Before I went to bed, I gave Twilight one simple request.

"Hey, Bill."

It was such a simple request, that I assumed even the simplest of simpletons could figure it out.

"Bill, I know you're under there."

Twilight, however, had a rather different conception of what I'd asked for.

"WAKE UP!"

It was my fault, really, for assuming that the standard procedure for letting a person sleep in meant letting them stay in bed until they felt like getting up. Purple Princess, on the other hand, took it to mean that my wake-up call would be postponed by merely a single hour.

I finally stuck my head out from under the covers to educate Twilight on the finer points of laziness. She apparently had her own ideas, because she just so happened to be reaching to pull the covers off. The way she leaned over to accomplish this left her boobs hanging perfectly within striking distance. I reached up and squeezed them one at a time.

"What are you doing?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Which one of these is the snooze button? I'm not done sleeping in yet."

Twilight just glared at me through narrowed eyes while I smiled innocently back up at her. She finally relented with a huff and stormed out. I knew she would make me regret it later, but the temporary victory was sweet enough to be worth it.

It had been a few days since our liaison at the spa, and surprisingly, Twilight had lightened up a bit from how she was before. At least, she no longer gave me crap for wanting to explore the town on my own. It still didn't stop either one of us from taking shots at each other every chance we got. If anything, we went looking for new and inventive ways of getting on each others' nerves, much to Cadance's amusement.

"Bill! Wake up! It's an emergency!"

If it had been anyone other than Twilight, or if she had bothered to wait more than ten minutes, I'd have taken the alarm more seriously, but it was Twilight, and it had only been about five or six minutes since her little storm-out. Naturally, I was skeptical.

"Is something on fire?" I asked flatly, not moving an inch.

"No." Twilight admitted.

"Then it's not an emergency."

Purple Princess, however, was not deterred. She sat down on the bed, putting a hand on my shoulder and speaking more softly. "Bill, this is important."

I silently regarded her for a moment out of the corner of my tired, sleep-deprived eyes. She actually looked sincere.

"I'm pregnant."

Those two words are enough to disrupt the rational processes in any man's mind, and I was no exception. She had my attention for sure, and I sat bolt upright with my mind going a thousand miles an hour. How could such a thing happen?

'Wait a minute.'

In the few seconds it took to regain my wits, Twilight had fallen off the bed laughing her pretty little tits off at my reaction. I would have words with Cadance later, because there was no way the purple one could have come up with that one on her own. I patiently waited for her to finish.

She soon calmed down enough to speak. "Oh, the look on your face. Priceless!"

She'd won fair and square, so all I could do was sit there and gracefully take my lumps. I'd been around long enough to know that Twilight just wouldn't be Twilight if she didn't stop to rub it in by running down the list of reasons why her being pregnant was such an absurd notion, even if I knew most of them already.

She finally recovered and took back her seat on the bed. "You know biology doesn't work like that."

"How can I be sure?" I defended, though I knew it was futile. "You're all aliens from another planet. How do I know you don't mate orally?"

Twilight gave me a play slap on the cheek. "Oh, stop that. Even if we did, no amount of magic would bridge the species gap. Our genetic material doesn't even have the same molecular structure."

"You actually checked that?"

"Why wouldn't we? It was part of all the safety checks we did before we lifted your quarantine, to make sure our viruses wouldn't make you sick or eat you alive from the inside or do some other horrible thing."

"What about bacteria and parasites?"

"Your body temperature is too high for all the common ones we tested. Now come on; get up. We can talk downstairs. Spike made breakfast."

"Fine," I relented with a sigh, "But tomorrow, I'm sleeping til noon, and I'm not taking, 'No,' for an answer."

"Have it your way." Twilight said, rolling her eyes.

