Sugar-Coated Sour (feat. Babs Seed)

Despite the cliche in sunglasses watching from a distance, Babs liked to stop and look in the mirror from time to time. In the morning, after she woke up, before her shower, or right as she was about to go to bed. Sometimes she'd just catch a glance of herself on the way out after washing her hooves. She liked to see what her response might be to a pony who looked exactly like her, staring back instead of forwards.

Noticing little changes... or big ones, as they turned out to be. The first time she'd dyed her mane, staring at the bright red in the reflective pool above her sink, and wondering if she was a completely different pony now that she could barely recognize herself. Then the piercings, the bridge of her nose, lower lip on the left side, and both ears, multiple times. Once she got started, it didn't seem to make any sense to go half-assed.

But then there was that cliche again. Was she really any different than the first pony? Was there any factor other than pure chance that would tell the difference between "Yeah, I'd fuck me" and "Clean yourself up and head straight to church you broken down harlot,". That was one of her words, no doubt. A lifetime of reading Celestial literature but not worshiping might do that to a pony.

There was something about her own space, too, even though it was dingy and desperate and smelled a little of urine despite the fact that she was assured the steam-cleaning had been done twice before she moved in. Anywhere was better than nowhere. Better than park-benches and that alley next to the old, out-of-business theater. Better than a dirt mattress and one blanket between you and the seasons.

But for some reason, all of that had been better than home.

Babs liked to eat cereal before bed. It felt kind of, in reverse, stocking yourself up with the meal you were supposed to eat right after getting up. But sometimes, or most of the time, she liked to go as soon as her eyes were open. No time to get ready. No bowl, cereal.

And maybe then, it was only some weirder, overarching thing... Babs tried not to think about those bits, that maybe would have stuck out like the edges of a puzzle waiting to be filed off so they could fit. She'd fooled around with a psych major once, who, aside from wanting to do a fuck-ton of weird shit on top of the normal (which, as long as he paid for it, wasn't really a big deal), loved to prod her with questions bordering on invasive, poking her more and more sensitive mental areas until she finally batted him away and got out with her bits.

Strangely, she missed him, and had always wondered if there was something she could have done. It wasn't normal to lose a client for good like that. Or to hear about it on the news, instead of in person. No family, thank Celestia.

It was the crazies who stuck out. Normal ponies were just crazy wearing a coat, but their dial was tuned in a different direction. You could indulge in the crazy, at which point it became commonplace, and asking for a hornjob in the school playground after school, while wearing a diaper and having Babs piss in your mouth, wasn't something that was a convention away from approach. You could just think of what you wanted, say it, and deal with the consequences from the standpoint that nopony was going to look at you normally after that anyway. Heck, they probably never had in the first place.

But burying the crazy, stuffing it in a closet somewhere or only letting it out on weekends with the window-blinds low and the deadbolt locked... that did something unhealthy to the crazy. It became like a gremlin, locked in a little box, scraping at the edges and polishing its claws and waiting for the moment after midnight it could finally break free and feast on whatever flesh was substituting for a proper meal that day.

And, so, you had to learn how to take charge in these instances, even when your mouth was gagged and all four of your hooves were chained to the wall in an elaborate and archaic stone sex dungeon. No, you may not use the iron maiden, and we will have a safe gesture as well as a safe word, and if there is one scar on me when I finish that I did not start with (because yes, I have counted them), you will be hearing from another pony much bigger and more prone to spontaneous acts of dismemberment than I am very shortly. Yes, that's right. Now let me step on them, you worthless little worm.

Babs sighed and took one of the few final bites of cereal. She liked to make sure to scoop out all the little bits at the end, then drink the milk from the bowl like it was some ancient chalice, supplementing her with tribute to the eternal Goddess. Celestia, probably, but with a less-coordinated wardrobe at the time when anypony went around calling her the 'eternal Goddess'.

Still. Things were going to go one of two directions.

There was slimy, desperate, and darker than the black hole at the center of the galaxy.

And there was vicious, asphyxiating, hedonistically self-indulgent madness, blooming from an underground, fiery place, to flower inside Babs' heart and drive her screaming hysterically off the cliff of sensibility and into the abyss of depravity below.

She knew the feel of both paths. Familiar to her hooves, as inadvisable as either might be. But there was also this—the sitting around, waiting for the flies on the wall to suddenly become more entertaining than they had been ten minutes ago—wondering if a storm might brew overnight and rain lightning bolts on the town and she would wake to an eviscerated city-scape laden with ash, and left to wonder if she was the only pony left alive. Could she dream herself to a permanent sleep, asking the question every moment she was awake in bed, and every moment she was sleep in the aether, and every moment after that and nothing else until the claws of shadows clutched her and dragged her to a sweet, eternal aftermath?

Milk. Much better after cereal. Much easier drinking than thinking. Much easier doing nothing than moving in any direction.

