Thanks to the fact we were all fliers, me Twilight and Rainbow were in no real danger from the tank of a blue crab beneath us as it tried to get its claws in range to chop us in half. Although, with the size difference, the pincers would probably crush anyone who got caught in-between them who wasn‘t thicker than a tree.

“So, any pony have an idea of what to do now?” I asked as the three of us calmly examined the scene. Since the plans I usually came up with involved a gratuitous use of violence that ponies weren’t generally comfortable with, it was probably best to let Twilight take the lead on this one while I stored my ‘hit the damn thing hard enough to crack open its shell spill out the juicy goodness inside’ plan on the back-burner.

However, our usually fearless leader’s latest blunder seemed to have knocked her analytical and planning skills down a few pegs along with her self-coincidence. “I…I don’t know,” she mumbled before looking over to our hornless flier. “Any ideas Rainbow?”

“Yeah, we fly in there and-”

“NO!” both me and Twilight shouted in a panic before grabbing the pegasus in our telekinetic fields and pulled her back to us while she was in the middle of demonstrating her idea. There was no way in hell I was letting Rainbow put herself in that kind of danger when we had plenty of other options.

When they looked over to me, I shrugged. If Rainbow was going to rush headfirst into danger, then I wasn't about to beat around the bush. “I say we go for the excessive use of violence option.”

Twilight winced an looked over at me with a pained expression. “Why’d you have to go and say excessive?”

“Because too much is always better than not enough,” I told her simply. “Now let’s just blast it and get the map.”

I began to charge a spell alongside Twilight, and winced when a burst of pain shot through my brain, breaking my concentration and forcing me to start over. Second time around, I closed my eyes to help me concentrate while I heard Twilight’s spell go off.

“Fae look out!” the alicorn’s voice called out in time for me to open my eyes and see a burst of purple energy smash into my face. The attack literally knocked me for a loop before the I was it sent me crashing to the ground, head first.

My obligatory ‘what just hit me’ comment was cut off when the stars I was seeing got replaced by a giant blue claw that came down to pound me into the sand, increasing the discombobulating feeling I was having before I felt something crush me from the sides and lift me into the air.

The next thing I knew, Twilight was floating right in front of me, still free in the air. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! My-”

“Twilight! Get away from that thing!” Dash screeched before a rainbow blur came from behind the alicorn to snatch her further into the air and out of the crab’s reach a good two seconds before the crab’s other claw swatted their previous position. I thanked God for Rainbow's speed and let out a sigh of relief.

Or, maybe it was air being forcibly ejected from my lungs due to the pressure. Thankfully, the crab's claws couldn’t put enough pressure to crush me while I had my carapace on, and the two winged ponies were well out of the monster’s range. So, I looked up at the purple alicorn and frowned. “Twilight, what the hay happened?” I asked like a total moron. Even with my armor, it took a lot more effort than it should have to get the air I needed to live back in my lungs after I wasted it on a stupid question.

“I’m sorry! The crab’s shell, it deflects magic,” she yelled back. “When I used an attack spell, it was reflected back at us.”

Of course… Why the hell was it when Twilight became super alicorn powerful, everything else that crawled out of the woodwork got a similar upgrade? I sure as hell didn’t remember them fighting anything like… Hell, I didn’t remember the mane six fighting anything at all beyond the changeling invasion of Canterlot. But now, in two months they had wracked up battles against pirates, giant crabs, Mesoamerican mythological monsters, and Aztec ponies. It was like Lauren Faust had come back and decided on doing things Power Puff Girls style instead of sticking with the pretty pony dynamic.

Considering it was my life on the line, I really would have rather let Fluttershy get over her shyness and have to deal with some kind of weird love triangle with ponies I couldn't bear to see sad than battle giant killer monsters in the city of Ponyville.

“Don’t worry girl, we’ll get you out of there,” Rainbow called from above.

“WAIT!” I shouted before the pegasus could…well, dash in and save me. Or at least try to. As cool as she was, I didn't really think Rainbow had the upper body strength to deal with something big enough to step on her and leave a smear behind. “The stupid thing had to leave its nest to pick me up, hurry and get the map!” And could you please at least call me a guy when I’ve got the voice? I mentally begged.

“But-” Twilight began.

“I’M FINE JUST GO!”

Now I just needed to figure out a way to get out of my predicament…without magic. The headache that had become a pounding migraine wasn’t helping me to focus either. Plus, all the involuntary motion the crab was putting me through wasn’t doing anything good. Being jerked around while something tried to crush you to death was not a good way to recover from a migraine.

“Any ideas?” Twilight called out from a safe distance.

“Teleportation?”

“The special distortion field is disrupted by the crab!”

“Transmogrification?”

“Will probably be reflected back at me too!”