After breakfast, I put on my warmest clothes and set off on my newest favorite hobby, wandering aimlessly around town and watching the locals. In deference to various safety concerns, I wasn't actually alone, but my guards really weren't much for conversation unless it got too late, and I needed to get back to the library. At any given moment, I only had one or two around, and their styles of keeping watch over me varied quite a bit. A couple of them stuck with the tried and true method of walking right next to me and giving mean looks to anyone who looked at us funny. Others followed at a distance, ready to come to the rescue should things go wrong. A few of them were practically invisible, but would instantly appear if I called for them. I liked them best because it made the locals act more naturally, at least as naturally as one would act in the presence of an alien from another planet. I knew they were watching me every bit as much as I was watching them.

Even though I'd had a taste of what a fur coat did to keep the cold at bay, I still found it surprising that the only concessions to the weather amounted to little more than scarves or hats. The nudity didn't even bother me any more as long as no one got too friendly too quickly, and as long as I was outside wandering the streets, everyone seemed perfectly happy to stare from a safe distance.

That changed, though, whenever I went indoors. I'd only managed to cover about half the town in three days, but I did find a nice pub on the first day that had a laid-back atmosphere and good drinks for any occasion. I made a point of stopping in every day after that. I got plenty of stares when I stepped through the door, but once I sat down and ordered a drink, I was just another guy taking a break from the outside world. I did still get a few stares and even a dirty look or two, but sooner or later a brave soul would usually come over to strike up a conversation.

"Hi!" greeted a mint green unicorn, whose cheerful disposition contrasted with her cream-colored companion, who looked more embarassed than anything else. "I'm Lyra, and this is my sister Bon Bon."

"Hello, I'm Bill," I politely replied as the two newcomers seated themselves on either side of me.

"Wow," commented Lyra. "I didn't think sitting like a minotaur could be so comfortable."

"Of course it is," I said. "Why would you think otherwise?"

"I had to sit like this once before. My back hurt like Tartarus the whole time."

"Then why did you do it?"

"I lost a bet."

Bon Bon giggled, "I told you you'd never get Big Macintosh to say more than two words."

"Anyway," Lyra deflected.

Bon Bon interrupted by whispering in my ear. "Whatever she asks you, you don't have to answer."

Lyra overheard her friend. "Awww, you're no fun. I was just gonna ask him about last night."

"What about it?" I asked innocently. I knew what she was talking about, of course, but I wouldn't surrender the details that easily. There were protocols to be observed.

"Oh, you know," Lyra said with a suggestive nudge and wink. "Everypony saw you leaving with a certain pegasus after a few drinks."

"The blonde one? We just went to her place for a while, nothing out of the ordinary I expect." Clearly, Lyra was fishing for gossip, and from the look on her face, my vague responses were frustrating her thirst for juicy details. I knew about the blonde pegasus's reputation ten seconds after she introduced herself. She made no effort to hide the fact that she was basically the town bicycle.

Lyra narrowed her eyes. "Quit playing dumb."

Bon Bon had different ideas. "Keep it up," she encouraged.

Not that I needed encouragement, taunting a starved gossip was its own reward. I paused for a moment, dragging the whole process out by pretending to think about it. "I got what I went for," I finally said.

Obviously, that wasn't anywhere near good enough for Lyra, but I made it clear that if she wanted more details, she wouldn't get them from me. Truthfully, I'd been diplomatic in my recounting of the experience. It was so forgettable, I didn't even remember the girl's name. It might have been better if she'd done more than just lay there and take whatever I deigned to give her, but if someone put a gun to my head, I'd say I'd had more fulfilling dates with Mrs. Palm.

Lyra gave up on the interrogation with an exaggerated show of frustration, much to her sister's amusement, and the two of them went to get their own table. Right on cue, the barkeep gave me a fresh drink to replace the one I'd finished.

I nursed a few more drinks over the next hour or so, watching the various patrons come and go. No one else seemed interested enough to approach, and that was fine by me. It just left me with more time to sort out my own thoughts and plan the rest of my exploration for the day. I'd been deliberately avoiding the business district because I wanted to get my own impressions of Ponyville without dealing with Twilight's friends who lived and worked there. Even though they were generally good company, I didn't want my whole experience of their world running through only their filters. Today, though, I couldn't put it off any more. I would have to go through the town center to get somewhere I hadn't seen yet, and that would more than likely mean bumping into at least one of them.

