My second teleport went a lot smoother than the first. I mean, for one thing, I wasn’t nearly cut in half, and for another, we weren’t miles off target. As soon as I recognized the enormous steel walls of the Bastion’s hangar looming around me, I smiled and trotted forward in a daze. It felt good to be back within the safety of the Sentinels’ fortress. At least I didn’t have to worry about surprise ringbird attacks here.

I heard a gasp and a decidedly not-masculine squeak as Gauge collapsed to his knees behind me. The poor zebra looked like he was going to be sick; his stripes looked more black and green instead of black and white. After dry heaving a few times and squeezing his eyes shut, Gauge grimaced and stood up. “N-Never again…”

“Hey, at least you didn’t die,” I said, smirking and standing in front of him.

“Mmrf… and that’s a good thing?” Gauge muttered, staggering toward me. “I f-feel awful… just kill me and put me out of my m-misery.”

I rolled my eyes and gave him a shoulder to lean on. “Oh, don’t be such a baby. You’re alive and in one piece. The rest is all in your mind.”

“Easy for you to say…” he grumbled.

All around us, the Bastion’s hangar was filled with a sense of orderly chaos. It looked like the Sentinels’ support staff was out in force, shuttling the ponies of Blackwash out of the hangar and to another section of the base. A group of armed Sentinels hovered overhead, I guess on the lookout for any signs of trouble, but they didn’t look like they were paying too much attention to what was going on below them. I didn’t blame them, really; as far as I could see, ponies were weeping and smiling and clinging to each other for love and support. Their ordeal was finally over.

“Ember!” I heard an excited voice squeak from the side of the hangar, and I turned to see an excited colt galloping towards me as fast as his legs would carry him. I didn’t realize he had no intention of stopping until he was right on top of me, and so Chaff nearly bowled me over when he slammed into my legs. “You’re okay! I knew you would be!”

“That makes one of us,” I said, embracing the colt and ruffling his short mane. “I thought I was dead meat for sure.”

“You?” Chaff asked, surprise pretty evident in his voice. He shook his head and grinned at me. “Not you! You’re too awesome for that!”

Gauge took one look at the colt and smirked at me. “Gee, Ember, I didn’t know you had a kid since I saw you last.”

“Shut up,” I said, taking a step back so the three of us could form a little circle. “Gauge, this is Chaff. The little stinker followed me after I left his family’s place to look for the Sentinels.” Then, smiling at Chaff, I patted Gauge on the head. “Chaff, this is Gauge, my idiot best friend from the Lights. If you throw a wrench he’ll fetch it like a dog. It’s pretty funny. And the little guy buzzing around his head like a ringbird is SCaR. You’ll probably like him more than Gauge,” I teased, earning a huff from the zebra.

“You’re from the Lights too?” Chaff asked Gauge, his eyes widening in awe.

I leaned in and whispered in Gauge’s ear, “That’s what they called Blackwash. They could see the dish lights from the valley.”

He made some kind of noise of understanding in his throat and nodded at Chaff. “Yeah, I spent a lot of time working on those, uh, lights. Keeping them working and that sort of thing, you know?”

“Cool!” Then he stopped like he suddenly remembered something, and his ears flattened against his skull. “I’m sorry that the Crimson broke the Lights…”

Gauge just smiled softly and tousled the kid’s mane. “The important thing is that the ponies who lived there are okay now, thanks to the Sentinels,” he said, pointing to the ponies moving with purpose through the hangar. “And we’re going to kick the Crimson’s flanks and rebuild those lights.”

I blinked, and looked at Gauge. I’d have to talk to him about Blackwash and the fact that the Crimson burned the whole thing to the ground after they flew him away. Blackwash was well and truly dead, and I don’t think we could ever go back. Not like I could ever forget what I’ve seen since coming down from the mountain. I’d spend the rest of my life wondering what was happening down here, away from the isolation of the mountains. Knowing that we weren’t the only ponies left on Auris would gnaw at the back of my mind for the rest of my life.

