Dusk Shine Rising. Ch4

When all else fails. Experiment

Twilight Sparkle’s gender might have changed but one aspect of him remained a constant: he loved books. He loved the smell of them. He loved the feel of them. He loved the look of them neatly arranged on bookshelves hinting at untold wonders and new worlds to discover. And of course he loved to read them. And he loved doubling the fun, and more, by sharing them with friends and reliving his own pleasure at the discovery of this or that book.

Getting Rainbow Dash hooked on the Daring Do series had given her a warm fuzzy feeling that lasted for weeks as she saw the flighty Pegasus not only enjoying a series Twilight loved, but discovering a love for books in general. Well, in the adventure/quest genre anyway.

Sharing the Restoration of Equestria books was not quite the same thing. They had been Twilight’s guilty secret for a very long time and she taken a lot of trouble over the years to make sure that nopony would ever discover that she had such a collection. She often felt she never should have started collecting them, and once she had she often felt she should dispose of them. There was a large part of her that found them vile. But at the same time she had to acknowledge that they opened up a window into a world view Twilight would never have known existed except for her exposure to them. And really, wasn’t that what books were supposed to do? They were just paper and ink after all. Nopony was harmed in the writing or reading of them. Were they?

Twilight glanced over at where Pinkie was sitting at the lab bench, her hands folded on the top and her expression intent and eager. In her bondage fetish wear she looked like a perverted school filly straight out of one of the Restoration books. Twilight was thankful he’d taken the time to slip into a pair of pajama bottoms he had brought down from the guest rooms that had been set aside for Shining Armor and Cadence if they should happen to visit. While they didn’t really conceal his body’s reaction to Pinkie’s state of dress, they preserved his modesty to a certain extent. He felt a brief moment of annoyance that Pinkie hadn’t been willing to take him up on his offer of a lab coat. Surely she knew the sort of effect she was having on him? She must. He bet she was giggling up her nonexistent sleeve at his discomfort.

Twilight sighed and took a deep breath. He was getting upset from the stress of the situation. It wasn’t Pinkie’s fault he had placed himself in this position. His expression firmed and he used his magic to remove the front row of obsolete reference books that had been concealing his private collection of Restoration of Equestria porn. The cheap paperbacks almost filled the shelf, some brand new and looking like they had never been read, some slightly damaged from frequent handling. Those would be the ones Twilight had located in the backrooms of various used bookshops. And hadn’t those been embarrassing moments, bringing those up to the front counter mixed in with a dozen or more innocent books and trying not to meet the eyes of the clerk as he, or she, rang up her purchases.

Twilight selected a half-dozen books at random without really bothering to examine his picks. There really wasn’t anything to choose between them. While they were all different the subject matter was pretty much the same in all of them. For a moment he hesitated and then left the newest book where it was. The one that featured the Princess of Friendship on the cover. He flushed a bit as he remembered how she had been both angry, and absurdly pleased, to discover that the unknown publishers of the book had added her to the lists of famous mares who had been tamed and shown their proper place in life. Maybe one day he’d actually work up the nerve to read it.

Holding his selection of books in his magic, Twilight returned to the bench where Pinkie was vibrating in gleeful anticipation. The brand new stallion was trying his best not to notice the effect this was having on the pink mare’s bare breasts which were jiggling like a pair of dessert puddings, very tasty looking dish indeed.

“Ooohhh, are those them?” Pinkie asked eagerly as she reached out to take one of the books from Twilight’s magical field. A moment later she frowned as her tugging bore no results. The book she had hold of might as well have been buried in a chunk of purple crystal for all the good Pinkie’s efforts to move it did. “Well, gee, Twilight. I can’t read it if I can’t hold it. Can I?”

The handsome stallion who could have been Twilight’s twin brother, but was really Twilight, and how cool was that, grimaced and said, “Before I let you look at these I just want to ask one last time if you won’t give up this idea to play Restoration of Equestria and just trust me that you really wouldn’t enjoy it.”

Twilight looked so serious, and uncomfortable that Pinkie almost backed down. But the party pony steeled her resolve. Her party files were full of the fact that Twilight always needed to be dragged reluctantly into any silly party games. The lovable mare was just too serious for her own good sometimes. But once Twilight let down her mane and got into the spirit she partied as hard as any other pony. Pinkie was sure that the stallion version of Twilight would party just as hard.

