V

The clubhouse looked more impressive than I thought it would. For being put together by a trio of often clumsy and inefficient miniature horses, the thing looked practically well engineered. White painted outer walls, a stable looking roof, and decorations with the Cutie Mark Crusader logo hanging wherever there was room for them. I gave a low whistle as Applebloom pulled me into full view of the structure, and she took the sound as a signal to spit out my sleeve and look up at me with expectant eyes.

I smiled at her. She looked so goddamn adorable.

I wanted to fuck her so badly.

“Wow,” I said, for once not feigning my appreciation for something done by a kid. “It looks really good already, really.”

“Thanks!” Applebloom practically shouted. She beamed up at me, and I felt something inside me melt a little as I got lost in her sweet, innocent amber eyes.

“I did most of the construction myself!” she said, posturing in front of the clubhouse like she was posing for a photo.

“It’s lovely. Are you sure it needs redecorating?”

Applebloom nodded and pointed a hoof toward one of the windows. “Uh-huh. You can see how the weather stripping is tearing away, and a lot of the paint is chipping on the far side. Plus, the banners are sort of tattered. Sweetie’s supposed to sew up some new ones.”

Huh. Weather stripping on a kid’s clubhouse?

I had an inkling as to what Applebloom’s cutie mark might be someday if she kept this up.

“I see. Well, it looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

Applebloom looked at me without imploring overtly, but I could see the request forming on her bottom lip as it hung out just a bit. Not quite pouting. God she was cute.

“Do you need me to help with anything?”

Applebloom nodded so hard her body bounced up and down.

“Yes, please!” Applebloom dashed back to where I was standing and grabbed another one of my sleeves. I managed to pry it out of her mouth as I started walking towards the door to assure her I wasn’t going anywhere.

“What would you like me to start on then?”

Applebloom paused for a moment. Her hooves stopped and her face twisted up in concentration like she was trying very hard to remember something. She looked tired again. She was about to start a whole afternoon’s worth of work after such a stressful day at school, so I couldn’t blame her.

But, just like that, her face snapped back to its cheerful smile, and she grinned at me with her brilliant orange eyes shimmering in the sun. I’d never seen them sparkle more.

“Can you help me move the furniture inside? Scootaloo says she found a table that’s better than the one we have in there, and I need ta’ make room for it.”

They even had their own little table in there?

So damn cute.

“Sounds good to me.”

Though the door was presumably designed for miniature horses, it was more than tall enough for me to walk through without straining my posture. I did have to duck a little bit as I pulled the door back to get under the frame. Surprisingly, the interior of the clubhouse looked as though there wasn’t a speck of sunlight outside – it was so dark, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

“Is there a light in here?” I asked as I took my first step inside. “I should probably be able to see the table I’m about to move-“

The last word caught in my mouth as I felt something against my foot. I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was going in the dark, and it felt like I tripped over something long and taut. A rope, or maybe a clothesline too close to the ground. What was a clothesline doing in a clubhouse, anyway?

The combination of the sudden disruption in momentum along with the abject darkness sent me tumbling forward in a full-on proper trip. The room was tall enough that I’d been able to stand up properly, which meant the full distance to the ground before my fall stopped.

Half-way through I found an unforeseen interruption.

Something hit my head. Hard. The sharp, solid edge of a very large wooden something. It sent a shock like a hammer ringing through my temples and blurred my vision behind my eyes into a darkness just as solid as the one that was around me.

So that’s where that table was.

The ground must have caught me, but I wasn’t awake to see it. I passed out a few seconds after my head hit the table.

When I opened my eyes it was at least light again, which was a relief. I could get a proper view of the clubhouse, which looked every bit the picture of adorable adolescent organization that I expected. A desk covered in papers and childish scrawlings of picture diagrams. A map of Ponyville with scribbled notation and labels. A vase with one, sad, drooping flower, hanging its collection of wilted petals over the edge of the container like it was sighing, perpetually depressed. It looked more put-together than any clubhouses I’d had as a kid, in any case.

And, there was the table. And the chairs.

Why did ponies need chairs anyway?

It occurred to me with that thought that I wasn’t lying down. I was, in fact, sitting on a chair, one miraculously big enough to fit my entire body.

I tried to raise my hand to my head to assess the damage from the table’s impact.

Curiously, my hand refused to cooperate.