But there was this. Day to day. Trudging brick and lurking alleys and paying yourself less and less each time, imagining a business boom, a sudden tourist industry, a sudden flare of reputation that might let you work on demand instead of crawling, inch to inch, minute to minute, budgeting by food trips and rationing chemicals and wrapping the apartment around you like a shield. It was easier not to eat, to forget to breathe, whenever your body would let you. There was water. Tell yourself it was enough. Tell her.

There are plenty of ponies in this world who'd be grateful for what you have. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself.

Work. What was the distinction between that and being alive? What was the distinction between somepony who was qualified to know what to do to take care of themselves, and somepony who felt like the world was a strange theme park they'd never been given access to, and even sneaking in on weekends, all the rides were full, and every guard and guest and member of park staff spoke five different languages but none of them were yours. Fuck. She was burning out, too, three days since her last toke. It felt like every object connected by a thread to ten years in the past. Bottles strewn amongst take out bags piled with needles and ashtrays into corners of every room. Bags of white & yellow falling from the cupboard instead of her Honey Nut Cheerilee-O's, no cereal in the house for two weeks but plenty of money to keep her boyfriend of the same in a new stereo system and car tune ups. School as a purgatory between waking and sleep, anything in that house likely to require more lung strength and willpower than whatever the ponies on the playground were capable of. Clean up your room, it looks like a den of pigs lives here, with your fucking [crack]-pipe on the goddamn living room table the next morning next to the T.V. remote while her brother was watching his cartoons.

Stupid bitch.

She didn't like the words contained in either direction. Especially that one. Even as a kid, when he was around, and then when he wasn't, too, it was 'Dad', or 'Laden', from 'Laden Hoof', which was his full name, or 'Fuckface', which became more popular in the time before she'd decided staying in the house after dropping out made about as much sense as staying in jail after you'd broken out of yourself. She was on the train to Canterlot the next day, and Manehatten was a blur in the past the same way the screams in her head were after taking a drag of homegrown smoke.

But there was no smoke now. No blurring. Everything had a crystal clarity to it that she loathed. Knowing she might cut herself on it, edges polished to a diamond point on every object.

That was what everypony called them. Not 'sugar'... ponies.

The other side of the coin. Babs raised a foreleg, studied the scars on the inside. The ones that lead up almost to her neck. The few on the hidden part of her hind-legs, only visible when the lights were up high and she was spreading for somepony else to get a good look. The one that carefully traced a vein, stubbornly accurate, but, unfortunately, not deep enough to do the job.

Fine. She rolled the word in her mouth, testing her tongue's ability to keep down the struggling sense of vomit welling in her stomach.

Time to start the sting. Stop moving from hoofful of bits to food-checkout, stashing what you can in your saddlebag before checkout. No more hoof to mouth. Stretch it out.

Find yourself... ugh.

A sugar... daddy.

Locating the right pony would be like a mark in a crowded bar, someone you could cold-read at a distance just to learn their brand of watch and how many figures were in their bank account. You could get a wallet without much trouble just by batting your eyelashes and flicking your tail. But the colt had to be the right style, or rather, you had to be his style, and spotting that just-right mix between stodgy and desperate was a talent in-itself. Looking the part was a whole other matter. Playing the part, a lifetime of devotion. Babs looked up towards the clouds and stuck her tongue out between her teeth. She adjusted her skirt and checked to make sure her blue-silver thong was in place, pulled tight between her bright orange cheeks and lighter pink pussy lips. Showered already. Perfume applied, that stupid, sickly-sweet apple scent that everypony with a nose and set of balls seemed to go crazy for.

Now, just look. Look for the glint in their eye and the thinning of their hair. Look for somepony very rich and very stupid.

It took a few tries. False starts were common no matter the practice. The first pony was nice, nervous, eager, but evidently penniless, as he couldn't even turn up one night's fee as Bab coaxed him with his tie wound around her hoof. The second pony was loaded, judging from the receipt she'd snatched with his bank balance, but, no matter how hard she through her underage body at him, resisted with a curt and prompt manner that made her so mad she'd knocked his briefcase into a gutter before she took off, fuming and praying that she wouldn't have to work all day just to find one pony in Ponyville who could make the act of selling her cooch enough to live on comfortably, instead of coasting from day-to-day like a run-of-the mill pony hooker. In Manehatten, at least she'd been able to find work. It was just the territory it came in that she didn't agree with.

But, after she returned to the market for the third time, wild-eyed and ready to rip the throat out of her next potential target, a pony had stepped past her that seemed to fit every detail in her dream about a wishy-washy older colt with too much money and not enough conscience.

He had a kid, too. Strolling downtown, taking her for a walk, ignoring everything she said and leering shamelessly at any half-decent filly that walked past, regardless of age. No wonder: with a sexpot daughter like that, a colt was bound to build up repressed urges. Unless his daughter was cooperative, anyway.

But come on. This was either a cruel joke, or a sign from the same Celestia that ostensibly made the sun rise every day. His daughter was wearing a literal diamond tiara, both on her head, and as her cutie mark. His cutie mark was freaking bags of money. You couldn't spell it clearer than that. And even Babs, who mostly checked the newspaper to muse despondently over the obituaries and make sure there were no typos in her classified ad, had seen Filthy Rich's picture in the news before. Richest Pony in Ponyville Makes Even More Money: Says He Won't Let It Go To His Head, and a big picture of Filthy Rich standing on top of a literal pile of bits. Of bits stacked to the ceiling.