That was a bit more philosophical than I cared for, though, so I just shrugged and turned back to Chaff. “I hope you didn’t cause too much havoc while I was gone.”

“No, I was bored, mostly,” Chaff said, frowning. “They made me stay in my room until this morning. It was really boring.”

“Probably for the best,” I said, offering the colt a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure they didn’t want anypony else pulling some dumb stunt like I did.”

There was another boom of thunder behind us, and I looked to see that the ten unicorns had teleported back to the Fort, leaving a smoldering runic circle in the ground. A few Blackwash ponies cried out in alarm at the sudden noise, but the Sentinels lingering nearby quickly quieted them down. Chaff hardly even flinched at the sudden noise; he’d probably been listening to it all day waiting for me to come back. I began to move towards the end of the hangar, motioning for Chaff and Gauge to follow. “Come on, we’re just going to be in the way if we hang around here any longer. Who’s hungry? I know I am.”

I got a jubilant cheer from Chaff, and even an agreeable grunt from Gauge. Food it was, then.

The rest of the day was kind of a boring blur, in that it felt like a lot of things were happening, but I was only at best kinda-sorta involved. Lunch was a dull affair, as the Sentinels had decided that a good welcoming feast for all the starving ponies liberated from the Fort was that disgusting thing that passed for soup. At least it was loaded with nutrients and that sort of thing, which I guess was more important than tasty food for all the ponies brought over from the Fort. Still, I would’ve killed for a little salt and pepper so it didn’t taste like I was eating actual shit.

Following that, I went and showed Gauge around the Bastion, or what little I’d seen in the day that I was there. He especially liked the view that the bunkers on the wall gave of the canyon leading up to the place. I think he was more interested in the old AAA piece left inside, though. If I gave him a set of wrenches and some grease, I’m sure he’d have the thing working again in no time.

Then Chaff wandered off on his own, and Gauge and I spent the next half hour looking for him. I got a much better appreciation for just how fucking big the Bastion was after that. At least SCaR had been making a map in its robot head while we were walking around so we wouldn’t get lost.

After conspiring with Gauge to get the colt to sit still by regaling him with (kid friendly) tales of the sort of things that happened during the attack on the Fort, we managed to pass the time until Zip, Sig, and the other Sentinels who had joined the attack were relieved and brought back to the Bastion. In their place, the other twenty-five soldiers who’d stayed behind at the Bastion were sent to the Fort to focus on securing the surrounding area and start trying to draft troops for the Sentinels’ cause. That left us with a slow night of R&R, which wasn’t bad or anything, but a slow night nonetheless.

At least for dinner, the Sentinels had brought back some of the stores of fresh food the Crimson had at the Fort, which was a welcome change from eating more of that mush they fed their soldiers. I nearly died of joy upon getting a plate full of steamed vegetables and songbird wings. Stars above, actual food!

Apparently Zip and Sig appreciated the change in meals as well, because they ripped through their rations almost as fast as some of the starving ponies we’d saved at the Fort. As a result, we didn’t have a very talkative dinner. We were all too focused on eating actual good food for the first time in what felt like forever.

It still couldn’t compare to Mom’s cooking, though. I missed that more than anything.

Only after we finished eating did we finally find the time to talk. Gauge was the first to break the silence, talking to Sig. “So you said something yesterday about a project you wanted my help on. Mind if I ask what it is?”

“Oh, that,” the griffon responded, picking up a morsel of meat between his talons and tossing it into his beak. “There’s a lot of old military equipment in the Bastion that’s broken or unusable. We think there’s more deeper in the base, but we can’t get any of the blast doors to open to get to it. Anyway, we do have an old Equestrian assault tank that was apparently brought out of storage before the Silence hit. It’s completely out of commission, but we’ve been trying to get it to work for a while now. Now that we have the Fort, we might be able to salvage parts that we need to get it running again.”

