An Industry-Distrupting Advancement
*Bzzzt*
*Bzzzt*
*Bzz-crck!*
"Horseapples!"
Flam swore as the crystal in his magical grip grew a spiderweb of cracks and fractures. If it weren't for the gold and silver bands cinched around each end, it likely would have crumbled entirely to shards.
He hurled it across the room in frustration where it shattered completely against the far wall.
"Another ten bits down the drain," he muttered.
He glanced longingly at the device on the table before him. It was rather like a barrel. In fact, that's exactly what it's outer casing had once been. Recycling is the friend of the inventor on a budget. It was inside the casing where things got interesting. Though an open panel all manner of arcane bits and bobs leaked like an open wound. Copper gears with brass escapements. Crystal lattices and gemstone manabanks. Pulleys and belts and arcplugs and tubing and all manner of esoteric components. Truly a marvel of magitech engineering.
Or, at least, that's how it would appear to a laypony. To a professional (such as a pony who'd attended a university to learn about such things) it was delightfully amateurish. The gears lacked a coprime tooth ratio. The gemstones varieties were poorly optimized for their enchantments. Half of the parts looked like they'd been removed from something else and modified to fit. There were a few novel innovations in place to overcome some of its shortcomings, but nothing spectacular. Al in all, it was a hodgepodge mess.
Flam was rather proud of his latest creation. While he was rather distinctly peeved at his inability to solder connections onto a ruby manabank without it shattering from the heat, the rest of the project had been progressing optimistically. He dared to think it might be an invention to rival the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000. That is, if he could just get past this one infuriating roadblock.
He pulled open a draw of his work desk and frowned. “Only three left. Might have to come up with another work around. That, or we can skip meals next week.” He sighed and removed one of the remaining gemstones. That was a thought for later. For now, he just needed to focus on his work.
Wrapping a gold band around one end, he once again cast the melting spell. Focus… focus… just low enough power that it only barely warps the metal without liquefying it.
The door behind him slammed open with a BANG! and the crystal shattered in his grip.
“What ho, brother of mine! I have returned!”
Flam flinched as a bit of hot crystal grazed past his cheek, but said nothing. His brother, not hearing a response let himself in.
“Well, well, well, hard at work I see, dear brother. Excellently done! That’s putting bread on our table! To think you’d even work on a day like today.” His singsong salespony voice, usually a pleasant patter to banter against, grated upon Flam’s ears today.
“It’s grocery day,” Flam said back, dryly. “Which is where you were supposed to be.”
“Bah, who needs groceries when the world is your oyster?”
Flam kicked away from the table, letting the swivel chair spin him around to face his brother as he rubbed his temples in frustration. “Flim, I'm really not in the mood for banter today. Did you get the groceries or didn't you?”
Flim stopped, hoof mid-risen in dramatic objection. “Of course I did,” he spoke normally, though a little confused. “Flam, have you really forgotten what day it is?”
Flam hesitated. Was there something important about today? He’d been so focused on the latest project that he’d hardly given it any thought. It was autumn, that must he knew every time a stiff breeze managed to worm it’s way through one of the countless knotholes in the barn they called a house. It was too soon for Running of the Leaves —not that they practiced it in towns this small— and too late for Founder’s day. A dark thought crossed his mind.
“The rent’s not come due, has it?”
“No.”
“No, of course not. You wouldn't be in such a good mood if it was. Then the government checks haven't come in either; that's always just about on rent day.”
He was stumped. No holidays, no paydays, not even the anniversary of their first sale.
“Brother,” Flim said slowly, “It’s our birthday.
Clarity dawned on him like the sun after summer rains. Of course that’s what it was! A smile grew on his face. For with a birthday, came birthday celebrations. And despite being similar in many ways, Flim was far superior when it came to planning celebrations. So what if an invention was being difficult, this took priority.
His soul sang as his lifted spirits carried him back into high-energy sales mode. “By jove, you’re right, wise O brother of mine! Our birthday it is indeed and what a fool am I for having forgotten! I can only ask your forgiveness for my earlier bruskness.”
The smile returned to Flim’s face as well. It was good to have his brother back in high spirits. “Indeed! Forgiven and forgotten! A fool you may be, but my brother nonetheless!" He walked backwards to the door. "And given that it is such a momentous of days, I thought it high time that we settle a certain debate."
"A debate?" Flam asked. He didn't remember them debating about anything recently. Nothing of substance, anyway.
"Of course! The greatest debate, the oldest of arguments." He reached around outside the door and brandished two bottles. One tall and clear filled with a pale golden fluid, the other squat and made of dark glass that hid its contents. "Sweet young cider versus rich aged brandy. Which is superior?"