If there was a time to pounce, it was now. Working around his daughter might be tough. But it was now or never.

There. She was distracted by a stall selling 'imported' necklaces. More likely made from local seashells and polished rocks. Not important. Time to move.

When she bumped into the old fogey, Babs made sure to make it a good bump, smooshing herself hard against his body, not to knock him off his hooves (though that would be pretty funny besides), but to give him a sense of how light Babs was—she could pack a lot more of a punch than that, but her body was young, and soft, and still wearing clothes you might see on a (suitably bad-mannered) school filly. Her butt was the only thing about her big enough to vote or purchase drinks. So she made sure to give him a good squish of that too.

"Oops!" she said, in practiced air-head. "I'm sorry, Mister! I wasn't watching where I was going!" Babs pouted her lip and made her eyes as wide and innocent as she could manage. A lot, surprisingly, considering the history behind them.

"Oh my. It's no trouble at all, er, miss—"

"Pixie. Pixie Stix." Babs smirked, and flashed her skirt, a plaid number she'd picked out to match her choker. She extended a hoof, and shook Filthy Rich's gently, as though she couldn't muster enough strength to even shake his foreleg. That's it. Reel him in.

"A pleasure, er, Pixie." Filthy rich wasn't sweating yet, but his eyes were roaming unaccounted for, dashing over the landscape of Babs' underage body like a colonialist with a flag. His eyes paid particular attention to Babs' low-cut top, not showing off really anything other than her bare coat, which would have been visible anyway... but her choker, and soft, youthful fur was a roadblock, and one he hung on for some time before stammering and awkwardly returning his eyes to face Babs, who was smiling at him obliviously.

"You too! What's your name?" Babs giggled, as though following the conversation was a feat she'd managed to accomplish at the height of her attention span, and was celebrating it by allowing herself to let out some of the empty-space floating around upstairs.

"Filthy... er, Filthy Rich, that is." Filthy adjusted his tie, straightening it, crookeding it, and then straitening it again, all with his eyes crossed for focus. Finally, content with the tie's position, he returned his eyes to Babs. "I don't suppose you've heard of me..."

"Oh! Are you that guy who like, has the pancake that looks like Princess Celestia?" Babs smiled sweetly and batted her eyelashes, hoof on her chin, recalling some nonexistent episode of Eye On Ponyville.

"Um, no, I don't... what? No, I'm the richest pony in Ponyville. That's who I am."

"Oh." Babs batted her eyelashes again, staring forward blankly. "That's pretty cool! You must have, like, a big mansion or something."

"It is quite big, I assure you," Filthy said, missing the subtext entirely, and checking over his shoulder for his daughter, more to make sure she wasn't coming to interrupt his conversation than out of concern for her safety. Diamond Tiara was still preoccupied with the necklace stall, by now berating the pony for their quality and haggling their prices far below anything that could be called a living wage. Filthy Rich smiled. Following perfectly in her father's hoof-steps.

"Wow. I'd love to see it some time!" Babs turned up the sweetness an extra notch, getting far closer to Filthy Rich than necessary, rubbing herself up against him, the fabric of her black-and-white striped t-shirt rippling over her coat each time she pressed herself up against his side. It was blatant, but Babs knew she could feign ignorance on cue. No need to worry about something that hadn't happened yet.

"I... well, we have just met, but I suppose..." Filthy Rich did a quick glance around, utterly ignorant of his already existent, other well-known reputation as Ponyville's biggest philanderer. Specifically with fillies around his daughter's age. At last, a nervous sweat began to trickle down his brow, and a lump to accompany it appeared in his throat.

"It can be totally quick. I just wanna see the bedrooms, really," Babs said, hanging herself off Filthy as though she'd immediately assumed the role of his accompaniment.

"Well... but, there is, the issue of my daughter—"

"Why don't you just send her to see a movie? I think Mane Six: End-Game is still showing. Probably every other hour." Babs voice shifted slightly as her vocabulary and ability to direct her speech increased, but she slipped right back into her ditzy, affected vocal fry as soon as she'd finished getting the logistics out of the way. "That way you can show me your place, and we can, like, totally just hang out with each other for a bit. It'll be fun!"

"Hmm... that sounds... very agreeable. Ah, just one moment, while I collect my, er, daughter..." Filthy Rich waved a hoof over his head and shouted into the crowd. "Diamond! Come here immediately! And don't acquire any non-liquidatable assets! We'll just come back and buy them out or something... that's a girl."

Diamond Tiara returned to her father in a huff, her hooves full with the three necklaces she had bartered as a 'product sample'. Nonetheless, the victory was short-lived. Daddy telling her what to do was a pain in her plot... and who was this random filly, who looked like a cross between a school filly and an alternative porn model? Was that a... a nose piercing?!

