I sighed as I rolled over, snuggling a bit closer into the arm blanket. Man, sometimes my bed was so warm I could swear I was laying against another body.

I shifted my head, feeling the fur rub gently against my...

Wait a minute. Fur?

I slowly open my eyes and blink, intending to close them again after. Instead of seeing one of the sides of my room, either the room at large of my window, I see darkish-grey fur.

I quickly back up, wondering what the hell’s going on and why there’s something darkish-grey in my bed, when I tumble backwards onto my back, wincing a little as my back pressing down on my tiny wings—

My eyes widened and I looked to my sides, my insides going cold. I don’t see any side of my bed. Instead I saw my sides, which were not covered by my T-shirt, but bare and covered in brown fur. As for my boxer-shorts, they were gone too. In their place was what I could clearly tell to be a white diaper. The crinkling sound it made when I wiggled a little confirmed it.

Quickly looking myself over as best I could, I realized I didn’t have hands of feet anymore, either. Instead I had hooves.

Pocking out of the tail I could see a small furry tail with colours ranging from orange, very light-brown and yellow. I struggled and rolled onto my stomach and glanced at my back to see a pair of tiny feathered wings, brown, just like the fur now covering my body.

My gut dropped. I was my OC, Autum Breeze and, if the diaper and small wings were any indication, I was a foal version of them.

“Well, somepony’s restless,” a voice with an English accent to it said.

Before I understood what was going on or who the voice had come from, I felt a pair of hooves grab my sides, then felt myself being lifted up and turned around.

I didn’t see who it was at first. My initial fear had been that someone had grabbed me, before the shock that what were holding me were hooves hit me. However, now another fear was making my uneasy. Ever since I was little, I had hated the feeling of being suspended in the air with nothing supporting my feet— well, I guess hooves now. I was okay being up high, but only as long as my feet— hooves were on something solid.

I started squirming, trying to tell whoever had just picked me up to put me down.

“Well, you are a feisty filly, aren’t you?” the voice asked.

That halted me and my eyes went wide. Filly? I glanced down at the diaper around my lower area and realized I didn’t feel like I used to down there.

“Did you have an accident?” the voice asked again.

This time I took notice of the voice, but the thought was too stupid to even comprehend. It sounded like Obabscribbler, only her voice was the tiniest bit off. But, hooves? What, was she her ponysona?

...

Okay, that not only sounded stupid, but why would I be a foal near her and she be a pony as well?

I looked to the one holding me and gasped when I saw who it was. Octavia Melody/Philharmonica. She was smiling at me, the expression looking at little tired.

Suddenly the realization of being a foal hit me and I understood where I was, but couldn’t believe it. I was somehow in Equestria! How the hell did that happen?

I glanced around and took notice of the room I was in. It was a normal bedroom for a couple (I’ve seen them on TV, so I know what they look like), a double cupboard, a window on the left-side of me, a door on the right.

There were two bedside tables, one either side of the double bed.

My attention, however, was drawn back to the mare holding me when she brought me closing, holding me with her right foreleg and prodding my diaper with her free hoof.

I blushed immensely at the feeling of her prodding that area, along with the small squishing sound that came from it when she did.

“Well, some little filly needs a change,” she teased playfully.

I buried my face in my hooves. How had this happened? Last I remembered I had gone to bed during the holidays after having published chapter twenty-three of Living Nightmare, spending the rest of the day listening to fanfic readings, then going to bed. How did I possibly go from all that to waking up as a foal version of my own OC and with Octavia, of all ponies.

A moan from Ocatvia’s left made me look up. I saw another form in the bed, it’s back to us. I didn’t need it explained to me who this pony was. The electric-blue mane and what I could see of the white fur told me it was Vinyl Scratch.

She lifted her head a little, slitted-open eyes looking at us from over her shoulder. “Tavi, it’s early. Do you have to wake me up by talking with the foal?”

One of my eyebrows rose. She knew about me? Okay, just what the hell was going on here?

Their voices were definitely not what I’d expected. Octavia sounded exactly like Scribbler with her voice the tiniest bit off, though I couldn't tell how— not her Octavia voice, that one was lower and with a bit more of an accent— whereas I’d have expected her to sound like she did in Rainbow Rocks and, while I would have expected Vinyl to sound like Nowaking, who was seen by the fandom as the cannon voice for Vinyl, she sounded like TheLostNarrator’s Vinyl.

Not that I could complain about either. I was okay with either Nowaking’s Vinyl voice or Lost’s. With Octavia, however, I definitely preferred that she sounded like Scribbler as opposed to the her in Rainbow Rocks. Not that I would complain about Octavia talking at all in Rainbow Rocks, in fact I was very thankful to Hasbro and DHX for making her talk, even if the voice wasn’t what I’d have preferred.

