It was the 117,599th consecutive beautiful day in Cloudsdale, and on the playground of Cloudsdale Elementary School, pegasi children were playing everywhere. The older kids were racing after each other at high speeds, barely touching the clouds, and the younger kids were taking their time in savoring their lunch while it lasted.

In an area of the schoolyard where the foursquare paint was wearing down in the breeze, a lone filly sat at one of the picnic tables, chewing her radish-and-molasses sandwich carefully, since it might escape at any second. She fumbled the bits of stalk out of her teeth, but then the molasses got in between, and molasses was really sticky. Why did she even ask her mom to pack this for her?

Because Rainbow Dash had eaten the same thing yesterday.

Fluttershy nodded in agreement with herself as she thought of how amazing, how brave, how bold her classmate was. The blue pegasus was everything she wanted to be - unafraid, never stressed out, a real leader. Dash was quick and strong, and she got the job done. A sip of nectar cleared her teeth for another bite into the sandwich. Just a few more and she’d be done.

“Hey Klutzershy!” A voice from behind her. She recognized it. Dumb-Bell.

“Um, Dumb-Bell, I’m uh, trying to eat...”

"Hear that, hawhuh? She's tryna eat!" Hoops and Quarterback chuckled at something that wasn't really all that funny.

"Quiet, oafs. So, uh, Klutzershy, trip over any good rugs lately?"

"...No..." She mumbled into her lunch, hoping that if she ignored them they'd leave her alone. But like always they continued to pester her. As rude as it was, she wished they would fly the heck away.

"Hey, Hoops, you know what I heard?"

"Whatcha hear, Dumb-Bell?"

The brown pony sidled up to Fluttershy and elbowed her as he spoke. "I heard Fluttershy ain't doing so well in gym." He made a face that mocked dismay.

"Awww...why not?"

"On account of her wings are too small for her body! She can't keep her balance neither!"

"Hawhaw! She's like... uhm, a dark matter butterfly!"

"Exactly! And you know what happens to butterflies that can't fly too good," he leaned in close to Fluttershy and stated calmly, "They fall."

"...eep..." The filly curled up, trying to make herself smaller.

"Hey! Get away from her!" Another familiar voice. Rainbow Dash had come to save her! Fluttershy turned and saw the short blue filly standing between her and the jocks. "Get away from her or I'll buck you into next week!"

"Hawhuh, look, it's Rainbow Crash!" Hoops and Quarterback laughed again. Dumb-Bell silenced them with a single glare. He turned to address the newcomer.

"Oh, hey, Rainbow. You defending your blank-flanked damsel in distress? That's real noble of you. Real noble. I can respect that. But you can't defend her if you can't catch up to her!"

At this, Hoops and Quarterback flew behind the rainbow-maned filly and grabbed her friend by the forelegs, lifting her up and carrying her away.

"Eep!" Fluttershy squeaked and struggled, trying to get loose, but then she realized how high above the clouds she was already and locked up in fright.

"YOU PUT HER DOWN NOW!" Dash revved up her wings and shot after the two bullies, the yellow filly being casually tossed between them in the same manner that one might toss a ball, except this was 50 feet in the air. They played keepaway with Dash for some time. She would get near one as Fluttershy was heading for him, but the other would catch Fluttershy right above them, and then drop her a few feet and switch places in some horrible game. "LET HER GO!"

Dumb-Bell, still on the playground, nickered at this. "You heard her, boys, let her go!" The two colts responded by releasing their grip on the awkward filly. For a few brief and challenging seconds she managed to keep aloft with her meager wings, but ultimately she did not so much soar as plummet.

"EEEEEEEEeeeeeeee...!!"

"Haybrains! That's not what I— I'M COMING, FLUTTERSHY!" Rainbow Dash swiveled and propelled herself downwards to the falling filly. In less than five seconds she was halfway there. In two seconds she was halfway again. In one she was another halfway, and in less time than that she had caught up to her friend. She spun around and hooked her hind legs under Fluttershy's forelegs, now straining upwards to slow their combined descent. They were only a foot from the clouds as she finally gave up and they collapsed in a heap. If Fluttershy had been screaming, there was too much wind to have heard it.

"And a happy ending for all. Come on bronies, let's get gone before the waterworks start." The three colts, brown and tan and gray, flew off to the school building. Rainbow Dash turned to the yellow pegasus.

"You okay, Fluts?"

"...Um...I think so..." she lied. She was shivering and the blood had rushed to her face. "...Thanks, Rainbow..."

"No problem. I know a gal who could take care of them, if that's what you want."

Fluttershy winced at the thought of vengeance on her aggressors. "Oh, um, no...I don't want that..."

Dash shrugged. "Okay, shoe yourself." Oblivious, she soared towards the schoolhouse too. The bell rang just then. Fluttershy sighed, packed up her unfinished lunch and walked back to the class which she would undoubtably be late for now.

