Redheart opened the door and found a rather effeminate looking stallion in the waiting room.

“You must be Bon Bon?” she greeted him.

It took him a second to answer, but he looked up and shook his black and pink mane out of his face.

“Yeah that's me. Doctor Redheart, I presume?”

“You presume correctly,” she replied. “Please step into my office, Mr. Bon.”

“Just Bon Bon,” he huffed as he rose from the bench. “I'm barely a Mister as is, and we both know why I'm here.”

Yes we do, Redheart silently agreed, and showed him into her combined office and operating room. She was used to patients being short with her, many of them were understandably nervous.

She motioned for him to take a seat on the operating table and sat down herself.

“So Bon Bon,” she said as she picked up her clipboard and prepared the standard form. “Why do you want to become a gelding?”

“Well I practically am one already,” he admitted.

Redheart nodded, she hadn't commented of course, but she could see from his soft features to his body language that he wasn't much of a stallion. Well he would hardly be the first patient to take that route, nor the last. Still, while she didn't exactly disagree with him, she had to make sure that this was what he really wanted.

“I see,” she said. “Can you elaborate?”

“What's there to say?” He asked, looking up. “I only have one nut and it's barely working.”

A blush crept over his off white cheeks as he self consciously spread his legs to show Redheart what he was working with.

The doctor on her part couldn't help but lean in and get a good look.

As promised, the pouch dangling beneath his sheathed stallionhood looked like it only held one family jewel, and a rather small one at that. Her expert eyes noticed the faint surgical scars that indicated the current state of his stallionhood was anything but natural.

“May I touch it?” she asked, her curiosity perked.

“Sure,” Bon Bon shrugged and scooted forward on the bed to better present his diminished package for the doctor. “It's probably coming off today anyway, so I might as well enjoy one last touch by a mare.”

“You're not supposed to enjoy it,” Redheart chided, “this is just a medical examination.”

“Hay, I'll take what I can get.”

Stallions, Redheart rolled her eyes as she began to fondle the small sack and the berry within. Sure enough, she felt scars along the delicate skin.

“What happened to you?” She asked, though she already had a pretty good guess as she continued her examination of the lone jewel.

“Can't really give any details since it happened on the job,” he began, sucking in his breath as the doctor probed his remaining token of stallionhood. “But to keep it short, I got into a fight with a mare and she kicked me, hard. Then when I collapsed she… stomped on them.”

Redheart winced at the mental image, and she held the result in her hooves. Even if she was quite numb to damaged foalmakers in her line of work, it was still a pain she never wished upon any stallion, much less one who hadn't asked for it.

“That's horrible,” she exclaimed, giving the surviving gonad a comforting pat. “Why would she do something like that?”

“Well in her defense I was trying to arrest her,” Bon Bon said, trying to downplay the horror of his injury. “To her credit it worked too. I was in no shape to chase after her with two ruptured testicles.”

“Two?” Redheart asked, though she had already felt the telltale damage and surgical stitches on his misshapen nut.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Doctors were able to save this one but the other was beyond repair. The bitch made sure it was absolutely pulped before she ran away. I think she would have done both but my backup arrived just in time.”

They both shivered at that. Him from the painful memory, and her in sympathy.

“That's just awful,” she said, cradling his damaged stallionhood in her hooves as she looked up at him. It felt so delicate, like one hard squeeze could finish it off completely.

“Mmhm,” he grunted in agreement. “It absolutely sucked.”

They were both silent for a while as she kept gently fondling his repaired foalmaker.

“So?” she eventually asked, remembering that she was on the clock. “Why are you here? I'm sorry for what happened to you, but I don't think I can fix what's left any better than the doctors who patched it up in the first place. Though I guess I could give you a fake one so you look intact again.”