“Transmutation?”

“Does everything you come up with have to start with T?” Twilight yelled back.

“Then just hit it with something really big!” I shouted at her.

“Like what? That crab’s the biggest thing on the island, and anything big enough to crack his shell would probably kill, or at least bury you too!”

“Hey girls, I got the map.”

I looked over to Rainbow Dash as she just seemed to appear out of nowhere next to Twilight with her usual rainbow contrail just fading behind her. At the mare’s appearance, I blinked as a rather risky idea came to mind. As a…masculine changeling monarch, I was a bit bigger than the average female, and Rainbow was anything but average. I didn’t think the lithe pegasus had an ounce of fat on her body besides the little bit in the flank that all ponies possessed. She was certainly smaller than me with my exoskeleton.

While I had to deal with the debilitating headache killing my magical powers, I could still concentrate enough to use the natural ability common to all changelings since it was practically second nature. So I focused on Rainbow Dash for a second, and changed myself into a cyan pegasus of slightly smaller size that could slip through the opening my reduction in mass provided.

One powerful wing beat later, and I was in the air, flying free. Then my head reminded me that quickly changing elevations when it felt like your brain was going to explode was not a good idea. I got as high as Twilight and Rainbow, then a wave of vertigo made me cut the movement of my feathered wings and let the cruel mistress known as gravity make me its bitch once again.

Twilight screamed my name, and the next thing I knew, I was wrapped in the tingling feeling of the alicorn’s magic before she brought me up level with her. “Fae, are you alright?” she asked while flying only somewhat erratically. Using her magic in flight was still something Twi was getting used to apparently.

I opened my mouth to tell her it was nothing, but only managed to let out a low moan. The pounding in my head told me it wasn’t a good idea to even nod an affirmative.

“Oh yeah, it’s bad,” Rainbow Dash said, earning a curious glance from Twilight Sparkle. “What? That’s my ‘I may still be awesome but I’m feeling pretty sick so I can’t do anything today’ face and moan.”

Even I debilitated as I was, I managed to give Rainbow a disbelieving look that I could see matched Twilight’s out of the corner of my eye.

“And, can you change back? Doing impersonations during parties is one thing, but this is…a little creepy,” she asked. “No offense.”

All in all, I wasn’t mad at her. If something back on Earth could have looked like anyone he or she wanted, I know damn well a lot of hot women doppelgangers would have been standing in front of a mirror in their birthday suits.

I closed my eyes to help me concentrate, and they shot open when I heard a loud crash from beneath us. We three ponies looked down at the giant crab for a moment, then back to each other. “Escape first, then changeling magic,” Twilight concluded before she told us before motioning for our getaway.

About fifteen minutes of travel later, Twilight dropped me in the middle of the jungle and put her nose on my forehead after knocking my new rainbow hair out of the way. “No fever,” she mumbled a after a few seconds of feeling my head with the end of her muzzle. The action was a little gratifying. I had always wondered how they took temperatures without hands.

The feeling of being back on the ground was indescribably wonderful. There were no jerking motions, no moving trees beneath my eyes, no waves of sea breeze assaulting my nose. I took a moment to just lay down and relax to let every tense muscle in my body just become pudding.

“Oh-kay, time to change back now,” Rainbow told me as she landed and spit the map out of her mouth.

“Give her a minute Rainbow,” the alicorn told the pegasus, who took a look at me out of the corner of her eye before relenting. I must have looked pretty bad if all it took was one look for Rainbow Dash to lay off.

“Alright…it’s just…kind of creepy seeing myself laying there all…bad,” she finished rather lamely.

Another minute passed, and Rainbow looked over to the alicorn. “So what’s wrong with her Twilight?”

I’m still here you know, I thought at Rainbow Dash with a frown before picking my head up…and instantly regretting it before putting it back on the ground as gently as I could.

“I don’t know!” Twilight exclaimed in anger. “I thought she was just sea sick, but we’re on dry land and I thought she was getting better but-ugh! Why the hay is she so much like you sometimes?”

While Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow, I couldn’t help but chuckle a the comment since I was currently copying the pegasus. Of course, I immediately regretted it. Not because of the glare Twilight was giving me, I knew how to deal with those. No, the slight jostling that came with the light laughter reminded me any motion sucked balls.

A second later, Twilight got nose to nose with me, with her glower power still going full strength. “Something funny?”

So, to disarm Twilight before she exploded again, I leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. It was not the ‘let’s go find the nearest bed and do it kiss’ but it was still more intimate than the ‘good morning here’s hoping I don’t have bad breath’ peck that I usually gave her when Spike was out of town and her new bed at the library was making use of its extra room. It didn’t last very long. The screaming pegasus put an end to it pretty quickly.