Gauge blinked. “You want me to help you fix a tank?”

The griffon shot him a grin. “How’s that for a project?”

“Well, I don’t know the slightest thing about tanks,” Gauge said, passing his cup of water between his hooves, “but if it’s greased, I can probably figure my way around it.”

I just snorted and rolled my eyes. “Dirty Greaser.”

“Just wait, Em,” Gauge said, winking at me. “Nova’s going to be damn impressed when we roll up to the Crimson’s hideout with a tank. Think we’ll get Carrion to piss himself?”

“Oh, I hope so,” I said, laughing. Then, turning to Zip, I reached across the table and took her hoof. “Can we please stick the cannon up his asshole and shoot it? Please?”

Zip snorted and leaned back in her chair. “I think you’ll have to get in line, Ember. There’s a whole lot of ponies that want to personally kick that smug bastard’s teeth in. I don’t think he’ll have any left by the time you get to him.”

“I don’t care about his teeth,” I said, crossing my forelegs. “I just want to shove something so far up his ass that he chokes on it. I’m not asking for much.”

“Maybe you can crush him with the tank!” Chaff suddenly exclaimed, reminding the adults at the table that we had a kid eating with us. “Smoosh him flat until he pops like a gas bean!”

“Is that what these things are?” Gauge asked, poking at some red bean thing with his fork. One of the tongs punctured the skin, and the bean let out a pitiful whistle as it deflated on his plate. I was more concerned about the fact that a colt five winters old was talking about crushing another pony until he died a very gruesome and gory death.

Zip coughed into her wing, trying to steer the conversation away from beans and crushing earth ponies like them. “Say, Sig, didn’t you have the number of volunteers and that sort of thing from the Fort?”

Sig blinked, but a nudge from the pegasus at his side seemed to get him going. “Oh, those.” He dug into a pocket on the jumpsuit he usually wore under his armor and pulled out a scrap of paper. “We did a few tallies as we were getting your townsfolk out of the Fort. We pulled out one hundred and seven liberated slaves in total, and of those, twenty-eight volunteered to help us fight the Crimson.” He bunched the paper up and slipped it back into his pocket. “Honestly, I would’ve liked to see more join us, if only to make up for their lack of training, but most of the ponies we got out of there were mares and kids not really old enough to fight.”

“That’s still half again the number that you have right now,” I observed. “That has to count for something.”

“Yeah, but without the training, they’ll only be half as good as their number in Sentinels, even if we give them our armor,” Zip said. “The gear’s one thing, but knowing how to use it and knowing how to follow orders on the battlefield are another. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take all the help we can get… I’m just not going to set unrealistically high expectations for them.”

Sig nodded in agreement. “Lieutenant Star Curtain relieved Thunder at the Fort, and I hope she’ll be able to get some of the ponies from the nearby settlements to join in. She’s the perfect mare for the job, and the Crimson aren’t well liked, so I expect we can probably get another thirty or forty off of her. But again, they’re not trained…”

“I don’t think there’s much you can do about that at this point,” I said. Cocking my head to the side, I looked over the huge crowd of ponies gathered in the mess, happily digging into their food. “How many ponies would you need to take down the Crimson?”

The griffon just shrugged. “I might be good with numbers, but I’m no tactician. That’s for the likes of Thunder Dash and Platinum Rampart to figure out.” Tapping a talon against his beak, he eventually added, “There’s fifty-ish well-trained Sentinels, following the attack on the Fort. Add in roughly thirty from the slaves that joined us, and an optimistic forty from local recruitment…” He shrugged and pushed his empty plate aside. “We have the gear to equip a lot of ponies, which will help quite a bit. We might even be able to arm the slaves the Crimson keep at the dam if we can get to them fast enough. But I wouldn’t feel comfortable attacking with anything less than a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred ponies. Of course, if we can get the tank working, then we have a better chance. That thing has the firepower to ward off any ringbirds that might get too close.”