Stepping outside, I stretched and took a deep breath of fresh midday air. There had been a light snow during the night that left a new layer of white powder over everything. Despite the cold, I always had been a winter person and felt that there was something wrong with people who couldn't appreciate the beauty of freshly fallen snow.

Heading towards my target area, I passed by one of the local parks. School must have been on break because there were several kids sledding, throwing snowballs at any moving target, and generally playing around. Meanwhile, their parents clustered around the benches socializing among themselves and occasionally glancing over at the little ones to make sure no one got too unruly. It all looked so normal that I couldn't stand it, so I kept moving.

Finally reaching the town center, I stopped to look around. Even for a cold winter afternoon, very few of the locals were out and about. Most of the shops and restaurants were open, but the townsfolk must have collectively decided to stay indoors or play in the snow elsewhere. Things got even quieter as I turned toward Sugar Cube Corner, the last obstacle to pass before safely arriving in unexplored territory.

'Too quiet,' I thought to myself.

The first snowball came from the left. It wasn't aimed at me, and I watched it fall just short of its intended target, a pile of snow in front of the bakery that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be occupied by Pinkie Pie and Applejack, who wore matching green kevlar helmets. Another snow fort on the far side of the street contained Rainbow Dash and the three fillies who had introduced themselves as the cutie mark crusaders when I first met them. They distinguished themselves from their adversaries with pith helmets. The two sides were engaged in a good old-fashioned snowball fight, and I'd just walked into the no-mans land between their trenches.

"Bill! Over here! Hurry!" called Pinkie, waving me over to the relative safety of her fort.

Without thinking, I dove behind the cover, and the two ponies made room between themselves for me to crouch behind their wall. I took up the offered position and armed myself for battle. Pinkie handed me a helmet of my own to mark me as a member of her team.

"What's the situation?" I asked, playing along with their game.

"They're tougher than they look," Applejack said. "We can't hit 'em in that there fort of theirs, and even though the crusaders can't hit us from that far away, they're small and fast and hard to hit when they jump out. And they're completely fearless with Rainbow Dash on their side."

"So what's the good news?"

Applejack just gave me one of those knowing, but smug, looks. "We got Pinkie Pie," she said, as if that was supposed to be reassuring.

I turned to regard the pink one on my other side. She was holding a snow cone in her cleavage, using her arms to keep her boobs in place as she licked the blue and red flavored snow. Some of it fell off the side, leaving colored streaks on her breasts as the fallen chunks of flavored snow melted from the warmth and slid off. Asking where she got the paper cone or the flavored coloring from likely would have ended in madness, so I ignored it.

I turned back to Applejack, "We're doomed, aren't we?"

"Just make snowballs," she suggested with an exaggerated eye roll, "We're gonna need 'em when they come at us for real."

"ATTACK!" yelled Rainbow Dash, signaling the end of peace in the street. Many things happened very quickly after that. Three snowballs zipped by within inches of our heads as the crusaders ditched their cover and darted around in the no-mans land avoiding the first round of our return fire. Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash lobbed heavy snowballs over our wall, forcing us to keep our heads down.

The initial onslaught was short-lived. Even though the crusaders could easily evade our return fire, they had to get back to their fort to re-arm themselves. Applejack and I made sure to harry their retreats. I couldn't hit such small, fast targets, but I could trip them up by aiming in front of them and getting close enough to make them hesitate. Applejack fared only slightly better than I did, scoring hits on Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. Pinkie, on the other hand, was a goddamn machine, firing off three shots in the time it took me and Applejack to reload, and her accuracy put the rest of us to shame. She even got Rainbow Dash between the eyes when she stuck her head up for just a fraction of a second too long.

We took our own fair share of hits as well in the ensuing chaos. I tried to knock one of Rainbow's heavy snowballs out of the air with my hand but only succeeded in redirecting it to my face.