Flam eyed the two bottles, licking his lips. He could already taste them. "A weighty debate. Full of rich points and counterpoints to be made by either side. I wonder if a single bottle each will be enough to make our cases?"
Flim lit his horn and levitated into view another half dozen of each bottle. "I'm fully prepared to argue my side all night if necessary." He passed a dark bottle over to his brother. "Would you care to make the opening remarks?"
Flam accepted his bottle and deftly popped the cork. A rich, dark scent wafted forth, heavy with notes of plum, pear... and apple. He frowned. "This isn't from that orchard, is it?
Flim scoffed. "Of course not, brother mine, what do you take me for? This is Appaloosian stock. Completely unrelated to those Ponyville hicks. Tastier too, I'd imagine, without such bitter ponies working the presses."
His worries cleared, Flam knocked back the bottle and took a sharp pull. It burned going down. He gasped as it passed, letting all the after flavors properly mature on his tongue. It was an excellent bottle.
This was going to be a good night.
Some hours later, after the sun had long set and many empty bottles had been cast out the door, the two brothers found themselves where they always did after achieving a certain level of drunkenness.
Sobbing in each other's embrace.
"She was too good for the likes of us!" Flam moaned, blubbering into the wet tear stains of his brother's back.
"The best mare in our lives, and we squandered our chance!" Flim wailed in return.
It was probably for the best that their house/workshop was out in the middle of nowhere. Any neighbors would have long since started complaining.
"Oh Marian, sweet Marian," Flam magically snagged his straw boater from the rack by the door and brought it close. From under the band, he pulled a small bundle of golden mane. "To think, either of us could have had her."
"Equal chance!"
"And yet we fought, bickered, and drove her away with our competition!"
"Too true, too true!" Even when properly sloshed, their flail for the dramatic was a train with no brakes.
"With her beautiful mane."
"Her perfect posture."
"That cultured voice!"
"Her treasured librable." He tried again. "Libraibry. Llllliable. Libelable."
Flam giggled at his brother's drunken slurring. "Perhab... Pershap... Maybe we've had enough for one evening." His brothers, all three of them, seemed to nod in agreement.
"Mm. And might I say, Princess, you look just lovely in that dress."
Apparently, Flim had managed to have a few more than his brother.
They walked together, leaning on one another for support. The ladder up to the loft where their beds were was enough of a bad idea for even their drunk minds to grasp, so instead they settled down atop a pile of scrap parts and failed inventions. Mostly because it happened to be the current resting place of the remains of their Comforts-Of-Home-On-The-Road Enchanted Blanket (patent pending). The 'enchanted' part had never quite worked right, but a blanket was a blanket.
Flam, being the most sober, laid his brother down as comfortably as possible before laying down beside him. This was nothing new for them. When half of their time was spent on the roads between towns, having separate beds was a luxury at best. Even the lumpy pieces of metal, leather, and gemstones felt soft compared to some places they'd slept.
Sleep came easily that night. Their bellies heavy and their minds loose, the booze worked its soothing balm over their souls; smoothing over the rough edges of worry and loss and deadening the pain.
But alcohol, no matter how strong, could only take the edge off. The underlying pain would always remain no matter how well they blocked it out with laughter and witty repertoire. It was this feeling that trickled into their dreams that night, their tale of loss replaying in an endless loop of regrets as they slept.
Princess Luna, in her nightly patrol of the Dreamscape, picked up on their distress. Swimming through the immaterial of her Realm, she alighted by the door constructs that separated the brothers' dreams from the rest of the Oneiric landscape. Laying her horn aside the peeling timbers, she allowed impressions of the dream within to come to her.
Sadness. Pain. A lost love. She nodded in understanding. It was an all too familiar scene with ponies of this era. Luckily for them, tricks from a thousand years ago worked just as well on modern ponies. Bringing her magic to bear, she applied one of the simplest, yet most effective, tools in her repertoire: recontextualization. Slowly, the doors turned pink as the dreams transformed from a memory of what was to a fantasy of what could have been.
In their dreams, slightly different though following the same beats, each brother found themselves back in Dodge Junction, that hole-in-the-wall of a town where they'd both met and lost... her.
She emerged from the mists of dreaming like an angel. Her golden mane tied in it's elaborate bun, her fur as neat and impeccably groomed as they remembered. Her lips, soft and plump as fresh berries and twice as alluring. Every part of her perfect, idealized, made more paragon than person. And above all those *eyes. Those piercing blue eyes which could cut through their doubletalk and clever phrases like a rapier of no-nonsense straightforwardness.
No words were needed in a dream where things happened at the speed of thought. In each dream, Marion, the mare of their dreams, approached them with an undeniable depth of certainty of intent to each step. Once close she allowed herself to be swept up into their grasp and pulled into a deep and passionate kiss.
