to other duties, Starlight had decided it would be good to keep herself in practice by reaching out to the locals in Ponyville and see if any of them needed her services as a counselor!

A move which would eventually be referred to in the annals of Ponyville history as “Mistake #437.”

The fact that Mistakes #1 through #436 were already taken may have been considered as indicators that this would happen, but nocreature ever claimed that Starlight Glimmer wasn’t willing to dive into a pool of crazy lemons and try to come out with a tall, cool glass of lemonade.

Plus, this particular mistake only really impacted Starlight, not the rest of the town, so they were generally happy to let her make it on her own.

Currently, she was leaning back in her seat, watching her clock, and reviewing her notes for her upcoming sessions. Sessions which, if they worked out, would be her crowning achievements of the summer!

Lily, Daisy, and Roseluck. The three sisters were Ponyville’s third most beloved neurotics, behind Princess Twilight and Rarity (Pinkie Pie being the town’s most beloved psychotic, naturally). It didn’t take much to set any of them off, especially not when they were together to feed off of each other’s anxieties, but they were working on it! They’d been Starlight’s first three patients of the summer, and she was confident that before school started again, she’d have helped them overcome at least one of their major stumbling blocks.

The clock ticked over to one o’clock, and Starlight flashed out of her seat and over to the door of her office, opening it before the schoolbell could finish sounding the hour.

There, outside her office Lily was sitting in one of her waiting-room seats, across from Roseluck and Daisy. Each of the ponies turned away from their awkward stares at each other when the door opened, seemingly grateful for the opportunity to stop focusing on the fact that they were all in the waiting room at the same time.

“Come on in!” Starlight said cheerfully. “I hope you weren’t waiting long.”

“Actually,” Roseluck started to say, only for Starlight to keep talking right over her.

“I was just reviewing your notes, and I’m sure that today’s exercise is going to be extremely helpful. Lily, why don’t you take the chair, and the two of you can take my couch.” Starlight teleported herself back into her seat, and smiled broadly at all three.

“Now, would anyone like anything before we start? Glass of water? Cocoa? Chocolates?”

“Cyanide capsule?” Daisy asked weakly.

“Sorry, fresh out. So! Lily, whenever you’re ready, why don’t you get started? For the first time through, just try and get out what you want to say. We’ll work on your confidence after that.”

Roseluck and Daisy looked at each other, then turned towards their sister, cocking their heads towards each other as they tried to figure out what Lily was going to say.

The pink pony across from them opened her mouth, but nothing came out beyond a high-pitched squeak.

“Okaaaaaay.” Starlight rubbed her hooves together, trying to think of how to encourage the earth pony.

”This would be so much easier if you just used your magic,” Starlight’s logical, straightforward, and utterly sociopathic side reminded her. Old Starlight, as she thought of her.

”No, Starlight, fixing your problems with mind control is wrong,” her conscience, a much smaller, squeakier, more plaintive presence in her mind reminded her.

”Oh come on, she wants to talk! It’s not like with Big Mac!”

Starlight opened her drawer and floated a chocolate up to her mouth, chewing on the candy and letting its empathy-cocoa-laced filling soak into her senses. Starlight’s conscience grew to twice the size of the Old Starlight in her mind. Old Starlight looked up as Starlight’s conscience cricked her neck.

”Not again!”

“Okay,” Starlight repeated after she’d swallowed. “Maybe if we tried using our words?”

“R-right. D-daisy? Rosie? I… I need to tell you both something.” Lily said after a few more abortive attempts. “I just hope you won’t think I’m disgusting after I tell you.” She tipped her head down, doing a remarkable impression of Fluttershy behind her blonde mane. Roseluck and Daisy looked at each other, and each nodded, leaning to put their hooves over Lily’s.

“It’s okay, sis,” Roseluck told her.

“I mean, as long as you’re not about to tell us you’re secretly a rabbit,” Daisy joked. “The horror!”

“The horror,” Lily joked back. “I… I’m sorry, Starlight, I can’t do this!”

Starlight smiled reassuringly and floated a piece of paper over to Lily.

“You didn’t think you could do this, either,” she said gently.

Lily took the page, and reread it for what was probably the thousandth time. She sniffed, wiping her teary eyes, and took a deep breath.

“I’ve gotta be able to say this,” she muttered to herself. “I can’t… it’s not fair to just give them a letter.”

“You are a rabbit, aren’t you?” Daisy deadpanned. Lily giggled, and looked up at her sisters.

