I wriggle my butt right off the brown furred back of the mare who’s carrying me, and go stumbling my hungry pony self up to the... the table in the barn with the lights with the food. There’s a pony there, a green mare with red hair, who looks at me like she’s seen a ghost, exclaiming, “Jesus Christ, are you one of the rescues?”

“Sorry, I just... can I have some chips maybe?” I ask, looking hungrily at the open plastic bag. “They... they said I could have salty t-things and—”

“N-no, they said you need soup, so we’ve got a pot—”

“I will love you forever if you get me a bowl of soup.”

“Sure, it’s right over here,” she says, turning clumsily around.

As she does so, I exclaim, “Oh! You’re a bat pony!” Indeed, I can see that leathery wings of slightly darker green are tightly folded at her sides.

At my words, her blush deepens, and she stutters, shifting her wings nervously, “I-it’s just kinda random. I’m not really a bat pony... type. My OC’s a pegasus, so it’s not that different, I guess.”

“There’s a bat pony type?” I ask, tilting my head in confusion.

“Y’know, all goth and broody and n-nocturnal?” she says, lifting a hoof, a soft blush pink beneath her grassy green cheek fur.

“Maybe those are only the grey and purple ones,” I reply diplomatically, giving her a sympathetic wince.

“Actually none of us are that color,” she remarks in reply, gazing away from me across the barn, “It’s weird. There are only a few dozen of us, but still. C’mon let’s get you some water first.”

The mare gives me water before any soup, as any intelligent being who wasn’t an inhuman monster would do given my situation. She trots over with a soup pot, handle held firmly in her mouth. When she holds it out for me, I can see it’s filled with clear water. There’s a moment for my pupils to widen, before I just dunk my face into it, drinking greedily.

She pulls the pot away with her mouth still on the handle then, saying, “Woah, woah, eeshy vere!”

Oh... oh right, I’m not supposed to eat or drink fast. The water starts to hurt, going down. I must’ve swallowed too big a mouthful. I just cringe, mumbling an apology, and settling on my haunches and then brace on forelegs, hunching there waiting for the knot in my chest to ease.

Other ponies are coming over this way, though the sickly ones are having to be carried. They look... more like horses than they ought to. Do I look... like that? I lift my own foreleg, to look at it, and it... has definition, that it really shouldn’t have. I can’t really tell without seeing a mirror, but I don’t know if I want to at this point.

“How long were we in there?” I quietly ask of my foreleg.

“It’s been thirteen days since the convention,” the pot holding bat pony answers for me. She’s not holding the water pot anymore, but it’s pretty clear she’s the same pony. She’s got the same green fur and red... sorta red hair? I really should learn more colors, if we’re going to be interacting with a lot of ponies now. Wait, what?!

“Thirteen days?” I ask, dumbfounded. “I thought it was like a... a week, at most!”

“Yours was one of the last places we know about,” she says with a blush, “I don’t... I’m not good at any of that cloak and dagger stuff, so I don’t know the details. But I think... one more rescue team is still out, but there is no way in Heck that they won’t rescue every pony without a hitch.”

She says that with a... rather oddly confident emphasis.

“Anyway, here you go,” she says, using a batty wing to lower... a dog bowl filled with soup to the dusty floor of the barn beside me. I go at the soup as hungrily as ponily possible. I don’t even care if they call me an animal eating with my face, and in fact I probably would have burned my nose something fierce if they weren’t serving us soup that was deliberately lukewarm.

It’s celery, carrots, beets and cabbage stewed in a delicious beef broth, and I can tell this because my nose is now amazing, I suppose. The celery, carrots, beets and cabbage have been strained out though, leaving only their flavor and hopefully their nutrients. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted better soup in my life. Because actually, I really don’t like soup all that much. But now I end up pursing my lips on the surface and just hoovering it up, swallowing as much as I can. In the end I’m even licking the bottom of the pot, to get every last drop.

“Hey there, you want more soup?” I hear the green batpony, and approaching me again, she’s managed to walk on three legs, with one hoof crooked around a pitcher of... soup, I guess.

“Yeth pleathe,” I say, offering her my empty bowl just as she leaps back away from me, shrieking,

“Holy giblets!!”

Her pitcher of soup spills everywhere, as she falls back onto her butt and stares at me, while I stand there blinking for a moment in confusion and dismay. Then, I’m sure my whatever-colored eyes dawn in realization, as blushing horribly, I drop the bowl, then...

...pull my tongue back into my mouth.

“Did you know your tongue is huge?” she blurts out, still staring at me.

“W-well how long is yours?” I ask her tetchily, my hooves slightly spreading as I cringe back defensively.

“It’s not... I’m not gonna show you my tongue!” she says, blushing hotly, “There’s no way it’s that long!”

“Go ahead and check somewhere private, then!” I hiss to her quietly but anxiously, “I don’t know if it’s only an earth pony thing, or only a ‘me’ thing or anything!”