"Daddy, who is this, and why are you—"

"Not now, my dear. This is a special friend of Daddy's, and he's going to take her back for a tour of the house while you attend the local cinema. Doesn't that sound wonderful?"

Diamond Tiara crossed her forelegs and pouted.

"Another special friend? What happened to Ruby Heels, from last month?"

"Well, you see, she and Daddy weren't having the best of times with each other any more, mostly due to an issue she was having with... it's all to do with something you'll understand better when you're older, in any case, dear."

"I don't wanna go to the movies," Diamond said. She stuck out her lower lip extra far and gave her daddy the best princess eyes she could manage.

But it was no use. She knew his dick would always steer him before his daughter did. Maybe one day she ought to fix that.

"Nonsense, dear. This one's very popular, all the ponies your age love it, I'm sure. So, take this—" he handed her a stack of paper bit-notes, which she snatched greedily, despite her protests. "—buy yourself some snacks, maybe take a friend or two. And Daddy will be back to pick you up in a few hours. Alright?"

"I want a new T.V. or I'm gonna tell mom about your new special friend."

"You know the agreement," Filthy Rich said, turning from his daughter and taking Babs' hoof in his. "You get one extravagant bribe per month, with an allotment of regular allowance and permission to skip school whenever you want. If you need to renegotiate, you'll have to contact our lawyer."

Diamond Tiara sighed. "But if you use our lawyer, who am I supposed to use?"

"I'm sure you'll figure that out, dear. You're a very industrious young filly." Filthy Rich waved to his daughter as he parted through the sea of downtown ponies, walking and walking until he was just a speck in the torrents, and then gone. Off to his mansion with a filly in tow.

Babs smiled the whole way.

Oh yeah. This was going to be a good one.

On the way to Filthy Rich's 'palatial estate', Babs spotted a thin white streak high above her in the sky. It grew longer and longer as she watched, and the tail started to melt into the surrounding sky, blending in with the passing fragments of clouds and the orange-red horizon where the sun was kissing the mountains.

Babs looked up at the white streak for a while. She knew there was a pony up there, making the white streak as it zoomed through the sky. Was it a pegasus jet-stream, or trail of chemicals, or something else? And the pony up there could look down, and see the entire town, and maybe know that someone else was looking up at them. But they had no idea who Babs was. They'd never know who she was. She was a speck of dust.

She was almost all the way to the old coot's bedroom before she had an attack. Well. She could call it that, or refer to it as something external, but really, it was inside her, and less of a direct assault than a slow, creeping death, that wormed its way around you and laced tendrils and tentacles in every one of your nerves and veins and didn't let you know it had taken hold until your last breath was struggling through your collapsed lungs.

In short, she was no longer horny.

Not that the prospect of fucking Filthy Rich, or stepping on his balls or pissing in his mouth or whatever he'd wanted to do with her for the afternoon, or foreseeable future. A comfortable living was worth a lot of negotiating over varieties of humiliation, in Babs' experience. But to work, you needed something to start. To light a fire, you needed a spark. And while Babs could let lube and the wrinkly pecker she was renting herself to do most of the work, there was no over-the-counter remedy for an inability to completely and utterly remove yourself from the situation.

When Babs was horny, even just a little bit, when she remembered that it felt good to touch her pussy every once in a while, even with grandpa's-age set-of-balls dangling in her mouth to make bits for the hour. It felt good to get fucked, even if she'd rather be alone in her apartment, high, thinking about anything besides what was necessary to eat and keep a roof for next month. Anything that could massage the equation of converting raw, sexual perversion into hard, usable cash. Anything that made her feel less like a difference engine for foalaphiles.

But when it hit her, everything went away. She could think of a fantasy and fit the bits and pieces and imagine herself as high or blitzed or faded out as she wanted, but nothing would dull the immensity of the context weighing down on her. The walls would close in, the windows would shatter and rain on her in endless shards and fragmented reflections. She was just a runaway filly, about to trade the last shred of her dignity for the only means of accomplishing anything in the world.

And Filthy Rich was telling her, for the third time, about the view from the backyard of his out of town palatial estate. His second one, of course.

"Do you have a bathroom I can use?" Babs asked? She flicked her mane with her hoof and batted her eyelashes in a practiced way.

Filthy Rich smiled at her, as he did every time Babs pulled her air-head routine. Some ponies were immune to it, but Filthy Rich was vulnerable on what seemed to be a genetic level. Mercy to Miss Tiara if Babs wasn't there to do the job. Only...

"Yes, certainly my dear. Of course the master bedroom is equipped with a state-of-the-art, highest quality linoleum bathroom, complete with the finest—"

"Yeah yeah. This door?" Babs prodded it with her hoof and tilted her head towards the inside.

"Oh. Yes, it's that one. Why don't you take some time to freshen up before we... hmm-hm, begin enjoying ourselves, hmm?"

