“Hmm.”

Twilight Sparkle had gotten very used to hearing that particular tone over the years. “Yes, Luna?” she asked with a thin frown, the same response that she would usually give.

“Oh, nothing much, your highness.” The older mare’s teal eyes flashed toward her with an amused smirk. “I was simply curious when you decided that it would be appropriate behavior to keep hazardous materials out in the open where anypony might happen upon them and risk causing an apocalyptic breach of containment.”

The alicorn didn’t have to look to know exactly what it was that was being referred to. “And I would be curious what led to you thinking that was a topic worth speaking so glibly about.”

Luna gave a bark of laughter. “Ah, so I see you have finally learned how to deflect inquisitions made upon you! Tia would be so proud!”

Twilight Sparkle rolled her eyes. Then her gaze cast across her office desk. Papers and books and scrolls and quills were scattered in a hodgepodge mess. Perhaps Rarity would be proud of her organized chaos, she hoped, but it was usually the thing that Luna commented on first. The former princess always thought it so funny that she put herself through the wringer with delegating so many affairs at once, and she would be quick to point out that she was having to manage the business of the day and night courts all at once. “Nopony said you cannot simply close one of the courts and tell those ponies to stuff it,” Luna would then respond with a scoff. And so it would continue, over and over.

And then there was the one object on the desk that stuck out like a sore thumb amidst all the documents and office supplies.

“It’s a surprise,” Twilight Sparkle said plainly, and she smiled. “For her.” Luna might have commented that the smile was also one she inherited from Celestia. It was almost alarming how much she had come to resemble the old diarch as the years went by. She had grown taller, her features sharper, her mane gaining the ethereal, billowing quality that elder alicorns were known for, shimmering midnight blue canvas with streaks of magenta and purple and sparkling stars. The way the colors distorted, though, stripes blurring together and spreading into a distorted aurora alongside the blue darkening into black, was an aspect that she had picked up elsewhere over the course of the past years.

“Hmm.” But this time Luna’s tone as she scratched at her chin was different. Curiosity, amusement, and sternness all at once. Ultimately, however, it seemed as if she decided to make no further comment on it, as she next said, “Very well, then, I suppose that you do know what is best for you and yours.”

“Thank you for your bid of confidence, Luna,” Twilight Sparkle replied with no small bite of snark. Not that that stopped either of them from coming together and wrapping an arm around each other, nuzzling gently. It was an act that no longer required one of them to balance on the very tips of her hooves while the other had to kneel down. It was still a rather surprising thing to consider for her. Just as much as seeing Luna bedecked in the garb of the commonfolk, a simple frock and short skirt and leggings instead of an ornate gown like the one the princess herself was currently wearing. The amount of cleavage and thigh left on display would have once been called scandalous.

“Tia would greatly appreciate the opportunity to see you again,” Luna murmured to her.

“I know,” she replied, feeling a pang in her chest. “Why don’t you convince her to come to Ponyville, and we can meet with everypony there? Surely that’s not too public of a venue for her.”

“We shall see, but you know how she is.”

“And you know how I am when she refuses to breathe fresh air and talk to other ponies.”

Luna rocked with laughter again. “Oh, so I should hope then that she tries to turn you down?”

She smirked. “Well, I didn’t say that, but…”

And then the office doors opened, and a gentle voice called in, “You wanted to see me, Twilight?”

The alicorns took that cue to separate from each other and she responded with an eager smile, “Yes, come in, Barb!”

The dragon bent down to fit her head through the doorway and stepped inside. For as much as Twilight Sparkle had grown, Barb had managed to grow even more, experiencing difficulty with most conventional architecture. It made things inconvenient at times, but she also relished in the reminder of her stature, over a head taller than even alicorns. Her purple-and-green form was thin and lanky, though today, since she had no official business to tend to, she was garbed in casual clothes much like Luna, loose garments instead of carefully tailored dress suits, the long skirt slit open along the sides so that her legs had more room.