“AHHHHHH! W-WHAT THE HAY ARE YOU DOING?”

A second later a pair of blue hooves pushed us apart and I was left with another spike of pain while Rainbow flapped her wings indignity while glaring down at me. “Can you at least turn into somepony else before kissing Twilight right in front of me?” she half-demanded half-pleaded.

Twilight’s eyes widened and she blushed in embarrassment before looking away. “Sorry.”

This time, the chuckle was worth the discomfort. “Am I giving you any ideas Rainbow?” I asked with the cheekiest smile I could manage. Each word made my skull feel like it was vibrating. Okay, need to talk as little as possible…got it. Still, the question was more than worth any amount of pain.

“Hurry up and get better so I can buck you,” she told me with a frown.

So…many…options, I told myself while using all my willpower not to say anything. One promise I had made to myself when coming to live in Ponyville was not to mock either of the pegasi, and only give them a light amount of practical jokes if Rainbow started to mess with me in that way. I knew her skin was about a thick as tissue paper, and I really didn’t want to upset the awesome mare.

“Okay…just give me a second and I’ll go back to my insectoid self,” I assured her before standing up…and getting a few inches off the ground before I fell over again. Then, I let out a sigh and concentrated on activating my natural magical abilities, and stopped when I felt a massive amount of queasiness run its way through my pseudo-pegasus body. “…or not.”

Dash’s angry scowl started to slide into a concerned one, and Twilight walked over to stand beside her with a matching expression. “What?” the pegasus asked.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. “I can’t concentrate enough to even change back to normal right now. This…could be a problem.” I decided not to try having my defense mechanisms take over using physical trauma. That would have meant Twi or Rainbow knocking the crap out of me, and I didn't want to know if I could actually take it in the state I was in.

“What’re you talking about? Just…stop whatever it is you’re doing to look like me!”

Before Rainbow could start making sense, Twilight cleared her throat. “Actually Rainbow, changeling transformations are one-hundred-percent physical, no illusions involved. There is a limit as to the mass conversion but…” she said before pausing after seeing Rainbow’s expression. “Right…well, point is. Fae is pretty much a physical duplicate of you right now and changing back involves her using her magic.”

All in all, I was surprised Twilight didn’t go into the magic side of changeling transformations in her lecture, which remained unchanged despite whatever I looked like. So I wouldn’t be doing any Sonic Rainbooms even if I could match Dash in a hoof-wrestling contest at the moment. If I had been feeling okay, that is.

As for the rest of the body like the organs…that’s where things got…freakishly simple in a complicated sort of way. Although I had a stomach and everything else that went with a digestive tract, I still didn’t get hungry or need to eat. In fact, I couldn’t eat. Stuff would just go down there, get put in the stomach, and need to be regurgitated later unless I changed back into my normal form. Then my magic just put all the food in my sacs and eliminated the rest. Maybe it was because my body didn’t have the instincts, unconscious knowledge, or instinctual desire for those organs to work right or something. I really didn’t know, and had no desire to start poking at stuff that didn’t make sense in Equestria.

I’m sure if some scientists saw the ins and outs of the process, they’d be foaming at the mouth and going on about how conservation of mass and a dozen other things didn’t make sense, but hell…it was magic! It wasn’t supposed to make sense. Even Twilight couldn’t explain to me why thinking happy or sad thoughts while casting certain spells made them work better. They just did.

“Just give me some time to rest,” I assured them in a whisper. The lower voice kept me from hurting myself at least. “We can figure out what to do about Hoofbeard till then.”

Ever the trusting alicorn, Twilight didn’t seem to have grasped the situation from earlier. “What do you mean? We just give him back his map, and then we wait for the guards to show up and give us transport back to the Equestrian mainland.”

“I doubt its going to be that easy Twilight,” I replied, closing my eyes in a wince at the end to try and help with the headache. “Those pirates we met earlier said they had to sneak away from Hoofbeard out of fear, and even took his map to make sure he didn’t go after any pony else. Plus, remember how he insisted Spike stay with him? The smallest and youngest of us?”

Twilight frowned, but it was in confusion, not anger over the implied threat to her little brother/son. “What’re you talking about? It was a good thing he stayed, I would have hate for Spike to have…been…there.” I felt a pang in my heart as her expression dropped. Nearly hurting Rainbow must have really shaken her up if she was still feeling the guilt over it.

As Twilight trained off into mumbles, Dash was a little quicker on the uptake. “You think he’s going to hurt Spike?”

“Crazy doesn’t mean stupid, it means unpredictable,” I replied as loud as I dared.

