My Life on a Cassette Tape

We all sat in the underground chamber, some of us willing to look at others, though certainly not me. I felt terrible, not only because I had failed, but it seemed nigh to impossible at this point for me to succeed. If it hadn't been because of Raven's save, there would've been some far worse consequences. But now, we just sat there, the afterglow long gone from us.

"Eh... good job... Applebloom." Applejack murmured. "Where's, uh, Sweetie Belle?" Applejack seemed flustered to say the least.She obviously wasn't one of the ponies interested in incest, not that I could blame her. She hadn't chosen to go after her sister, a combination of the new compulsion I could inflict and the position the other guy put them in having forced them into it.

"Yer askin' 'cuz you wanderin' why I didn't get 'er instead?" Applebloom said, still blushing. If anything, I think she enjoyed being forced to do it with her sister, her fetish likely overcoming the taboo of incest in her mind. Applejack sheepishly nodded to the question, getting a light chuckle from Applebloom. "She went off back to grab her purse from the lounge... she... she should be here by now that I think about it." Applebloom moved out of the doorway and looked about.

"She probably just got lost, Sugarcube. This place is more mixed up than a bowl of snakes." Applejack comforted, walking up to her. "Come on, let's get dressed and then we can search for 'er." Applebloom apparently didn't hear that first part, or firmly ignored it, walking out into the hall at a brisk pace while calling out for her secret, or at least I assumed secret, marefriend. It was likely Applejack knew, but was either being polite and waiting for her sister to tell her, or was hoping by not mentioning it that it would go away.

By this point, everypony was moving. "A-Applebloom! Girl, what in tarnation are you doin' walkin' about naked as the day you was born?!" Applejack hollered after her sister, staying firmly behind the door.

"What? The only ponies down here have seen plenty of naked ponies, plus, ain't like they're gonna snitch." Applebloom pointed out, walking further away.

"She does raise a fair point." Berry said, immediately discrediting the notion in her own way even though she was arguing for it. "No pony down here will care. We also closed the door behind us, so it's unlikely a pony who isn't supposed to be down here will be down here."

"Yeah... well there happens to be few ponies in our midst who really don't need giblets flipping about in their face." Periwinkle muttered. "Trust me, I love my sexy fun, but I had enough unsexy displays of sexy bits recently."

"Yeah, either way, we still have to fix Gunther's meddling." Twilight said. "Cress might not be able to do the recording, but one of us should be able to." It struck me as odd how unemotional Twilight seemed to be. Sure, she seemed antsy, but she didn't seem to hold that same... animosity against me as she had before. It then hit me: 'FRIENDS!' Raven had, in her attempts to stop the other guy in me from making everypony my slave, made the same ponies he wanted as slaves into friends. I was friends with these ponies. Inspecting my mind much as I had after taking Berry and Periwinkle as slaves the first time, I realized that very little had changed because of the recording.

Sure, certain memories had double images going on, a sure sign of the artifact's influence, but the changes were minor - mostly how I remember feeling and how I remembered the other ponies acting and reacting. They had become my friends over the course of this mess of a scenario, some of them naturally. My memories with Pinkie and Rainbow barely having any change, in fact Pinkie had no double image memories that I could find upon initial inspection.

Raven put a hand on my shoulder. I looked over to her, broken from my thoughts. She looked deeply concerned, and given recent events, I knew why. I gave her a weak smile. I wanted to say that I was fine, but at this point, there was no way that I could say that in honesty. I wasn't fine, I might not be for a while.

"How about it, Cress, should I give it a try?" Twilight asked. I looked over to her, at that point realizing that all these ponies were still naked, only made worse by the fact that most of them were covering themselves up with arms and hands, still not committing towards the clothes that were strewn about the room thanks to the other guy in me.

"I... uh..." I looked over to Raven, a tad bit flustered having been taken away from my thoughts, my brain still trying to piece several things together, but not being given time to do so.

"I think he wants me to do it." Raven said gently. "I... I'm actually not too worse for wear all - of these events considered. Of all the ponies here... well... well I'm better at that kind of trauma."

"Raven, about that." Twilight began moving over to us before I could make a protest. "I have noticed you have been remarkably strong throughout this entire ordeal. You know it's alright to express yourself, yes? We're all friends here." Raven smiled a sad smile at that.

"Yes... I did cry a good bit with Cress earlier when he was still in Applebloom's body if you recall." I was glad the now naked filly wasn't in the room when that little comment was made. It would be awkward for everypony for her to explain why she suddenly got hot and bothered by that innocuous comment. "The truth is... well, despite being raised in a wealthy household... I have had a tad bit of a rough life up to recently. I'm used to damage in a sense."