"Haha! Eat snow, Bill!" she taunted from behind her wall.

For once, my reply found its target, giving her a taste of her own medicine. Things generally deteriorated from there, with occasional lulls in the action when both sides needed to restock their frozen munitions.

After several minutes of back-and-forth offensives in which everyone but Pinkie got themselves covered in snow, Rainbow Dash made her boldest move yet. With a great war cry, she leapt into the air with her wings spread wide and a big chunk of snow in her arms. She paused for a moment before selecting the pink snow demon as her target and dive bombing toward her. Unfortunately, she miscalculated her descent and landed in the snow drift we'd been using as our ammo supply.

"You okay in there, Rainbow?" Applejack asked once the dust settled.

The murmured reply indicated nothing more than a bruised ego.

"Good. Pinkie Pie, take her as our prisoner and show her the price of messin' with the best."

The resulting display really didn't seem appropriate for the children in the audience, but that was probably just my own dirty mind at work. I was sure the crusaders weren't thinking the same thing I was. In any case, tickle torture took on a whole new connotation in my mind.

Pinkie invited us all into the bakery to warm up and dry off from our snowball fight. I took off my soaked outer layers and set them aside only to realize the melted snow had gone even deeper. I withdrew to a room away from the kids so I could strip down to my boxers and wrap up in a blanket. Somewhere amidst the chatting over hot chocolate, I nodded off on the couch.

"Hey Bill! Wake up!" Pinkie Pie shook me awake with only slightly more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary.

I blinked a few times as I regained my bearings and remembered I'd fallen asleep on the pink one's couch. Looking up, I saw the maniac grin on her face that suggested more than just sending me on my way back to Twilight's place.

"I made cupcakes!" she triumphantly declared, "Want some? It's a special recipe."

Applejack snatched one off the table and started eating it. "Don't you worry none, Bill. Pinkie's the best baker in Ponyville."

Taking one for myself, I bit into it. While I wasn't a connoisseur of baked pastries, I felt obliged to give credit where it was due. "These are pretty good! Thanks."

Pinkie saw this as cause for celebration, cheering and bouncing around the room for a moment before stopping to bear-hug me. "I'm so happy you like them. I was worried you wouldn't, and then you'd be sad, or mad, and that would be bad."

"Can't... breathe," I managed from the clutches of the pink strangler and her sweater stuffers of suffocation.

"Oops, sorry," she said, promptly letting me go.

Once I recovered enough to finish my first cupcake, which I'd somehow managed to not drop, I noted a conspicuous absence in the room. "Where's Rainbow Dash?"

Applejack answered, "She went back outside ta play with the crusaders some more before they go home. Now ya mention it, it's late enough I should probably get goin' myself."

Pinkie suddenly gasped as if something horrific had occured. "If Rainbow Dash and the crusaders went home already, that means they didn't get any cupcakes!"

"We can't have that, now can we," Applejack said, grinning.

"You're right!" Pinkie proclaimed without missing a beat. "Applejack, take the rest of these, and share them with Rainbow Dash and the crusaders so they don't miss out!"

"Sure thing, Pinkie," Applejack chuckled. "But what about you two? There's a lotta cupcakes left, and Bill's only had one so far."

"That's okay..." I managed to say.

"Yeah, that's okay," Pinkie interrupted. "His clothes are still drying, so I can just make more for him before he goes back to Twilight."

"You really don't have to..." I tried to explain that I didn't need a half dozen cupcakes, but the way the pink one looked at me suggested that more cupcakes would be forthcoming regardless of my thoughts on the matter. I decided discretion was the better part of valor and held back from engaging in a pointless argument with a pink pony. It wasn't like I had anything better to do anyway.

With Applejack gone, that left me and Pinkie by ourselves. Pinkie gave me an appraising look before taking a seat next to me on the couch. She rested her head on my shoulder and put her arm around me, pulling me in for a much gentler hug than she'd given me earlier. "Thank you for playing with us today," she said softly. "It meant a lot to me, seeing you having fun and smiling for real and not just being polite or putting on a brave face. I like that smiling, happy Bill."