Oooh, hard Twilight, Pinkie thought hungrily, directing a quick hidden glance downward at the front of Twilight’s pajama bottoms. The sight of the large bulge there removed any tiny inclination that might have remained about backing off on her latest quest for bringing smiles to Ponyville’s grumpy stallion demographic.

“Nuh, huh,” Pinkie said, giving the book a firm tug. “I can’t let down all those poor unhappy stallions. Gosh Twilight, how can you think that if there is anything I can do to put a smile on their faces I’m not going to do it.”

Twilight closed his eyes for a moment, and then let out a sigh. The book Pinkie was holding came free and the rest of the volumes in Twilight’s magic field settled down on the bench top.

Berry Punch had already shown Pinkie one of these books, but she’d only had time for a quick glance, just long enough to get excited about how wonderful it would be to have such a scary experience. She’d told this to Berry Punch who had snatched the book away and explained that Pinkie had totally missed the point. What grumpy stallions really wanted was to assume the role of the mare in the stories. That hadn’t made much sense to Pinkie, but her previous observations had proven that Berry Punch was a master at putting smiles on stallion faces. That was why Pinkie had sought her out after all. So Pinkie had bowed to the older pony’s expertise.

The book Pinkie was holding at the moment turned out to be set in a big office. The mare in question was the boss and she was mean and nasty toward all the stallions who worked for her. They spent all day with sad looks on their faces and their shoulders hunched in case she swatted them with the riding crop she carried with her at all times.

Then the Restoration of Equestria happened, and the tables were turned. The mean mare had to fetch and carry for all the stallions. She was not allowed to wear any clothes and every time she did something wrong she was spanked or switched till her rump was as red as her flushed face. Her most important duty however, according to the book, was to serve as sexual relief for all the stallions she had so badly abused before their rights were restored. There were numerous pictures of her under a desk sucking on a stallion’s thingy, and many of more of her bent over a desk with a thingy in her woo-hoo, or bottom, as well as in her mouth so two stallions could make use of her at the same time. All the sad and grumpy stallions had smiling faces and were cheerful and happy as they played with her.

Pinkie felt a warm moisture between her legs as she imagined playing this game and making so many sad stallions happy. She was intrigued by how messy the mare in the story ended up, her face covered with a thick layer of gooey frosting that had shot out of the end of the stallion’s things. She licked her lips and wondered what it would taste like. It looked so yummy. And the mare looked dazed and happy as well. Clearly while she’d resisted at first she’d ended up enjoying the games as much as the stallions. The expression on her face was sort of like the one worn by Pinkie’s friends after an all night party that had wandered into the early hours of the morning when they were full of cake and punch and overloaded on fun. Looking at that glazed contented face Pinkie found it easy to believe that stallions would want to be in her place, Pinkie certainly did. Though not for quite the same reason.

Pinkie flipped back several pages to where the boss mare had just learned that Equestria had been restored and she was now the property of the stallions she had so cruelly abused. Pinkie focused on the expression of fear on the mare’s face as her clothing was ripped from her body and her new role in life was explained. Pinkie was feeling more than a little flushed and she fought the urge to slip her hand down between her legs. The last thing she wanted was to freak out Twilight at this point and scare him off. Twilight had to be eased into things she reminded herself.

“You see how scared she is?” Twilight asked. When Pinkie looked over at him she could see that he had leaned over and was looking at the same page she was. He blushed and looked away as soon as he noticed her noticing. “It’s not a game for her. She’s terrified. She’s not even a pony to those stallions anymore. She’s just a toy for their cruel games.”

“Ummm, Twilight. You do know that she’s just ink and paper, right? She never was a real pony?” Pinkie asked in the tone of voice one used on drunk earth ponies who had decided that they were really Pegasus and could fly off the top of the town hall. Pinkie had been called on to do that three times in the last couple of years.

“What? Of course I realize that Pinkie!” Twilight protested. “But you’re not. You’re a real flesh and blood pony, and so would be the stallions you want to play with.”

“Well, duh. It wouldn’t be any fun if they weren’t. But it’s still just a game. Not real. Just like when you talked Princess Luna into dressing up like Nightmare Moon to scare us on Nightmare night. It wasn’t like she was really Nightmare Moon. She was just pretending.”