“You two are really good. You’re just like them.”

All three earth ponies swallowed hard, and Lily sat up straight.

“Rosie, Daisy, I love you,” Lily said, occasionally glancing at her page to try and keep the words in her head that tried to hide from her. “Both of you, and I… I don’t just mean like sisters. You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re beautiful, and the three of us have been through everything together. Growing up, losing Mom and Dad, starting the flower stand? We’ve been through everything couples are supposed to do together, just the three of us, and somewhere….” Lily’s voice cracked as she shrugged helplessly. “Somewhere in there, I stopped ever wanting to be in one with anypony except the two of you. I-I’m sorry I’m so messed up, but I h-had to tell you, it’s driving me crazy wanting to say something, but I’ve been so scared you’d throw me out! I get that I’m sick and-”

“No, you’re not!” Roseluck interrupted fiercely, wiping her own eyes. “Oh Celestia… y-you’ve wanted to tell us this for how long?”

“A-about… uhm… six years,” Lily admitted, scuffing her hoof in the carpet before she suddenly realized what Roseluck was saying.

It clicked for Starlight just a few moments before, but she was too busy trying to stare a hole through her office door with her jaw practically on her desk to have stopped Lily if she’d wanted to.

Lily started trembling physically as what she’d done and said finally sank in.

“You’re… not really my sisters… are you?” She squeaked, shrinking down as small as she could in her seat.

Author's Note

Oh Starlight - this is why we make sure that the changelings we've hired actually are changelings first!

All According to Plan!

In the middle of town, there was a modest little house with a not-so-modest little garden. Behind the house, an elaborate greenhouse held all manner of flowers, herbs, and ferns that weren’t so amenable to Ponyville’s climate, but the rest of the yard was dominated by row after row of rose bushes, carnations, lavender, and chamomile. Lilies yawned out of the cacophony of colors and shapes, standing tall next to snapdragons, marigolds, and daisies. Even in the few spots that weren’t a cultivated garden, patches of wildflowers received the same tender loving care that the orchids in the greenhouse got.

This was the home of Lily, Roseluck, and Daisy. The three mares were a crucial part of the Ponyville market, a central fixture that everypony could find an excuse to visit, whether for decorations or a quick snack. Their stand was the excuse, and the rest of the market was ‘oh, right, I forgot to pick up asparagus at Barnyard Bargains!” or “isn’t that doll just darling, honey?”

In this way, Ponyville maintained a sort of quiet detente between the forces of retail mass commerce, and the small family farms and businesses ponies wanted to pretend they patronized more often than the one-stop shopping emporium out past the old Pear family farm.

It was also well known that the three flower mares were also prone to fainting spells, panic attacks, nervous indigestion, hoof-biting, and occasional fits of panicked indecision over the smallest things.

As a result, it wasn’t particularly unusual for passersby to see Lily pacing back and forth outside of her house, nervously muttering to herself and glancing up at the Ponyville belltower, waiting for the last few minutes to pass before the bell would chime one. Not being particularly unusual, or even likely to be over anything especially noteworthy, the ponies of Ponyville continued on their merry way, leaving Lily to her own devices.

“It’s okay, they just moved the appointment up an hour, they probably just want to get it over with as much as you do!” Lily muttered. “Yeah, that sounds right. That makes sense.”

The bell rang the hour in the distance, and Lily let out a sigh of relief. She reached up, opened the door, and stepped inside.

“Rosie? Daisy? I’m home!” She called out, closing the door behind her. Roseluck stood up from her workbench and came over to give Lily a hug.

“Glad you’re here on time, before we chickened out,” Roseluck giggled. “Lily… we have something to tell you.”

“We do?” Daisy asked, turning around abruptly and looking at Roseluck.

“Okay,” Lily nodded easily, enjoying the hug for a moment more before joining her sisters in the workroom. “So, what’s up?”

“Rosie,” Daisy muttered under her breath, leaning in close to Roseluck, “I thought she was the one-”

“She is, Daisy,” Roseluck smiled awkwardly. “Lily… Daisy’s in love with you. And I know that you’re in love with Daisy. I’ve known ever since I knew you both. But I knew there wasn’t any way I’d get the two of you to confess without doing this. So… I’m sorry.” ‘Roseluck’ flashed with green fire, revealing Ocellus sitting where the earth pony had been moments before.

“But I knew that if I waited for you two to talk to each other, the entire hive’d get fat on the tension.”

Daisy looked at Lily.