It felt kind of odd, really, to see the normally exuberant girl suddenly turn tender and sentimental. Despite the unexpected change in demeanor, it felt good to know somebody cared. Caught in the moment, I took a deep breath and returned the hug.

Within a half second, Pinkie snapped back to her usual self. "Now, let's make us some cupcakes! You wanna help?"

Come to think of it, I was probably the only one who didn't see it coming. Two minutes later, we were down in the bakery's basement, which for reasons known only to Pinkie and the bakery's owners had its own fully stocked kitchen separate from the one behind the business counter. While my clothes dried, I had nothing but my boxers and a loaned blanket to preserve my modesty and keep me warm. Pinkie had donned an apron over her birthday suit because, why the hell not.

I stood well back as Pinkie bent over to rummage through a cupboard, not because I had a better view of her well-rounded backside, but because a disturbing number of very large and very sharp looking knives were among the growing pile of assorted implements that shouldn't realistically fit into such a small cupboard. Naturally, I had a few reservations.

"Uhh, is all this really necessary?"

"Of course not, silly Billy," Pinkie replied, backing out of the cupboard and setting what looked like a butcher's cleaver on the counter. "I'm just getting these out of the way." She went back to her rummaging, said, "Aha!" a few seconds later, and produced, with great dramatic flair, a perfectly ordinary cupcake pan.

In short order, and in ways that appeared to violate at least two laws of physics (as well as several OSHA regulations), the unneeded kitchen implements made it back into their storage space. I kept my distance during the process. Lacking any practical knowledge of baking, I took responsibility for the mixing bowl and stirring the ingredients as the pink one added them. While not the most glamorous of tasks, it was something I could do. Besides, repetitive, one-handed motions come naturally when the most prominent sight in the room is a pair of big bouncy boobies barely bound by a baker's bust cover. I couldn't help but marvel at whatever mysterious apron physics were keeping those things from spilling out completely. And that was ignoring all the times she'd turn around and bend over, often for no apparent reason at all, unless it was all on purpose.

Once the cupcakes were in the oven, I helped Pinkie with cleanup. To avoid dirtying the blanket, I left it on a nearby chair. Pinkie compensated by brushing up against me as often as she could, reaching in front of me to grab things so that her side boob would rub against my arm or chest. If she'd bothered to look down, she would have seen the bulge forming in my boxers as a result of her efforts. However, she gave no indication that she'd noticed as she continued her work, humming a cheerful tune the whole time.

With the cleaning done, I retrieved my blanket again and sat down at the table facing away from the kitchen. Pinkie definitely knew she was getting me riled up with her antics. I wasn't opposed to the idea on general principle, but I had no idea what the pink mystery had in mind.

I heard the oven timer go off, and I heard Pinkie taking the cupcakes out and setting them on the cooling tray. I glanced back at her just in time to see the apron come off and her plush pink pair of play pillows once again set free to brighten the room with their presence. I turned back as she disappeared into the pantry, where she rummaged around for something or another.

"Hey Biiillllllll," she sang softly from right behind me. "I made a little mess. Can you help me clean it up?"

There was no mistaking the tone of her voice. It wasn't her usual bubbly, happy voice. It was the universal 'Come Hither' voice that could only mean one thing.

Turning around, I saw the extent of her 'mess'. In the brief time I'd had my back turned, Pinkie had managed to smear chocolate frosting all over herself and then sneak up on me.

"How clumsy of you," I remarked, shedding my blanket as I approached to inspect the damage more closely. "I guess I can help you clean yourself up," I said as I ran my finger across her fuzzy frosted funbags and then licked off what I'd picked up. "Just hold still, please."