Fluttershy was scared. Well, she was scared almost all the time, but not usually like this. She was falling from an unimaginable height for an unknowable distance, with nothing but clear blue sky around her. She couldn't see anything but the sky. All that empty air was scary. She tried to flap her wings but the wind shear was too great. She screamed an endless scream.

Suddenly there was Rainbow Dash, right above her, hooking her...muscular...legs around Fluttershy's body. She hadn't noticed it before but Dash's coat was so...blue. So like the sky itself, but deeper. Like the sky at Cirrotrotus Observatory, where they'd had a field trip once. It was so high up that the stars were visible well until mid-morning, and appeared around dinner in the evenings. Perfect for stargazing.

Rainbow Dash's tail brushed her in the face. She saw how vibrant and saturated it was. Full of color. Better than a real rainbow. It was realer than a real rainbow. Really realer.

Fluttershy realized they weren't falling anymore– in fact, she was hovering of her own will! Dash was still holding on, though, and her shaggy tail whipped aside to reveal her naughty bits, rendered crudely and inexpertly by Fluttershy's imagination. They were soaring ever higher...they soared through dark thin rain clouds and deep white clouds of warm steam. Fluttershy shimmied up Dash's glistening, dew-dropped body and inserted her—

—Fluttershy woke up with a start and sat straight up in bed, sweating all over. Only a dream. Just a dream. Just...a dream. She laid back and looked at the position of the Moon through the translucent patch in the ceiling. About 2 AM. The Mare in the Moon stared down at her, eternal.

"Well I'm not getting back to sleep now..." she muttered, quietly bemoaning the lost end of the dream. It would keep her up the rest of–

Up. Something was bunching up the thin turquoise sheets, which were soaked through, plastered to her legs. "Um, Mr. Bunny? Is that you?" She reached out in the dim moonlight to pull aside the covers and find her precious stuffed animal. She did not find Mr. Bunny.

A...a boy part?! WHAT?! She shrieked. "AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

In the next room over, her mom Posey was dreaming about baking a cake. She put on her cloud-shaped oven mitts and watched the timer count down. 0:05...0:04...0:03...0:02...0:01... "AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"

She woke up immediately. "Fluttershy!" She raced down the hall, bucked open Fluttershy's bedroom door and turned the lights on, only to find...her daughter. With a raging boner. Not the wing kind.

Fluttershy paused, stared at her mom, stared at it, and resumed shrieking. "AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—"

"Fluttershy! Oh my goodness! Calm down! Stop it! Please, stop, you'll wake the neighbors!"

Fluttershy eventually had to stop to breathe. Panting, she managed to convince herself she had gotten it out of her system for now. Now, this system on the other hoof...

They both stared, alternatively at it, then each other, then it again. Nopony spoke for a few minutes. Finally the mare broke the silence.

“When...”

Fluttershy responded in kind. “When what?”

"When...when did you...did this..."

“I...don’t know...”

“Um, are...are you alright?”

“I...guess?”

“What...what happened?”

The filly got worked up again, her eyes watering. "I don't know, Mama! I was just sleeping and I had a weird dream and when I woke up I was all wet and this thing was on me!"

"Okay, um..." Posey ruffled a hoof through her mane, searching for the right turn of phrase.

"Mama, am I turning into a colt or am I just weird?!"

"As far as I know, um, neither. Put on a sweater and...go huddle up in my saddlebag by the door. We're going to the doctor."

"...can you change my sheets first?"

Posey sighed and wearily smiled. "Sure thing, honeybunny."

It was a ten-minute flight to the doctor's office and a thirty-minute wait in the waiting room. The selection of magazines, probably more tailored to the tastes of the doctor rather than his patients, only confused Fluttershy and annoyed Posey. Finally the doctor sent out his previous patient, an older blonde filly with a patch on one eye, and permitted the two to enter.

"And what seems to be the trouble, Mrs. Posey?" The doctor was middle-aged and sort of bluish-green, with a short black mane that connected to his mustache and beard in an arc. He spoke with a warm, firm, yet slightly condescending voice. His cutie mark was a red cross with two smaller ones on either side; they were holding hooves. Fluttershy didn't trust him.

"Well, um, my filly Fluttershy woke up with an unusual problem that hasn't gone away yet..." She lifted the filly out of her saddle-bag by the scruff of her emerald green sweater, placing her on the examination table. "See what I mean?"

"Ah! Oh my...this...this is incredibly rare." He first examined Fluttershy all over, taking the sweater off and measuring her height, weight, length, teeth, wingspan, and other things. Finally he turned his attention back to the problem at hoof. He tested it in numerous ways, using various instruments to examine it from all angles. Fluttershy looked immensely uncomfortable in both body and mind.

"...what's wrong with me...?" She gazed downwards at herself.