Lily looked back at Daisy.

“Ocellus,” ‘Lily’ sighed, “I’m very disappointed in you.” The pink pony flashed with blue flame, revealing Thorax. “I’ve told you that it’s not right to borrow other creature’s forms! And getting us to do it to help us instead of them is still inappropriate!”

“I don’t know, I’m actually impressed,” ‘Daisy’ mused in a deep, raspy voice, before returning to Pharynx’s natural form. “This was pretty good for a bug who never got infiltration training. But you know Thorax doesn’t feel like that about me, right?”

Ocellus raised an eye ridge.

“You aren’t saying that you don’t,” she noted smugly. Now, Pharynx scowled.

“Because it doesn’t matter if I do or not, Ocellus, it matters if he-”

“I do though,” Thorax cut in, scuffing a hoof against the floor bashfully. Pharynx turned to stare at him, cocking his head to the side as he tried to assimilate this new information.

“...Oh.”

“And I wasn’t lying about helping the sisters,” Ocellus pointed out. “I just helped them a different way than I was expected to.”

“Nymph’s got a point,” Pharynx shrugged. He stepped closer to his brother, nosing his muzzle up so they could look at each other. “You really… me?”

“Uhm, yeah!” Thorax half-laughed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve kind of been the best thing in my life since forever!”

“Even when I was making you hit yourself?” Pharynx smirked.

“You didn’t make me hit myself hard.” Thorax drew his brother in, hugging him tightly. “I love you, Pharynx. And I totally get if you want to just be brothers and forget about all this, but it’s good to get it out.”

Pharynx wrapped his own legs around the larger body of his little brother.

“I thought that was what Feelings Forum was for,” he teased.

“Feelings Forum is a powerful thing, Pharynx, but even it has its limits. Romance is one of them, remember? The Chinchilla Incident?”

“I was still dumping black paint on drones and teaching the grubs how to hiss and snarl when that happened.”

“Oh, right. I really need to tell you that story some day.”

“Well, at either rate, neither of you were saying it, so somebuggy had to!” Ocellus stepped back to give them some room, leaning against the workbench and just enjoying the emotions radiating from them both. “You’re kind of the only changelings left who didn’t know.”

“I guess I could have brought it up in Feelings Forum then,” Thorax chuckled. He pushed Pharynx back a bit, looking into his brother’s purple eyes. “But then, I guess you’d have just been all ‘eww, gross, feelings,’ wouldn’t you?”

“Not saying that now, am I?” Pharynx rumbled low in his throat, wrapping his arms around Thorax’s neck and pulling him in for a kiss.

Ocellus’ diaphanous wings shivered as she tasted the sweet love and spicy lusty pouring off of her King and his brother. She unconsciously rubbed her wings along her sides, making a trilling, buzzing sound that reverberated through the room and wiping away a faint moistness she wasn’t familiar with.

Thorax and Pharynx both moaned as the sound and a heady, spicy scent started to affect them. Pharynx pulled back, dragging Thorax with him down to the floor without their lips breaking contact. Thorax grunted, and rolled over onto his back, pulling Pharynx on top of him.

“I’m the King, remember?” Thorax grinned up at him. “You’re the drone.” He leaned his head up, and licked Pharynx’s nose playfully.

“Are you sure about that, Prince Thorax?” Pharynx smirked down at his brother. “You might be bigger, but that doesn’t make you the one in charge.”

Thorax smirked back up and kissed Pharynx. As their tongues pressed against each other, he made a small adjustment.

Suddenly, where his hind legs had been before, two powerful tentacles slapped against Pharynx’s back, the suckers on them trapping him as he was pulled flush against Thorax’s body with a squawk.

“I’m the King,” Thorax winked. “Means you’re still breeding me... unless you’re a good drone and convince me to give you a turn.”

Pharynx nodded as he felt his shaft emerge from its armored sheath, quickly hardening. He’d never been one of Chrysalis’ drones, but the scent Ocellus was fanning through the room and the sound of her wings vibrating at her sides, mixed with how Thorax was handling him, had him responding like she was right there beneath him.

Only, in this case, he was actually completely certain he wouldn’t get his head ripped off if he didn’t perform to expectations. Not that he intended to give his brother the excuse.

“That dragon really is rubbing off on you,” Pharynx observed, leaning down to nip at Thorax’s throat roughly, fangs pricking his brother’s chitin. “This really a safe place to do it?”

“The sisters shouldn’t be back for hours,” Ocellus grinned over at them. “I’ve got help making sure of that!”