It wasn't always that the waves of nullified desire came with the urge to vomit. This one had. Babs shut the door behind herself just in time to dive for the over-sized, probably ludicrously overpriced porcelain toilet. She'd skipped breakfast, so the upchuck was mostly water and smoke, which left a particularly unique nasty taste coming up instead of down. The toilet water was cool as it splashed up onto her face, launched from the steady stream of her initial throw-up. Two more followed, each decreasing slightly in intensity, until the fourth just came out as a wretching cough, and her nausea began to finally pass into the wave of shivering relief that washed through her body. She wiped a hoof across her forehead, drenched with sweat, and shook it off beside her, shaking droplets onto the linoleum floor, where they glistened under the overly-bright bathroom light.

Get it together. At least don't cough up an intestine.

Babs held both sides of the toilet seat with each hoof, head lowered, eyes closed, and took in her breaths slowly. Her chest swelled with the inhale. Exhale, and lowered again. She tried to stay there, eyes closed, slow breathing, until at least the sour taste and white pre-throw-up fluid in her mouth had dissipated.

This wasn't good. He was out there. Waiting. Probably popping a Hoof On pill right this minute. And his fucking old, rich, foal-fiddling dick.

Babs let out a long, low sigh. She opened her eyes and tilted her head upright. There was a mirror above the sink, rimmed with what looked like inset gemstones with lines of gold. Babs stood up. Her legs shook slightly, but she managed to make it to all fours, upright, where she could get a good look at herself in the mirror.

Hey, her reflection said. Need me?

"Help. I don't know what to do. I need your help."

"Pixie? Is everything alright in there?" Filthy Rich knocked at the bathroom door, blessedly leaving it closed.

Nevertheless, Babs turned around and pushed the handle in to lock the door.

"Fine. I'll be out in a minute."

"Take your time, take your time, dear! We have all day, after all, hee-hee..."

Do this. Get it together. Face up again. Eyes open. Look forward.

I can't just cast some magic spell and make everything better, you know.

"Dust," she said. "We still have some in our purse."

We haven't done the stuff since back home. The pony in the mirror tilted her head, mouth knotted in concern. You wanna go down that road again?

"We need this. We need help. We can't just turn on the urge to fuck like a faucet or we would. Just do this with me. Let's get it together, okay?"

Stop saying that. I thought we agreed on a new phrase?

"Shut up. Are we doing this or not?"

Do you have a mirror?

"No. I don't have anything. I have this." Babs put the small makeshift plastic-baggie of white stuff on the counter. "Are we doing this?"

What do you need?

"Help."

The Babs in the mirror shook her head, eyes closed.

No, you need drugs.

"Right. That's what I meant."

Is time a glue, holding everything together?

Babs cut the line with one of her business cards. Most of what was there. Bumped.

Then the rest. Sniff. She wiped her nose on her hoof, and then her hoof on her skirt. Probably getting dirty soon anyway.

Now she was here. In a bathroom. Down the only consumable she had left to either make her life more bearable or liquidate into something that could. She was in a bathroom, head on the counter next to the sink, wondering why seconds took as long to pass as they did. Why a second was the smallest amount of time you could count before anything important happened. Babs could count much smaller than that.

Give it a few minutes. You always get in your head about it anyway.

We don't have a few minutes.

Babs lifted her head and shook it a few times. She wiped another trickle of snot off with her hoof, hoof-to-skirt, and then ran the sink with a mix of mostly hot water, which turned near-boiling as soon as she let it run for more than a second.

Whatever. She splashed her face in it, waking up in a piping hot waterfall as opposed to a dumpster at the end of an alley. Shake your head. Get it together.

I thought you said—

"Shut up. I'm gonna go get our money."

You got this.

Shut up.

Stupid bitch.

Babs half-opened, half-collapsed onto the door back into the bedroom, where Filthy Rich was waiting, alternating between checking his elaborately expensive watch and gazing forlornly out the nearby window with a view of the entire palatial backyard. He snapped to attention as soon as Babs entered, tucking his watch away and staring deliberately in any direction than that of the timepiece.

"Ah, my dear, you look ravishing. Are you feeling up to returning to our get-together?"

"Yeah... right. You're real loaded and stuff," Babs said, rubbing her hoof over the right side of her nose and sniffing loudly. "So here's the deal. I'll do whatever you want, once a day, and in exchange, you pay for my meals, rent, and any expenses I happen to occur on the side." Babs walk-staggered her way over to Filthy's side of the bed and flicked her tail suggestively towards his face. "I'll do anything your pervy old brain comes up with, for as long as you want."

She sat on the bed next to Filthy Rich, and stared into his eyes with a sudden intensity.

"But once I leave for the day, that's it. No calls. No letters. No cloud signals or carrier pigeons or anything. My work is done, my time." She let out a long breath, finally over the mouthful she'd been saving up to get ready for her next, much-less-pleasant-tasting mouthful. Hopefully once a day, anyway.

Filthy was flustered. He evidently wasn't used to his supposed 'prey' being so straightforward. But Babs knew how to fuck, and how not to fuck around, and she was very clear on keeping the two things separate.