“Maybe some of the Crimson you captured would be willing to fight against Carrion?” I suggested, remembering Wheat. “Some of the ones at the Fort didn’t really want to be a part of them, anyway. Plenty were just pressed into service or foalnapped as kids. They might want to take a shot at the pony who flipped their lives upside down and forced them to do his bidding.”

“Eh, maybe,” Zip said, crossing her forelegs. “But I don’t trust anypony who has killed and raped and enslaved with those bastards. If it were up to me, I’d shoot the lot of them. No amount of ‘I’m sorry’ is ever going to make it up to a mare who’s been raped, a father who’s had his son taken from him…” She pointedly looked me in the eyes. “Or a daughter who’s watched her mother die in front of her.”

I fidgeted in my seat, but thankfully Gauge answered for me. “That seems harsh to me, and I was the one they enslaved.”

“Is it harsh? Or is it justice?” Zip asked. “How many second chances are you going to give a marauding bastard like a Crimson hoof soldier? How many times are you willing to get stabbed in the back before it’s not worth it anymore?” She took her drink and downed the last of it in one big gulp. “Shoot them and be done with it. It’s safer that way—for you and for everypony else.”

Then she stood up and pushed her empty tray to the center of the table. “I’m going to go back to the room and get freshened up. Maybe grab a shower along the way. Too busy this morning to get one then.” Sig nodded, and Zip sidled around the table until she brushed against my side. “Look for 38C if you want dessert,” she whispered in my ear as she passed.

It was a good thing I wasn’t drinking anything, because I probably would’ve choked on it right then. Even still, the surprised snort I made was hardly what you’d call dignified.

Only after Zip disappeared from the mess hall did all eyes at the table turn to me. I pretended I was too interested in my food to notice, at least until Gauge elbowed me. “What was that about, Em?” he asked, a smile of pure evil plastered onto his muzzle.

“Shut up…” I warned him, doing my best to keep my blush under control and my voice steady.

“Oh, I get it,” Gauge said, preemptively scooting a little farther away from my hooves. “It’s not appropriate for kids, right?”

That caught Chaff’s attention. “What’s not appropriate for kids?” he asked, a keen interest in his eyes. “I want to know!”

“Yeah, Ember, why don’t you tell him?”

I hissed at the zebra, “Gauge, I’m going to cut your fucking zebra dick off—”

“Now that wouldn’t be very nice.”

“—and put a ribbon on it and give it to Nova in a box!”

“Zip said there’s ‘dessert’ in her room,” Sig said, smirking at me. Gauge immediately snickered and placed a hoof over his muzzle. “I feel like I should add that that’s my room, too. Don’t get my bed dirty.”

I blinked, trying to fight down a tidal wave of emotions at once. In the end, surprise won out. “You heard that?!”

Sig just tapped the side of his feathery head. “I’ve got a bird’s head. Little known fact, birds have incredible hearing.”

Stomping my hooves down, I simply stood up and flipped my empty tray at Gauge’s muzzle. “Whatever. Fuck you, I’ll talk to you later.”

Marching out of the mess hall, I couldn’t help but catch one last little tidbit from Chaff. “Wait, why can’t I have dessert, too?”

Trying to navigate the Bastion was next to fucking impossible. I don’t know how long it took me to find the barracks, but by the time I did, I was more than a little pissed at having to navigate this labyrinth by myself. Still, finally, at the end of a hallway of identical steel doors, the tag ‘38C’ painted in blocky red letters beckoned to me. The door was even slightly ajar, an open invitation I was more than ready to accept.

Still, as I held up my hoof to knock on the door, I couldn’t help but feel a little doubt and anxiety. A flood of emotions hit me all at once, from doubt to excitement to fear. Was this really happening? Would I be good enough? Would Zip be good enough? Of the last one, I had no doubt, but that didn’t stop the thought from crossing my mind.

Fuck her—it. Fuck it. Fucking her would come soon, I hoped.