Meanwhile, back in Starlight’s office, the unicorn was trying to figure out exactly where her plan had gone awry.

“All right,” she said cautiously, “everycreature in this room who isn’t a pony, turn back to your natural form. I won’t be mad about this going in such a weird direction, but it’s not a funny joke.”

She waited, looking between the three earth ponies.

The three earth ponies looked back at her, then at each other, and then back at her.

“You aren’t Ocellus and Thorax, are you?” She asked, turning to Daisy and Roseluck.

“Uhm… we shouldn’t be, should we?” Roseluck asked Daisy.

“I think she expected us to be,” Daisy pointed out.

“All right.” Starlight took a deep breath and let it out, following one of Twilight’s breathing exercises. She steepled her hooves, smiling beatifically. “Would you mind terribly telling me why you didn’t tell me this before your sister confessed to you both thinking it was a rehearsal exercise?” She bolted out of her chair, pounding her hooves on her desk, her hair beginning to frazzle at the edges.

“We were coming in to cancel our appointment at two!” Daisy whimpered. “And then you kinda just kept talking over us and we thought Lily was your friend and we didn’t know what she was going to say and then she was saying it and oh Celesita Lily we love you too and please don’t kill us Scary Miss Shrink Pony!”

“Wait!” Lily interrupted. “You love me too? Like, both of you? Two o’clock appointment?”

“We were supposed to come in and practice how to tell you with a Changeling who goes to the school!” Roseluck agreed, latching onto the suddenly-much-less-scary prospect of spilling the secret she’d held with her sister for so long. “We would have told you, but you were acting so weird, we were afraid you knew that we were already kind of aggressively sharing our side of the bed after you went to sleep!”

“I thought I’d said something in my sleep and you two were just trying to stay away from me!”

“We’re gonna need to reinforce my side of the bed, aren’t we?” Daisy giggled nervously, glancing over at the marginally less volcanic Starlight. “And… uhm… cancel our two o’clock?”

Starlight deflated, sighing as she slumped back into her seat.

“Right. You’re supposed to give me twenty four hours notice, and if this happens three times I’ll have to stop seeing you as patients, and what does it matter? We’re probably not going to have another appointment, at least not about this, because it sounds like you’ve managed to cut through six weeks of planned baby steps up to what just happened.”

“If it helps, Lily, what you had to say was a lot more romantic than what we did.” Roseluck giggled, and made room on the couch between herself and Daisy. “So…?”

In a flash almost as quick as if Starlight had moved her, Lily was on the couch between her sisters, one in each hoof, hugging them both tightly.

Starlight looked up as somebody knocked on her door, and went over to open it up. On the other side, Derpy was flying patiently with an envelope in her mouth. Starlight took it, passed the cross-eyed mailmare a bit as a tip, and looked at who it was addressed to.

Lily, Roseluck, and Daisy
C/O Starlight Glimmer
School of Friendship
Ponyville, Middle Equestria

“It’s… for you?” Starlight frowned, passing it to them. The trio looked at it curiously, and Daisy carefully ripped it open with her teeth.

Roseluck dumped the contents at their hooves, and her eyes went immediately to three slips of paper.

“Three tickets to Las Pegasus?”

“And a weekend stay at the Manedalay Bay?” Lily carefully picked up an invoice and skimmed through it.

“All courtesy of… the Unofficial Changeling Ambassador to the Crystal Empire?” Daisy asked as she finished reading the enclosed note. “Who also sent our luggage to the… balloon… launch.”

“Well… I guess you’ve got a chance to get to know each other better without anypony from here seeing you!” Starlight grinned broadly, showing far more teeth than were Pinkie-Pie-Smile-Approved. “Better get going if you’re going to make your balloon ride!”

She picked the three mares up, setting them on their hooves and opening the door to her office.

“Enjoy your weekend!” She chirped as they started to walk out, exchanging confused looks.

“I didn’t know there even was a Changeling Ambassador to the Crystal Empire,” Roseluck noted.

“Well, they are unofficial!” Lily helpfully noted.

Starlight closed the door behind them, and her head hit her desk, hard.

“Ocellus, when you get back here, I’m gonna….”

”Hit her with a giant flyswatter?” A somewhat bedraggled Old Starlight suggested in her head. Both of them glanced over to the right, expecting a counterpoint from her still-hulking Conscience. Instead, the giant Starlight looked up from polishing her halo and shrugged.