“Oh, hey there Luna, I didn’t know you were visiting,” she said cordially, crocodilian muzzle spreading into a toothy smile that was exceedingly effective at getting Canterlot nobles to reconsider their choice of words.

“Just a little check-up, you know,” the blue mare replied, and then she flashed a devious smirk, “making sure the princess here hasn’t been planning anything that would get us in another war with the gryphons.”

“They were threatening trade sanctions, Luna, not war!” Twilight Sparkle promptly asserted crossly. “And I had them reconsider before the end of the week!”

“It still wouldn’t have happened if you’d reminded yourself of their carnivorous cuisine beforehand,” Barb commented with a sneer of her own.

“Oh, I see how it is.” She crossed her hands over her chest and stared at both of them in turn. “Maybe I should go see Celestia right now, at least she doesn’t read the news enough to criticize my reign.”

“Come on, Twi,” Barb replied with a laugh, her heavy tail thumping on the floor.

“Though I suppose it is time I be heading back, myself,” Luna admitted, clearing her throat. “After all, I would not wish to get in the way of your surprise, Twilight.”

“What?” The dragon blinked, turning from one alicorn to the other. “What surprise?”

“Luna!” Twilight Sparkle whirled toward her, but she only caught a glimpse of the mare winking and sticking out her tongue before there was a flash of silver light and she vanished. “I swear to…me…” She pursed her lips; the shifting of common sayings that had come with her rule would never cease to frustrate her. So she turned back to Barb, now that it was just the two of them in the room, as had been originally intended. She took in a deep breath and focused her thoughts.

“Is something wrong, Twilight?” Barb asked, now calm and gentle, one hand beginning the motions of reaching toward her, an unspoken offer for an embrace, should it be desired.

“No, no, nothing at all.” She smiled warmly up at the dragon, eyes shimmering. “In fact, this is something that you and I have both been waiting for, for a long time.”

She stared back at her, perplexed for several seconds before realization dawned on her, emerald eyes widening. “You…you don’t mean…?”

“But perhaps you should see what exactly I have in mind, first,” she said while she turned around. Her horn lit up with purple-pink light, the glow of the horizon as the sun sank past, and with her magic she lifted the foreign object that had been sitting on her desk. It was a thin, dark container made of smooth stony material. The light of the room bled around it.

Barb stared at it warily, her frills and spines raising. “Twilight…what is…?” But all the same, seemingly without thinking about it, her hand was reaching toward it.

“Careful!” The alicorn’s magic pulled the vessel away. “It’s not so much the container as what’s contained inside it. I want to say with reasonable certainty that I’ve removed any possibility of danger, but…” She wet her lips. “It never hurts to be too safe.”

“Okay…” Barb looked at her uncertainly, arms crossed over her chest. “Perhaps you should tell me the story behind this.”

“Well.” Twilight Sparkle grinned to herself. “Remember back when I was helping Non with designing new methods to stem the corruption?”

One eyebrow raised slowly. “Yes?” And then. “Twilight are you really saying…?”

“Well, I had to be able to study the corruption in order to learn how to adequately contain it and combat its effects, so…”

The top of the dark jar twisted and came off, and something emerged from within it. Inky, ebon black with motes of purple, churning and roiling as it emerged, expanding to roughly the size of a basketball once it was free.

Barb’s reaction was immediate but not decisive. Her whole body flinched with a spasm of alarm, but she was immediately staring with rapt attention. The thumping of her heart in her chest was almost audible. “Twilight…” she whispered, “why did you hold on to this?”

Twilight Sparkle’s countenance turned a smidge toward the guilty. “Non really wanted me to give it up after I was done with that initial research, but…I wanted to explore what it could be capable of.” She levitated the glob of corruption so that it was floating between her cupped hands. She could feel the emanations of Non’s residual energy that rolled off of it. “Non’s magic is unlike any in Equestria, it makes it possible to do things we could only dream of. I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to open the box on all of its possibilities, but…” She took another deep breath before she looked up at Barb. “There’s at least one thing I’ve always wanted to do.”