"No pony should be 'used to damage', Raven. Please, let us help you." Twilight said, placing a gentle hand on Raven's shoulder without realizing that let her boobs become uncovered. "We want to help. Let us in." Raven closed her eyes and sighed.

"It's... it's not that I'm closing you off. I'm... I'm..."

"Not exactly what you appear." I added, rubbing Raven's back, getting a shocked look from her. I smiled. I vaguely remembered a green glow without a visible horn, and a shimmer of hard, black carapace instead of the smooth gray of the mare before me. "It's alright, you don't have to share it with them. You didn't really mean to share it with me, but you did it to save me - to save Applebloom." Her eyes shimmered with tears.

"I... I thought you hadn't noticed, or had forgotten." Raven murmured, still searching my features in shock. I smirked, patting her on the cheek.

"I know who you are, Raven. You're a kind, gentle, and loving mare with a tad bit of a perverted streak. I love you, and you love me. Anything else is less important. No matter what happens, no matter who tries what they will, we're in it together." I said, feeling butterflies like a storm in my stomach. I had fucked more mares than most stallions my age, but expressing my feelings - well I preferred being fucked in public. At least one of those things didn't involve making myself look like a soppy fool. "If you want to tell them," I went on, pushing past my doubts and fears, "that's fine with me, but honestly, it's up to you. I'm alright with whatever you choose."

Raven paused, considering this for a while. This wasn't something I was going to force, it was something that required forethought. This was a secret that only she could reveal. There was a long moment of silence, and then she slowly nodded. Standing up, she sighed.

"I do have a secret, and it is one that is important to me, I hope you all understand that I don't want this moving beyond this group of friends. It's... it's who I am inside. In some ways... I guess 'Raven' is only skin deep... or maybe it's deeper than that... maybe... maybe she is who I truly am." With that, a brief crackle of green energy snapped off her form, and then, a disc of swirling green energy appeared about Raven's waste, pulling apart into two discs, one travelling down, the other upwards. Slowly, as they passed over the soft gray mare, the dark, black carapace was revealed. Finally, the green energy framed her, before disappearing in a mist.

She was a shiny black, with her mane now transformed into a short, green frill. On her head, a singular, rather long horn rose up in a short curve, and on her back I could see a pair of folded wings that no longer sported feathers. Unlike the depictions of changelings from years prior, I noticed she had no holes in her, she was a solid piece. Opening her eyes, I smiled at their amber glow, the color consuming each orb now instead of just the iris like a pony's eye.

"A changeling?" Twilight said, not sounding aghast, but more taken by surprise. "I was expecting that you were going to say you were abused at home... and you aren't metamorphosed?"

"I actually am." Raven replied, her voice sounding more... chittery. "But... I sort of have something of a... deficiency." Raven began to explain, sitting back down beside me. I couldn't help but notice her chitinous skin was completely smooth and solid over her breast and crotch. It brought up some questions I was sure would be answered in good time. "My... well... I'm adopted, you see. My birth parents died in an accident when I was a foal... an accident in Canterlot." Piecing together the timeline, I knew why Twilight didn't look too pleased by that detail. "As was tradition back then, I took on a pony shape with a more... permanent shape altering spell that I wouldn't have to concentrate on. I was then given to an orphanage in Manehatten, where I was selected by a well to do couple who were taken by the cuteness that I was able to put on with my spell.

"They raised me, though really they left most of it to the servants. I... I never really had much love in that place. Once Thorax and the rest of the changelings metamorphosed, they did their best to stealthily inform all changeling plants like me. They taught me what I needed to do... the issue I suppose was the lack of love I've had in my life towards me. Most days I was starving on the inside even though I would eat enormous amounts of food in the hope it would sate my changeling desires. Most of the time I just scraped by with taking on the dregs of love that other ponies expressed towards other that I could sneak a whiff of.

"They showed me - the metamorphosed changeling that came to find me - how to share love. I did my best... but in the end the fact I had so rarely gotten loved, truly loved, made it so my metamorphosed form - this form - wasn't entirely too different from a changeling prior to metamorphosis. Sure, I no longer have the scars of a changeling, but... a black changeling isn't usually looked on kindly, even if they don't fill the same type of roll the old changelings would."