For a threat against her family member’s life, Twilight took it pretty well. Instead of going epic rage time, she frowned in thought for a moment, looking at something neither Dash nor I could see. Then, she smirked and let out a little laugh. “Well Hoofbeard’s going to be in for a surprise then. Spike may not be able to handle other dragons, but a crazy pony with a sword isn’t going to be much of a problem to someone who can breathe fire. If worse comes to worse, I can simply teleport him to safety.”

I resisted the urge to chuckle at the scene. Twilight have not been the best pony when it came to spur of the moment planning, but when she had time to sit down and look at things objectively, she could formulate strategies and backup plans with the best of them.

“Look, I don’t see what the problem is,” Rainbow said. “We go there, give him the map, get our friends, wait for the guards to show up, then go home. If he gives us trouble, then Pinkie gets a new doll to play with.” This time, I had to agree with Dash, one pirate against an alicorn princess was like someone bringing a pocket knife to a nuke fight. If he tried anything, Twilight could crush him.

Twilight shook her head. “The problem Dash, is time,” she said before looking over to me. “Fae, you’re not getting any better, are you?”

I managed a weak grin, then rolled over to my four pony feet and stood up. My legs were pretty wobbly, but I didn’t collapse right away. It took a good ten seconds before I went down. “Okay…I may be having a problem.”

“I did the calculations in my head,” the alicorn continued. “I’m just guessing here. But that second wind you had in the bar might have been from adrenaline or…maybe your real body more resistant to whatever is happening. But whatever it is, you’re worse off than you were before. Even if Princess Celestia sends an airship, it will take at least twelve hours for it to get here from Canterlot. With the fastest pegasus in the guard sending dispatch papers, eighteen by normal boat. If we take Captain Hoofbeard’s boat, we can be back to the mainland in three. But we all know he’s not going to go for it.”

Her opinion of staging a mutiny was written plainly on Rainbow Dash’s face. However, the disgust and hesitation was slowly eroded away as her gaze fell upon me. “Okay,” she finally agreed. “How do you want to handle this Twilight?”

The alicorn took in a deep breathe, then let it out in a sigh. “That’s the problem. The fact Fae can’t even walk changes all my original plans. I’m afraid there’s not much either of us will be able to do Rainbow. It’ll be up to you to take the ship from Hoofbeard.”

“What?” I asked while looking up at my girlfriend’s face. “Why?”

“Because I need you to drain me of every drop of energy that you can without threatening my life,” she told me evenly. “I don’t know of anything else that might help you fight whatever this is off, but more love has to be able to help. And afterwards, you are not to channel so much as a spark, do you understand?”

Of course, simply feeding didn’t mean I would get better. I hadn’t exerted myself at all back when fighting the pirates, and the amount of mana I had in me at the moment was more than enough to go a few rounds with an alicorn princess. “Twi-”

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” she screeched.

I glared back at her and did my best to collect myself. “What we need to do is take care of the ship first, then you can transfer your love to me,” I explained. Although the odds were still pretty heavily in our favor if Twi just sat on the sidelines, being… Pinkie, AJ, Rainbow, and…maybe Rarity against the pirate if she had made it back to the ship, I would have felt much better if the alicorn that could neutralize a small army like it was nothing was leading the charge.

Twilight didn’t agree. “And how do we know that we even have that much time?” as her eyes began to glisten. “If there is even the slightest chance you’re going to be hurt, the tiniest chance that I can help you with this, then you are going to do it! Please!”

“And what about the others?” Rainbow asked.

“I know you can do what’s necessary Dash,” Twilight told her without looking away from me.

Like always, the threat of Twilight’s tears made me crumple like a tin can. I looked over to the other cyan pegasus with the rainbow mane and gulped. Considering what was about to happen, Rainbow Dash was probably going to kill me. “Umm, Rainbow, you might want to find somewhere else to be…for a few minutes.”

Rainbow simply tilted her head to the side and in confusion. “Why?”

“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed before looking over to Rainbow, then back to me, and back at her. “Uh…well, you see…Fae tends to feed on me when we’re…coupling. And…well…it feels…good…really good, and…um…my body has sort of gotten so used to Fae feeding on me when we’re…together…”

“When I eat Twilight’s love, she has an orgasm,” I explained while keep my voice as neutral as possible. Judging by the shock on Dash’s face, it didn’t work all that well. “Or at least needs to have one because it…umm…yeah.”

“But you look like…me.”

“Oh, umm…” I replied, looking down at my blue coat. And here I was thinking she was going to freak out about me getting it on with Twilight in the middle of a jungle. Me and the purple princess shared a look of apprehension before we both turned our attention back towards the blue pegasus. “Sorry.”

I blinked at hearing the sound in stereo, then looked over to Twilight, and back to Dash. Finally, the pegasus let out a sighed and rolled her eyes. “It‘s okay, just a bit strange, I guess. Uh…just let me get behind some bushes or something and cover my ears.”