"Well, I... that is, I mean, I suppose we could... but, just once a day, do you suppose you could—"

"Uh-unh." Babs shook her head and crossed her forelegs in front of her chest. "Once a day. That's it. Non-negotiable."

Filthy Rich held a hoof to his chin, pondering and letting his eyes wander briefly out the window, over the vast green fields that were only one of his livable assets among many. The collar was certainly a cherry on top, but to drive such a hard bargain... what to do, what to do...

"Hmm... I do believe we're unable to come to an agreement then, madam." Filthy Rich lowered his gaze to the floor, frowning and chewing his lower lip. "Without a sample of your product, I'm afraid I'm simply unable to make a judgement about the viability of your business proposal. Perhaps if, in the future, you're open to renegotiation, we can arrange another rendezvous—"

"No, wait."

Babs closed her eyes for a moment, sorting through the voices and flashes of lightning and brick wall of willpower she'd stood behind and in front of, as much of an obstacle as a beneficial barrier. One that had been there her entire life. The voices hadn't come til around twelve years old. And even then, not loudly, at first.

"What if I give you a... a sample." Ticking, gears clicking into place. Or just a sun, rising slowly over the mountains? "Then would you be open to... making a deal?"

"I believe my disposition could be swayed, given the right demonstration," Filthy said, half-interested, suddenly holding every card and the key to the master bedroom besides. "That all depends on your enthusiasm, I suppose, my dear." He chuckled softly, and looked at Babs, as if to say, 'Well? Are you that desperate?'

She was.

"Come here," Babs said, grabbing Filthy's tie and attempting to pull him towards her. The old colt proved surprisingly strong, and he chuckled again at Babs' attempt before 'giving in' to the tug and letting him yank his face forward until his lips were practically pressed against hers.

"Do you wanna kiss me?" Babs asked. She ran her hoof up and down Filthy's tie and traced it softly against his neck and chest. When she spoke, she lowered her eyes and licked her lips, looking very pointedly at Filthy's waist before returning to stare, as seductively as she could, back into his eyes.

Filthy grinned smartly, leaning back and away from Babs' hold ever so slightly.

"I think it's your job to kiss me right now, isn't it?" He chuckled for the third time. "Come on. Don't you want to give Daddy a big, wet kiss?"

There it was. The word.

For anypony else, maybe it was easy to think of something else. Maybe it was easy not to wonder where he went, or why he never said goodbye. Why he'd called, drunk, five years later, talking about Hearth's Warming presents and one time he'd taken her to the beach as a kid, and the two of them had gotten stuck as the tide came in, taking terrified leaps over half-submerged stones until they finally reached the safety of short, and Babs had refused to stop crying for at least half an hour afterwards. She cried after the phone call too.

But, yes. She had a new type of gag reflex, tested every minute she would have to deal with this pile of old bits and business slime. She had to fucking kiss him already.

"Of course I do... Daddy," she said, managing only a brief pause before the lurch hit her stomach, and she swallowed it, getting the word out without coughing or sputtering or feeling more than a little of that white fluid pooling in her cheeks. She swallowed it too.

Then she kissed him. It was hard to be interested. He licked her a lot, and left spit all over her mouth and chin. He grabbed at her ass under her skirt without much warning, and she rolled into an eager-sounding moan without the heartbeat necessary to remember what acting felt like. He seemed to take it as approval, because then his hooves went double time, both of them, kneading and squeezing her cheeks like they were a ball of dough being worked into a perfect knot.

What could you say—because of? despite the?—having somepony knead your butt felt good sometimes. Other times it didn't. Usually depending on how recently you'd gotten off. Other times, it felt like it was how lonely, or hungry, or how bad you had to go to the bathroom. You could either rinse them all away, or bury them in the warm, wanted-feeling that bubbled up in your stomach and chest when you had somepony's foreskin inbetween your lips. Or when they had you on their lap, caressing your body all over, exploring it like a forbidden paradise and giggling with glee every time they managed to elicit a genuinely pleasureful moan from the ministrations of their hooves.

You could want something, and see that it was very far away. It could be so far away, you might have a rule to prevent yourself from thinking about it, for special circumstance like these.

Babs closed her eyes and tried very hard to remember how anything involving the absurd and grotesque practice of friction-massaging genitals could qualify as something she could be interested in for more than the length of an orgasm. Maybe even just that long would be enough. Maybe he was all talk.

Do it. Do it. Just put your hoof on his stupid old cock. Step one.

Yes. There you go. He was hard—very hard—obviously taken something after all. And he was smiling at her, that condescending fucking smirk. 'Go on'.

She went on. Began rubbing him up and down, the most unenthusiastic hoofie imaginable. She hadn't even taken her skirt off. And her eyes were half-focused.

Filthy Rich feigned a yawn, and looked obviously at his watch.

"Lemme suck you, Daddy," she cooed, the words coming out on practice. The voice was there too, the everything could be there including her body, but the actual 'her' still somehow very far away, a distant galaxy where she was being crushed into her composite particles by a black hole of infinite size. Soon it would wipe out the entire universe. Then nothing but what had been before.