”Sounds reasonable!”

Yes. Yes, it sounded very reasonable, right about now.

Completely unaware of her impending swattage, Ocellus continued explaining her plan back at the cottage.

“So they’ll be out for days, unless they don’t take the vacation. And Sandbar says nopony ever questions a free vacation! So we should be okay.”

Pharynx frowned, his wings popping up from under his carapace when he heard the word that had been the bane of his existence ever since he’d taken control of the hive’s security.

Should.

“Pharynx,” Thorax frowned, feeling his brother’s mood shift. “We’re in Ponyville. If anyone comes in, just turn into a bear and they’ll run off.”

“I’d still feel better somewhere more secure,” Pharynx grumbled.

Ocellus let out a huff, and threw the lock with her magic.

“There! Now, nopony can walk in, nopony has a reason to teleport in, and there’s nowhere safer except the castle between here and the hive. Unless you want to wait until you get home when you’ll have every Changeling coming to congratulate you and ask questions and take a nibble and tell you the toilets are backed up or the soup’s too hot…?”

Pharynx blinked, clearly having not thought of it quite like that.

“Right, if anyone walks in, turn into a bear, got it.”

“You don’t have to wait that long, if you’re feeling adventurous,” Thorax grinned sheepishly.

“You and your cute fluffy things!” The smaller Prince groaned, though he did start to rub his hips against the smooth chitin beneath him.

“Just wait until I do get you back to the Hive and we can find somewhere private.” Thorax stole another kiss, returning his legs to normal and rolling over beneath Pharynx. “Now, where were we?”

“Right about… here,” Pharynx growled, biting down on the base of one of Thorax’s antlers and thrusting his long, slender shaft forward, the tip pushing against Thorax’s tight anus.

“Okay,” Thorax grunted, “this is a little weird!”

“Want to try something different?” Pharynx asked him.

“Actually… yes,” Thorax decided as an idea came to mind. “Hold on!” He focused on the form he wanted to adopt, looking at Ocellus and making a few mental adjustments, then willed himself to change. With a flash of blue flame, Thorax’s body became more slender, his muzzle shortening and turning up; a bit. His antlers curved more, the edges becoming faintly more jagged, giving Pharynx more places to grab onto. Finally, he felt his own shaft retreating, replaced by a complex set of internal organs.

Thorax’s wing-cases opened, and her wings started vibrating along her sides just like Ocellus’ were, spreading her own mating scent.

“You just - Queen?” Pharynx half-stammered, his own shaft getting harder, if it was possible.

“Unless you never dreamed about being the Queen’s Consort,” Thorax crooned in a gentler, higher-pitched voice. “You don’t mind if I’m your sister for a while, right?”

“If this is why, I can handle it!” Pharynx grinned, taking up his place on top of Thorax again. This time, when he thrust forward into his sibling, her soaking sex accepted him readily. He growled around the antler in his mouth, and started pounding into her hard and fast.

Ocellus watched the two of them, completely enraptured as the cottage was filled with the hum of changeling mating calls and the heady pheromones that were begging for another male to come along and find her, take her from behind. Instead, she shifted a hoof into a distinctly phallic, distinctly equine shape, and started working it into her own hungry cunt.

Thorax gave the nymph a gentle grin, panting as Pharynx picked up his pace.

“Your… mmm… your fault we’re doing this,” she winked. “Want to join us?”

“No thanks,” Ocellus blushed, working herself deeper as Pharynx started to work his way further up the Queen’s body. “I like watching.”

“Born infiltrator,” Pharynx grunted. “All the way?”

“Do it,” Thorax nodded. “Breed your queen!”

Pharynx thrust himself home as deeply as he could, his body tightening up as the well-toned muscles in his flanks tightened. His shaft bulged inside Thorax’s body, sending a rolling sense of pleasure through the Queen’s loins. Her front half dropped down to the floor in languid pleasure as she felt her brother’s thick, heavy load sliding into her, a soft layer of resin holding it together while her muscles pulled it deeper inside of her.

“That’s… weirder than taking it under my tail,” Thorax giggled drunkenly. “Good weird.”

“Have to try it the other way some time,” Pharynx murmured, nuzzling into Thorax’s neck. “So… this is going to be your first clutch?”

“It’s about time, isn’t it? Besides. I think you’ll be a good father.”

Ocellus turned her hoof back to normal, licking her own nectar off of it before walking over to snuggle up next to her mated leaders.

“So, forgiven for tricking you both?”