While she heads off for somewhere out of sight, I lower my head down to the fallen pitcher. There’s actually a little bit of soup left in it, so I start licking it up, following my nose into the hollow plastic cylinder. The stuff in the back is really tricky to suck up, but I lift it up on my nose, and bite the lip to let the last of it pour down my hungry maw.

“Hey!” the green batpony from earlier addresses me, walking back up.

Letting the container slide off my nose, falling to the floor, I give her a nervous look.

“Hi,” she repeats, coming to a stop and toeing the earth.

“So, am I the only one with a tongue like that?” I ask, kind of afraid of the answer either way.

She just blushes and looks downward though, mumbling, “Why’re ponies so weird...”

My time in that barn is one of healing, and personal discovery, for all of about ten minutes, before I start flipping out again. “No! Get out!” I shriek unapologetically, “You have to go. Now!”

It’d probably have had an actual effect, if I wasn’t clearly delirious and dissheveled, half starved, with maybe a cup of soup and, after one awkward discussion on tongues, a flat soda in my stomach to sustain me. They’re trying to feed me calories as fast as they can, but it’s been like ten minutes, and now... this!!

“Are you okay, lady?” the subject of my wrath asks in a bemused tone. I want to shove him outside, to grab him and run, but I’m one of them too!

“Please, you have to leave!” I beg of a fully clothed, fully human um... human. He towers over me of course, looking down as I stand bow-legged in front of him, “Before you catch it, too!”

“Catch what?” the human man asks.

“Catch—catch what?!” I splutter in outrage, “Haven’t you noticed you’re talking to a my little pony? Don’t you know it’s contagious! You have to get out of here, or you’ll catch the pony!”

At that point, one of the healthier ponies drags me aside, and the mare, blue haired and golden furred, looks me in the eye, saying, “Calm down! You need to relax. Nobody’s infecting anybody today.”

“But... but there’s a human, right over there!” I whisper at her tightly, “Why wouldn’t he get infected?!”

“Oh, right,” the mare says, looking at me in realization. “Actually, this pony thing isn’t contagious.”

I stare at her in disbelief.

“No, seriously,” she says. “Everyone thought it was at first, for... some reason. Someone was yelling about it at any rate. But once we escaped, we ended up hiding out with some um... still human humans, and they never got ponified.”

“But Twilight said it was contagious!” I whine weakly in protest.

With a laugh, the mare says, “Twilight Sparkle?”

“No, a... a changeling disguised as Twilight Sparkle,” I make sure to clarify, standing on my own without too much trouble. “She set me a-and my friends up, to take the blame for this... pony virus. It’s... It’s not even contagious?!” My weak stomp still staggers me.

“Woah, you should rest,” the mare tells me. “We’ll get you a little more back to health before you have to deal with any of this stuff. I didn’t know there were changelings impersonating ponies. That’d explain a lot, actually...”

“Yah, it... yeah I’m... I am kind of ...worn out,” I admit, wishing already that I was ready for more soup. “Maybe I’ll just... sleep for a little longer.”

“Be sure to eat some soup before you do,” the blue and gold mare advises me.

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” I reply emphatically.

Alright, then my time is one of healing and personal discovery, for one whole night, all the way into late morning. I have to eat soup frequently, in small portions, with plenty of water alongside it, but I’m already starting to feel better as the sun breaks over the horizon.

I’m not really looking better though. I make sure to find a mirror, just to see if it’s... as bad as it feels. It’s worse. In the mirror, I see a starving filly with shrunken, knobby limbs, whose fur is clumping and filthy, and whose soft green hair looks more like a rat’s nest than a mane. I see that my eyes are a striking, raspberry red, something I hope to commit to memory this time, but they’ve a... hollow look to them, with weary dark rings around them, even though I feel... fine...ish.

It looks almost... eerie, to see myself with those eyes, as skinny legged and saggy as I am. I don’t have a belly, it’s just kind of... like Fleur de Lis, just... more curvy uppy. I really want to have a belly again.

You can even see my cheek bones! It’s kind of freaky. I don’t feel... right, looking like that. Even less right than usual, I mean. I can’t believe I weigh 20 pounds. I don’t even know how much I’m supposed to weigh. I know that Twilight was surprisingly heavy for her size, but I never even thought to weigh myself as a pony on the scale here.

I don’t really have much energy to do anything else that night, but I do manage to look at the pony in the mirror, and take note of my weight... the one doctor here actually insists on that, though they’re terribly busy with all the other sickly escapees, so they’ve not much time to spend gawking at me.

The final team returns, triumphant, but by then, I’m too sleepy to care. I sleep peacefully all through the night, on a mattress with seven other ponies, and oddly not Nick. When I awaken, the sun has risen, and the morning grown long, and I’m... not hallucinating, am I?

Because I should still be in that cell. I should be lonely and scared, and eating myself from the inside. But as I awaken that morning, with the cool air tickling my nose, and the sun shining in through the door I stagger up to, to look outside across a weed choked field to distant trees on the horizon... I’m not dreaming.