The dragon stared back, eyes widening more and more, breath hitching in her throat. “But…but I thought we agreed,” she stammered, “using the c-corruption would be…it wouldn’t be right.”

“That’s right.” The alicorn nodded back. “That’s why the first thing I did was learn to harness it in such a way that it would be possible to mimic Non’s transformative powers while removing the mental alterations. With this, it would be possible to alter the structure of any creature. But that was the easy part of it, I had that figured out pretty quickly. It would be simple for me to work on my own body, but if I were to use it on someone else, it would be based entirely on my own input, since I would be controlling the spell. I wanted to find a way to make it so that I could cast the spell while letting the subject enact their own effects. This way…” She smiled warmly. “You can be exactly what you want to be, and it’s all your choice.”

At first, Barb could do nothing but stare, dumbfounded. The shimmering in her eyes began to spill forth in the form of tears over her cheeks. Her shoulders and wings shuddered. “T-Twi…I…”

Twilight Sparkle returned the corruption to its container and brought it to the side so she could extend a hand toward her. The response was almost immediate, Barb rushing forward and bearing upon her, wrapping arms around her back, squeezing tightly in an embrace that might have seriously hurt her if she weren’t an alicorn. Her sobbing proved infectious, bringing stinging tears to the princess’s eyes as well even while she smiled delightedly. It was a good thing that she still had the mental capacity to maintain her magical control, or else the jar might fall and risk a breach.

“Th-thank you,” Barb whispered.

“Anything for you, sis,” she replied, “I’ve wanted this for you too, you know.” She then smirked as she pulled away. “You should probably wait until after we’re done before you go thanking me, though.”

“Careful, you might get tired of it if I have to really show how much it means to me,” the dragon said with a laugh as she wiped at her eyes. “Does that mean…we’re doing it right now?”

“Of course! Why would we wait a moment longer?” Twilight Sparkle stood back and prepared the jar again.

“Do I…do I need to do anything?” Barb asked, her wings and tail folding around herself.

“Not really. Although…” There was a flash of another spell being cast, and there appeared in the office a wide mirror leaning against one wall, poised so that Barb could see her reflection in it. “This will probably help you visualize what you need,” she said. For a moment she stood beside the dragon so they could both see each other, the dragon and pony siblings who had come so far. They mutually reached to their sides and held each other close for a few seconds before they separated.

“I hope all this waiting has given you plenty of time to come to a decision, at least,” Twilight Sparkle remarked with a grin when she held the jar at the ready once more.

“I’ve got…a bit of an idea, you could say,” Barb replied.

“I can’t wait to see what you’ve cooked up.” The black container opened again, and the oily essence trickled out from it, this time floating over toward the dragon. “It should be fairly rudimentary. I will be channeling my magic through the corruption and into you. All you have to do is envision the changes that you desire, and they will come into being.”

“O-okay. Just…a moment.” With continued heavy gasps of breath, steadily slowing and evening out, Barb looked at the dark matter, its hypnotic roiling undulations. Then she turned to her reflection in the mirror. She placed her hands over her chest, feeling up along the length of her neck. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, and when they opened again her expression was resolute. “Alright. I’m…ready.”

Twilight Sparkle smiled at her. The corona around her horn intensified and a beam of light shot from it, piercing into the corruption. The ethereal glob rippled and spasmed, purple flashing within its core, and then it calmed. “Take it,” she said, and Barb held her hands to either side of the shadowy mass in the way that the pony had before. Even without physically touching it, the effect of its power spilled into her, a shudder running through her arms and along her spine, tail and wings shaking. “Now…envision yourself. Your ideal self.”

“My…”

There were snaps, and Barb cried out as a spasm wracked through her and she nearly toppled over.

“Barb!” Twilight Sparkle shouted, alarmed, starting forward, “Are you—!”

“I’m…I’m fine,” she gasped, shuddering, maintaining her intangible hold on the corruption, legs trembling. “I just…” She opened her eyes and looked at her reflection.