“Mmm… forgiven. Just don’t do this again,” Thorax scolded her playfully, booping her nose.

“Promise. I won’t try to set up changelings under the disguise of getting ponies to confess their love for each other.”

“Good enough,” Pharynx declared, lowering himself onto Thorax as the three of them drifted off into a pile of snuggle bugs.

But the Best Laid Plans....

Dear Princess Cadance,

I am happy to report that your lessons have paid off, and Operation: Wincest was a success! As I mentioned in my last letter, I was able to plant the idea of showing up early in Roseluck and Daisy's minds. Well, by telling King Thorax that I needed him to show up at their cottage early, and take my place as Lily, I got the second part of my plan together.

Everything went great! The sisters took the vacation just as expected, and I imagine they're having a great time! By the way, thanks for those tickets! And the title suggestion, it should help keep whose idea all this was secret. As for Thorax and Pharynx, there's a new clutch of grubs on the way to prove how well that went.

That was a bit of a surprise, but at least now you can't taste the tension every time they're in the same room. Now the only problem is figuring out how to apologize to the hive for giving them that comparative anatomy textbook you recommended as a gift! Apparently Thorax has been walking funny ever since Pharynx skimmed ahead to the section on dragons, and they're keeping half the high-castes awake at night between the roaring, barking, howling, and purring that goes on. But I suspect you already knew that would happen.

Operation: Starburst will commence upon receipt of the Royal Crystaller's upcoming vacation itinerary, as previously planned. Until then I humbly remain,

Your faithful student,
Ocellus

Ocellus put the magical seal on the scroll as her mentor had taught her, and sent it on its way. Just as she was selecting a new book to read from the small personal library she kept in her dorm room, she heard a knock at the door.

"Just a minute!" She called out, reshelving her copy of Aligning the Stars: A Practical Guide to Mating Souls and going to get the door.

"Counselor Starlight?" She asked when she saw the pink mare on the other side of the door. "I'm really sorry about the mix up with who was meeting who where and when," she said with all the sincerity she could muster.

"Oh, don't worry about it! Everything worked out in the end... Ambassador."

"Oh carapace, " Ocellus thought.

"As a matter of fact, I'm so grateful that I thought I'd help you with your Advanced Studies!" Starlight continued. "Specifically, the differences in interpretation of pain, pleasure, and punishment."

Slowly, a very large flyswatter emerged from behind the counselor, and Ocellus gulped audibly.

"I... Uhm... Don't suppose I could take an incomp!ete on that lesson?" She chuckled nervously.

Starlight leaned in close, a vaguely manic grin on her face.

"No."

Meanwhile, half-way across Equestria, Roseluck was waking up with a lazy, catlike yawn in an extremely crowded Princess-sized bed. She was happily snuggled up between her two sisters, and would have been content to remain that way if not for the impending necessity of certain biological functions.

With the cautious grace of a mare used to crawling out from between two bed mates for over two decades, Rose slipped down between two intimately familiar sets of pink thighs and started wriggling out the foot of the bed. On a whim, she gave each of her sisters a playful kiss on the hock before popping out the bottom and rolling onto her hooves and trotting over to the bathroom.

Once she got there, she sighed to find the door locked and the shower running inside.

"Ugh, hurry up Lily," she muttered, knocking at the door once, twice... and freezing on the third knock as she remembered something very important.

That Lily and Daisy had both been in bed with her.

Indeed, a glance back into the 'bedroom' confirmed her suspicions. Lily had already rolled into her spot in the middle, and was snuggled up between Daisy and Trixie, so who....

For a second time that morning, Roseluck's brain stopped, took a look back at what had just gone through it, and did a double-take.

As the haze of sleep started clearing rapidly, Roseluck remembered the night before. Their arrival at the Manedalay Bay. "Breaking in" the bed, drinks, dinner, more breaking in the bed, wandering down after a lengthy shower, dancing, meeting Trixie, being just buzzed enough to invite her to join them for a few drinks and a show, getting tickets to some magic act that Trixie had come out to compare to her own....

Then the door to the bathroom opened to reveal an older stallion with a blue coat and tousled silver hair.

"Good morning, Rosie!" He said entirely too cheerfully for being in Roseluck's hotel room at Celestia-knows what hour in the morning. "Thanks agouch!"

Jack Pot slammed the bathroom door between himself and the mare who had just punched him in the face. Roseluck, for her part, did the only logical thing left to do.

She fainted.

Author's Note

The end?