Despite his size, half-decent still for an old-timer (as though size decreased with age, but just got a little saggier around the edges), Babs fit Filthy into her mouth with ease, and began bobbing on him sloppily, lolling her tongue out and lapping up and down at the underside of his shaft and base of his balls.

"Ooh," he crooned, suddenly intensely interested in continuing the 'business demonstration'. "That's the stuff. Show Daddy how bad you wanted."

"Mmm-hmm," Babs murmured, slurping on his shaft and tonguing the underside of his head. "Yes, Daddy, I want it so bad." You could reflect it sometimes, like a mirror, like a trained parrot. There were little formulas hidden in everything, and sometimes, all you had to do was take a hold of something and squeeze to amplify it a hundred times.

She went from blowing him, to gorging on him. Diving down intense force easily mistakable for enthusiasm, hitting him on the back of her throat, making gagging noises and drooling obscenely, her spit pooling on his balls as it ran down every side of his cock. Yes, Daddy. Of course, Daddy. Anything for you, Daddy.

"Do you wanna see my coochie too?" Babs asked, taking a moment to remove her mouth from Filthy's now overly-lubricated rod. 'Rod'. Do you want me to call it a cock every time? Shut up.

Filthy nodded with a hungry look in his eyes, hooves already raised to pluck whatever fruit was underneath Babs' covered orchard.

Peach fuzz, in this case. Babs lifted her skirt and turned around, bent over, waving her tail over her ass and pussy as she displayed them to her would-be suitor-slash-customer. She winked over her shoulder, then winked again, this time under the flick of her tail.

"Do you like what you see, Daddy?" she asked.

"Oh yes. Yes, yes, very much. Perhaps we can advance to the, erm, 'hooves-on' portion of the sampling, as it were..."

Babs flipped her skirt back down and turned around, smirking.

It was getting easier, whether everything was softer on two bumps of serotonin, or the prospect of a hot meal every day of the month was underneath, driving everything forward without stepping too hard anymore on anyone's libido. Babs even felt herself get a little bit wet, though she didn't feel anywhere near slick enough to 'advance the demonstration'. As it were.

But, she was prepared for that. A good working pony never went out to a job without their tools. Babs rustled in her bag for a moment before producing a long, tapered blue bottle of lubricant, which she opened and squirted onto her hoof without so much as a blink. She reached under her skirt and rubbed it over her prized, youthful entrance, making sure to get enough inside and out that there'd be no worry of harsh rubbing or chafing while she let her body become some old pony's personal plaything. There was the inside her too, the one doing the steering, making the mouth move and the hooves stroke and the body turn and do what it needed to do. But that part felt further away, maybe almost so far away she couldn't quite reach it, hovering above her head and pulling her along by invisible strings woven out of air.

Sudden snaps. Like she was thinking two thoughts at once, and would catch the tail end of whatever was on the periphery just as it vanished beneath the shimmering surface of an infinite pool. Too many words to use to describe what was utterly and inescapably physical. You had a body, you used it to get what you needed. You were a pony, or you were a means to an end: a gussied-up cum-sleeve, at the end of the day, when you got right down to it, a gloryhole on hooves, a portable fetish generator and semen remover, whatever conscious you had left could be shredded into pieces and relieve you of five month's wages worth of bits at the same time. It could punch you in your jaw and take your bits anyway, if you mouthed off.

So why was she... why did she always ask? Why did it always feel like a choice?

Because she still felt like she was the one doing the steering, maybe. With no map. Back in the black hole's infinite void.

Babs shook her head and sniffed loudly, then coughed, holding a hoof to her throat. She shook her head twice more and opened her eyes wide, first to nothing but straight distance, and then to Filthy Rich, staring at him almost unblinking.

"You wanna pound my pussy, Daddy-kins?"

"Get your little ass bent over the bed now," Filthy Rich said, a low growl in his voice. He got up onto the bed, prepping himself in mounting position, stroking his shaft a few times to straighten it out and make sure he was still nice and hard. The right doctor's prescription could really do the stuff.

"Yes, Daddy," Babs drawled. She hopped up onto the bed the same as Filthy, turning herself in front of him and flipping her skirt up again to give a view of her lubed-up pussy, with a few drips dangling off her lips and onto the bed for good measure. She reached back with her hooves and spread herself, showing off the underage pink and the hole that Filthy was about to fill for as long as he could until he got his rocks off. A 'thorough sampling', in other words.

"That's my girl," Filthy said. He put his hooves on either side of Babs' ass, grabbing her cheeks and squeezing them for a moment before taking one of his hooves to line up his cock to Babs' gaping entrance. He slid the tip in effortlessly, and groaned as the rest of his length was swallowed up, gulped inside just as eagerly as Babs' throat had taken him earlier. "Yes, that's what Daddy likes..."