I’m standing on three legs, because one’s braced on the door frame. I’m a magical...ish pony, a girl with a name that never suited me as a guy. My best friend is a magical unicorn, and my sister has bat wings. I’m standing there in a barn, somewhere hidden in the country far away from home, feeling the sunlight shine on my naked shoulders, which are sideways.

There’s no way anything about this could possibly be real, but I laugh nonetheless, a sweet, girly, surprised laugh that bubbles up within me. I didn’t wake up in a cold cell enveloped in darkness. I woke up here, after a good night’s sleep. The world doesn’t make sense, but somehow I feel like it doesn’t matter. I’m here, I’m safe, and I’m not going back into that nightmare any time soon. I’m safe. I’m...

I’m kind of hungry, actually.

A pony I don’t recognize explains how the other task force has returned with all the ponies they intended to rescue, seeming very pleased with this while I’m just trying to get some food.

When their leader comes to announce their success that morning, I’m trying to keep down a small meal of crackers, that my stomach stubbornly protests. I’m going to make it though. I escaped. I’m free. I’m not going to let myself die. I soak another cracker in my mouth, sucking up a small drink of water to wash the salt down my throat, and my stomach’s just gonna have to deal with it.

That’s when I hear her.

Striding in from somewhere outside the barn, she announces to everyone, “Good morning, and congratulations, everypony! I’m happy to state that the rescue effort has been, for the most part a success!”

My head shoots straight up and I snap around to stare, wide-eyed in the direction of the mare who spoke.

“The next phase of our strategy is to recover our strength, and nurse the ponies we’ve rescued back to health,” the bright voiced pony declares, as I stumble away from the table, and go creeping over there, to where the ponies are assembling around her in an attentive group.

“We want to prepare as much as possible so that the third phase can go off without a hitch,” she continues as I stare, unable to believe what I’m looking at, with no idea how she could possibly be here, “Train your magic, and your bodies, make friends with each other and work together, and within the next moon, I promise you that you’ll all be safe and out of reach of any government your planet has to offer, because we’re going to Equestria!”

Everypony listens as this unicorn mare speaks, and all I can do is stare. I don’t know what to do. What do I say? What is going on here? Looking from pony to pony in our group, she says, “We have about...”

And then Twilight Sparkle is staring directly at me, capturing me in her hauntingly purple gaze. Her eyes light on me only for a moment before moving to look at the other ponies next to me, and onward through the crowd. “We have... about...” she says haltingly, as if distracted by something, and it really is her! Isn’t it? This isn’t the evil changeling, is it?

Oh no, what if it is the evil changeling?

“We have about a month before reaching the optimum solar activity to potentiate the ionosphere,” Twilight Sparkle says confidently, “And we’ll be ready for it, each and every one of you. There’s no denying that what Sunset’s done to you is unforgivable, and I will do everything in my power to restore you to your old selves again. But it won’t do us any good either way, if you get captured by your government while you’re still like this. Once we’re in Equestria I’ll have a lot more resources at my disposal, and between me and the princess, I’m sure we can restore your human form, and return you to your normal lives.”

Princess? As in, singular? This Twilight isn’t pre-Nightmare Moon, is she?

“Plus I mean,” Twilight says with an awkward smile, “Who here doesn’t want to visit Equestria?”

A ragged cheer rises up among the group at that. I don’t join in because I’m too flummoxed at the sight of Twilight Sparkle after all this time. It’s been almost a month! Or is the the very first time I’ve ever met her?

“I’ll be happy to give some of you a tour of Ponyville,” Twilight Sparkle says, to the sound of more cheers, “or even Canterlot. You’ll get the royal treatment, so to speak, while Princess Celestia, Princess Luna and I figure out how to undo Sunset’s magic, and return you to normal.”

Okay, so post-Nightmare Moon, but there’s still so much I don’t know. So confused beyond belief, I sneak up to Twilight, after her... speech thing, and... I just don’t understand. Twilight Sparkle is just standing there. She turns to me with a pleasant smile, after talking with some others, saying, “Hello! Aren’t you one of the ponies we rescued?”

“I... yeah but—” I say, struggling to find the words to describe my conflicted emotions right now. “Twilight?”

“Is everything okay?” Twilight asks, looking at me with worry, and she’s huge! It was easy to deny how small I had become, by just... not looking at the humans as humans. On some level, I could pretend that the humans I’ve seen were some sort of inhuman giants. But I remember Twilight, from when I was human. How I could lift her in my arms like a baby lamb. And she’s still sleek, graceful and purple, but now she’s the same size as me! Far from prancing around at my feet, Twilight is looking me eye-to eye, as if she were as big as a person. Because I’m not as big as a person. I’m just a... little pony.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt smaller.

“I—I don’t exactly know,” I stammer desperately, “Something... happened to me back... you don’t happen to know a human named Meadowsweet, do you?”

A surprised laugh escapes her, and the bright eyed purple unicorn declares in amusement, “I didn’t know there were any humans with that name. That sounds like a pony’s name! Is this some kind of trick question?”

“No, it... no, I mean... you didn’t do anything to a human called... Andrew, did you?” I ask her. Twilight looks at me blankly. “A human you stayed with, after a big snowstorm,” I continue, “And... and became close with, and then you turned him into a... a pony?”