I knocked on the door, and immediately heard Zip’s inviting voice. “Come in,” she all but sung, and my tongue immediately felt fuzzy as I tried to formulate a response. Thankfully the door momentarily shielded me from my embarrassment, at least until I pushed it open with a burst of my magic.

Zip’s (and Sig’s) room was pretty bare, but honestly, what was I expecting when I was at a military fort? There were two beds, two desks, two chairs, two lamps, and two small trunks, one of each set on each side of the room. About the only interesting things I left out of that description were the bright lights set into the ceiling, and the orange mare reclined on the bed to the left.

Zip’s ears perked and her face brightened as she saw me. “You get lost or something?”

“Yeah,” I admitted, slowly walking into the room. “This place is a stars-damned maze. A map would’ve been real nice.” Zip smirked, and I took that as a good sign. Taking a deep breath, I shut the door behind me and looked around. “They don’t let you decorate your rooms or…?”

“With what?” Zip said, rolling off of her bed and stretching her wings. “There aren’t really any posters or pictures to hang up around here. Some of the soldiers that lived here before the Silence had some shit, or at least, I assume so; it was all moldy trash when Sig and I were assigned here.”

I snorted. “Sig didn’t turn that into a nest or something?”

It got a little giggle out of Zip. “He tried to, but sanitation regulations being what they are…” she shrugged, smirking just a little bit. “You should see him when he wakes up in the morning. Blankets strewn everywhere. I guess he tries to build a nest in his sleep or something.”

“Do you hide eggs under his blankets?” I asked, stepping a little closer to the orange mare. “Freak him out real good?”

“Oh, I did that once,” she said, shaking her head and tossing her short mane from side to side. “Didn’t work all that well, though. I guess his siblings back at the quarry used to pull that kind of thing on him all the time.” She paused, then cocked her head at me. “Did he tell you about them?”

“A little,” I said. “He told me about the quarry and the flock fathers and all those kinds of things.” I shook my head, adding, “Griffons are weird.”

Zip nodded. “Yeah. The, uh… ‘mating season’ really got me the first time I heard it.”

We both laughed a little at that, but that laugh faded into an uncomfortable silence. After a second, I decided that was as good a time as any to segue into some snatch. “So, about that ‘dessert’…”

An evil smile spread across Zip’s face, and she took a step back. “Oh, right, that. Close your eyes.” I raised an eyebrow at her, but she frowned at me. “Do it or you won’t get any.”

I’ve never squeezed my eyes shut so hard in my life.

I heard some shuffling around near Zip’s bed, and the sound of paper unwrapping. I blindly frowned in her general direction. If she was just fucking with me instead of fucking me, I was going to be really pissed. And disappointed. But mostly pissed.

Hoofsteps made their way toward me, and I felt her hot breath on my muzzle. My shoulders tensed as I wondered what she was going to do next. “Relax,” I heard her say, though it sounded like she was speaking around something. It turned out that something was a sweet berry of some sort she held between her teeth. I figured that last part out when she kissed me and shoved the thing into my mouth.

But she didn’t retreat after that. She kept her lips locked with mine, and threw her forelegs around my shoulders, only pulling us tighter together. The berry, turned into a juicy pulp between my teeth, slipped back to her as her tongue invaded my mouth. The sticky and frighteningly sweet taste remained on my tongue, and as I tried to steal the berry back from her, the tartness sent shivers down my spine. I moaned in dismay when I felt her jaw shift slightly and the berry disappeared down her throat.

Our muzzles broke contact, and I opened my eyes to see her smirking at me. “If you want your dessert you have to come and get it,” she whispered, her voice taking on a sultry and husky tone. She even winked at me.