Back in the physical realm, Flim and Flam moaned in the midst of their wet dreams. Drunkenness kept their minds fast asleep, but their bodies were all too eager to respond. As far as their autonomic responses believed, this was finally the end of a very long dry spell.
Flim rolled over in his sleep, moaning as a dream mare's ministrations brought him pleasure in ways that could only be imagined.
Among the pony races, each has a unique quirk that can rarely happen during sex. Pegasi may succumb to the oft-mocked 'wing boner' where their wings go completely rigid and triple in sensitivity. For earth ponies, they can become animalistic; losing themselves in passion and devolving into sex-crazed beasts that speak in only grunts and whinnies. And unicorns... unicorns sometimes shoot sparks from their horns. They're harmless having no spell to direct them, merely a sputtering of raw magic power.
Flim was a sufferer from such a condition.
A cascade of brilliant green sparks ripped through the air as he came in his dream. They danced and flitted through the air, falling harmlessly back down onto Flim, his brother... and the exposed magic circuitry of their blanket.
The circuits sucked down the magic eagerly, energy flowing through wires and crystals as it did it's best to function in a half-cannibalized state. Magic sparked again as it reached the ends of broken wires and fractured crystals, leaking down into the bowels of broken machinery that made up their bed.
Machinery that now sputtered to life with supplemented power.
Flam and Flam were many things. They were inventors. Part wizard, part engineer. A little bit chemist, a little bit artificer. Jacks of all trades but, unfortunately, masters of none. They had the natural talent to get a project off the ground, but lacked the training and skill to bring it to completion. They made up the difference with fast talking that painted their bugs as features. And thus, was the root of their problems. While the brothers could, and had, created many innovative devices and contraptions, they lacked the skill and training to really make them work. And then trouble came when they tried to spin their bugs as features.
Such was the case of an invention that they'd hoped would allow them to make a fortune turning the beauty industry on its head. The Minute-Model Moldable Model Maker Mk. III.
Beneath the bodies of two slumbering brothers, machinery began to click and whir. Gears spun against open air and pistons pumped free of their housings. Yet alcohol kept both brothers asleep as their bed rocked and shifted beneath them, causing them to slide into one another, face to face. As he fell, Flim's hoof depressed the activation button for the MMMMM Mk. III and a pink crystal illuminated.
"D-DeMo MOde oN. W-W-WeLcOMe," a synthesized voice stuttered through it's missing and broken parts, "T-t-T-to a r-r-revOLUtion iN B-beAUty. J-juST onE m-MinUTE mA'Am aNd y-You'LL lOOk a-a-a-a-a-AbsOlUtelY StuuUUuuUUnningggggg..." The voice froze on the last sound before cutting off abruptly.
As the main spell came into effect --the brain of the contraption, so to speak-- it began to look for it's designated subject. All but one pressure plate had been taken for other projects, but one was all it needed. It scanned the subject and compared it to the idealized dimensions in it's database. There was a lot of work to be done.
Magic arced across crystal logic boards, building a spell with all the calculated changes it determined were needed. After a few moments, it was complete, and the customized, personalized spell was cast.
Flim shifted in his sleep as the magic of the spell sank back into his body. One thing that he and his brother had not accounted for when building the device was that transformation spells tended to be severely itchy. That, among other things, was why the device had been scrapped.
It started with his fur. Coarse hairs, rough and unclean, became silky and smooth. He twisted his body against the sensation, unintentionally rubbing up against Flam's. Long gangly limbs turned thin and elegant, the muscles below becoming supple and given a healthy coating of fat. His mane shifted and twitched like an agitated animal as magic worked in down to the root, causing a sudden explosion of growth until it ran down his back like a peppermint striped waterfall. His muzzle softened, bone shaving down to a petiter frame that would draw in the eye of any stallion that saw in.
Down below, previously useless nipples, hidden beneath soft belly fur, swelled and grew into modest yet milkable teats. Finally, as though the machine had some sense of irony, the very last stage was his pride and joy. The spell had assessed his stallionhood and found it unacceptable. Some strange growth incompatible with its designs. As such it had to go.
Flim couldn't help but moan as the magic invaded his shaft, permeating and penetrating it with a tingling most indescribable. He writhed in his sleep, grinding his soft new body against his brother's now much larger one. Flam's body, for it's part, took this in and responded in kind, rubbing right back. With that and the influence of his ongoing dream, it took but a moment for Flam's member to come out of its sheath. As the magic dwindled Flim away, Flam only grew larger.
A soft whine squeaked it's way out of Flim, the pitch growing ever higher as the magic continued. Finally, with a final surge, the spell completed it's work and Flim became Shim. She loosed a high-pitched cry as the changes finalized, her body not knowing how to process these strange new sensations.