“Oh, I think I know what this is about,” Twilight said, with a sad smile. “You must have gone through so much because of her. I promise you, Andrew, that you’ve done nothing wrong. The pony you’re facing is a... a genius of her own right. But consumed by ambition. You can’t blame yourself for falling to her charms.”

Some of the other ponies listen in as Twilight states seriously, “I want you to know she’s a wanted criminal in Equestria, for manipulating and bullying others, causing untold amounts of pain and destruction. That’s why I need to return to Equestria again as soon as possible, to warn everypony that Sunset’s here, and have her finally brought to justice, before she causes more harm to your land.”

“Sunset Shimmer?” I ask, mouth dropping open in shock.

“The very same,” Twilight says, shaking her head regretfully. “She’s a powerful enchantress, who escaped to the human world. I don’t know why she changed you into a pony, or any of the ponies here, but it’s sure to be part of her scheme to take revenge on Princess Celestia. She said as much, before jumping through the portal.”

“Wait... wait no, she was a changeling,” I protest, “Wasn’t she? She was talking about her queen, and mind control and... stuff.”

“Thankfully, Sunset is not a changeling,” Twilight replies with a nervous laugh and a quiet shudder, “Otherwise we’d... never be able to catch her! But yes, she is well trained in the magical arts, and she could make a very convincing illusion. You might not even be able to tell if you touched her.”

I still don’t know if this is the real Twilight or not, but I can’t but help feel an immense relief that I was fucking Sunset Shimmer, and not a changeling. Just thinking of those sharp carapaces riddled with holes, those weird icky cold bug guts, those soulless compound eyes, I can’t believe anyone would ever actually be into that sort of thing. A disguised pony, I could deal with. A changeling... not so much.

“Yeah, she... she got me good,” I say sheepishly, “I really did think she was you.”

“Did you see her?” Twilight asked curiously, “Most of the ponies who were... apprehended by the government didn’t even get a good look at her, even though she implicated them in her crimes.”

“See her?” I laugh, “I kicked her butt!”

“Really?” Twilight asks, looking at me in a new light, “She was a highly trained combat unicorn. I would have thought she could have wiped the floor with you.”

“Nope,” I say, puffing up a bit proudly, “She tried to go after Nick, but I knocked her down, and showed her a thing or two about what we humans can do.”

“Did you really?” Twilight says, swaying up to me with a playfully skeptical smile.

“Yeah, she was actually quite weak, when it came down to close quarters combat,” I reply cheerfully.

“I... I see,” Twilight says, lifting her hoof a bit at my enthusiasm. Well, good! Because I’m proud of how well we did!

“I guess she wasn’t as highly trained in combat as you think, because she just gave up then, and didn’t try to stop us at all when we took her prisoner,” I explain smugly, “She went right down once we overcame her magic. It was easy to keep her from using it. ”

“Oh?” Twilight says faintly, with a slight eye twitch.

“Yeah, Nick was just waiting there to smack her horn, if she tried to light it up,” I say, thinking fondly of that sleek grey unicorn stallion. “If only we’d been more attentive, but we got distracted at the worst time. She managed to activate the machine, and teleported away before we could stop her. We were basically humanity’s best hope, even if we uh...” I look around a little nervously, squeaking out, “...failed.”

“You probably shouldn’t talk about that in public,” Twilight says wryly as other ponies turn to look at me, “A lot of humans are upset at becoming ponies, and they might have a bad reaction if they find out how badly you failed.”

My ears lower at that, and I say, “Right, that’s probably a good idea...” The ponies listening to me have these stiff stares which I don’t like one bit.

“You’re basically the reason every human ended up like this, just saying,” Twilight says, chiding me with a roll of her eyes, “People might not appreciate that.”

“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean...” I say, looking at the ground. Somepony’s stiff hoof cups my chin, and lifts my gaze to meet her own, and it’s Twilight.

“You did an amazing thing, going up against Sunset,” Twilight Sparkle says with a gentle smile, taking her hoof back to herself, “There aren’t many ponies who could oppose her. What you did was a commendable act of bravery. You just didn’t have the training you needed to stop her from taking advantage of you.”

Laughing nervously, I say, “Y-y-yeah I kind of had only been a pony for two months before that.”

“Don’t worry, Meadowsweet,” she says with a sadly sympathetic smile, “I won’t let her take advantage of you or anypony like that ever again. The next time we face Sunset Shimmer, we’re going to be prepared. All of us.”

There were smiles all around for that. Twilight excuses herself, and I separate from the crowd too, to see about if I can get some more food, and to ask Nick what he thinks about all this. I still don’t know what to think about her. She didn’t even seem to recognize me, but maybe she was just pretending?

“Nick!” I whisper urgently, coming up to the skinny stallion resting on a hay bale, “Did you see that? It was Twilight Sparkle!”

“Maybe Twilight Sparkle,” he specifies, staring suspiciously where the purple unicorn went, “Why is she leading this group?”