“No,” he responded. “I'm not here to get a useless prosthetic, I'm here to finish the job that bitch started.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Because it doesn't work,” he said, resigning himself to his fate. “Ever since she broke it I have had trouble getting hard, I've felt myself, my body, my preferences change.” He tossed his long mane and turned his head to accentuate the feminine curve of his jaw “I mean, I know the doctor's said they fixed it but come on. I've got a beautiful mare fondling my junk and I can't even get hard.”

Redheart felt her cheeks redden at the combined compliment and reminder that she wasn’t being completely professional in her examination, but had to agree he was right. She had been somewhat fondling his lone jewel, letting her hooves linger and explore a bit more than was strictly necessary, and even so he remained soft. All she could see of the rest of his stallionhood was a hint of pink as it barely managed to poke out of its sheath.

“I'm sorry,” she said, giving his hidden tool a gentle stroke out of sympathy.

“Me too,” he replied, “but it is what it is. I've accepted that I'm never going to sire a foal.”

“Oh that might still happen,” Redheart hurried to cheer him up, giving his stallionhood another gentle pat. “Did you leave a sample before you came in here?”

“Tried to,” he replied dejectedly, though he did start to lean into her touch. “Took me over an hour and when I finally managed your receptionist threw it away, said it wasn't enough.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Redheart said, giving his soft tool a few more tugs before she gave up.

"Eh, who cares,” her patient grunted in frustration. “Maybe I'll adopt. Point is, I'm never going to get my other nut back, I'm probably never going to have sex either, and I can't imagine I'll find a mare who wants to be with a stallion as broken as me.

Redheart opened her mouth to disagree, but he continued.

“So I think I'd be a lot happier if I just gave in and got fully gelded than if I tried to cling on to a life as a pathetic excuse of a stallion.”

“If you're sure,” Redheart said. She very much agreed with his reasoning, and would have suggested it herself if he had asked for her opinion, but this was his conclusion to come to, his decision to make. Had he chosen to remain a stallion she would have supported that too. “Then I'd be happy to help you cross over to that happier life.”

“Thanks,” he said, then blushed. “Never thought I'd thank the mare who gelded me.”

“Life takes us to strange places.” Redheart agreed as she picked up the clipboard she had set aside for the examination.

“Tell me about it,” Bon Bon agreed and looked around the operating room. “Never thought I'd end up living in a small town like this either.”

“Oh, you're staying in Ponyville?” Redheart asked as she looked up from the gelding form, smiling. Most of her patients came from Canterlot and returned as soon as she was done stitching up their scrotum.

“I've been staying here,” he corrected. “For a couple weeks actually.”

That brought her to a pause. She hadn't recognized him.

“Don't apologize,” he said. “I've mostly just kept to myself. I got a nice severance package from my old job and haven't really done much since.”

“They fired you because you got hurt?” Redheart could hear the outrage in her own voice. Those bastards!

“No,” he hurried to reply. “This,” he pointed down at his broken crotch, “this happened last year. I'd been healed up and back on the job for months when something else happened, something that had nothing to do with me or my… bodily changes. They shut down the entire department and I ended up here.”

He must have seen the confusion on her face because he continued.

“And that's all I'm going to say. I know you have doctor's confidentiality, but this is national secrets, so I'm not going to put you in danger by telling you any details.”

“Oh, okay,” Redheart found herself nodding. That explained it, while offering no explanation whatsoever. As a doctor though, she could respect another pony's privacy, even if her curiosity ate at her. “I'm sorry I asked.”

“Don't be,” he shot back. “I know I come across as weird, so I don't blame you for asking, as long as you respect that I'm not going to answer.”

Redheart nodded, and for a change of topic looked down at the form in her hooves, she might as well get back to the procedure at hoof.

“So you want no prosthetics?” She asked.

“No,” he confirmed, and she crossed the appropriate square on the form. “In fact, can you take it all away? I want to be all smooth down there.”

“If that's what you want,” she happily agreed. “Penis too?”

That brought a blush to his pale cheeks. “N-no, just the, you know, the sack.”

“Good choice,” Redheart giggled and wrote it down.

“Not that it'll be useful for anything,” he grumbled.