"I'm assuming you know what this...thing, is, then, and that it is indeed wrong. You are a hermaphrodite, more commonly known as a she-stallion. This condition only affects... well there haven't been enough cases to calculate how rare it is!"

"...am I turning into a colt?" She sniffed the intrusive object. Margarine...?

"No, no no no. You are neither a colt nor a filly; you are somewhere in between. You have both the male and female sets of organs and consequently there is an unstable combination of hormones in your brain that will stay with you the rest of your life." The filly paled at these words.

Posey was also slightly paler. She turned from the doctor to look Fluttershy in the eyes. "It's okay, honeybunny, everything's going to be alright."

"Wellllll..." the doctor led the concerned mare around a corner, out of earshot. "She'll never live a normal life. Even though this condition is so rare, she will face horrible stigma for it, and probably be ostracized. Public perception of she-stallions is that they are insatiable, omnisexual nymphomaniacs with little regard for the safety and sanctity of others. And public perception of this is generally correct."

They glanced around the corner at Fluttershy, who had put the sweater back on backwards and was struggling to turn it around, not an easy feat with such a cumbersome obstacle in the way. "Not only this, she might not even grow up properly. The hormonal imbalance is already affecting the proportions at which her wings grow, versus her legs and her head and so on. She'll have blood pressure and anger management issues, uncontrollable sexual urges, a wet bed every night for the rest of her life, and the worst thing is: she's fertile."

"F-fertile?" Posey stumbled over the word. "But, but she's just a filly! She's only just getting her growth spurts! She sleeps with a toy rabbit! She can’t even fly! She can’t be...fertile!"

"She is not a filly, she is a she-stallion. That makes a world of difference. She has incomparable sexual endurance and will stop at nothing to achieve her instinctual goal of mating with every last pony she sees; no matter what race, creed, gender, or age. She is a biological machine designed to reproduce, and she is designed efficiently." Fluttershy finally got the sweater on forwards again, but now it was inside-out. "I advise this: you must keep her away from all other ponies. At all costs."

Posey thought this through quickly. "No way that could work. Is there an alternative?"

"You’re not going to like it.”

The mare toughened. “Tell me what I must do.”

“Geld and spay her."

Her eyes widened in horror. "N-no. Never. I will n-never have such a thing done to her."

The doctor shook his head in disapproval. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Posey, those are the only viable options. Life-long isolation or significant surgery. I suggest the former; it would be less traumatic."

"I'll be getting a second opinion, then. Good day." She turned the corner and found her filly trying to use the sweater to cover herself up a little better. It wasn't working. She turned back to the doctor for a moment. "Um, can you at least prescribe some medicine to stop these...these moments from happening?"

"Ah, well, of course I can. Follow me, there's a wide selection." He opened a door behind them, revealing whole bookshelves of medicine textbooks, and led her inside.

"Mama, I got my sweater on right! ...Mama?"

Over the long weekend, since it was nearly Cloudsdale Day, Fluttershy and her mom went to every library in the city in search of reading material. They read dozens of books and research papers. There was no stopping Posey from giving her filly an enjoyable, healthy life.

“...Mama, this is the fifth library we’ve been to today...” Fluttershy complained, an ache taxing her long legs from walking so much. Though the clouds were soft and puffy, their effect added up to over-relaxed leg muscles, which made them difficult to walk on for extended periods. In addition to this, her heartbeat was pulsing in her ears with the sight of every pony. “...can we stop for lunch?”

“We still haven’t found any good information, Fluttershy. When we find a book that explains your body well, we’ll check it out and go get some donuts.”

“...Okay...but what if we don’t find a book like that...?”

“Then we’ll stop at noon so you can take your medicine and get donuts after that.”

“...Okay...” she murmured, her turtleneck sweater riding up on her mane. The two pegasi entered the library.

"...do I have to wear this? It's...itchy..."

Posey stood back and admired her work. "Uh, yes, yes you do, Fluttershy." She picked her daughter up and placed her on her hooves again. Fluttershy was wearing a tight rubber leotard roughly the same color as her coat. Posey bit the last tag off. "How's that?"

"...little better..."

"Okay, now what are the strategies I taught you?"

"...Book on lap, scoot in, bathroom breaks, no staring, no dirty thoughts, avoid sugar..."

"Great! Have fun at school, and remember to take that pill at 12. I'll see you at pickup."

"...'kay, bye Mama..." the filly turned to enter the school yard, her saddlebags containing a secret pocket for her medicine as well as some other emergency supplies.

"Wait, Fluttershy!" The mare called out, making her daughter turn her head back. "You are very special, and I love you so much! No matter what you are, you will always be my honeybunny."

"...Love you too, Mama..." and she went inside, where she saw Rainbow Dash excitedly talking with a strange new griffin girl, pointing at the brown, tan and gray colts.

THE END