“Because she’s trying to stop Sunset Shimmer from turning everyone into ponies,” I say holding a hoof against my chest, “She wants to regroup in Equestria, where she can report Sunset Shimmer’s wrongdoing, and get the help she needs to stop her.”

“How do you know that?” he asks, looking at me in confusion.

We stare at each other blankly for a moment, before I cautiously venture, “I... talked to her?”

“You talked to her?” Nick squawks, shining green irises narrowing as he stares at me like I’m an idiot. “Now she knows we’re here! If that’s the evil Twilight, we could’ve hid from her, and found out her true motives!”

“Oh, yeah,” I whimper with a guilty wince, “Damn, that would have been a good idea.”

Nick conceals a surprised snicker at that, and I ask curiously, “What’s funny?”

“Just the things you say,” he replies in amusement, “Kind of funny to hear you say damn like that in a girl’s voice.”

“I...” I really don’t know what to say to that, but a blush does come to my face, so that is communication enough, right? ...right. “I can’t stop talking like this, you know,” I say in the voice of a flustered squirrel, firming my jaw and staring at him defiantly.

He laughs, saying, “And then you go and scrunchy face like that. It’s adorable!”

“I’m not—” I say furiously, cutting off and... and what am I even doing with my face?

“It’s called pursing your lips!” I decide on vehemently at Nick. He seems unimpressed though.

“You were totally scrunching,” he chuckles irritatingly.

I’m—I’m not gonna do that again with my... face.

Very deliberately relaxing my facial muscles, I chide him, “Okay, so I’m a pony. Ponies can scrunch. There’s nothing odd about that.”

Nick looks at me calculatingly, then leers and says, “It’s really because you’re a girl now.”

“It is not!” I insist, stomping. He doesn’t answer, just stands there trying not to laugh. Why is he—!

“You just said that to make me scrunch again!” I rage at Nick, while he falls over laughing because I sound about about as intimidating as Fluttershy doesn’t, and because oh my god is it hard not to scrunchy face, when you’re confused and extremely irritated at your best friend.

Nick and I observe Twilight as subtly as we can, but the story she gave me is the only one that makes any sense. Why would she turn people into ponies, get them incarcerated and tortured, then be here, helping ponies escape horrible places like that... that cell? She feels guilty over what she’s done, but still pretends not to recognize me for some reason? She’s completely insane, and sees nothing wrong with helping people out, after ruining their lives?

Or was I making love to Sunset Shimmer, who disguised herself as Twilight Sparkle because she was afraid of being rightfully judged as a villain?

It’s obvious, really. I knew that pony wasn’t really Twilight Sparkle, the moment I read what she’d been saying to that commissioner. She was some kind of deceitful creature who’d merely disguised themselves as Twilight Sparkle. And why wouldn’t the real Twilight Sparkle be hot on her tail? If I were Sunset Shimmer, I’d have pretended to be Twilight Sparkle, just to try and get us to distrust the real one!

It makes so much more sense than to think that the pony who dumped me was Twilight Sparkle herself. She would never do something like that! This Twilight Sparkle has to be the real one. She’s not like the evil one anymore, at all!

In days to come, I would fall in love with Twilight Sparkle all over again, though this time from afar. Gone is the scary, cruel, vicious Twilight that I had the misfortune to know. Twilight’s eyes are bright, and her smile sure seems genuine. She speaks of things in such complicated ways, but then stumbles over her words trying to make herself understood, because she cares about making herself understood to others.

I’m afraid to approach her, not just because I think she’d hurt me, but I’m afraid to dismiss the illusion, and watch the wonderful pony I see be destroyed once more. Though when I’m not inhaling soup and hay, I’m thinking about her, and asking about her. And everypony seems to agree she’s not just their friend. She’s their savior!

Twilight saved everypony from those awful cells, and in the original group she joined, she secretly taught them pony magicks until they could work out an escape plan. This can’t be the fake Twilight, because she’s helping us so much, and the fake one has no reason to do so at all. She’s putting herself at risk, her whole mission at risk, just because she felt responsible for what happened to us, and wanted to make up for it in any way that she can.

She is even studying how to change us back! Twilight can’t just whip something out though. That might make me suspicious, but her explanation really makes a lot of sense, even to someone like me!

“Sunset Shimmer was studying humans for years before she decided to use you as her guinea pig,” Twilight explains to me at one point, “Changing a pony’s morphic resonance is supposed to be close to impossible, and I need to know a lot more about humans before I could even think of risking turning one of you back into a human again. Sunset’s completely wiped out any traces of your old signature, so I might not even be able to restore you to the humans that you were, but I promise that I can restore your humanity. I’m sure you would all appreciate having fingers again.”

I’m too embarassed to tell her, but I’m actually not having much trouble at all getting around without fingers. Anything that I can’t stomp into place, I can use my mouth to do detail work, and unlike when I was a human being, I’m not alone anymore. Like I’m once working on hammering together some boards at one point, to make another wooden training dummy for ponies to practice on, imagining it were Sunset. Officially, they’re just for kicking practice, since we don’t want to damage any nearby buildings, or ponies, or trees when learning to use our hooves, but I think I know what’s on everyone’s mind when they slam their hind legs into this thing.