“You know geldings can still have sex, right?” Redheart saw fit to correct him.

He nodded, his blush deepening “Yeah I've heard so, seen it a few times too, but I've never been into butt stuff.”

“You won't have to.” Redheart rolled her eyes. “Even if you are not a stallion anymore, that little thing can still feel pleasure.”

“Little?” He bristled, but they both knew it was an accurate description. Whatever size it had been before his injury, it was very much on the smaller side now. “So?” he sighed dejectedly. “Even if I might find some mare who likes it small, it doesn't matter if I can't even get it up.”

Redheart resisted the urge to roll her eyes again and decided to explain in no uncertain terms. “I'm a mare, I will never get hard either, doesn't mean I can't have sex or feel a lot of pleasure if somepony goes down on me.”

She felt herself blush as he stared at her unprofessional outburst, but she pushed it down and continued. “You said it yourself, geldings aren't broken stallions, they are functional geldings. They can still enjoy a good lick even if their penetrating days are over. And there's a bunch of helpful potions if you want to change that as well.”

That seemed to silence the stallion, but failed to entirely cheer him up.

“I'd still have to find a mare who’d be into somepony like me” he whined.

“I'm sure there are many,” Redheart tried to assure him.

“Well, would you date me?” He shot back.

“No,” Redheart replied, not sure if he was serious, but as cute as he was, she preferred her stallions to be, well, actual stallions. A big drawback in her line of work. “I'm legally not allowed to date patients,” she added to soften the rejection.

“Figures,” he grumbled, but cheered up a bit. “But maybe there's some mare in town who's into geldings .”

“I'm sure there are,” Redheart repeated herself. She knew for a fact there was, and had even helped a few of them to geld their husbands, but those were all taken and definitely not what her patient was looking for.

“Anyway,” she said, bringing the topic back to the gelding form in her hooves once more. “Do you want the procedure to be done with anesthetics or without?”

“Definitely with!” He hurried to answer. “Getting halfstrated was the most painful experience of my life and I'm not keen to repeat it. Give me the strongest you have.”

“Understandable.” Redheart noted this down and stood up, offering the clipboard to her patient. “Then please sign here and we will begin the procedure.”

Bon Bon took his time reading through the form before he signed it with a flourish. “And done!” he said and stood up. “How do we do this?”

“Well you start by drinking this,” Redheart said and handed him a vial of painkiller potion. To her surprise he uncorked it with a practiced motion and swigged it down without even glancing at the label. She supposed he might've gotten the same potion to deal with the pain last time and recognised the bottle.

“Excellent,” she said, taking back the empty vial and placing it to the side. “Now you just bend over and rest your barrel on this table over here and I'll do the rest.”

She helped him get comfortable and adjusted the table to the right height and then gathered her tools. She already had most of them on a mobile tray that she wheeled over, and then there was the bowl. Her patient frowned as she walked past him and placed it between his legs.

“Is that really necessary? I didn't have the bowl last time a doctor cut one of my nuts off.”

“Well last time you expected to still be a stallion afterwards. The bowl is to help geldings process the change," she explained. "But we can absolutely skip it if you want to. Everything about this procedure is up to you and your choice.”

“Keep it,” he grumbled after mulling her words over. “May as well do this properly. It's gonna be a sad sight though, wish I still had both of them for this.”

“If you had both of them we wouldn't need to do this at all,” Redheart reminded him as she gently lifted his tail. She was pleased to note that he took the hint and kept it raised.

“Maybe,” he agreed, shifting self consciously with his rear hooves. “I always was a bit curious about how it'd feel to get gelded, and the changes haven't all been bad.”

She could tell the blush was spreading down his neck and decided to take mercy on him. It was well known to her that most stallions were at least somewhat intrigued by the idea of giving up their sexual organs, though for many it remained a curiosity at most.

Though, while she applauded the few brave souls fascinated enough to go through with it, she also understood that for some stallions, such a loss would have been devastating. She deeply hoped Bon Bon wouldn’t be one of them.