Something was different. Her height was the same, but her proportions had changed subtly. Her torso was shorter, her legs longer, a shape that was more comparable to an equine than a dragon. The skirt that she had been wearing was hitched up higher, making it clear to see how her stance had changed from digitigrade to unguligrade, balancing on cloven hooves with tapering sharp tips that resembled claws. The legs were also of a decidedly shapely sort, thick calves and thighs leading up to broad hips flaring out toward the sides. “D-does this…” she whispered. And then Twilight Sparkle gasped when the dragon reached with one hand to pull all the way up on her skirt, making two revelations. One was the cutie mark on her flank, a roll of parchment with green flames at either end. The second, upon pulling down on her taut underwear, was the presence of not a genital slit between her legs but the very distinct labial folds of a vulva.

“O-oh…it…” The mare could barely believe her own eyes. Under different circumstances, such a lewd display might have been more alarming, but Twilight Sparkle had seen other ponies’ exposed genitalia far, far more frequently in the time since the Non Incursion than she had in the years before. There were far more important matters to consider.

“It’s working,” Barb said plainly, joyously, tears streaking anew over her face.

“Oh, Barb…!” Twilight Sparkle beamed at her. She wanted to throw her arms around her all over again. The magenta light filling the room flickered momentarily.

“Whoa, hang on!” The dragon then held her palm up toward her, stopping her in place. There was a hint of a different kind of eagerness in her expression, smile stretching wider. “I’m still not done yet!”

“Oh, I…” She faltered briefly. It occurred to her that she hadn’t the slightest idea how far any of this might go. But that wasn’t going to hold her back for long. Fulfilling Barb’s heart’s content had been the whole point of this. “Sure, go on ahead!” She redoubled the strength of her concentration, the spell flaring anew, surging between pony and shadow and dragon.

Barb in turn concentrated as well, steeliness seeping in to bolster her giddy anticipation. She looked at the mass of corruption and then at the mirror, and her posture tensed.

More sharp cracks rang out. Twilight Sparkle tried her best to stifle her horror as she watched Barb’s skull change, bone shifting under skin. The shape of her snout altered subtly, thickening, her forehead bulged before a unicorn horn erupted from its center, curling up toward the ceiling, and flaps of cartilage emerged to cover her ear-holes while they also migrated upward, forming the short floppy ears of an equine. The spines along her scalp lengthened, their consistency changing, rigid to flexible, curling to the side like a long mane—the alicorn remembered this from Barb’s corrupted form, a feature which puzzled her both then and now, but she had to admit it offered an appealing aesthetic. Her skin rippled in a wave across her skull and down her long neck to the rest of her body, scales cracking into pieces and growing out into short hairs, a coat of purple fur, though her front remained covered in green plates.

She was no longer a dragon, but she was not exactly a pony either. Twilight Sparkle thought the closest comparison might be a kirin, but this form was more on the side of draconic than equine. She was Barb, plain and simple, as she had always wanted.

But, as if expecting another interjection, she said once more, “Hang on.” She craned her neck so that she could look down at herself. The excitement in her expression was now just about bubbling over. And then there was a sound almost uncannily like a balloon filling with air as her shirt filled out with twin mounds rising from her chest, heavy globes that were around the size of her head, straining the fabric of her dress. “There.”

“Uh…oh.” Twilight Sparkle couldn’t keep herself from staring, dumbfounded. Not exactly in a bad way, simply taken by surprise. “I…I know you really wanted breasts, but I didn’t think you’d want to be so…big. The girls might get jealous, you know!”

Barb gave a snort of laughter, plumes of greenish smoke emerging from her nostrils. “I don’t know how you can be so surprised. You mammals have been hogging these for way too long! Even changelings and seaponies get to have tits but I’ve had to wait all this time to have more than mosquito bites!” She looked at her reflection again, and she made a bobbing motion, bouncing on her heals, presumably hoping to see how the mounds moved. She failed to take into account her new hooves, though, causing her to yelp and nearly lose her balance as she stumbled. At least that got a whole lot more jiggling out of it. “Yeah…” she murmured, satisfied, now stretching her limbs and observing herself from different angles. “This is really it…”

“I’m happy for you, Barb,” the mare replied, grinning from ear to ear.