"It feels so good, Daaaddy," Babs said, drawling on the last word as long as she could, as long as it would take to get the taste out of her mouth forever, ptooey, unless she spit. Maybe later. He was all the way in now, bottomed out, not hitting much in particular but still giving that 'full' feeling, that 'stuff-me-up-and-move-in-and-out' feeling on the barely visible edge of the horizon. Babs remembered that sex felt good, but not why it felt good, or why it felt like knowing so and telling her body just that was the only way to bring back the feelings that eventually led to an orgasm. But the acting was separate from all that, and something she probably could have done if she was being vivisected instead of fucked for the benefit of someone's incest fantasies. "Rut me harder... make me a mare, Daaaaaaaddy."

"I'll make you a mare, you little slut," Filthy said, panting and wheezing under his breath as he thrust in and out of Babs' cunt. "But right now you're a dirty little filly, and dirty little fillies get what they deserve." Filthy pulled his cock out suddenly, and, with no warning, lined it up with Babs' asshole, tucked between her luscious buns. Equally unwarned, he slid inside with only the lube from Babs' pussy to assist, making the journey much less comfortable than it could have been. But Filthy was determined to reach his destination, and, with a final grunt, he buried his cock in his third hole of the hour, his hoofs still gripping tight on both of Babs' buns.

Fuck, she wanted to say. You fucking piece of shit. You don't switch to my ass right from my pussy with no warning. You don't do it period. You didn't go to health class in grade school, where they teach you about that shit? I bet you'd look nice with a broken bottle shoved in your mouth, you can suck it like you made me suck your shriveled up grandpa shrimp-dick, you absolute—

"Oooh, that feels so good in my ass, Daddy," she said instead, rolling her eyes out of Filthy's view and reaching underneath her stomach to rub mindlessly and pleasurelessly at her lubed up slit. "I love the way you rut me."

Filthy gave no response besides grunts. He seemed taken away by finally having his hooves on the prize, focused entirely on the curvy half-circles bouncing up and down with each thrust. His eyes remained locked on the point of entry, savouring each time his dick would pop out of Babs' tight young asshole, then disappear as it slid all the way back in, grinding against her insides and slapping his balls against her tiny cunt.

Just like that, he was pulling out. Yanking her by her mane, hard, and jerking her face towards his cock, fresh out of her ass and still dripping with twice-used lube.

"Suck it," he grunted, shoving his cock clumsily towards her face. "Suck it and drink Daddy's cum like a good filly."

Babs nodded, wasting no time on dialogue when the finish line was right in front of her. She closed her eyes and gave what she hoped was a sensuous moan, murmuring as her lips slid over Filthy Rich's cockhead and down his shaft. He was still obtusely hard. Babs stroked at the base of his shaft with one hoof while she played with his balls with the other, squeezing and stroking them gently to coax out the load that might have her next pay-cheque attached.

As he had before, Filthy grabbed her mane and yanked, this time forcing her down full-force on the full length of his cock. Not normally enough to make her choke, but at force, and without warning, had finally brought out the gag reflex, and Babs started choking and sputtering spit as the first gush hit the back of her throat like a kinked-up fire-hose.

"Take it all, you little slut," Filthy hissed. He yanked Babs' mane even harder and jerked his hips forwards in little bursts, shoving deep each time he felt a spurt of jizz work its way out of his balls, up his shaft and spurt from his cock-head. With the last burst of cum, he let out a long, low groan, and closed his eyes, pressing Babs' face down with both hooves. She was gagging in full-force, struggling to breathe, maybe even flitting on the edge of consciousness, as her hoofs began to kick in less and less enthusiastic jerks...

"Gaaah!" Babs let out a long, loud gasp, Filthy yanking her up again by her mane and and letting her breathe, but also bringing her close to study his handiwork, the deposit of salty white goo he'd left lodged in her mouth and back of her throat.

Sure enough, Babs couldn't help herself from drooling the stuff down her face and chest like an idiot. She coughed wildly, and spat some out onto her hoof, mixed with phlegm and a little of what looked like maybe blood.

It took about a minute to finish coughing, steadying herself on the bed and taking drinks from the water glasses on the bedside table. Two, both of which she downed, wondering whether she'd better bother to ask for more or just throw herself out the window and see what story she was on when she landed.

"Well," Filthy said, straightening his tie, which he'd failed to remove for the entire encounter. "I must say you have an unprecedented talent, practically a prodigy, at your age. You did say you were...?"

"Fifteen," Babs said, and spit into a garbage can on the floor near the bedside table. "I'm fifteen."

"Fifteen! My goodness, but you look so... well, nevertheless, all things considered, we've already come to a judgement, and I'm afraid we'll be declining further use of your services at this time." Filthy stood from the bed, tie in place as though he hadn't moved it an inch, mane slicked-back with a mix of sweat and freshly-applied hair gel. "Do stop by some time if you're in the neighbourhood and want to arrange a consultation, however. We're always open for consultations." Filthy smiled, revealing a single, diamond-studded tooth in the right of his mouth.

Without speaking, Babs got up off the bed, picked up her bag, and walked out of the bedroom. She went down the stairs in the main entrance, out the enormous set of double doors, and down the long driveway to the end of the road. Then she walked home.

When she got home she had a shower and a glass of water.