“We’re really going to have to do something to make this up to her,” I mumbled while I watched Rainbow Dash depart.

As soon as the pegasus was gone, Twilight was on top of me, and settling in for a long session. Her forelegs rested partially on my shoulders while her hooves touched the ground and she pressed up against my body without putting her full weight. When our noses were niches from each other, she got around to asking a question. “Why?”

I didn’t even try to stop my sigh. “Twilight, I’m pretty much going to be having sex with you, looking like her,” I explained as my wings and her intertwined. It took a bit longer than normal, with Dash’s wings being different than the big alicorn type I was used to. “It’s wrong.”

“Says the changeling princess formally known as Flash Sentry,” Twilight told me with a tiny smile. “I still don’t understand what you think is so bad about this. I know it’s you, we’re just…wearing a costume like we do every Tuesday and Thursday night, Professor.”

The way Twilight said my name in her sexy schoolgirl voice right into my ear made my whole body tingle right before she reached out with her tongue and ran it along the outside of my ear. It took me a second to recover and focus my thoughts, and by then she was licking her lips for the coming make out session.

As Twilight readjusted herself to kiss me on the lips, I couldn’t help but mention the irony of the situation. “You know what’s really weird about all this? I always thought you and Dashie would make the perfect couple.”

“Less yak, more smack,” Twilight commanded before she moved in for a kiss.

As we broke apart, I inhaled some of Twilight’s love, getting a shudder out of the alicorn before I cut the drain. For me, feeding on love was a weird mix of those first few moments when you wake up in the morning next to your wife, and eating ice cream. I experienced the emotions building in Twilight as she did, then felt my whole body go through a brief feeling of fullness before asking for more. The trouble was, like with ice cream, if I ate too much too fast, there were unwanted side effects centered around the brain.

Another kiss was followed by another feeding. That one got a moan from Twilight as she readjusted herself to straddle my body and her wings shot outward before her hooves rested on my shoulders while her tail intertwined with mine as best it could.

The process fell into a pattern, and two more feedings later, Twilight instincts began to take over while my nose tipped me off to her heightened arousal. She rubbed her body up against mine in tiny thrusts and let out a squeak of a moan before looking down at me again. “Any better?”

I tried to mentally check myself over as best as I could. After a few good gulps of Twilight’s love, I did feel stronger, more capable…but there was still a throbbing pain in my head; temping me to just gorge on Twilight’s love in order to try and forget about it. I pushed the desire away as best I could, and nodded to Twilight. “A bit…I think. At least…I might be able to get up now.”

“Good,” the alicorn on top told me before her horn lit up. The next thing I knew, there was a cloth covering the ground next to me, and Twilight rolled us over so that I was the mare on top. She gave me one last kiss, then a smile that told me exactly what she wanted well before she opened her mouth to talk, and spread her legs. “Now eat up, it’s almost sunset, and you didn’t have lunch.”

Choosing to gulp at the implication rather than groan at the pun, I sat back on my haunches and looked down at the waiting piece of Twilight’s anatomy that was demanding attention and asked myself the same question I did whenever sex and Twilight were mentioned in the same sentence. Was she always this horny, or is it just an alicorn thing?

Thirty minutes later, Luna had put a full moon high into the sky and the excess of Twilight’s orgasms still clung to my face. I had taken five minutes to try and clean it off, only to find doing so without a wet cloth and telekinesis just left a mess on my fetlock, and shoved some more of it up my nose.

Twilight was sprawled out sideways on the blanket she had conjured with a glazed look over her eyes, barely conscious from the last feeding as her tongue fell out of her mouth and wing-boner slowly died down. It had been a long time since I had fed off her while she was in climax, adding the euphoric feeling of being fed on by a changeling to the normal bliss of an orgasm usually left her dead to the world for several minutes; and made the level of love she gave off more pure than…well, anything really.

Since the deed was done, I took in a deep breath, and blinked when the feeling of dizziness that came with it was only a mild case. Whatever it was still had an effect on me, but after eating more love from Twilight than I had since before turning against Chrysalis, I managed to fight it off with some difficulty.

“DAAAASH! OKAY, YOU CAN COME BACK NOW!” I yelled into the trees.

A few seconds later, a disgruntled pegasus trotted her way into the clearing we were using and took a look around. Her eyes fell on Twilight, and she took on a look of hesitation. “Awww, seriously? Couldn’t you at least clean up first?”

I sighed, and hung my head. “Sorry, but I don’t know how long I…wait a second…you heard me calling to you?”

“…yeah?” she replied after a moment. A blush made its way through her fur, and the pegasus looked away from me.