I like to imagine it was Sunset, at any rate.

The practice dummy isn’t anything like a pony, or a human for that matter, but it supports two large bags of sand that you can then kick to your heart’s content. Only trouble is kicking them tends to destroy the structure, if not the sand. I can hammer the nails in easily just like in the show, with the hammer held in my mouth. It was tempting to just stomp the nails in, but Twilight says that you do not want to crack a hoof, so it’d be best to stick with the hammer.

What I’m really having trouble with is placing the nails before hammering them. I can’t really see what I’m doing, with the hammer sticking out the side of my mouth, and I basically have to balance a nail in place, then hit it neatly into the wood before it falls over. Another bent nail, and I groan, cursing around the hammer handle I’m chewing on.

“Need some help?” Nick asks lightly, clip-clomping his way over to me.

“I’m fine after the nails start going in,” I say, staring at the boards in frustration, “But getting them in the right place at the right angle is just impossible without fingers.”

“Oh, that’s perfect actually,” Nick says happily, “Watch this.” With a twinkly sounding burst, a sparkling green light begins to flow around his horn. Concentrating fiercely, he stares at a nail, until his green aura ensrouds it, and he lifts the nail shakily up into the air. “Al...most...” he says tensely, then the tip of the nail comes down to rest on the boards I was trying to nail together.

“Thif if perfect! ” I say in delight around the hammer handle, “I ca’ hammer it in now!”

“Just tell me where to put it,” Nick says, swiveling the flat head of the nail around in his magic. I do so, then pick up the hammer, and give that nail a good decent, precise whack.

“Succshess!” I chirp, at the smooth passage of the nail into the wood. My enthusiasm dampens a bit then, and I drop the hammer even though Nick picked up a second nail.

“Though I guess you could do stuff all by yourself, with your magic and all,” I say, staring at the fallen hammer, uncomfortably self-conscious of my lack of a horn or wings.

“Nah, I can barely levitate these little nails,” he replies dismissively, “You can just hammer them in, just like that! I think it’s part of your earth pony magic.”

“But I’m just... hammering them in,” I say in confusion. “I don’t have any magic.”

“Whatever you say boss,” Nick replies with a roll of his bright green eyes. “Now where do you want the next nail?”

More evidence that this is not the Twilight Sparkle that I once knew, she is teaching the unicorns among us to use magic, just like she can. Even Nick, she accepts without hesitation, patiently instructing him in things I can only vaguely imagine, not having a horn with which to feel them. And it works! He’s lighting up his horn, along with the rest of the unicorns, and learning the magic of levitation, transmutation, even combat spells like a knockout spell that’s proven highly effective on humans.

Nick’s unicorn magic is especially nice, because I can’t stub his magic. My hoof, I could stub. A bruised hoof is not what I’d call a pleasant thing to imagine. But I can wail at nails as hard as I like, with Nick’s magic there to hold them. I end up working like four times as fast, and getting all my work done before it’s expected of me. Just whack, whack, whack one hit per nail, swinging as hard as I can without worry I’ll hit whatever’s holding them there.

Most importantly of all, Twilight is teaching Nick and the others the magic of teleportation. Not something one could master in a day, or even a year, but Twilight isn’t trying to teach us how to teleport. She’s trying to teach us how to open a gateway to a whole nother world. Equestria. That’s something I wouldn’t think one could learn in a lifetime, but Twilight did it once before, in pursuit of Sunset, and she thinks that with all the unicorns working together, she’ll have enough magical “oomph” to make a portal stable enough for all of us to escape through.

I can’t say I’m not scared at the prospect. But also terribly excited. What would Equestria be like? Where would I visit? What ponies could I meet? It could turn out that Equestria’s some kind of terrible place, but I have to think of my current situation. Our current situation. Running low on food, unable to be seen in public, trapped in an old hay barn of all places, we really need to do something, and changing us all back to human is... not something Twilight came prepared to do.

“I’m really sorry, but I just haven’t studied that kind of magic much,” Twilight tells me with sympathy in her voice at this downtrodden earth pony that I am. “My specialty is in teleportation, and extradimensional travel. Sunset used one of my spells to escape to here. I know—I’m pretty sure that I know how to open a portal back to Equestria, but teratomancy? Even if I did know everything that there is to know about the magic of shaping biological organisms, I hardly know anything about humanity. It’s not as simple as just waving my horn and turning you into a human. I have to know the particulars of what a human is, how you’re different from ponies, or apes, not just in appearance, but on a genetic level.”

Twilight sighs, and turns a page in her book, only vaguely reading the floating codex. Written in the strange writing of Equestria, it’s the only thing she could take with her from home: her own personal journal and spellbook. “Sunset Shimmer could do it,” the somber purple unicorn says glumly, “She’s had years to study humanity. If only I knew what she was doing, when she disappeared all those years ago... but the fact remains that she’s got a huge advantage against me, when it comes to altering your human biology. For all I know, she may even have left a trap in your pony form, and if I blundered into it, trying to alterate you blindly... well, neither one of us would like the outcome.”