“Well, yes. That is true,” Twilight acceded. “But---”

Pinkie kept her face Pinkie bland, for her. Meaning she was wide eyes and brightly smiling. “That reminds me. I need to do something splendiferous for the Princess. I mean, wow! That had to be hard for her. Pretending to be that monster from the worst time of her life. It was really great of her to do that to make the fillies and foals happy. Not many ponies would be willing to do that. Live out their worst fear just to make other ponies happy.”

Twilight looked startled, and then guilty as all heck. “I never thought of that. What was I thinking? How could I have been so unaware as to ask her to do that?” he said. Pinkie kept her mouth shut. She had been around Twilight long enough to know that he wasn’t really asking her, but himself those questions.

That didn’t stop Pinkie from thinking that this was another Duh question, or rather questions. Twilight hadn’t thought, because at times like that he didn’t look at side issues. His focus was that of a bull in full charge. Straight ahead. Twilight had seen the problem, had deduced a solution, and had ignored all other consideration in his pursuit of it.

It was both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. It was why he needed friends to swat him upside the head at times. It was also why Pinkie was so fond of him. He was the bestest friend in the whole world, but he was freaking scary sometimes.

Pinkie Pie’s friends and acquaintances either thought she was fearless, or too scatterbrained to be aware of danger. Neither opinion was true. Pinkie was just as prone to fear and terror as any other pony. Where she differed was in the fact that she adored being scared and terrified. It was why the scarier a situation got the broader her grin became.

She didn’t laugh at the ghoulies to make them less scary. She laughed because being scared filled her with pleasure. The fact that her good humor and laughter freaked out the ghoulies and ghosties was just a pleasant side effect.

Twilight was everything Pinkie could have wanted in a coltfriend. Kind and generous, considerate and thoughtful, and on occasion wet yourself scary. Best of all, given the current situation, as Pinkie had already considered, Twilight would be unlikely to insist on Pinkie taking the role of a stallion so he could experience life as a mare. That is, if she could just talk the Alicorn into playing with her.

Looking over Pinkie saw that Twilight was still wrestling with the fact that he’d pushed Luna into channeling what had to have been a very traumatic memory. She deciding to let Twilight struggle with that for a bit more. Pinkie put aside the book she’d been perusing and selected another one.

To Pinkie Pie’s surprise this latest book featured Mi Amore Cadenza, or as Pinkie thought of her, Twilight’s big sexy sister-in-law Princess Cadence. This book was not nearly as much fun as the first because Pinkie simply could not see the warm and friendly Cadence in the autocratic and arbitrarily cruel female character. The mare in the book looked like her but had none of the personality that was so much who she was. Pinkie frowned and considered the situation. Then her expression brightened as she realized that the character was very similar in behavior to the way that bug-bodied changeling queen had behaved while pretending to be Cadence toward the end of the imposture. That flipped a switch in Pinkie’s mind and from that point out she greatly enjoyed reading about how the haughty fake empress was shown her true place in life by her husband, Shining Armor, who had seen the light of the true stallion’s path. He stripped her of her finery, ravaged her on their bed, and then turned her over to the guards she had humiliated and ordered around as if they were cur dogs. The guards were inventive and inexhaustible, and by the end of the book the fake Cadence had been penetrated in every place a stallion’s thing could go. Pinkie turned to the very last page where the thoroughly conquered evil fake princess was covered in male juices and her previously sour expression of discontent had been replaced by an expression of dazed contentment.

Pinkie gave a sigh of longing and squirmed slightly in her seat due to the warm tension between her legs. She looked over at Twilight who was muttering to himself and looking guilty as all heck. Pinkie decided that enough was enough. Giving the stack of unread books the same sort of look she would the remains of a birthday cake that other ponies still had to cut a slice from, she reached across and grabbed Twilight’s muzzle, forcing the shiny new stallion to look her in the eyes.

“I’m the worst,” Twilight wailed before Pinkie could say anything.

“No, you’re the silliest,” Pinkie retorted with affection. “That’s no good. I’m suppose to be the silly one. Not you.”

“But---”

Pinkie rapped Twilight right between his eyes. Not hard, but enough to surprise the stallion and make him pause.