Of course, she had no intention of holding still, just as I had no intention of cleaning her up the boring way. As punishment for her disobedience, I tickle tortured her just as she'd done to Rainbow Dash after the snowball fight. She threw her arms around me and held me close, but I maintained the upper hand as she writhed and squirmed under my relentless tickling assault, laughing and giggling every time I found a particularly good tickle spot. Somewhere in there, my boxers must have come off because I could feel my bone rubbing against Pinkies nethers and gathering its own coat of chocolate.

I paused every few seconds to lick some frosting off too, giving her boobs special attention. There's just something about big, soft, jiggly, chocolate-covered chest cannons. A guy can't help but lick them, and play with them, and rub his face all over them, and lick them some more. I'm sure it's in the laws of physics or something like that.

Suddenly, Pinkie stopped me by grabbing my head and pulling me in for a deep kiss. Her tongue probed the inside of my mouth for several seconds, tasting the fruits of my labor. After breaking the kiss, she whispered, "My turn," into my ear and promptly turned the tables on me.

I let her wrestle me over to the table and push me backward on top of it. She followed soon after, straddling me as she tickled me in my everywhere. This only served to make an even bigger mess than the one we'd started with, and she was more than eager to clean me up just as I had done with her.

That went on until we both ran out of breath from tickling and laughing. Pinkie just flopped down where she was on top of me, resting her head on my chest while I kept my hands on her breasts.

"You're still covered in frosting," I said after taking a few deep breaths.

"And you're all messy now too," Pinkie pointed out, slowly licking a spot on my shoulder.

"I'm not complaining."

"I can tell," she giggled, sliding her hips back and forth along my cock, as if reminding me that I was an open book on such matters.

We lay there for another minute or so. Pinkie slid up a little further so I could play with her boobs some more and make sure they got extra clean.

"How about some dessert?" she suggested once I'd licked off all the frosting I could reach.

"What did you have in mind?"

Instead of answering with words, she turned around on top of me and assumed the 69 position. From the looks of things, much cleaning remained to be done.

"I thought I was here for cupcakes," I pretended to complain. "This is a muffin. Besides, are muffins supposed to have frosting on them?"

"I won't tell if you won't, now eat up." Pinkie replied before going to work cleaning up my lower parts.

Not to be outdone, I did the same. In addition to all the frosting down there, she was already wet from having just as much fun as I was earlier. If anything, it just made her chocolate coated cunt taste even better.

Getting chocolate frosting out of Pinkie's pussy turned out to be more difficult than one might think. Sure, cleaning the area around it was easy, but getting all the little nooks and crannies around her clit and outer lips took many passes. I had to work my way around slowly, pressing my tongue as deep as I could go and making sure to give every single spot a thorough licking before moving on to the next. Some of the chocolate still escaped, though, and got deep enough inside her that I had to use my fingers to dig it out, leaving it on the surface and then licking it up little by little. Pinkie seemed to enjoy my diligence too, if the way she squealed as her knees buckled was anything to go by.

Despite falling flat on my face, Pinkie was undeterred in her endeavour to polish my knob, and her efforts were soon rewarded. After the first few spurts, she let my cum dribble down my shaft and happily licked it up again as it reached my balls.

Even though the main event was technically over, there was still quite a bit of frosting all over the both of us, and while basking in the afterglow, we took turns licking the parts we'd missed. Mostly, it was concentrated around our bellies, but I still got a few more mouthfuls of mammary mound for good measure. It never hurts to be extra thorough.

As always, though, good times have to end, and I had to clean myself up properly before retrieving my clothes, which had dried off by then. On my way out the door, Pinkie handed me the cupcakes she'd made in a box so I could take them back to Twilight's.

"Don't forget to share," she reminded, although she didn't specify how many I could keep for myself.

"I won't forget," I assured her.

'Though I may choose not to if this batch is as good as the first.'

I'd lost a day of exploring the town, but at least it wasn't a total loss. The snowball fight was a good chance to blow off some steam, and the cupcakes afterward more than made up for the difference. It was one of the few times since I'd woken up in the Palace that I genuinely could not say anything bad about my day.