“It’s okay, Twilight,” I tell her with a little smile, “Actually, this pony thing is kind of fun, and I know you’re trying your hardest to help us. In Equestria, there are more experienced terasolo...”

“Teratomancers,” she offers.

“Yes, that,” I say with a brighter smile. “They can help us, turn us back human, and... stuff. I’m just trying to say, you don’t have to do everything on your own.”

She looks up at me thoughtfully, while I tell her, “There are ponies who can help you, and guide you when you’re lost, and you can always count on your friends to help you out. Nick helped... me a lot, when I turned into this, and he helped me deal with Sunset Shimmer... breaking up with me. I dunno where I’d be without him. The only reason Mira’s not here throwing herself into helping others is that we haven’t been able to find her yet. Your friends... and your colleagues I suppose, and the princesses, if they can help us, all you have to do is bring us together, and I’m sure everything will work out great.”

Blushing, I have to add, “A-and that’s what you do, is bring ponies together. Through teleportation.”

A surprised laugh bursts out of Twilight at that last statement. With a twinkle of amusement in her large, purple eyes, she says, “You sure are something else, Meadowsweet.”

“Besides a pony?” I ask curiously, tilting my head.

“Be—that’s—” Twilight says, flustered, “I mean that you’re something special. People might say you’re stupid, but you’ve got a good heart. Nick is lucky to have a friend like you.”

“People say I’m stupid?” I pout, ears going down.

Twilight stares at me again, speechless. “It—just—ugh!” she finally exclaims, throwing her head back in consternation.

I’m the one who lets a little laugh escape this time, and I tell her, “It’s okay. I think I understand what you meant.”

Twilight looks like she’s going to object, but then all she can do is slightly shake her head silently at me, with a warm smile.

Twilight might not have exactly known how much I understood, but in the end I don’t think it mattered. When she smiled warmly at me, I think she realized that I’m not worried about being a pony, or even a mare. What matters to me is that she is here, and we don’t have to be enemies anymore, despite Sunset Shimmer’s attempt to poison the well.

Most of my diet is soup at first, then hay and... soup. Did I mention we were getting low on supplies? Dried fruit is available at least, and there’s always a big pot of soup going now, and some canned chili for when I can stomach it. I feel fuller and healthier now that I’m free, but as time goes by... I’m not menstruating. I can’t believe it’s been a month since the convention, but the fact remains that nowhere during that month did... weird red bloody stuff start coming out of me. So, with increasing worry, I go looking around behind the barn one day, until I find Nick, sharpening an axe.

“Hey, Nick,” I say shyly, sounding far too much in my opinion like that foolish girl who became pregnant, and had to tell her boyfriend that she’s having his unwedded child. I can’t believe it’s me who’s saying this. I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl. A... a colt, or a filly, who could be inside my belly right now.

“Hey, Meadows, what’s up?” he says, continuing to delicately levitate the axe against the grinder.

“Could you pause for a minute?” I ask, eyeing that blade nervously. “I have something serious I need to talk about.”

With a flick of his horn, he powers down the grinder, and sets the axe beside it. “What did you want to talk about?” he asks, with worry in his warm, green eyes.

“Nick, I’m—” I say, gulping, because it’s harder to say than I thought it would be. It’s harder to say it out loud, because that makes it feel like this is actually real.

“Nick, I think I’m pregnant,” I manage to tell him, a full-on blush hitting me, like I should be guilty about any of this. I try to tell myself that this isn’t my fault. I’m pretty bad at it.

“How do you know?” he asks in alarm, “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“Mira said I’d start menstruating if I wasn’t,” I reply, “I just noticed it’s been a month, and... I don’t think I’m menstruating, at least.”

“It’d be pretty obvious if you were,” he replies, head drooping in shame. “I’m sorry, Meadowsweet,” he says, his voice heavy with sympathy, “I don’t know what came over me back then. We’ve been... we’ve been good ever since, but it only takes one time. I wish I didn’t... have to do that to you. Meadows, what’re you gonna do?”

“I-if I can survive the birth I guess... I’ll have to give the child up for adoption,” I say unhappily, “There have to be orphanages in Equestria. It’ll work out fine. I–I just have to s-survive the birth...”

“Man, you’re pregnant?” he says in utter bemusement, “How are you feeling?”

“Well I haven’t... gotten sick, yet,” I tell him, “But maybe I missed that, when I was being held prisoner in... you know.”

“Yeah,” he says apprehensively. “But I mean how are you feeling, like emotionally?”

“I feel... trapped, I guess,” I say haltingly, struggling to express just how I feel, “Like I could just...”

With a small leap over to the side to demonstrate, I say, “I could just leap like that and get away from it, but now I’m just a pregnant mare over here instead of over there. The baby comes with me, no matter where I go. She’s still here in my...” I look back at my flank, “In there, and it’s still gonna grow bigger no matter what and...”