I looked up to Octavia and made to ask, “Octavia, what the heck’s going on here?” Instead, what came out of my mouth was, “Mama, what da heck’s going on hewe?”

Now, the foal talk was not what caused my mind to freeze up, in fact I'd expected that. It was that, even though I knew I’d meant to say Octavia’s name, I’d called her mama. Why the hell did I call her mama?

Octavia just chuckled, then pulled me closer and nuzzled my nose.

I had mixed feeling about it. It wasn’t bad, per say, more weird. But it also felt nice. It strangely calmed me down a little, even though I didn’t know why.

“Come on, Vinyl,” she said, starting to get up. “The sun’s out, so I’d have woken you up anyway. Besides, we’ve a lot to do before we go visit Pinkie.”

This caused me to glance at her. Why were they— uh, I guess we going to visit Pinkie?

It was a second later that I realized what I’d just thought. I was going to go see Pinkie Pie. I know several bronies that would be so jealous of me right now.

When Vinyl didn’t move, Octavia grinned cheekily at me and lowered me onto the bed, then patted my diaper, causing it to squelch again. It took a moment for me to understand she wanted me to try waking Vinyl. I would have tried arguing the matter, but the chances she’d understand me seemed unlikely, so I shrugged and did as instructed.

Crawling along the sheets (I tried walking, but it seemed my new body wasn’t ready for that yet) I reached Vinyl and pushed against her back. She grunted a bit, but didn’t do anything else.

I dropped to my rump, ignoring the sound of my diaper or the feeling of it, frowning. I’d only done that to humor Octavia. Now, it felt like Vinyl had just dropped the gauntlet. She was changeling me to try and wake her.

I turned to look at her head and grinned, or would have, if I’d had any teeth. I crawled over to her head and, using the back of her head for balance, stood on my hind legs and clamped my mouth around the ear sticking up.

It was meant to just be a playful bite (no teeth, so it wouldn’t hurt), but I suddenly found myself sucking on her ear and, instead of finding it gross, was enjoying it a little.

A second later, Vinyl gave a cry and shot up, causing me to tumble backwards.

I watched from on top my back as she rubbed at her ear, a grossed-out look on her face. “Tavi, really? You got her to suck on my ear? Gah, this is so gross!”

“Maybe now you’ll get up,” Octavia said, picking me up again. “Now, while I change her diaper you can go and get her breakfast ready.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Vinyl crumbled, then strangely said, “I can’t believe you threw out all that milk still.”

I wanted to ponder what she meant by that, but my attention was drawn as Octavia laid me on the floor and started changing my diaper, which it seemed I’d gone number two in as well as number one while I’d been asleep.

Octavia sat down with me at a table in a small kitchen, having carried me in one foreleg from the bedroom. Vinyl was by a stove, cooking what looked like bacon and eggs. Hay bacon, I reasoned, since ponies don’t eat meat... except their human counterparts.

While the hay bacon and eggs were cooking, Vinyl used her magic and levitated a baby bottle full of milk out of a pot of water, before levitating it over to us.

I was so shocked by having actually seen magic that I was taken by surprise when Octavia popped the tip of the bottle into my mouth.

I blinked, glanced up at her and she smiled, then nodded. “Go on. You must be hungry.”

My stomach growled, answering her question.

Though the idea of drinking from a bottle was embarrassing, since, before I went to sleep, I was a twenty-three-year-old man, considering my situation, I guess I was lucky she was bottle feeding me and not nursing me, so I decided to go along with it.

Just sucking wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I started to shift between chewing on the rubber tip and sucking. This rewarded me with sweet, warm milk, which I eagerly drank, the warmth flowing through me.

As I drank my milk, Vinyl came over, levitating two plates of eggs and hay bacon, placing one in front of Octavia and another where she sat down, diagonally from us.

As they ate, they chatted and I listened, if only for something else to do while I drank the milk.

“I tell you, Tavi, that song Pinks, Neon and I wrote is still rockin’ it in the clubs,” Vinyl said, levitating a piece of hay bacon into her mouth and continuing.

“That was about the only good thing that came out of that drunken night, if you ask me,” Octavia said.

I turned to look at Vinyl. This sounded juicy.

Wait. A drunken night? Pinkie, Neon Lights and Vinyl. Why did that sound familiar? The song I had a good idea about, I’d downloaded a video of it being sung by Nowacking, ShadyVox and... who was the other one; the one who voiced Pinkie in the song? BreefaithVA, I think?

“Hey, at least we had some laughs that night,” Vinyl said, swallowing her food. “Well, at least until the cops took us to the Manehatten Prison and you had to bail us out.”