Making sure everything was in order she reached up and cupped the lone fruit in her hoof once more, this time feeling for where it connected to the rest of the stallion's body. With practiced ease she located the life giving cord and reached for her gelding tool.

As steel met skin something unexpected happened. It seemed that in its final moments, Bon Bon's stallionhood stirred.

“Oh seriously?” The patient grumbled as a small erection poked out of its sheath. “Now you're getting hard?!”

“It's okay, it happens to most stallions in your position,” Redheart giggled, glad that he got to enjoy feeling like a stallion one last time as she started to squeeze the handles together. Too little, too late, she thought, watching his surprise erection as her tool clamped down and severed the final shred of the stallionhood that fueled it.

Crunch!

The sound of a stallionhood ending always left Redheart a bit short of breath, and both ponies remained still and panting as she held the tool down and waited for the change to take.

Despite her jaded professionalism, she was sorely tempted to reach out and stroke his wilting erection as she held the tool closed. Instead she just watched, counting down the seconds in her head, as it shrank and returned to the sheath it had escaped from. As she reached 30, the Doctor allowed her hooves to relax and removed the tool from the now bruised sack. Putting it aside she reached up with her hooves and fondled once more the berry inside. Sure enough, the lone jewel rolled around freely at the bottom of the pouch, no longer connected by the life giving cord that had allowed the pony carrying it to still call themselves a stallion.

“Congratulations,” she said to the fresh gelding, giving it a reassuring pat on the rump. “You're almost finished.”

It answered with a soft whine, so she wasted no time in finishing the removal.

A quick incision from her scalpel and the little jewel drooped with a wet ‘tink’ into the steel bowl below.

Being curious about the repair job she picked up the severed organ in her hoof and held it up for inspection. The stitches that intersected it was not a pretty sight and it had probably lost half its size, if not more to the rupture.

She wondered idly who had put in such effort into saving the barely functional nugget? She was sure he couldn't have worked for either the Navy nor the Royal Guard. They didn't like the fact that stallions were allowed to serve and took every opportunity to relieve them of their cherries. Even in the Army or The Watch she would not have been surprised for them to cut off both even if only one of them were damaged.

She supposed it didn't matter. The previous surgeon had clearly done their best, but it seemed their efforts had only delayed the inevitable. The damaged nugget had still ended up in a steel bowl.

She was just about to put it back and show him when she remembered the patient's earlier wish. The lone damaged orb would indeed be a sad sight and it deserved better.

Thinking fast she trotted over to the trashcan and replaced the sad remnant with two much healthier looking testicles from one of her earlier patients.

"Much better,” she said to herself as she stepped around the patient and presented it with the bowl.

As expected the gelding was not at all fooled by her switcheroo, but it gave her a look of gratitude before locking eyes with its, well somepony else's symbol of the change it had just gone through.

The mare left it to stare at the bejeweled bowl as its new status sank in and returned to the still reflexively raised tail to finish the procedure.

Bon Bon had asked to be completely smooth down there, so she went about to remove what was left of its pouch. A few more cuts from her scalpel and she was soon sealing the wound with fine stitches. A generous help of healing salve would ensure not even scars remained.

Putting her tools away she studied the pony before her. At first glance Bon Bon could easily pass for a mare with the changes its long term near-gelding had brought along, and the recent procedure held that illusion even if you managed to get a brief look beneath its tail. She wondered if that was why it had wanted the empty pouch removed? Not her business though, and if it was going to stay in Ponyville they would run into each again sooner or later, and then she could see for herself.

“Well I’m done here,” she declared, giving her patient another gentle pat on the leg. “How does it feel to be neutered?”

It gave a mumbled reply of “What?” As it finally raised its head from the bowl of sacrificed stallionhood and turned to look back at her.

“I said I'm done back here,” she explained. “How are you feeling? Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” it replied slowly, a sheepish grin spreading across its muzzle. “It's just… a lot to take in.”