Sighing, and shaking my head, I close my eyes, admitting to Nick, “I just don’t wanna hurt when I’m giving birth. Otherwise it’d be... kinda... neat.”

“Kinda neat?” he asks skeptically.

“I’ve never been able to do that before!” I tell him more enthusiastically, “I’ve never had those muscles, those... womb... muscles or whatever. And I get to feel them giving birth. I get to... I get to give birth, Nick! I never thought I’d be able to feel that before! It just... I’m just scared of the pain, really.”

“Yeah, plus you’d be making cute little baby ponies,” he adds with a sloppy grin, “Who could say no to more baby ponies?”

“I dunno, considering how many...” I say uncertainly.

“Hm...?” he asks, tilting his head at me.

“A lot of people have been having sex as ponies,” I tell him in a whisper. “I saw like... three couples, and that’s just the ones I saw. And actually four couples, because one had the same stallion, with different mares!”

“Yeah, um... that’s happening a lot,” he says blushing. “There’s just so many more female ponies than male ones. You end up having to... share.”

“Wait, you haven’t been having sex with other mares, have you?” I ask him incredulously.

“No! I... uh... that is...” he says not very convincingly.

“Aren’t you worried about getting them pregnant?” I ask him tensely, “What about the ones who were guys?”

“Well, you were a guy,” he says defensively. “How do you feel about stallions approaching you for sex?”

“Stallions haven’t exactly been approaching me,” I admit, “But... well, you know, male/female ratios... and one did approach me once, but I kind of freaked about it. E-even though I’m already pregnant, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Nobody freaked on me, at least,” he grumbles, “But it’s really hard to just... not help a mare. Some of them just... can’t stop wanting it, any more than I can.”

“How uh... who have you had sex with?” I ask, looking around curiously, “Mira, of course, but I mean like, ponies you could impregnate.”

“Yeah, Mira, and... heh, actually I had sex with her in the hotel room,” he replies amusedly. “She was like ‘I’m so fucking horny, I don’t wanna walk, I want a cock!’ Luckily we weren’t um... having sex when I got apprehended.”

“Thank goodness for small favors,” I grumble. “So Mira, I can understand. But what about everyone else? I’m surprised you’ve been having sex with basically complete strangers.”

Nick shrugs. “It’s not like anyone could have contracted a pony STD in the last month. What surprises me is how many mares want me to take it all the way!”

“Even the ones who were former guys?” I ask, wide-eyed.

”Especially the ones who were former guys!” he replies emphatically. “They just don’t know how to deal with these feelings, especially since being a pony is more...” Nick frowns in thought, then concludes, “Intense than being human.”

“So how many have you...?” I ask with an apprehensive hoof lift.

“Just... one,” he says, glancing down, “I could tell the others no, but she really needed... something, at least.”

“So... is she nice?” I ask shyly, with an insecure sway in my hips. Because shut up, that’s why. “What’s her name?”

Nick starts to answer, then winces. “It’s sorta hard to say since most ponies don’t have y’know... pony gender appropriate names like you,” he says, “But she’s that cute green haired pegasus mare who used to be called John. I found her crying and uh... masturbating behind a crate. So, I talked with her, and told her it was okay, that ponies were just kind of... extra horny, so it’s okay if she y’know, has to masturbate, as a mare.”

With a sympathetic sigh, I say, “Wow, that’s...

...

“Wait, she knew how to masturbate?” I squawk indignantly, “Do you know how long it took me to—...” and here comes the full on blush again. Why do I even open my mouth?

“She figured it out somehow, I guess,” Nick says with an uncertain flip of his tail, “But no amount of... that is gonna give you a—I mean give one a penis again.”

“So you gave her a penis again,” I say, after a pause to think on it.

“Heh... yeah, basically,” he says in dark amusement, “She was crying because masturbating was making her, you know, want a stallion. She was too afraid to approach anyone though, and felt bad for wanting it. I guess a lot of people might be like that, but well... once I started talking with her, she just came onto me stronger and stronger. She was trying to tell me of her problems, but she was practically dripping just being around me, kept talking about how much she wanted it, a-and I basically just saw her rubbing one out. It wasn’t too long before we were just rutting like animals. I haven’t been able to get her to stop flagging her tail at me ever since. It’s kind of worrying, actually!”

“Maybe I can talk to her?” I say thoughtfully, “She sounds like she’s going a bit too far in the other direction. But then again... she is pregnant with your foal, so it’s not like you can do any worse to her.”

“Ugh... don’t remind me,” he says, hanging his head, “I don’t know how ponies could survive without huge overpopulation. There could be at least two girls with my child right now um... counting you.”

“What about Mira?” I remind him cautiously.

Nick blushes heavily at that, scraping a hoof and saying, “Yeah, that wasn’t... exactly... vaginal.”

“Holy crap, I am not ready to deal with this,” I say, covering my face with my forehooves.

“Well, some kind of crap at any rate,” he replies.

“Fuck you, Nick.”

Author's Notes:

Nick is such a nice guy.