I tried for a moment to determine the reason for the absence of a hand at my side. Well, my arms were still there. I followed them back with a mental touch and found both my hands attached as well. They were resting against each other. Behind me. Behind the chair. Tied to the chair.

Hm.

I tried to stand and found my ankles in a no more accommodating position.

Tied to the chair like the rest of me, then.

I was tied to a chair.

“Applebloom? Can you hear me?” I called out in the hopes that, if this was some dumb prank, I could at least talk Applebloom into getting my head looked at for concussions before playing ‘tie-up’ or whatever else it was I was sitting against a chair for.

Though, Applebloom tying me up to anything was something that I didn’t need the best of explanations for.

Even the flimsiest excuse would do, really.

“Applebloom can hear you, but she doesn’t feel like talking right now.”

Hm. The tone of unmistakable bitch.

“Diamond Tiara? If that’s you, can you please untie me? I hit my head pretty bad and I’m not if I need to get it looked at.”

“I know. You should have heard the sound your forehead made as it smacked against the wood.”

Diamond Tiara’s voice was coming from somewhere behind me that I couldn’t see, which meant I was either in the center of the clubhouse, or somewhere completely different that just looked like it happened to be a clubhouse for the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

I checked one of the posters on the wall. A Rainbow Dash picture, signed; ‘To Scootaloo – keep being awesome!’

So, probably the first one then.

Diamond Tiara had been there to see me fall.

So, what was going on?

“What’s going on?” my mouth mimicked, taking a second to catch up with my head, which felt like a combination between the worst hangover ever and a normal migraine. I wanted to rub the ache away so badly, but the ropes around my hands were disturbingly snug and thick.

“Oh, nothing’s going on. We just decided to join you for an evening in Applebloom’s clubhouse. Isn’t that right, Silver Spoon?”

Of course. The bitch duo never broke apart if they could avoid it.

“Mh-hmm. We came to see what kind of things you and Applebloom get up to when school’s out.”

That was the same line of conversation Diamond Tiara had been barking up that morning. And still, she didn’t have any evidence to suggest her insinuations had any basis in reality.

Part of my headache was brewing from my frustration at that point.

“Look, I don’t know what you two are up to, but I want you to cut it out and untie me right now, or you’re gonna be in big trouble.”

“Oh no, we are?” Diamond Tiara emerged into my periphery, finally, smirking and leering at me as I struggled helplessly against my bonds. “What are you gonna do; pin us down during playtime and rub your dick all over us through your clothes?”

Shit.

She had seen. She had watched at least once. But there was still no evidence to substantiate that kind of accusation. Even if she had kept her eyes on me the whole time, it still shouldn’t have looked that incriminating.

Unless I’d been so caught up in the idea of pressing my dick against Applebloom’s sweet underage body that I’d forgotten how brazen it might look if I wasn’t paying attention.

Fuck.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you just let me go so we don’t have to discuss the particulars of any potential punishment? I just want to get up so I can see if I’ve seriously injured myself.”

“Your head looks fine,” Diamond Tiara spat, getting closer to my chair and walking from the edge of my sight right into the foreground of my forward gaze. She looked just as cocky and unpleasant as ever. Pink princess coat, smug self-satisfied smirk, and that stupid tiara on her head. Even stupider today because of the out-of-place jungle-ruin looking ornament she’d pinned to the center like a bad hood ornament.

“Forgive me if I don’t trust a kid’s assessment of my potential head-injures. Untie me this second.”

“How about this instead,” Diamond Tiara started, leaning towards me as she spoke. She was just a few inches from my face, settling with her hooves on my knees. The look on her face was beyond any of my attempts at reproach – she looked like a predator waiting to devour its prey.

For the first time ever since waking up in Equestria, I felt a bit worried.

“How about,” Diamond Tiara continued, “instead of untying you, we keep you here for a little while so I can tell you all the things I’ve noticed about you over the last few months. All the things I’ve seen you do with Applebloom, and all the looks I’ve noticed you giving her – me – everyony around town, and what I think it means about you.”

I could feel a bead of sweat rolling down my forehead.

“Or, even better yet, how about I prove what I know about you, and watch you ruin your reputation in Ponyville – and all of Equestria – forever, by doing disgusting, perverted things with an underage filly. And then I go tell everypony in town, with proof, and get you exiled to the Everfree Forest, or someplace much much worse.”

