Decoy

A few days later, Decoy (and other ponies who’d volunteered) were called away from work early to get ready for a big party. Investors from all over Equestria and the surrounding lands were going to be there, to hear the company’s CEO give a speech about how well the construction was going and how much money they were all going to make.

“And then the sex?” Decoy asked. She was a unicorn mare for the night, since her caseworker had been worried about the Kludgetown representatives making a play (another play) to foalnap her. It meant keeping track of a new identity for the night, which had never been Decoy’s specialty, but all the other (actual) ponies volunteering as party favors would be using assumed identities too, and they weren’t changeling infiltrators either.

It also meant wearing a dress and makeup, and all that nonsense that didn’t generally apply to changelings. She enjoyed that part, though. It was sort of like shapeshifting with tools.

“If they’re interested,” said the mare that officially still slept above her, although she hadn’t been back to the room since the incident. Apparently she and her coltfriend hadn’t broken up after all. “Some of them will just want company and conversation, or maybe a blow job or something.”

“I’m surprised to see you here,” Decoy said. “Won’t the unicorn get jealous? We don’t want him barging in on the party.”

She sighed. “We talked. It wasn’t entirely his fault, I was doing things to make him more jealous since I was annoyed he wasn’t putting out. So now, well, I’m sleeping with him so that he doesn’t have to imagine what I might be up to in my room, and he’s sleeping with me so that I don’t get so frustrated that I start clopping to my roommates fucking each other.” She smiled. “He’s saving actual sex for marriage, but we’re kissing and cuddling and going down on each other. He really likes eating pussy. It’s adorable.” She shivered. “And he started experimenting with his magic… I think this might work out.”

“But,” Decoy waved her hoof around. “This?”

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be completely monogamous,” she said. “So this is a test. He knows all about the party, and that I don’t have feelings for anypony-or-whatever I might end up having sex with here. If he still gets super-jealous, then we’ll know we weren’t meant to be.”

Decoy was pretty sure they weren’t meant to be, but she had to admit that part of her certainty might have actually been jealousy, which wasn’t an emotion to wallow in, even if it was one of the ones she hadn’t been able to feel before reforming. “I think I like the other format better,” she said instead of following that thought.

“Hmm?”

“A few of us for a group of creatures,” she said. “One on one seems like a lot of… work? Social work? Emotional work?”

“What do you mean?” the mare asked.

“Being a toy for a group to play with is easy,” Decoy said. “And fun. Being a person to talk to is something completely different.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, nopony’s expecting us to be good at that part.”

===

The party started, for them, after the big speech, when all the important ponies and other creatures were mingling. Decoy wasn’t sure if it was the ballroom’s acoustics, or if parties were just always like this, but she couldn’t hear anything that anypony was saying over the general cacophony. She wandered around, in her sexy little dress that meant that she was open for anypony to claim as their companion for the night, smiling and trying not to run for the corner and hide because after she did that the first time one of the waitstaff had come over and scolded her for it.

So instead, she started looking around for anypony familiar, not counting the other mares and stallions doing the same job as she was supposed to be doing, only much more competently. Her eyes locked on a familiar dragon, standing in the middle of the room by herself, arms folded and stance daring anypony to approach. As she watched the dragon looked over at her, and their eyes met. Decoy blinked, and looked away, but it was too late. The dragon was headed her way. Decoy sighed.

“You,” the dragon said, when she arrived. “What’s your name?”

Decoy’s mind went blank. She couldn’t use her real name, but she didn’t remember the name they’d given her. “I don’t remember,” she said. “We’re not supposed to use our real names.”

The dragon laughed. “Alright, I’m claiming you. C’mon.”

Decoy followed her back to the center of the room. The party swirled around them, the noise no less impenetrable with a dragon standing next to her.

“So what are we supposed to do here?” the dragon asked, loudly enough to be heard over the others. “I haven’t been to one of these before.”

Decoy had been briefed on this. “We talk for a while, then dinner. Then more talking if you want. Afterwards you can take me back to your room for the night, although I’ll probably have to leave before morning.”

“Wow,” she said. “No games?”

“I don’t see any,” Decoy said. “To be honest, this is my first time at a party like this, so I might not be the best guide.”