“Princess Luna was all grumpy and sad, and hurt because she thought we were making fun of the bad things she did. You made her see that we were just laughing at the biggest ghoulie of all, and we didn’t really think it was her. Well, Pipsqueak did most of that. But you helped. She was happy when she left. That’s what was important.”

“But it could have turned out so bad,” Twilight protested.

“Yepper, sure could. Good thing it didn’t,” Pinkie said cheerfully. Because of her recent bout of creative imagination, she continued by saying, “When you defeated the evil nasty buggy queen who tried to make your brother her love slave you didn’t spend any time worrying about what would have happened if you hadn’t.”

Twilight looked a bit embarrassed. “Well, actually...”

Pinkie face-palmed. “Okay,” she said, speaking into her hand. “Maybe you did. We didn’t.”

Pinkie lowered her hands and considered. Drawing on some of the descriptions from the book to expand her vocabulary, she asked, “What if I were to put on a buggy mask, and you buggered me? You could pretend I was the buggy queen and you’re defeating me in a whole new fun way?” She waggled her eyelashes at Twilight cheerfully while pointing at an image of in her most recent book where Cadence was bent over the arm of her throne while Shining Armour rammed his extra large thingy up her bottom. “Maybe that would make you stop thinking about what would have happened if we lost, and give you different sort of dreams?”

“What? No!” Twilight protested while averting her eyes from the image. “I couldn’t do that.”

Pinkie looked down at the bulge in Twilight’s pajamas bottoms. “Sure you can. You look nice and hard. We might need a little butter, but it should slide right in.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Twilight yelled, his face looking like it was about to combust. “I didn’t mean I ‘couldn’t’ do it. I meant I could not, for ethical reasons, do it.”

“Why not?” Pinkie asked, her expression showing genuine curiosity.

Twilight was already flustered, but Pinkie’s question made him more so. “But, but, it’s obvious. I’m not really a stallion.”

Pinkie leaned forward and poked the bulge between Twilight’s leg. “Sure does feel real.”

“Gyaaaa! Pinkie! You can’t touch a stallion like that!”

“But you said you weren’t a stallion?”

“I meant for real. I’m only one temporarily. That’s why we can’t do, well, that. It wouldn’t be fair. In a couple of days I’ll be a mare again.”

“Well, yeah. That’s why we have to do this now while we have a chance,” Pinkie said. “Otherwise how can you fill this out?” She held up a checklist with the heading, Compare Sexual Response

“Acckk,” Twilight choked out. He snatched the checklist from Pinkie and tossed it into a waste receptacle. “It’s not like that. I only meant to compare my reaction to visual stimulation to see if my preferences had shifted.”

“Oh, so this is why you have this,” Pinkie said, holding up an old charity calendar that was titled. Stallions of the Royal Guard. “Ooooh, your brother is in it,” Pinkie said, opening it to July. Wow. I see it runs in the family. Cadence sure is one lucky mare. But you sure are naughty Twilight. Looking at your brother like this.”

“Ahhh, no! It wasn’t like that. I didn’t buy it for that reason. This was the first time they asked him to contribute. And it was for charity.”

“Ooh, what’s this?” Pinkie asked, Ignoring Twilight’s garbled protests. She picked up a large photo that had been taken a month before during a real hot spell. It featured Pinkie, and the rest of Twilight’s friends at the Apple family’s swimming hole. Fluttershy and Rarity were the only ones who were wearing bathing suits. In this particular picture Applejack had her back to the camera as she bent over to retrieve a beach ball for Apple Bloom.

There were other candid pictures in the pile. Each one seeming to feature a different one of Twilight’s mare friends. Pinkie didn’t get a very good look at any of the rest as Twilight used his magic to yank the whole lot out of her hands.

“Those were for research purposes only,” Twilight blustered as he crumpled up the eight by tens and tossed them in the trash along with the check list.

“Good idea. Why waste your time testing yourself with pictures and books when you have the real thing here,” Pinkie exclaimed. She hopped out of her chair, and onto Twilight’s lap before the startled stallion could think of stopping her.