I got it. The Drunken Ramblings of Vinyl Record Scratch. It was a fanfic reading I’d listened to by TheLostNarrator. In it, Vinyl and Neon Lights got wasted, met up with Pinkie and somepony else (who escaped me at the time), got even more wasted, then arrested by the police and the only reason Octavia knew this is because of the messages Vinyl left on her phone, including one from the Manehatten Prison, telling Octavia that she needed to bail them out.

So, I’d arrived in that fic’s world, had I?

“By the way,” Vinyl said, frowning. “Why did you throw out the milk I made? You told me that at least we’d have plenty for the kid when she woke up, but then you threw it out. Why?”

Octavia gave Vinyl a deadpanned look. “Vinyl, you’d had enough cider that night that you almost couldn’t find the apartment for us and you never feed a foal milk from a mare that’s been drinking. You want to stunt her growth?”

Vinyl shook her head. “Never mind. The less I know about the workings of that the better.”

I cocked an eyebrow, very confused. Vinyl’s milk? As in breast milk? Wait. They weren’t feeding me formula. But if Octavia threw out Vinyl’s milk and I was currently drinking milk, then that would mean...

“Well, while you may not care right now, had you been responsible for stunting Autum’s growth you’d have been metaphorically stabbing yourself for it, later in life,” Octavia countered. “Luckily I was able to take the mothering pills myself and produced milk she could safely drink.”

And that confirmed it. I was drinking Octavia’s milk. Despite knowing this, my mouth continued to drink as my brain started shouting, “Ew! Ew! Ew! Not cool! Not cool!”

Vinyl swallowed another mouthful of her food and looked to me, then Octavia. “So, we’re going to stop by Foal Services before we head to Pinks’ place, right?”

“Yes,” Octavia nodded.

Vinyl shook her head. “I still don’t get why we didn’t take her last night.”

Octavia deadpanned. “Vinyl, it was 11:32 at night. They’d have been closed.”

I wasn’t really listening anymore. My gut had dropped at the words Foal Services. They were planning on taking me there? NO! Please, God, NO! I wasn’t a real foal. I was a human in a foal’s body. I’d never survive.

And what if I ended up in the foster care system, being sent from place to place. I didn’t really know much about this world beyond Ponyville. There I could at least get my bearings. But the rest of Equestria? Not a chance.

Or worse. What if I got adopted by ponies I didn’t know anything about from the show? Or even worse. What if I got adopted by ponies from the show I did know, but only because they weren’t nice characters? What if I got adopted by Jet Set and Upper Crust? Oh, heck to the no!

Octavia seemed to have noticed I’d stopped drinking. When she looked down, I looked up at her with pleading, tear-filled eyes, silently begging her not to send me to Foal Services, hoping she’d understand.

It seemed she did, because her expression became one of concern. She took the bottle away and held me closer, rubbing her cheek against mine as she said, “Oh, it’s okay. It’s okay. I promise, we’re not sending you away.”

“We’re not?” Vinyl’s question earned her a glare before Ocatvia returned to comforting me.

“No, we’re just going to file a report so that we might be able to find your family. But, til then you can stay with us, I promise.”

I stopped crying, though I still sniffled a little. That hadn’t been acting, either. I’d really started crying. Being a foal, it seemed my emotions were a lot stronger than they used to be. Last time I’d cried was when I listened to Derpypony22’s reading of My Little Dashie A Sequel, at the part where Dash’s dad was reading the changed note left by Dashie and that was over a year ago.

These, however, had been tears of fear and sadness together. Sadness at the thought that they’d send me away and the fear of what that could’ve led to.

Once I’d calmed down, Octavia put the bottle back in my mouth and I resumed drinking, feeling a lot more at ease than before.

Still, one thing she said stuck in my mind. They were taking me to Foal Services to file a report on me so that my family could find me. I only wished I could tell them it was pointless, since my family weren’t even in the same dimension.

When the bottle was empty, Octavia took it away and smiled down at me. “All full?”

I was about to answer, for all the good it would do, since she couldn’t understand a word I said anyway, when I felt a strange churning in my stomach. It caused me to wince.

Octavia seemed to figure out what was happening before I could, because she lifted me, placed me over her shoulder and gently patted my back between my wings. This was followed at once by me giving a small burp, which coincided with me blushing like an idiot.

“Um, Tavi?’

“Yes, Vinyl?”

“Everypony’s staring at us.”

Vinyl was right. She and Octavia were walking down the streets of Ponyville (very glad I’d wound up in the one place in Equestia I knew the most about instead of, say, Manehatten), Octavia carrying me in her foreleg like she had when she took me from their bedroom to the kitchen.

Ponies kept stopping and staring at the three of us as we walked by, though I noticed a lot of them with faces that said they were looking at me and finding me cute, which only made me blush, giving me the appearance of a brown-coated filly with a red-furred face.