The dragon puffed a little ring of smoke. “Eh. You didn’t run away when I approached, so you’re better than the alternatives.” She plopped a claw on Decoy’s back, and started combing her claws through her fur. “So soft…”

“I’m glad you approve,” Decoy said, taking a sideways step to lean against the dragon’s warm scales. Both of them were wearing dresses, but neither of them were wearing dresses that covered much.

“It’s nice, but makes you kind of useless,” the dragon said, continuing to pet her. “For sex, I mean. I’d break you if I got into it at all.”

“Oh,” Decoy said. “That’s a shame. Maybe we could do something with magic?”

“Eh. Maybe,” the dragon said. “I was hoping to find that changeling. Word is she’s on the list for parties like this.”

Decoy carefully forced her muscles to relax, and silently recalled the first rule of lying: ‘Don’t tell the truth’. “I don’t think they bring everypony on the list to every party,” she said. Crap. That was the truth. “Maybe they were worried one of the guests would try to kidnap her?” Also the truth. This was harder than it sounded. “If she was here, she’d be in a disguise, so you wouldn’t be able to tell her from anypony else.”

Decoy closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She really, really wasn’t cut out for being an infiltrator.

“Heh,” the dragon said. “So what was your name again?”

“Why don’t you pick one?” she suggested.

“Alright. How about Deee…light?”

Decoy stared back up at her. “Okay,” she said. “That sounds like the kind of name they were giving out.”

The dragon laughed. “Wow, they didn’t even let you pick your own names? No wonder you forgot.”

Since the dragon didn’t feel like approaching any of the ongoing conversations – creatures standing in little circles to talk, each with a decorative pony clinging to their side and only occasionally joining in – she ended up talking to Decoy for a while. Decoy did her best to describe what unicorns did on a construction site, and usually remembered to use the first person. The dragon mostly complained about ponies, and Kludgetown, and especially the hippogriff navy, which was being a pain in the ass for legitimate traders based in Kludgetown.

“They’ll just stop you, right there in the open air, and demand to inspect your cargo for contraband,” she said. “We’re not even shipping to Mt. Aeris! Where do they get off deciding what’s contraband.”

“What do they think is contraband?” Decoy asked.

“Damn near everything,” the dragon said. “I’ve seen them confiscate potions, weapons, clothing, food…”

“Slaves?” Decoy prompted.

“I’m sure they would, but we don’t ship slaves anymore. With the changelings shut down and the Storm King gone, everyone knows it’s a bad idea to get caught with a claw in that business.” She snorted. “Kind of puts us in a pickle. We can’t just free the slaves ‘cause they’d turn on us and want revenge, and can’t just get rid of them since if the ponies found out we slit their throats and dumped them in the ocean? Yeah, it’s bad all around.”

“What about the diamond dogs?” Decoy asked. Before the Kludgetown slave markets, that’s where the Changelings had always dumped their problem ponies.

“What about them?”

“You could give your slaves to the diamond dogs. They’re always looking for slaves.”

“They wouldn’t pay us anything for them though,” the dragon said. “They’re too stupid to understand trade.”

“They’d pay you in being the place the princesses blow up when they decide to shut down the slave trade.”

“I like the way you think,” the dragon said. “Have you ever considered a career in piracy?”

“Doesn’t everypony?” Decoy replied. “Until they grow up enough to realize just how many ponies they’d have to hurt or kill when they don’t play along with the ‘getting robbed and enslaved’ narrative a pirate captain tries to build with her targets.”

“Good thing I’m a dragon. Born with a big pile of not giving a fuck about what happens to idiots.”

“You should enroll in friendship school,” Decoy said. “They can fix that.”

The dragon laughed. “But then I’d have to find another line of work!”

===

Dinner was expensive, and fancy, and still far too loud to hear much of anything over the constant talking. It also featured a floor-length tablecloth, and many of the pony companions slipped under the table to tend to their masters-for-the-night in something that almost passed as secrecy. Decoy offered to do the same for the dragon.

“You would die,” the dragon said, snagging another fancy, spicy pancake from the serving platter. “I would literally crush your skull with my thighs. Don’t ask me how I know this.”

“How do you know that?” Decoy asked.

“I told you not to ask,” the dragon growled, munching on the pancake. When she was finished, she added, “I tried to use a lever as a dildo once. Bent the metal all out of shape when I came.”

