Decoy

About a week later…

Decoy woke up in a tangled mess. It tried to open its eyes, but didn’t seem to have any. It also didn’t have any ears, but it could hear the soft breathing and steady heartbeats of several different ponies. It could also feel their warm fur pressed against its skin – its soft, damp, hairless skin – and oh my, that wasn’t pony fur touching that part. It squirmed the tip of that tentacle a bit to feel around, and determined that it was, in fact, a pony’s pussy, damp with what tasted like a mixture of sexual fluids.

Oh yes, now it remembered. Tentacles. It had transformed itself into a giant mass of tentacles the night before, and apparently everypony involved in the resulting experimentation had fallen asleep still wrapped up in them.

The pony it had squirmed inside stirred, and her hooves grasped at a different tentacle, which she started to lick. In response, it moved the tentacle inside her with more purpose, slithering it deeper in and twisting it against her inner walls. She moaned, and twitched, and her hind-hoof kicked out involuntarily, waking up one of the other ponies… the pegasus, this time, who gathered a bundle of tentacles to her chest to snuggle them, wrapping her legs around a different group and squeezing.

Decoy obliged her by coiling several of them around her to return the hug… followed by gentle insertion into her sex, which clenched around it… and her ass, which relaxed as the slippery tip of the tentacle licked across it, allowing it easy access… and of course her mouth, the tentacle there sliding between her lips, across her tongue, and down her throat until she gagged, at which point it pulled back and let her control the depth of that intrusion. Others tried to complete the set, prodding at her nostrils and ears, but it didn’t leave the former blocked for long, and the latter got only a token penetration, since it didn’t want to damage anything.

The third pony, vaguely on the bottom of the pile, although Decoy supported the others enough that she wasn’t crushed by their weight, struggled feebly as if trying to escape from its grasp. It recognized this role-play, of course, and let her make just enough progress to see the open air before it wrapped up her limbs and muzzle and pulled her back inside of its coils, more and more of its tentacles sliding around her until she could barely move… and that was when it penetrated her as well, thrusting firmly inside her with a single, large tentacle, providing the best approximation of ordinary sex of any of them, including the tip opening and spraying her insides with slime as all the stimulation finally brought it to a climax. Most of the other tentacles didn’t have that feature, but Decoy was still one creature, despite its current form, and they all convulsed in orgasm simultaneously, the sudden jerky motion driving the other mares to climax as well.

Extricating themselves from the resulting tangle – and washing off the slime and other fluids that absolutely soaked all four of them – took long enough that they missed breakfast, but nopony was complaining.

===

Once they were clean, Decoy headed to see its case worker to get the daily assignment.

“I think I’ll put you on ditch-digging with Grounder today. If that’s alright with you.”

“And if it isn’t alright?” Decoy asked.

She shrugged. “I could assign a different unicorn. I know the two of you have had issues.”

“No, it’s fine,” it said. “This isn’t a large enough camp to avoid him entirely, so we should probably talk.”

“As long as you can work together, it’s fine with me,” the pegasus said. She scribbled out the assignment form, and hoofed it over. “Oh, one more thing. It hasn’t been a moon, but I think your bug is recharged. It’s glowing.”

“I probably shouldn’t bother Thorax ahead of schedule,” Decoy said, after thinking it over for a few seconds. “I don’t have anything critical to report.”

“Okay then. See you tomorrow.”

===

The unicorn was professional, and quiet. Eventually, Decoy had to be the one to speak up. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out between the two of you.”

“No you’re not,” he said.

“I am,” Decoy repeated. “The ideal outcome would have been for you to realize that your jealousy and possessiveness were unnecessary and join us all in the exploration of shapeshifting and casual sex.”

The unicorn almost growled his reply, “That isn’t my ideal.”

“I know. The world is like that, with ponies working at cross purposes because they ultimately want different things. It’s annoying. Things would be a lot easier if everypony was flexible enough to…” it waved a large clawed paw around in the air, “weave it all into one web of satisfaction.” Decoy paused to focus on its digging a bit more – the unicorn was steadily fusing and shaping the edges of the trench behind it, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to let him catch up.

“So you’re not sorry, then,” the unicorn said. “You’re not admitting that you did anything wrong. You’re not admitting that you hurt me. You’re not even planning to do anything different in the future.”

“No, I’m not apologizing,” Decoy said. “What would I even apologize for? I was trying to be sympathetic.”

“You’re gloating, because you got the filly.”

“I don’t have her,” Decoy said. “I play with her. I play with our other roommates too, and they want the same thing that you do, eventually. To find one mate, to have foals, to own and be owned.”

“It’s not ownership,” the unicorn snapped. “It’s about building a family and being loyal to each other.”

Decoy tried to think of it that way. It was hard. “Like a really, really tiny hive?”

The unicorn snorted. “Clearly not, since you’re willing to fuck anything with a pulse.”

===

About two hours after lunch, their work was interrupted by a dragon dropping out of the sky, thumping into the sand with a soft ‘flumph’. She watched them dig for a while, before remarking, “Wow, this is thrilling. I can see why you didn’t want to give it up.”

“If you’re here to join us, then I don’t know who you should go to to sign up, but I’m certain that it’s not me,” Decoy said.

The dragon shuffled nervously, glancing up at the sky, then back down at the Maulwurf-shaped changeling. “I need to talk to you in private.”

“I’d say to come visit me in my room after dinner, but I bunk with three ponies,” Decoy replied. “Also, you break furniture during sex.”

“I need to talk to you now” she said. “Without him listening in.” She pointed to the unicorn.

Decoy sighed, changed back into its normal form, and told the unicorn, “Apparently I need to take a break. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, I’ve probably been foalnapped.”

They flew around until they found a secluded spot that wasn’t full of workers.

“You need to come with me,” said the dragon. “This is your last chance.”

Decoy stared at her.

She growled. “I’m not threatening you, I’m warning you. There’s creatures out to hurt you, and the ponies here won’t be able to protect you.”

“Can you be more specific?” Decoy asked.

“There’s another stupid party, this time in Kludgetown. They’re going to take you there to show you off. You’re never going to leave.”

Decoy nodded. “Okay.”

“Don’t ‘okay’ me,” the dragon said, poking it in the chest and knocking it back a step. “They have spies here watching you. They know what you can do, and they’re not worried. You should be scared.”

Decoy considered that. It was feeling an emotion, but ‘fear’ didn’t match up. No, this was excitement. “They can’t plan for what I’m going to do, because I don’t plan what I’m going to do,” Decoy said. “I improvise. You’re the most dangerous thing I’ve seen in Kludgetown, and I have three different ways to take you down.”

“That sounds like planning,” the dragon said, folding her arms.

“I just made up two of them on the spot.”

The dragon gave it a look. “You’re being stupid, and you’re going to die. Fuck, this was a waste of time.” She threw her arms up in the air and turned her back on it.

“I’ll be careful,” it said. “I would have been careful anyway, being sent to Kludgetown, but I’ll be extra careful because you warned me.”

“That isn’t going to – screw it. You’re coming with me for your own good,” the dragon said, suddenly lunging for it, arms outstretched.

Decoy coughed in her face, spraying her with dragon-sneeze pollen. The dragon pulled her arms back to clutch at her throat, coughing and wheezing, eyes red and tearing up. Decoy stood over her, and watched while she collapsed against a nearby rock, each breath labored but steady. “I have to get back to work,” it said, leaving her there once it was sure she would be okay.

It looked around for her after its shift, but she was nowhere to be found. That was a bit of a shame, but it was still happy that it had apparently made a new friend.