When we arrived at the Foal Services’ building, it was rather nice looking. A small square building, but with flower patterns decorating the front, giving it a welcoming feel.

We went inside to a desk, where a grey unicorn pony with a black mane and tail, blue eyes and a tornado for a Cutie Mark was sitting, smiling as the two mares sat down and Octavia made sure I was comfortable in the crook of her foreleg.

“Can I help you, ladies?” he asked politely, glancing from Octavia to Vinyl, then down to me. I could’ve sworn I saw his smile grow the tiniest bit more upon seeing me, almost as if he knew me and had been expecting to see me.

“Yes, you can,” Octavia said, indicating down to me. “Last night we found this filly in a basket outside my marefriend’s apartment, with nothing but this note.” Vinyl levitated the note out of the saddlebags she was wearing and handed it to the unicorn, who took it and started reading. “We wanted to file a report of her, just in case her family might be looking for her.”

The unicorn sighed, shaking his head. “Very well, ladies. Though, after reading the note and your having told me she was left on your doorstep, I get the feeling you won’t be hearing from her family.” I could’vbe sworn he winked at me when Octavia lowered her head, sighing and Vinyl glanced in her direction, so they both missed it.

I frowned at the stallion. Something in the back of my head was nagging at me, telling me I’d seen him before, and not just as a background pony. But my memory was totally flopping, in more ways than one.

Ever since we’d left the apartment, I’d been trying to remember what I’d been doing before waking up as a foal. All I could remember though was posting chapter twenty-three, listening to fic readings and going to bed.

When I moved to the memories that should be connected to that, like what I’d had for dinner, or what my family looked like, I ended up drawing a blank. I knew I had family and knew I’d been a twenty-three-year-old man, but everything else was so fuzzy. It was like the majority of my memories beyond MLP had been blocked off by something and the nagging feeling that I knew this stallion was digging at me even more as I struggled to remember where I'd seen him before.

I almost yelped in surprise when I felt myself moving and realized we were leaving the Foal Services building.

“So,” Vinyl asked once we were outside again, “where to now? Your cousin’s place?”

Ocatvia shook her head. “We need to make another stop first.”

Vinyl looked at her. “Where’s that?”

“YFN.”

Vinyl and I blinked.

“Come again.”

I facehoofed as I looked up at the name of the store and Vinyl had a deadpanned expression.

“Your Foal’s Nursery?” she glanced at Octavia. “And why are we here?”

“For her, of course,” Octavia motioned to me with a nod. “Since we’ll be taking care of her, we’ll need some things to do so properly.”

“So, we’re really taking care of her?” Vinyl asked, her tone making me feel a little insulted.

Octavia’s expression hardened. “Vinyl Record Scratch,” she said, her voice making both of us shiver, “are you suggesting we leave this foal all on her own? Or at an orphanage?”

“Uh, well, I, um—” Vinyl tried.

“Let me remind you that whoever left this foal on the doorstep of your apartment trusted us to look after Autum Breeze, and I will not be a rude and cruel pony by just ignoring that and carting her off for somepony else to deal with and neither are you, you got that?!”

I looked at Vinyl, hoping she’d agree, not for my sake, but her own. The vibe I was getting from Octavia told me that disagreeing with her was something only a complete idiot with a death wish would do.

Vinyl hesitated, then, reluctantly, nodded.

Octavia’s expression and vibe changed at once, becoming one of calm and she smiled. “So, let’s go inside, shall we?”

Vinyl nodded and we went inside.

We came out about half an hour later, Vinyl’s saddlebags bulging with the number of foal related items that had been purchased, and those were only the ones that would fit.

“They’ll deliver the rest to the apartment,” Octavia said as she stepped out with me. I was now riding in a foal carrier that had me strapped to Octavia's front, so I could see where she was going without having to turn my head to do so.

As the door closed the stallion at the counter called out, “Thank you for visiting YFN, Your Foal’s Nursery. You’re one stop foal store and have a lovely day—” his sentence was cut off by the door, though not before I facehoofed at his words. Sometimes the ponified stuff from the real world just gave me a headache.

“Now that all that’s settled,” Octavia smiled down and me, then look towards another part of town, “let’s go see Pinkie.”

Author's Notes:

Discord: Oh, dear. Won't Autum be in for a surprise when she learns it's not that fic she's in, but her own. His own? Oh, whatever.

Look forward to the next chapter, where Autum will find she's got one friend who will understand her situation.

Celestia: Discord? What are you doing? Who's the friend you're talking about?

Discord: *acts all innocent* Oh, nothing, Celly. Nothing for you to worry about.

As Autum is unable to say it right now, til next time, later everypony