Okay, consider me turned on. I don’t even know why I had that brief flicker of doubt earlier. But I had to strike while the iron was hot, and my iron was definitely hot. Before Zip could react, I began attacking her face with my lips, driving her backwards to the bed as she tried to resist. I managed to touch everything from the tip of her nose to the soft orange of her cheeks before her rump bumped into the bed, and we spilled over it, me ending up on top. I gave Zip just enough time to breathe before I pressed the assault, crawling the rest of the way onto the bed, and pinning her beneath me, using my unicorn weight and size advantage over her little pegasus frame to keep her in place. Only when I felt her hooves pushing against my chest, accompanied by her giggling of “Stop!”, did I momentarily relent.

I looked around her bed, spotting a tin tray full of some bright yellow berries, and picked one up in my magic. I barely had the time to set it in my teeth before Zip flung her forelegs around my shoulders and dragged me down to the bed with her. I grunted in surprise, though that died pretty fast when she pressed her lips to mine, trying to steal the berry away again. I fought her every step of the way, trying to sweep the pulp out with my tongue from the tart and moist reaches of her mouth, but after a few seconds, she managed to swallow it again. Frowning, I faked irritation and broke off the kiss, staring down at her while I kept her pinned to the bed. “You’re too good with your tongue for your own good.”

Zip just stuck out her tongue and winked at me. “My own good? What about yours?” Before I knew what was happening, she’d somehow flipped me onto my back so now she was straddling my midsection. The mattress still springing from the solid thwump of me ending up on my back, Zip took to the offensive, showering my face and neck with kisses and nips that left me laughing and squirming. She was completely in control now, and I was as helpless as a foal under her attack.

Not that I minded, really.

We kissed again, and I held her as tight against my body as I could. Our curves interlocked like pieces of a puzzle, and I felt her tail flick against the space between my legs. The contact only drove me onward, and I broke the kiss to begin pecking at her neck and shoulders, slowly making my way down her chest. Without her armor and jumpsuit on, I could see so many pale scars on her flesh, small white marks where the hair wouldn’t grow back. It was like reading a story of all her fights, her battles, her brushes with death. Some were nastier than others, but each one had a story behind it, I knew. Though Zip probably didn’t remember the stories tied to each scar, I made sure my lips brushed every one, and I soon found myself staring at her bellybutton. Smirking, I leaned in and blew a raspberry into it, making Zip giggle and lightly swat my horn.

That was when the orange mare took charge once again. Gently pushing me back down into the bed, she shifted lower so that she could mimic me, kissing her way down my neck and chest, toward my bellybutton. She went further, though, her lips teasing the perky, fixed points just below. Her teeth nipping at my nipples sent icy fingers creeping up and down my spine, and I gasped as my hooves blindly fumbled for something to hold on to. They clutched at her mane briefly, but a feathery wing brushed them aside and held them back. She apparently wouldn’t be satisfied until I began to squeak, and try as I might, I couldn’t keep it in for long. She stopped as soon as she heard the sound, and when I opened my eyes, I could see her grinning up at me.

“Sensitive?” she teased. I was too breathless to do anything other than glare at her. Smirking, she scooted backwards, her eyes leaving my tits for something lower.

The only warning I had was her breath against my lower lips sending shivers up my body before she dove in.

I gasped as her tongue made contact with my clit, spreading my lips wide and searching for that magical spot. Panting, I moaned and feebly kicked with my legs as she did her work. Her tongue moved up and down, in and out, teasing and toying with my flesh in every way I could think of. I pressed my hind legs against her shoulders, the sensation overwhelming me. My legs clenched, driving her face into my cunt. She made some protest, but I didn’t listen. I was too busy bathing myself in the sensation shooting through my crotch. The heat and pressure between my legs grew and grew, and sweat beaded on my forehead. My moans became cries of ecstasy and pleasure, and a shivering sensation that was at once numbing and exciting spread through my legs. “Don’t… Don’t st—” I moaned, eyes shut as I let the sensation drown me. Zip didn’t relent; she began to get her hooves involved to spread my lips wider, letting her jam her tongue farther into my cunt.