Flam reacted to the cry, his hips swinging forward like a falling axe. It struck true, splitting Shim down the middle. A perfect bull's eye right into her new marehood.
In Shim's dream something shifted. She was still with Marion, deep in the throes of lovemaking, but the sensation had changed. Hadn't she been on top before? But there was no sense in dreams anyway, and so she continued as Marion cupped her cheek and leaned in for another kiss.
Shim cried out in pleasure and pain as her newly formed hymen burst, Flam's well-hung stallionhood piercing her to her innermost depths. She bucked her hips against it, her body reacting instinctively to the pleasure even as her mind remained trapped in a dream.
Sensing that the spell had completed, the brain of the MMMMM Mk.III tried to send a signal to the makeup and garment attachments that it was their turn. But those parts had never been built and there was no response. It tried again. Still nothing.
Meanwhile, Shim and Flam had fallen into a rhythm. He thrust deeply, an old chassis to his back providing leverage, as her tight and virginal walls tried to hold in. Every time he bucked, she bucked back, her body eager for more of this intoxicating new sensation. In their dreams, both were still with Marion, being pleasured in strange new ways.
Flam groaned as he felt a hot pressure building up inside his body. With one last powerful thrust, pushing deeper than he ever had before, he unleashed his load of burning seed. His cry mingled with Shim's who, at that very moment, had just achieved her first orgasm.
Though the machine had done its work thoroughly, it was only at that moment that she truly became a mare.
The pair of them lay back, both breathing heavily despite being completely asleep. Their euphoric highs permeated their dreams, reducing them to little more than bubbles of sensation and feeling.
As they rested, their bodies still clutched in each other's embrace and dripping with sweat and semen alike, the machine beneath them continued to try and and contact its missing components. On its ninety-eighth try, no response. On it's ninety-ninth try, no response. After the hundredth failure, it finally reached the fail state and found new instructions. The first step of which was to revert any processes already performed. "E-E-eRroR. S-S-shuTTIng DowN."
Shim's body glowed slightly as the magic effects began to wear off. Her hair retracted and her muzzle regained its roguish definition. Flam struggled as the body he caressed suddenly grew several inches longer, and relocated his hoof. Right on top of the activation button.
"D-dEmo moDe ON. W-W-WElcoME," the synthesized voice said again, even more disjoined now as it was running on less power.
As Shim's body continued to restore, Flam's was quick to begin diminishing. One became taller as the other got smaller. Shim's teats vanished into nothingness as Flam's ballooned out to enormous size. And in a remarkable moment of reverse synchronicity, Flim's rod regrew in perfect pace with Flam's retracting away, leaving one penetrating the other in reversed roles.
Sham's moan at her slow penetration only seconds after the nerve ending were created was more than enough to reawaken their sexual urges (though the ponies themselves remained firmly ensconced in dreamland thanks to Luna's magic). They were still tired, but the new and different stimulations were plenty sufficient to encourage them into round two.
Suffice to say, both Flim and Flam were incredibly confused and sticky when they awoke the next morning.
"Pregnant?!" Both Flim and Flam cried in perfect unison, their voices echoing off the walls of the tiny office in the Phillydelphia free clinic.
The doctor winced at the noise. "Tartarus! You trying to give me tinnitus?" He flipped up a page of their charts and showed it to them. "Yes, pregnant. The tests are very clear."
"But we're stallions," Flam argued, "How can we be pregnant?"
The doctor pointed to a helpful diagram. "Because you have a uterus lodged up and around your prostate. There's no exterior opening, of course, so you're going to want a Cesmarean when the time comes. As to how it happened." He shifted his weight to his cane and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his free hoof. "My guess? At some point or another the both of you did some experimenting with some kinky magic from one of those back alley stores in Canterlot." He held up a hoof against their protests. "Not my problem, I don't care about your personal lives. What you should have done was read all the warning labels. Especially the ones about the spells not fully reverting in the case of pregnancy. Magic can't kill, after all."
"So, that's it?" Flim asked, astonished. "We're going to have foals?"
"Fillies, by my count. Congratulations."
"Foals..." Flam said breathlessly, "I can't believe it. Flim, do you know what this means?"
"Indeed I do."
The pair leapt to their hooves and struck a victorious pose. "Childcare stipends! Twice as much money from the government!"
"Three times, brother! If we register as intersex we can apply both as single mothers and single fathers!"
"Brilliant! What a fantastic windfall!" He stroked his belly. "Oh you are going to grow up so spoiled, my little Hustle."
"Hey! Don't I get a say in naming? It's as much my child as it is yours."
"Name your own, this one's mine."
Dr. Stable sighed at his patients' inane chattering. Reaching into his pocket, he took out an orange capsule of pills and swallowed four of them, then two more for good measure.
He hated clinic duty.