Diamond Tiara dove forward. Her nose pressed against mine, and I could feel her eyes burning into the back of my head. I swallowed loudly.

“You disgust me. And today, I’m just lucky enough to have found a way to prove to everypony what a horrible thing you are.”

Diamond Tiara pulled her hooves off my legs abruptly, and I leaned forward as she returned to the floor. My heart was racing. I could hear the beating in my ears, so loud I was sure that Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon could hear it too.

She was on to me. Even though I’d never acted on it – really acted on it, I mean – Diamond Tiara knew what was going through my head. Every minute of every day, fighting the part of my that was still sane, telling myself it wasn’t right to want to fuck a pony, to fuck that pony, the tiny yellow one with a southern accent that still mumbled her words like an elementary school kid and was one fifth my size and had a virgin pussy I was sure so was so tight I’d shear my dick off if I even tried to fuck her–

Diamond Tiara knew. She had seen the touches here and there, the rubbing, the staring. Maybe she could read my thoughts… maybe every time I showed up to school in the morning, watching Applebloom’s butt bounce along with her bow and eying her tiny little pony slit, she could hear me thinking ‘I want to stick my penis in that underage horse.’

Fuck.

“Diamond Tiara… I don’t know what you think you know about me, but please. Just untie me so we can talk this out like rational hu–pe– … individuals.” I was pleading, and the tone of it dripped off every syllable of my voice.

Diamond Tiara sneered at me.

“I like my idea more.”

The pink pony princess with all the power at the moment gave a quick sashay with her rear, tilting in one direction and flicking her tail at nothing as she turned around to watch the wall opposite my chair.

“Applebloom! Come out here!”

Applebloom. If there was hope for me getting out of this situation with any part of my integrity still intact, Applebloom was the key. There was no way that during all those months I had spent with her she’d just been biding her time to expose me as a disgusting horse-pedophile. I could ask her for help, and everything would be okay.

But then… why had she let me be tied up in the first place?

Applebloom entered into my peripheral vision from the left, and walked curtly until she was standing right in front of me, her eyes locked on Diamond Tiara the whole time.

“Applebloom!” I practically shouted. I was having trouble reconciling the panic going through my body – every inch of me was screaming to do whatever I could to extricate myself from the notion of having my entire existence in this new place be shattered.

“Applebloom, please, could you untie me. I don’t know what Diamond Tiara’s talking about, and my head hurts really bad. I would really appreciate it if you could come untie me.”

Applebloom froze for a moment. Her whole body locked in place, her eyes still deadest on Diamond Tiara for a few seconds before her posture unstiffened again. She turned to me, smiling, and shook her head simply back and forth.

“Uh-unh. I need you to stay right there so I can let you fuck me until I’m broken, and then Diamond Tiara can show everyone in town how you’re a perverted little filly-fucking mutant.”

Applebloom’s teeth shone at me as she smiled wide.

My jaw dropped.

“App…Applebloom…. How could you… do you mean that you…”

I couldn’t get past what I had just heard to stammer out my disbelief.

Luckily, an interruption saved me from breaking down completely. Diamond Tiara, I noticed, had been snickering lightly, but now she had erupted into full blown laughter. She tilted her head back as she laughed, her eyes closed with how uproariously funny she apparently founded my distress. Silver Spoon was beside her now, I noticed, and she was laughing too, resting her hoof on Diamond Tiara’s back as the two of them shared what looked to be a gut-wrenchingly hearty series of guffaws.

My worrisome panic turned to anger for a moment. My hands struggled against my binding, the ropes burning into my wrists as I futilely tried to pull them free.

“What in the name of fuck is so funny?” I was in no position to try to sound intimidating, but by this point bravado was mute. If I was going to be ruined, I may as well spit in the proverbial face of my captors.

“You are!” Diamond Tiara managed between laughs, wiping tears away from her eyes as she collected herself through the torrent of chuckling. She ran her hoof across her eyes one final time before turning to me. Applebloom simply stood in the center of the clubhouse and blinked, while Silver Spoon stared on in amusement.

“Did you like Applebloom’s little speech?” Diamond Tiara asked, her inflection rising in the vocal fry I’d linked to her in memory, especially prominent when she was saying something overtly bitchy.

I couldn’t muster a response. I had no idea what to think.

As I watched, paralyzed by shock and resentment, Diamond Tiara grinned at me and tilted her head in Applebloom’s direction.