That was when I reached the breaking point. With a mighty shudder, I gasped and moaned as it felt like my entire body contracted. A balloon burst between my legs, spreading fire up my crotch. The smell of sex thickened, almost suffocating me. Brilliant colors and lights flashed behind my eyes, a dazzling display of ecstasy. My hooves dug at the sheets, clinging onto them like a drowning mare to a piece of driftwood. Burning needles of ice danced across my legs and my hooves. Through it all, my brain felt like it’d completely shut down, absolutely overwhelmed by the sensation assaulting me from all sides.

It was almost a minute before my breathing slowed and I could open my eyes again. I found Zip laying on my chest, her eyes watching me while a small smile danced on her muzzle. I could smell my own musk on her muzzle, and the orange hair around her lips and chin and nose was sodden and slicked back. The light in the room gave it a dull shine, a sort of luster that matched the light in her blue eyes.

It was beautiful. Perfect.

“Good?” she asked, the single word carrying in it more tenderness than I thought possible.

“Good,” I said, confirming it with a breathless little nod of my head. “You’re good at that.”

Zip smirked, and she used the back of her fetlock to wipe a little of my juices off of her muzzle. “I try to be,” she said, before leaning down and kissing my lips, giving me a little taste of my own crotch. The smell of sex hitting my nose was enough to pump a little energy back into my limbs, and sitting up, I met Zip for another kiss before pushing her down to the bed. She didn’t offer any resistance, only wrapping her forelegs behind my neck and pulling me down with her.

I did my best to shower her with kisses before moving on to other parts of her body. I nipped at her ears, giving one a light tug that caught her by surprise. She made an adorable mewling sound and feebly pushed against my chest as I nibbled on the tip of her ear, teasing the soft flesh between my flat teeth. Smirking, I darted my tongue inside of her ear, making her gasp and buck at the sudden unwelcome sensation. I just pulled my head back and smirked at her while she rubbed at her ear, trying to get my saliva out.

“Gross,” she muttered, feigning an offended glare at me. I just grinned at her and shifted my body downwards, admiring the smooth orange curves of her body, and the hard points poking out through the short hair near her crotch. I pressed my lips to one and began to suck on it, earning a contented sigh from Zip as I ran my tongue over her tit, teasing the hard spot back and forth. I could feel the shivers dancing through her skin like lightning, and the soft feathers of her wings began to curl around my head as I worked and sucked, even poking at it with my teeth for good measure. When I finished with the first, I moved to the next, giving it the same treatment, and making Zip moan in delight. Then I focused my attention even lower.

Sliding back a bit more, I brushed Zip’s short tail out of the way of her crotch, catching a strong whiff of her pussy. The lips were slightly bulged and slick with her fluid, ready and inviting. Licking my lips and brushing my long mane back, I cautiously approached her cunt, not quite exactly sure how best to go about it. I didn’t want to keep her waiting, though, so I decided to improvise and dived right in, burying my muzzle in her crotch, tongue fully extended to part her lips and search for that sweet spot.

I grimaced at the sour taste on my tongue, and recoiled slightly. The smell dominated my nose, almost blocking out everything else. Still, the gasp I got out of Zip was worth it, so I steeled myself and dove in again. This time, I forced my tongue deeper, sliding it in and out as I traced the walls of her vagina until I found that little spot that sent her into shivers and twitches at my touch. Her thighs pressed against the sides of my face and pulled back, burying my face into her crotch like she wanted to shove my entire muzzle inside of her. While I did my best to pleasure her, I blindly reached forward with my hooves until I found her nipples again and began to rub them in slow, circular motions. She gasped and tried to say something, but I couldn’t really make out what it was from all the way down there. Instead, I just focused on working my tongue and my hooves as her body began to gently convulse, working up the strength to finally orgasm.

