So, um...

Yeah

um

I’m hugging a pony, no no no. I’m a pony hugging a pony, because a certain somepony decided to pull out the mother of all evil plans and transform literally everyone into a pony. I’ve learned how to walk in predictable ways, and engaged in fine manipulation in very bizarre, unpredictable ways.

I’m not human, and I’m not male. I’ve got a freaking vagina back there underneath my tail, that I’ve eagerly stuffed with dick, because somewhere along the line I just got too horny to care. The sun is warm on my naked back, because despite the creamy yellow fur covering my whole body, it’s still my skin. The hair on my head is a gorgeous, tangled, unnatural green, along with my lush, responsive tail. My fingers feel like toes, and all four of my toes feel thick and sturdy, carrying my weight with stability and confidence.

I’m not standing on my hooves now, but instead squatting down on my haunches where what used to be the bottoms of my right and left feet press into the riverbank and the creek bed beneath the water, respectively. The fur on my left thigh is chilled and soaked, right where my cutie mark would be, if I had one.

This would all be quite odd and... strangely satisfying, but what really makes it bizarre is the other pony who’s desperately cuddled right up in my embrace. My forearms bend awkwardly around to hold her close, and console her: a pretty little purple unicorn mare with bright pink hair, whose muzzle smells vaguely of squirrel blood. And she’s a pony and I’m a pony and that means she—I—does it really mean that... she seriously just did that?

“No pony would do this,” Janice says bitterly into my chest, while I try to get my brain working again, “I’m acting like a—like a cat, or something. It just keeps happening to me. It’s so easy to just... Meadowsweet, what... am I? What the hell are we?”

There’s a thousand things I could shakily stutter, but I don’t know what I should say. She just outright confessed she’d been catching things and eating them, and I’m pretty sure you don’t have to catch plants! The only thing she really needs now is someone to not be horrified of her, but she expects me to do the exact opposite. Not to console her, but to fear her, and push her away with an empty smile and false words of consolation. She expects me to fear her, yet to be afraid to tell her I’m afraid of her.

Am I afraid of her?

“We’re ponies,” I tell her bluntly.

Her ear slides along my chest as both of them go flat, so I hastily add,

“I—I’m really not sure what a pony is though.”

It doesn’t really help.

And so two little ponies leerily approach what they both know to be a freshly dead squirrel. I’m not chasing Janice all over the place this time, so it’s a relatively quick trip back for the both of us. I get a little lost, but... Janice takes the lead then, helping me find where I want to go. Soon we’re both standing over the corpse of a dead squirrel.

“So why did we come back to—to this?” she asks hopelessly, waving a hoof vaguely in the squirrel’s direction.

“I really should be more grossed out,” I reply, not even bothering to make eye contact with her, as I peer down at the squirrel. I lower my head down to it and take a cautious sniff. It’s not warm anymore, but still really... fresh smelling.

This is absolutely insane. This can’t possibly be true. We’ve been taught from... from birth not to do this, and our biology can’t be that much different. We have hooves, not— claws. I don’t have any—

Against everything I’ve ever been known to be a good idea, whether human or pony, I reach out my tongue and take a cautious lick. The bite of iron fills my mouth, as if I’d bitten my tongue really badly, but clearly I haven’t. Not just iron, but a salty enticing sort of flavor that makes me... yearn for a little package of beef jerky. Or a nice roast chicken. Looking longingly down at the gamey, ratty-furred squirrel with actual meat on its bones, I exclaim in mortified resignation,

“Oh my god we’re carnivores.”

“You knew?!”

“Hey! Hey!” Nick says, backing up nervously at my utterance of outrage and frustration, “I didn’t know know. I thought you knew!”

“I knew that ponies are hunting small game with their teeth?!” I reply, eyes practically bugging out from the sheer implications of this.

“What the—seriously?” he replies, with a near identical expression, “Since when?! With their—teeth? You’re joking!”

“It’s not like any pony can chase after something with a spear,” I say, a little off guard from his surprise, “But how did you know that ponies were eating... meat?”