Twilight had lost control. From the moment Pinkie Pie had appeared in his lab she’d been in the driver’s seat. Now she was sitting on his lap and he was afraid of moving lest his joke of a male body betray him even more than it already had. Pinkie Pie had no such compunction and Twilight let out a little gasp of surprise right before she kissed him. His open mouth offered no resistance as Pinkie thrust her tongue inside. Twilight’s mind went blank. His entire world narrowed down to the plush pink pony who was pressing herself up against him and trying to eat his tonsils. For a moment his body moved on auto pilot and he felt himself leaning into Pinkie’s kiss. The same warm comfortable feeling flowed through his body that always filled him when he hugged one of his friends. But the feeling was more intense, more... just more. It was like friendship squared. His arms reached out and wrapped his arms around Pinkie. She snuggled up even closer to him as he hugged her. Impossible as he would have judged that to be. His tongue, which had been dodging and darting to avoid Pinkie’s limber limbic muscle, stopped retreating and darted into Pinkie’s mouth as their kiss deepened.Both of them were clumsy and awkward, fumbling to get as close together as possible. Until—

“No!” Twilight gasped, and not just from lack of air, as she pushed Pinkie Pie back. “We can’t do this.”

“Awww, but it’s fun,” Pinkie panted. She leaned back into Twilight and swirled the tip of her finger around his chest as she tipped her head up and puckered her lips.

“We can’t. I’m not really a stallion. I’m going to use the antidote and turn back into a mare in just a few minutes,” Twilight said, tossing all his plans to spend the whole weekend as a stallion out the window. This body was just too dangerous.

“But that’s why it’s so perfect. You’re already a mare. Or were? Or will be?” Pinkie said, her face twisting up in confusion. “No. No tense distractions. The most important thing of all is you want to know what it’s like to be a stallion. So when we play the game you won’t want to play the mare.”

Twilight didn’t bother telling Pinkie that there was no way in a million years he was going to be playing the game with her. But his mind was scrambled enough from their kiss that he blurted out, “Berry Punch didn’t tell you the truth.”

Pinkie stilled. For which Twilight’s brand new male member was intensely grateful. She looked at Twilight with her eyes wide, a hurt expression in them. “She lied to me?” she asked.

“Yes. No. Maybe. It might have just been a practical joke,” Twilight babbled, backpedaling in a desperate attempt to remove that hurt look from Pinkie’s expression.

“A practical joke?” Pinkie considered Twilight’s words. A corner of her mouth started to twitch, and a moment later she broke out in loud laughter. “And, and, I thought, Wahahahaaaa. Oh no. The look on Clod Kicker’s face. He thought, and then I, wahahaha. Oh man. Berry Punch is good. Best practical joke ever.” Tears streamed down Pinkie’s face and she wiped them away with a forearm. “Guess I should go hunt up Clod Kicker and those other stallion’s and tell them it was just a joke?” Pinkie said in a questioning way and with a rather reluctant expression on her face. It almost looked like she didn’t want to play with the three stallion’s she’s propositioned mere hours before now.

Twilight noticed none of this. His mind was too full of Pinkie and three stallions acting out scenes from the Restoration books.

“No, absolutely not!” Twilight yelled at Pinkie.

Pinkie Pie recoiled a bit at the vehemence in Twilight’s voice. But despite the fact that Twilight was interfering with Pinkie’s pursuit of this new fun adult game she had only recently discovered the pink pony found she didn’t mind in the least. In fact, she found she had zero interest in playing with any other stallion other than the one whose lap she was currently sitting on.

It was something new for her, her philosophy about playing party games had always been the more the merrier. Wanting to restrict herself to one play partner was something she had never thought would happen. But she liked it. Pinkie was a creature of emotion. There was no hesitation with her when it came to her feelings. She never second guessed herself. She liked everypony. But she had never liked a pony as much as she liked Twilight right at this very moment. She wondered if the feelings would persist once Twilight was a mare again, but only for a moment. She was not the sort to worry about tomorrow, or even the next minute. Now was now and it was where she was. She’s just take all the nows she could get.

But, that meant that right now, more than anything in the world, she wanted to play Restoration of Equestria with Twilight. Now if she could only figure out how to pull that off.