It wasn’t her specialty, but Decoy lit her horn and made a patch of tactile magic appear on the dragon’s side. She slid it down under the tablecloth, and circled around her thigh, slipping under her dress. The dragon picked up a roasted carrot, and started wrapping her tongue around it, slowly drawing it into her mouth, while her eyes watched Decoy’s face as she concentrated.

She stroked the dragon’s thigh a few times, then slipped it inwards towards the crotch… then slipped it around, under her tail and up her belly, searching for anything that resembled a vulva. She could feel the scales, and the gaps between them, but couldn’t find any that she could pry apart, and using more force just made the spell evaporate.

“You tried,” the dragon said, after crunching up the carrot in two bites.

“You do actually have one, right?” Decoy asked. “Or do dragons make eggs by breathing magical fire on specially painted rocks or something.”

“Hah. No, we’re not changelings,” the dragon said.

Decoy had enough presence of mind to remember that changeling reproduction wasn’t common knowledge. “Is that what changelings do?” she asked. “I didn’t even know they could breathe fire.”

“Okay, I’m getting bored of talking now,” the dragon said. “Let’s go find one of those rooms you mentioned.”

===

Decoy led the dragon to the private rooms, since while this was the sort of party where ponies would have sex in public, that part wasn’t mandatory. The dragon herded her inside, then closed and locked the door behind them.

The room had a large, comfortable couch, and an even larger, more comfortable bed. Everything was various desert tones, except for the pale blue walls fading into the darkened ceiling. The dragon, somehow already naked, hopped onto the couch and rolled over on her back with her legs spread, hooking one leg over the back and letting the other rest on the floor. Her crotch remained a smooth, featureless expanse of scales, until she brought her claws in, hooking them into an invisible slit, and pulled it open, revealing shiny flesh within.

Decoy planted her tactile magic on the dragon’s thigh, then slid it over her scales and claws until she could feed it inside, caressing the edges of the slit and wiggling deeper as she pushed and twisted.

The dragon grunted. “More.”

Decoy set her hooves, and pointed her horn directly at the dragon’s sex, pushing more magic into the spell, pulsing the force in and out, a little deeper with each thrust.

“Ah, yes,” the dragon said, throwing her head back and lolling out her tongue. “More like that…” she squeezed back around the magic – and it snuffed out in an instant, the backlash sparking off Decoy’s horn.

Decoy cried out and collapsed, curling up around her burning horn. Magical feedback was the worst!

“Fuck,” said the dragon. “You okay?”

Decoy whimpered.

“Just shift into something without a horn,” the dragon said.

Decoy changed back to its normal form, and the pain faded quickly with no horn to plague. “Um…” it said, looking up at the dragon as it realized its mistake. “I can explain.”

“You explained earlier,” the dragon said, grinning. “I knew it was you!”

Decoy had put some thought into what it would do if it met the dragon again. It shifted into a guardgoyle, an animated statue made of stone, used as the guardian of Tenoctitlan temples. It felt a bit of regret as the dress it had forgotten it was wearing tore to pieces, but the scraps that ended up wrapped around one of its forelegs didn’t slow it down any. Before the dragon could react, it leapt on top of her, pinning her to the bed. She brought her arms up to its shoulders, claws scraping against the stone surface, but it was impervious, as it had planned. Even her stronger hindclaws were… not actually digging into its belly. Instead, her knees gripped it around its sides.

“Yeeeah, that’s the stuff,” the dragon moaned, grinding her crotch against its stone belly. “Come on, you did give this thing a dick, didn’t you?”

It had not, but after a moment of disorientation Decoy decided that playing along was the safer path for everyone involved, and reconfigured itself appropriately. His stone cock – more of a sharp, vicious spike – sprung out from his crotch with a ‘chunk’, stabbing the dragon between her legs. She still had to wiggle back and forth against the spike to open herself for it, but once the tip was inside he was able to thrust it inside her in a single, brutal motion.

“Oh fuck…” the dragon said, thrusting back against him, helping to drive it deeper. Decoy hissed, and retracted it partway before letting the mechanism slam it back inside, this time thrusting his hips to pound it in harder. The dragon’s insides were slick and smooth, and impossibly hot, but yielded only before the amount of force a stone construct could provide – and when she clamped down on him, trying to keep him inside as he pulled back, only the tapered shape and slick polish of the penis he’d chosen kept him from being trapped by her impossible grip.

She hadn’t exaggerated. A pony would have been crushed.