“I can understand that,” she nodded in sympathy. Having one’s identity change like that had to be intense, even if it was by choice. The Doctor imagined she would feel something similarly world shaking if she ever found a stallion that'd stick around long enough to knock her up and have a foal of her own. This wasn’t about her though, she could muse on herself when she got off work. “But you have as much time as you need to come to terms with it,” she continued cheerfully and extended her hoof to Bon Bon. “And welcome to Ponyville.”

Bon Bon turned around and shook her hoof. “Thanks, I think I'm going to like it here. It's a fresh start for me.”

“It sure is,” she agreed with the fresh gelding, and because she was curious, asked, “By the way, what is it that you do for a living, Bon Bon? I know you said it was secret but could you give me a hint?”

That got her a chuckle in response. “Nice try Doc, but these days I don't do much of anything,” he admitted. “I haven't found a job yet so I mostly just lie on my couch and read books, oh and I bake.”

“Bake?” Redheart perked up, “Maybe you could get a job at the Sugarcube Corner then. I'm friends with the owner and she's mentioned needing some extra help to run the place in the near future.

She didn’t mention the reason of course, but she knew Cup and Carrot had been trying for a foal for some weeks now and she wished them the best of luck.

“Maybe,” Bon Bon replied. “I don't really do pastries though, just candy, and occasionally bread.”

“Candy?” Redheart's ears were immediately perked. She had an incurable sweet tooth.

“Yeah,” Bon Bon replied. “Probably not a big surprise given my cutie mark,” it turned to show off the three bon bons that decorated their flank, “but I love making candy, especially around the holidays. Used to work in my parent's confectionery store before I was recruited into… my own career.”

As if to hide that near slip at the end, Bon Bon produced a pair of wrapped sweets that very much resembled their namesake and offered one to Redheart.

She thanked them and popped the sweet into her mouth. It was minty with a hint of sour apple and chocolate. It was an odd combination but somehow it worked.

“Really nice,” she praised as she chewed. “But isn't it a bit backward for the doctor to be the one receiving sweets after the visit?”

“Watch yourself,” Bon Bon joked, popping the other sweet in its own mouth. “They're apple flavoured, so they'll keep you away.”

“Well I'll have to anyway,” she replied, tossing the wrapping paper in the bowl. “Can only geld a pony once after all.”

“Really?” it shot back, “Mine got removed in in pieces."

Redheart didn't have a good response to that so they just enjoyed their candies in awkward silence for a while. “I am sorry about that,” she eventually said.

“Don't be,” the gelding replied. “It's not your fault what happened, and I'll have to thank you for making it a lot less painful than the first mare.” It shivered, probably at the memory of that evil mare and what she did.

“You're welcome,” and not knowing what else to do, she offered Bon Bon a hug.

It took it and then left wordlessly a few minutes later.

After closing the door behind them, Redheart turned and began preparing her operating room for the next patient. Her tools went into the sink to be rinsed off, but as she picked up the bowl and glanced down at its contents she paused.

Looking down at the beautiful fruit she couldn't help but feel a wave of anger at the mare who had broken Bon Bon's first pair, and the pain he must have endured as she ground them to pulp. How could somepony be so sadistic? To do something so brutal to something so precious, and while they were still attached?

“Some ponies have no respect,” she said with a huff as she dumped the bowl's contents back into the trash can.

Author's Note

So first of all I apologize for taking so looooong to update this story. It's been a rocky few years but I am happy to say I am once more back to writing and hope someone will enjoy this story's continuation as much as they enjoyed the first three chapters.

Secondly I apologize for the chapter, I know we all want to see what happened to Fleetfoot and what awaits Cobalt and Rarity, well I hope this little side story can keep you over until then.

I would also like to thank Alfons for proofreading, and for kicking my butt about getting back to writing. You like my stories, you should check out his.(I might've had a hoof in some of them, and we are working on a collab together.)

Best of love, Asteroid Tom.