My eyes widened, and I quickly took a glace at Rainbow’s erect, stiff wings. Which meant she probably heard the tail end of…oh, who am I kidding? It’s Rainbow Dash! She probably flew back to check up on us after five minutes, and got a wing-boner from all the stuff Twilight was screaming, I berated myself.

Instead of calling her out on it, or making some stupid joke, I simply bowed my head while a hundred other things me and Twilight could have done after the fact became apparent, from me at least trying to change shape after the make-out session, to asking Twilight if she could create some kind of sound barrier. Instead, after everything started, all we had thought about was feeding and pleasure.

“If there’s anything I can ever do to make this up to you, just ask,” I told her while keeping my eyes on the ground.

Rainbow cleared her throat and looked away. “Look, it’s not like…I mean, you…um… It’s okay.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not. Whenever you think of something for me to make this up to you, just ask and its yours.”

“Is this more of your stupid guilt stuff you and Twilight used to argue about?” Rainbow Dash asked me with a frown before she let out a sigh. “Fine just…uh…get me some Wonderbolts tickets or something, and we’ll call it even.”

Once again, I found myself shaking my head at the sensibilities of ponies. I knew Rainbow had to have been weirded out by what me and Twilight just did, but…hell, how was it any different than two of my little endeavors that had been set up a month prior? Well, aside from the fact impersonating royalty, or any pony depicted on a window at Canterlot Castle was against business policy I mean. It was a line I had made when it came to that kind of stuff. None of the others had even brought it up.

Before I could get even more into myself, Rainbow Dash broke my train of thought. “Okay so…what now?”

“Uh…yeah, about that…” I said hesitantly before telling her my plan for what was probably the best way to go about dealing with Hoofbeard.

By the time I was done, Rainbow was giving me a rather disgruntled look “Seriously? That’s your plan?” she asked before Twilight let out a tiny moan to show that she was coming to.

“Okay fine, but at least get yourself cleaned off or something, I mean…I can still smell you and Twilight for crying out loud!”

I looked back down at Twilight, and sighed. Okay, we’ll find a stream or something. Um…help me get her on my back.”

As Rainbow reluctantly agreed, she let out a hmm when I turned my back on her and I found myself looking back at her. “Something wrong?”

“You’re still uh…didn’t Twilight...you know...do you too?”

The question made me wince. “I don’t have sex with Twilight when I’m a girl, remember?”

“But you still get…ummm…urges?”

“…yeah,” I replied while doing my best to ignore said throbbing biological urges. “Now come on and let’s find a stream or something.”

In the hour it took to find a fresh stream, get cleaned up, and then make it back to the docks, Twilight had managed to get enough of her energy back to complain about the absurdity of my plan before being able to stand on her own four hooves again. During that time, I also made my own observations when it came to the problem I had been facing ever since our little adventure had begun.

Whatever was wrong with me, it was still there. Twilight had simply given me the magical equivalent to a shot of adrenaline or something. The strange thing was, nothing beyond my energy reserves had changed. The splitting headache was still threatening to crack my skull open and I barely enough strength to walk around. I wasn’t going to chance any serious flying, or anything else for some time though. Magic still wasn’t really an option either. But I could still move, even if it felt as if my body was made of lead.

Oh, and I still had Twilight’s…scent shoved up my nose, so the cold wash hadn’t helped for very long at all. Being a horny female for more than forty five minutes strait had just about driven me crazy.

So with my paralyzing changeling cold problem I was having on top of a biological need to get laid, I was ecstatic by the time I wandered onto the docks leading to the Salty Sea Mare with the map in my mouth. On the brighter side of things, the lack of taste buds meant I could only feel the bits of sand and dirt clinging to the map instead of taste them.

When nopony came out to greet me, I made my way up onto the deck and put the map on the railing so I could talk without it getting in the way. Once I had my wing safely positioned over the map, so it wouldn’t blow away, I took in a deep breath and steadied myself until the dizzy spell passed. “Hey Hoofbeard! Come out here you slimy bilge rat! I got words with fer ye!” I shouted in my best pirate lingo.

The pony who came onto the deck from within the captain’s cabin was not the stallion I was expecting. In fact, she wasn’t a stallion at all.

Rarity let out a loud yawn, and looked around before her eyes finally settled on me. “Dear, must you be so loud? A lady needs her quite time!”

My mouth dropped in absolute sock. “Oh SWEET CELESTIA! Rarity, please tell me you are not sleeping with that peg legged tri-pod!” I begged the prissy mare with all my heart. While this was Rarity I was talking to, she deserved better than a nut job of a pirate…or Spike.