But he wouldn’t be crushed, and she wouldn’t be injured by his weight or his strength or the gear-powered piston mechanism he’d attached to his cock. He went all out, losing himself in the sensations of the wiry, scaly dragon squirming underneath him, the diamond-hard claws leaving only the smallest scratches in his stone surface, and the slippery heat of her inner flesh as it alternately parted and clenched around him. She came quickly – as pent up as she’d implied from years of frustration – but he didn’t stop. He had no need to stop. He was a machine. She cried out, her moans turning to whines, and whimpers, and finally another climax, and then another after that, but he didn’t stop until her strength was exhausted, and her claws fell limp at her sides.

His cock retracted into his crotch, a stone covering slipping back into place with a click. He let go of her neck with his teeth – he’d clamped on like a vise at some point, but hadn’t even been able to restrict her breath. He folded his stone wings, and sat up in what was left of the couch – splinters of the frame and shredded remnants of cushions, bits of cloth and cotton stuffing everywhere.

The dragon groaned, and pulled her legs back under her, rolling into the folded leg sitting position bipedal creatures used sometimes. She lifted her arms over her head, and stretched, opening her mouth in a wide, slow yawn. “Okay, that was worth the trip,” she said, still looking tired, but recovering quickly. “Can you be a pony again? I want something to pet.”

“Or something easier to carry off with you,” Decoy said, warily, his voice low and rumbling in this shape.

“Would if I could,” she said, with a smirk. “But that was my boss’s stupid plan, and all he got out of it was uninvited to the party. I should give you the sales pitch, though. I need something like you in my life.”

“I’m not going to say this is an easy transformation, but it’s something most changelings could be taught,” Decoy said. “It’s magically powered but internally consistent. You don’t need practice in partial transformations. You should go to the hive and talk to Pharynx. He’ll know if there’s anyone who might still be willing to work with Kludgetown.”

“Yeah, well, we need you for more than just being my fuck toy,” she said. “I can’t give you the details unless you agree, but I promise you won’t be bored.”

“That’s not a very good sales pitch,” Decoy replied. After a second, he shifted back to the unicorn form she’d come in with, and lowered herself into the dragon’s grasp. There was no reason to burn magic if she wasn’t planning on trying anything, and… actually, her reserves were fine. She’d managed to absorb more from the dragon than she’d spent, somehow. Cuddling as a unicorn was still more efficient, though.

And claws petting her fur was one of the nicest sensations that wasn’t sex.

“You wouldn’t be a slave,” the dragon said, combing a claw through her mane while the other caressed her flank. “You’d get paid, like anyone else. Plenty of cash to buy anything, or anyone, you wanted. Fuck being a prisoner for a hundred years. Fuck Equestria’s laws.”

“Fuck the hive,” Decoy said.

“Yeah!” the dragon said, enthusiastically.

“No,” Decoy replied. “We went to stand trial because we needed the ponies to trust us again. Now I’m serving this sentence so that every time they get angry about what happened to the ponies we hurt, they can remember that there’s a changeling somewhere being punished.”

“So?” the dragon said. “Fake your death or something. Wasn’t that your specialty?”

Decoy whined, “Everypony knows that was my specialty!” She took a deep breath. “And I don’t want a life of crime. I’d settle for that if I had to, but I have feelings now. Empathy.”

“Oh, nothing you’d do would be against the law.” The dragon put her claw under Decoy’s chin and lifted her muzzle to meet her gaze. She was grinning. “I promise!”

Decoy just rolled her eyes. “There are no criminals in Kludgetown, because nothing is against the law.”

“Ha,” the dragon said, letting go of her head. “Maybe you’re too smart for this scheme. You might end up running the thing.”

“Still not interested.”

“So…” the dragon said, slipping her claws under Decoy’s tail, and rubbing across her slit, pressing one claw slowly inside her. Gentle as she was, it felt even better than the petting, if a bit… dangerous. A few exploratory strokes, and she was soaking the dragon’s hand with her arousal. “If I threatened to burn down the hive, and kill everypony you cared about, could we have more angry sex?”

“No,” Decoy said, pressing her side against the dragon’s warm, firm belly and closing her eyes as the claw continued to slip in and out, in and out, another claw resting, just resting over her winking clitoris. “I’d have to kill you.”

“Then I guess I won’t do that,” the dragon said, continuing to work her claws gently against Decoy’s sex, and gripping her cheek to pull her up for a kiss.