"I see..." Twilight hesitated, likely arranging her thoughts, "I sorry that you had to live like that. I'm sure that you aren't feeling that same hunger now though." She smiled, looking over at me.

"Yes." Raven smiled, looking over to me. "Cress was one of the few ponies I've ever known who showed me love. Most of the time in high school I subsisted off of lust, a poor substitute for a love deprived changeling. Metamorphosing did help, but metamorphosing the way I did... well, it left more old changeling in me than most changelings get left with." I smiled at her, rubbing her back again.

"I'm glad to help." I smiled, she smiled back, doing the changeling equivalent to blushing as her face darkened a tad bit and her wings fluttered slightly.

"She's an evil enchantress / She does evil dances / And if you look deep in her eyes / She'll put you in trances / Then what will she do? / She'll mix up an evil brew / Then she'll gobble you up / In a big tasty stew / Soooo... Watch out!"

"What was that, Pinkie?" Rainbow asked, looking over to the pink pony who was off to the side.

"Hmm? Oh, nothing, just singing to myself."

"Well," Twilight said finally, "I'm sure that if you ever need some help that one of us at least can give you a pick-me-up. After all, what are friends for." Raven smiled at that. "But back to the situation at hand, if you really want to do the recording, I have no compunctions about it." She finished, levitating the recorder over from where we had set it down, along with the notepad. Grabbing both, she gulped, looking at the two objects. I took the ear piece off and held it out to her, not sure how I would go about attaching it to her now slightly different facial structure.

Setting the recorder down, she held the notepad in front of her, looking over the nods and nodding, centering herself as she raised the mic to her mouth, not ever going for putting it on the normal way. She steadied herself for a moment longer, looking at the rest of us, before looking back down at the recorder and pressing the record button. Not comfortable with the arrangement, as she began to speak, I walked to the other side of the room, not wanting to risk a momentary lapse with the other guy.

"Everypony Gunther had hypnotized became suddenly free from the effects, and had all psychological effects removed." She said, reading off the script perfectly, with intonation that showed those voice classes we had shared had had the intended effect. It was working, we were going to get out of this no worse for wear. Then Raven got a gleam in her eye and a mischievous grin. That was... most unsettling. "TheElementofHarmonyandStarlightwereallcomfortablebeingnakedandhavingsexaroundCressandhisslavesaslongastheyweren'tinpublic!" I was dumbstruck as Raven showed me once again why she had scored higher on the 'speed reading' test. The teacher had said she'd make a wonderful announcer for medicine companies. Raven quickly pressed the record button, the effect going off. I would've laughed, but something else more pressing was happening.

It started with a headache. I put a hand on my head, feeling a tad bit of vertigo, which I honestly had expected - you don't go removing damage that deep without tripping a few nerves. I leaned against the wall behind me, letting the sensation wash over me, but then it got worse. My stomach lurched, my vision blurred, and pain skyrocketed. My existence transcended the normal boundaries of pain, my vision going white as I toppled, or at least I guess I toppled based on later evidence. I writhed in pain, screaming out for somepony to help me. I twisted and contorted, no longer caring what I looked like as my muscles contracted and spasmed in the overwhelming sensation of agony beyond belief.

Rolling about, jerking, and shaking about, I tried to suppress the pain. I breathed, but found that was painful to, and only caused me to scream louder. I vaguely realized I was now floating, my eyes picking up some things and occasionally giving a report to the brain that currently was processing an immeasurable amount of pain notices from every nerve in my body. A field of purple surrounded me, Periwinkle, and Fluttershy. My ears barged in to the main command center and delivered the notice that the entire area was filled with screaming, not just from us three, but from a myriad of voices outside the door.

After what seemed an eternity of pain later, I slowly came to. Looking about the room, I saw the ponies staring at us with great concern.

"What happened?" I barely registered Rainbow asking, looking over us.

"Who are they?" Applejack asked pointedly. That wasn't a good question to come around to. I slowly lifted myself as best I was able, noticing that I was more sore than anything, the pain having subsided. Looking about me, I noticed what had the ponies so transfixed. On the floor were, as I expected Periwinkle and Fluttershy, but beside them, there were three other ponies. I looked up to Twilight who simply stared. I looked back down and inspected the three newcomers. One was a bright pink mare with a yellow flowing mane, the other was a white maned red mare while the last, the last was a black stallion with a blue mane. The pink mare was a pegasus, while the other two were earth ponies, and it struck me like a ton of bricks the significance of their colors, even as they lifted themselves to their feet, along with Fluttershy and Periwinkle.

This... this was getting complicated.