I saw it happen this time. A faint orange shimmer. So insubstantial I never would have noticed it if I hadn’t been staring straight at its point of origin.

The little hanging flaps on the side of Diamond Tiara’s new ornament waggled like they were in the wind as the glow traveled from her tiara to Applebloom.

Applebloom blinked. She looked at me with as big a smile as I’d ever her seen on her. When she spoke, her voice sounded completely ordinary and cheerful.

“Diamond Tiara figured out she could use me to get rid of you for good… you having to stick your gross human dick inside me is just a little bit of a necessary casualty.”

Jesus Christ.

Diamond Tiara burst out laughing again.

Applebloom stared silently forward, blinking far less frequently than seemed normal.

“What the fuck—“

“Isn’t it the best?” Diamond Tiara interrupted, sashaying over next to Applebloom and grinning at me. “It’s the most amazing find I could have ever hoped for.” Diamond Tiara gestured to the wooden-carved figure protruding from the tip of her crown.

“My daddy is one of the curators of the famous artifacts museum in Canterlot. He gets to see all the exhibits that go to the museum, and a lot of ponies send him things long before they’re scheduled to show up… things they find in the jungle, or just in their attic, that they think might be interesting.” Diamond Tiara started to walk as she spoke to me, circling around my chair like a shark before a feeding frenzy. I craned my neck to keep her in my sight, but my attempt to see behind my back was no use.

“Just a few days ago, he came home with something somepony had brought him… something from so far into the jungle, nopony can even remember the name of the tribe it belonged to.”

Diamond Tiara spoke until she had finished her rotation, then paused in front of me. She gestured obliquely to the ornament at the head of her crown.

“He said that the pony who brought it to him said that anyone who held this dumb-looking talisman could control other ponies at will… their thoughts, their actions… everything. I didn’t believe it, at first, but I decided to take it and see for myself. And, wouldn’t you know it, it actually worked! ...as I think Applebloom can demonstrate.”

Diamond Tiara tipped her head in Applebloom’s direction, and I caught the faintest shimmer of orange light before Applebloom turned to me and opened her mouth.

“I’m gonna lose my virginity to a human! I’ll be ruined forever, and nopony will want anything to do with me!” Her voice was so cheerful and chipper, the words she was saying sounded even worse.

A magic talisman? That was the source of what was happening to me? But…

“You’re not even a unicorn!” I yelled, hoping maybe that the volume of my insistence would undo the lack of logic orchestrating this chain of events. In a world with magic and flying horses there wasn’t much room for logic, but I intended to cling to what little of it there was.

“I know. Good thing those jungle ponies weren’t either, or this thing might not even have worked in the first place.”

Diamond Tiara strutted back to her place at the side of the room where Silver Spoon was waiting for her, grinning at her friend’s speech. I hadn’t had the chance for a direct confrontation with Silver Spoon, but it seemed that she may as well not have had her own opinions about anything – if Diamond Tiara thought something, so did Silver Spoon, and now the two of them were poised to put the pieces in place to ruin my life in Equestria going forward.

But…

What they had said about Applebloom.

What Applebloom had said.

It had sent a twitch through my body, centered in one very particular location.

I didn’t want this… but part of me did.

Still.

“There’s no way you just conveniently happened to stumble on something that makes it just that easy to mind-control other ponies.”

“Are you arguing with what you just saw? I know humans are supposed to be dumb, but if you’re going to choose not to believe me after that demonstration then you might have a special place in the dictionary under the word ‘moron’.”

It’s an odd feeling to be irate at the prospect of intangible magic in a world with unicorns and pegasus. It might be possible, sure, but it didn’t seem fair.

Logicking away the magic didn’t seem to be a possibility, however, so I tried to head down a different route of counterpoint.

“How do you even intend to use this against me? It’s not like anyone is just going to take your word for it—“

Click.

Silver Spoon smiled as she lowered the camera to give me a face-full of her smirk.

“Don’t worry, we’ve got that covered.”

My face fell.

That was it then, really. There wasn’t any getting out of this. My hands and legs were bound so firmly I could barely move them. Even if I could, in a few seconds there’d be enough compromising photos in that camera to provide more than substantial evidence for the necessity of my exile from pony society. I was well and truly fucked.

But.

There was a silver lining in all of this, after all.

If I was going to Hell, proverbially or otherwise, I might as well enjoy the ride.