She was all too ready to cut off the spell and embrace her before they then went about all the preparations and announcements they would have to make.

But a thought suddenly occurred to her. From whence it came she had no idea, but it was there to stay and could not be ignored.

This had always been for Barb. That had been all she intended to do with the corruption. But now it had been proven that her conjecture was effective. What more could be done with it?

Could she use it on—

Barb groaned, a deep, rumbling noise in her throat.

Broken out of her thoughts, Twilight Sparkle turned her attention outward. She found the dragon panting heavily with her jaw slack while one hand cupped at her newly bulbous chest.

“Barb, is something wrong?” she asked, immediately on edge and wary.

“O-oh, it’s just…I was r-remembering…that night,” Barb crooned.

This was something that would usually weigh heavily on Twilight Sparkle’s mind. Even years later, there were still ponies who carried trauma from the Non Incursion, whether it was those who had been directly affected or those who had been caught up in the panic.

But it didn’t sound like Barb was remembering it as painful.

“It was just…s-so…good…”

The spell was still in effect.

“BARB!”

The dragon reared her head back in a long sigh while she groped at herself with both hands, and her breasts pushed back against her fingers. Globes expanded from melons to yoga balls in the span of seconds, cloth tearing asunder. Tongue lolled out from between rapidly plumping lips, lime gloss manifesting from thin air. Wings fluttered and flapped, tail lashed. Barb was lost in the transformation.

“Barb, stop, I—I can stop this!” But Twilight Sparkle quickly found that she couldn’t. The flow of magic was actively pulling on her, no longer consciously affected by her casting. The dark glob of Non essence was churning again, ever more violently, as if containing a storm. It was reacting to Barb’s desire, the merest inkling expanded to an insatiable hunger. In the time it took her to register this, the top of Barb’s dress had torn apart entirely, enlarging breasts joined by two more rows of scaly mammaries underneath it, and the skirt was about to go the same way.

“No!”

She did the only thing she could think of. She pulled back. That proved to be a mistake. The magenta energy carried through the corruption and brought its roiling dark into the alicorn.

There was an indistinct noise in Twilight Sparkle’s throat, the dying gasp of panic and terror. That sense of alarm was rapidly being quashed even as she felt her flesh rebel against her, mass distorting her structure. She fell backward to the floor, her vision going blurry as a fog rapidly fell over her mind. There was so much that could be done. So much that she could change about herself.

“N…no…!”

Her horn flashed with another spell, consciousness cast out far beyond her distorting corporeality.

“Non…!”

Fire flared into being between her legs, an inferno all at once.

“Non!”

“Twilight?”

“I…I…”

She was being choked by girth and she saw a glossy wall rising up beyond the tip of her muzzle.

“Twilight, what’s happening?”

Her brain was bubbling, laughter inside her skull.

“Ha ha…oops…!”

Author's Note

Even when it ends, it never really ends.

I think I always imagined that there would be something akin to this for the ending, even before the airing of the series finale. I think.

I had considered other possibilities for what could be shown here. I could have done a scene which had all of the main cast years after the main events of the story to show what they had each done with what they had learned, then closing with Twilight revealing that she has some "distilled" Non essence which should have more controlled effects and then asking if any of them ever wanted to experience what that night was like all over again. The main obstacle with this was that I didn't really have good ideas for most of them. Ultimately, I don't think it's really necessary to show what became of all of them. I briefly considered including a cameo of Fluttershy along with Luna but as the words came to me it didn't really fit how the flow was panning out.

I also could have done a scene which focused on Twilight suffering from a bout of Who Wants to Live Forever prompting her to imbibe of Non essence, but I didn't want to touch on that tired plot point any more than I already had.

In the end, I suppose I went with the most indulgent option I could have.

How many readers will get to this point and decide that this was the step too far?

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