Before she could, though, I suddenly pulled back, leaving her panting and sitting on the verge of coming. She shot me a betrayed glance through her sweaty mane and the dazed mix of pleasure and bliss in her eyes, and I just smiled at her. Pushing my mane back as far as I could, I let a little ambient mana bathe my horn in an orange glow, and I lowered my head again. This time, however, it wasn’t my tongue that I stuck inside of her, and Zip gasped as I introduced her cunt to a much harder member of my body. Almost immediately, I felt the walls of her pussy grip the spiraled grooves of my horn, and her legs and wings thrashed for a second as she finally climaxed, the gasp and moan completely stealing away her breath. I felt a tingle of pleasure run through my skull that put me in a daze as well as her sex slowly released its grip on my horn, allowing me to slide it back out, separating us once again.

Rubbing a hoof against my brow to wipe away the sticky lubricant Zip’s marehood bathed my forehead in, I crawled my way up the bed and wrapped my forelegs around the little pegasus, holding her close to my chest as she began to recover. After a minute or two, her crystal blue eyes fluttered open, staring right into mine. Humming, Zip shifted her body slightly, finding some way to cuddle in even tighter against me. “Mmmm… not bad.”

I kissed her forehead. “That’s it?” I murmured back to her.

She giggled slightly and shut her eyes, fitting her head beneath my chin and wrapping her wings around my back like a feathery blanket. “Okay, you were good. Better?”

“Better.” Smiling, I shut my eyes, just listening to her breathe, feeling the rise and fall of her chest against mine. “Thanks for that.”

“Don’t worry about it. I needed it as well,” she said. Her lips brushed my chest, and she grunted as she wrapped her hind legs with mine. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” was all I said.

After a moment’s pause, Zip shifted so she could run her hoof across my ribs. “You’ve been with somepony before?”

I hesitated, not really sure if I should mention it, but decided that he wouldn’t really mind if I told her. “Yes,” I said, thinking back to that encounter four winters ago. “A stallion. Brass Casing.”

“That’s a name,” Zip said. “He like guns like you do?”

“He was a militia captain, so I hope so,” I said, chuckling. Sighing, I dredged up the memories from where they lay, mostly forgotten about since then. “We were stupid kids. I was barely more than a filly, and he was a few winters older than me. We fucked on the floor of my family workshop. It was the only place I could think of to get away from my mom that wasn’t somewhere out in the open.”

Zip hummed and nuzzled my neck. “Fucking under the stars wasn’t an option?”

“In a town that small, I’m sure somepony would have heard,” I said, blushing slightly. “But it was… it was good. Messy, sure, because we were both making shit up as we went along, trying to figure out how the other sex worked, but it was good.”

“Hmm…” Zip said, right before she yawned at least. “I didn’t take you for a bi.”

“Sex is sex,” I said, running a hoof through the mare’s mane. “Mares and stallions do it differently. Maybe I just don’t want to limit myself to only half the population.”

“With an attitude like that I’m sure you could put any whore out of business,” Zip joked. Her hoof traced the heart seared into my flank, and I could feel her wincing from her remark. “Sorry, that was bad…”

“It’s not like they actually made me do any of that,” I said. “I got away before they could. The fuckers just stole one of my marks. All things considered, I’ll take it.”

I felt a yawn coming on, and try as I might, I couldn’t suppress it. Closing my eyes, I shifted the pillow with my magic and laid my head down on it. I guess the sex had taken more out of me than I cared to admit. At least Zip seemed to understand, and I felt her lips on the underside of my jaw. “Sleepy?”

“Mmhmm,” I hummed, grunting and shifting slightly to get more comfortable. “Exhausted.”

Zip kissed me again and pressed herself even more firmly against my body. “Me too.”

She didn’t have to say anything more, I craned my neck back until I found the light switch, and a quick burst of my magic shut the lights off. Zip hummed in contentment as darkness finally bathed us, and I managed to drape some of the blankets over us. Finally tucked in, we kissed one more time, and Zip tightened the soft and downy grip of her wings around my back.

“Night,” she whispered, giving me a little squeeze.

“Night,” I whispered back, stroking her mane. Within seconds, she was gone, and it didn’t take much longer before I followed her.