“WHAT?” the unicorn shouted in her best indecorous voice. A second later, her face turned into a smoldering volcano that I could practically see smoke coming out of before she jumped up into my face and blew her top. “Now listen here you…uncouth lout! I’ll have you know I was performing a much needed service for that fine stallion in there, and-”

“WHOOOO Wheeee, just what is all that racket goin on up here?” the ship’s cook called out in her country twang of an accented voice as she made her way up from below decks, absent the mane and tail nets that had covered her body during most of the voyage. “Rarity? What’re you and-wait, where’s Twi and-”

“SERVICE?” I screeched as mental images of the unicorn with her head down near the pirate pony’s privates burned their way into my mind and set up shop to create future nightmares. On instinct, I reached up to grab my hair with my hands, only to fail since I had hooves and just let out a girlish scream. “OH GOD! Please stop talking!”

Both the mares frowned at my reaction, and I managed to catch myself from falling flat on my face by readjusting my weight on my pony knees as my back legs bent back in an entirely too human fashion while my wings kept me upright.

With that kind of news running through my head, I just skipped the next three steps of the plan and went strait for the endgame.

Rarity may have not of been my favorite pony, but if that bastard thought he was going to get away with tricking her into giving him a blowjob, he had another thing coming. My new plan, that I had just made after hearing what he did to Rarity, mostly involved me using the cutlass currently at my side to ass-rape the butt stallion until he died screaming.

But I still stuck to the verbal part of the script. It was something me and Twi had come up with, and pretty good if I did say so myself. Real pirate stuff. “Hoofbeard, I say ye be a poor captain and call for a count!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Applejack lean in to whisper to Rarity. “What’s she talkin about?”

“No idea darling,” the unicorn replied.

"Oh neato a showdown!" Pinkie exclaimed after she popped out of a nearby barrel.

A minute later, after hearing the pirate’s wooden leg knock its way closer from inside his cabin, the door flung open and Hoofbeard burst forth onto the deck. The pirate’s appearance was sudden, but it was his appearance that made me freeze. Instead of the gaudy jewelry and other junk he had on before, Hoofbeard was wearing the frilliest, purplist, girlish…thing that had ever been seen on the seven seas. I suppose it looked like something an old English commodore would wear, but…the damn thing just looked so feminine that I had to resist the urge to throw up.

So he makes others suck his cock and dresses gay too, huh? I asked myself. If the guy was going to be all homo, he could have at least had the guy providing the suction instead of poor Rarity.

“What ye be callin me fer ya scallywag?” the frou-frou pirate demanded.

“I said I think you’re an inept captain, and call for a count!”

Hoofbeard’s face twisted in confusion. “A what?”

Are you kidding me? I asked myself before letting out a disgruntled sigh and rolling my eyes. “You know, a show of fidelity?”

Nothing again.

“A vote?”

Still nothing.

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “I say you’re a poor captain and call for a vote to determine by democratic majority who’s going to command the ship from now on!”

That finally got a reaction from the crazy old pirate. He snorted before his face twisted in anger and began shouting. “WHAT? How dare you! I be the captain of this vessel, and can’t nopony say otherwise!”

My anger over his mouth-rape of Rarity quickly combined with a new anger at this idiot’s historical inaccuracy. “That isn’t how pirating works!” I yelled at the idiot who besmirched the first real democracies in existence. “The crew decides who’s captain, and the captain decides how to best provide for the crew! It’s not some type of top down monarch like some stupid pirate…king…thing.”

Okay, my finish was rather lame towards the end. While Once Piece was a nice story and all, there really was no such thing as a real pirate king. It went against everything piracy stood for. Each ship was a country unto itself. A land of free men who did what they wanted, when they wanted. A pony calling himself a pirate king was sacrilege!

“Well let me tell ye something lad,” Hoofbeard declared as he drew his sword to hold it in his hoof as he stood erect. “That is exactly what I be! I shall live, and die, a pirate king!”

I blinked as music started ply from nowhere, and Hoofbeard advanced in a very…choreographic manner. As the song began, I just groaned in annoyance. Ah damnit, I thought I got away from this shit, I thought before drawing my own cutlass I had gotten from Dash and weaving it around wildly to parry his blows while using my flying advantage to keep a good amount of distance between the two of us to compensate for my debilitation.

All the while, Captain Jackass just went about serenading me.

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part
With a pirate head and a pirate heart

The pirate lunged at me, and fell back using my wings. For every advance, there came a retreat. For ever lunge, a back-step. For every move…a fallback. It wasn’t so much a sword fight, as I sure as hell wasn’t comfortable enough with my hooves and fetlocks to try and swing a sword around; and there was no way in hell I was putting the handle in my mouth, I knew damn well where the cutlass I was using had been.

Away to the cheating world go you
Where the pirates all are well-to-do;
But I’ll be true to the song I sing
And live and die a pirate king.