Twilight was shocked at his outburst. He had as good as ordered Pinkie Pie not to do something she had every right to do. As Pinkie’s friend he had a duty to try and convince her that what she planned was a bad idea, but not to out and out order her like some tyrant. But the instant Pinkie had suggested she would seek out those other stallion’s Twilight had felt, not worry over the danger Pinkie might place herself in, though there was that, but anger than a stallion who was not him would be claiming Pinkie’s body. Twilight forced down the inappropriate feelings with difficulty. It was disturbing how possessive he felt toward his friend. Pinkie, and the rest of her friends where not his personal property. He was acting like one of those stallions in the book. As if he had some sort of Celestia given right to possess and own mares he was attracted to.

“I’m sorry Pinkie Pie,” Twilight said contritely. “Please, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to ask stallion’s you don’t know well to play these sort of games. You should only play them with stallions who you know well and trust.”

“Like you?” Pinkie asked, her eyes wide with interest.

“I’m not a real stallion Pinkie,” Twilight protested even as his mind tossed up the image of him bending Pinkie over the lab bench and forcing his aching penis into her body.

Pinkie’s answer was to twist her bottom in his lap, grinding herself against a very obvious bulge.

Twilight grimaced. He’d been dealing with the monster between his legs for some time now, but it was worse than ever. He had an awful feeling that if Pinkie made a few more gyrations it was going to get messy. He did not need that humiliation on top of everything else. “Okay, you’re right. Right now I am a stallion. But I can’t play the game with you. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that I wouldn’t be any good at it. I couldn’t play the part of a cruel stallion. I couldn’t be scary at all.”

“Oh, Twilight. You’re so silly. Of course you could do it. Remember when you were trying to figure out my Pinkie sense? And you strapped me into that scary electrical machine and put probes on my head? That was wonderfully scary.”

Twilight looked at Pinkie in shock. “You were scared? Oh Pinkie I’m so sorry. I would never have done it if I had known.”

“Pffft. Why do you think I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want the fun to stop.”

Twilight continued talking, having not paid any attention to what Pinkie had said. “And it was all for nothing. I put you through all that and couldn’t detect a tiny little smidgen of anything that might indicate the existence of your Pinkie sense.”

“Well, duh. There wasn’t anything nasty for my Pinkie sense to sense while you were testing me. How could you detective if there was nothing to detective.”

Twilight opened his mouth to reply, and froze in place, one hand raised with a finger extended as if he were about to make a point. His eyes had a thousand yard stare. As if Twilight was focusing on something no other pony could hope to see. He held that pose for so long that Pinkie was on the verge of checking to see if he was still breathing when he gave a shake and came back to himself.

“Pinkie, you’re a genius. And I’m an idiot,” Twilight said in a chagrined voice, that changed to firm and determined. “We have to rerun that test!”

Pinkie felt herself wrapped in Twilight’s magic, which was warm and tingly, and lifted into the air. “Weeee,” she cheered as Twilight jumped to his feet and headed toward the back of the lab, floating Pinkie behind him like a tethered party balloon. Pinkie puffed out her cheeks and extended her arms and legs to add to the image.

The lab under Twilight’s castle was far larger than the small cramped space under the old library had been. It took several minutes for Twilight to reach the back of the space, weaving between an increasing amount of clutter until at last he reached his goal. In front of them was something bulky under a dust cover. Still holding Pinkie firmly in his magical grip Twilight whisked off the cover and revealed the cobbled together device he had created to test Pinkie’s danger sense. Including the pillory he had strapped her forearms into to hold her in place while he probed her brain.

Twilight examined the device. “Hmmmm, you slipped out of those too easily last time. We can’t have excess movement skewing the results,” he mused, more to himself than to Pinkie Pie. “We’ll need to secure you more firmly. Minimize extraneous motion. The new adhesive sensors should work better than that cobbled together helmet. Need to apply some probes to your most sensitive nerve clusters. Check the galvanic reactions of your nerve twitches. See if they correlate to brain activity.”

Pinkie gave a little shiver of anticipation. Twilight was lost in her, no his, special crazy place. This was going to get scary, scary good.

Author's Notes:

Finally, next chapter, we have clopity clop.

I hope. I have to confess that I'm writing this one page at a time and have no idea what might happen between the beginning and the end which are pretty much set.

But that's good for you readers who have a wish list. Chime in, who knows what might end up getting thrown into the mix.