As the battle went on, I continued to parry, parry, midair-backstep, parry, parry, retreat, parry, move back some more, and continued to swat the other pony’s sword away before he could cut into my unarmored blue body.

Okay, screw this, I thought to myself when I ran out of ship to retreat on and was just left flapping my wings to stay aloft as Hoofbeard reached the end of the ship where nothing else was even close to being in the way. “TWILIGHT! DO IT NOW!”

A second later, a spark of magic shot up from the edge of the pirate town and flew high above the ship before igniting into a flare that illuminated the night and brought color to the entire deck. Three seconds later, the night was truly lit up as an explosion of rainbow colors that washed over the area, along with an earsplitting boom that made by very bones ring a second after the pony standing in front of me was knocked aside by my identical twin flying at speeds surpassing Mach 1.

Then, the magic of the Rainboom hit me, and I just stood there in awe for a moment, completely forgetting the ‘Remember this as the day you ALMOST got bla bla bla’ line I had planned to make myself look cool. Instead, I just barely stopped myself from dropping into the water in shock.

The Sonic Rainboom wasn’t some cheap optical trick where Rainbow’s contrail got exploded all over the place and gave her an even cooler wake. To be honest, I’m not sure what it was; the magic of Harmony, some type of one in a billion genetic fluke, or…whatever. As the light washed over me, I could feel myself being rejuvenated and infused with a bit of the pegasus’s magic, and my changeling senses revolving around magic yearned for more of it.

I was in such a daze, it took being called by the girls to snap me out of it. Even then, it was nearly ten minutes later that I noticed all my sea sickness symptoms had disappeared.

“I’m sorry for dragging you girls along. I just wanted to have a cool adventure you know? Relaxing on the beach is fun and all, but I mean come on, we could have been pirates!”

“Aww it’s okay Dashie! We had loads, of fun, right girls?”

As the chorus of agreements sounded, I did my best to restrain myself from groaning while Twilight’s hoof caressed my once again pseudo-alicorn back. An hour out into the ocean, and whatever Dash’s Rainboom had given me had faded away. I was left under the weakened alicorn’s care while she charted our course by the stars as Captain Rainbow steered the ship.

“Oh yes Rainbow Dash, it was very…exhilarating,” Fluttershy agreed without looking up from the fishbowl in her hooves. Although, to be more specific, all her attention was on the tiny fish that was inside the new fishbowl she had acquired from Captain Dash’s cabin.

“Hey Fluttershy…isn’t that the same fish you dropped off in the ocean to begin with?” I asked while getting close enough to try and study the animal in detail.

The yellow pegasus gave me an uneasy look, then glanced around in a panic when my words attracted the attention of the other mares on-board the ship. “Um…well…you see…”

Luckily for the shy sky pony, Rainbow Dash jumped in to save her with a dismissive puff. “Geeze Fluttershy, if you wanted to keep Gill as a pet, you could have just said so.”

So that’s why she decided to come along with us, I realized with a roll of my eyes before deciding to try and change the subject before Flutters got too anxious or something. Even with Rainbow pulling her plot out of the explanation fire, she still looked kind of nervous. “So AJ, did you ever find out what Hoofbeard whatever with the map?” I was a bit curious as to what the wandering X led to.

“I reckon from all that yakkin he did after I got him good an sloshed, it’s some kind of wanderin treasure,” the apple farmer explained. “Kept goin on about a jewel he wanted.”

The resident gem detecting unicorn let out a snort. “He made us risk our lives for some silly bauble? Ugh, and to think I believed him a gentlecoat.”

In Hoofbeard’s defense, he never did try and hit on me. It was a rare thing, done only by stallions who already had their special somepony...or the 100% homosexuals. But, I let Rarity think what she would about him. I kind of owed it to her after mistakenly thinking she sucked his cock when she had just been Rarifying his wardrobe.

“Ah well, nopony got hurt, and we got a pirate ship out of it…no treasure, but I still call it a win,” I said to everypony.

A wing came up to wrap around my shoulders, and a second later, Twilight leaned into me. “Of course, we wouldn’t have had to go through any of this if Fluttershy had just told us she wanted to keep Gill in the first place,” the princess mumbled loud enough for only a few of us to hear.

I chuckled, despite the fact my feminine voice made it sound like a giggle, and leaned over to nuzzle Twilight. “Oh come on, at least Dash had some fun,” I whispered back. “Besides, what else would we have done the week before my class starts?”

“Well I was going to take you to meet my parents, but now with all the preparations that still need to be done, and this trip taking so long, it’ll have to wait until after our first day of class.”

I froze.

I gulped.

I dreaded.

I squeaked. “Parents?”

Oh, better far to live and die under the brave black flag I fly, I thought to myself as I looked up at the top of the ship's mast.