Nick stares at me a moment, before saying more calmly, “I meant the soup. Meadowsweet, we’d been eating meat for the whole time Twilight Sparkle was here. What do you think was in the soup?”

“Carrots?” I reply in exasperation, “Celery? I didn’t notice any meat!”

“It was a meat broth, I’m pretty sure,” Nick says frankly, “And you—”

“Oh my god,” I groan, strutting in a tight circle, “All this time, it’s so obvious! Twilight even... she even—!”

I think there are tears in my eyes when I look at Nick and exclaim shrilly, “That’s why she had that beef jerky. She was eating it because... because she had to!”

“I think she ate it because she wanted to,” Nick says in aggravation, “Because she just liked killing cows—”

“No, I... I have to talk to Brian. She’s the... she’ll know what’s going on,” I say in a confused sort of frustration, or a frustrated sort of confusion. Frustrifusion.

“Well, whatever’s going on, don’t leave me out of the loop,” Nick urges in similar frustration, “How could people possibly be getting beef jerky way out here? I bet they’re hoarding it all to themselves, I swear— ”

He cuts off, noticing my alarm as his anger grows to genuine shouting. “I would kill for some beef jerky right about now,” he adds in a haggard tone, the grey unicorn drooping his head wearily.

“Look, I don’t know, I just... please don’t tell anyone about this yet,” I say, my tail swishing indecisively as I insistently bump Nick’s side with my own, “I think there’s something... going on, but I’m not a doctor or a... biologist or anything. I’ll tell you more after I talk to Brian, but in the meantime, don’t hunt any squirrels, okay?”

“I’ll... keep that in mind,” he says a little too hesitantly for my liking. So I just dart off trying to find Brian, or maybe that doctor whatshername.

Well, I find Brian at least. The blue haired, green pegasus mare, who is ostensibly a biology... grad student is just lounging around beside a tree, looking bored, nibbling at her wings. Hurriedly cantering up to her, I say urgently, “Brian! Brian, I have something really important to ask you. A big biological... thing.”

“Sure, what do you want to know?” she replies easily, the green winged mare turning her head, and spearing me with a lazy, or a tired gaze.

“Can ponies eat meat?”

“Um... yes,” she replies tentatively, lifting a forehoof to rub at her temple, gazing forward as she speaks to me. “Any animal can eat a small amount of meat, even herbivores,” Brian explains, “Ponies don’t typically eat meat though. They’re only opportunistic carnivores, generally when they’re deficient in...”

She falls silent, then turns staring at me speechless a moment, before blinking and saying, “Wait, seriously?!” with her deep purple eyes open wide.

“Seriously what? ” I ask, half stepping back with my hoof up, still all fidgety from how to say this to Brian in a way that’ll actually make sense, without making me and Janice look like some kind of crazed psychos. Heck I’m not convinced me and Janice aren’t crazed psychos! That was... I mean...

It just tasted so interesting that... and... I was so hungry for it, even though I’d already eaten... hay. Before I even think to talk with Nick, or Brian, I stand over that dead squirrel with Janice, having licked its blood, wanting it more than sex, when I meet the worried greenish gaze of the purple unicorn next to me, and ask, “So... how do you eat it?”

She blinks at me owlishly.

“I mean... c-can I try some?” I clarify, hoof raised. Her eyes widen as I say, “Please, it just looks so good,”

“Y-you’re shitting me,” she stammers, still openly staring, “You too?!”

“I don’t know. Just... I just want to try it,” I say, stomping in frustration. “How do you eat it?”

“I just bite it,” she says in a small voice, “I–I mean, start by licking it, and just... work the skin off with your... your teeth.”

I think in any other situation, I would have backed out of this. But I want it, I can smell the freshness, and Janice needs to feel good about herself. N-not like the squirrel’s gonna mind.

Craning down, I lick it again, tentatively. God, I never thought I’d like the taste of blood. There’s a whole... story in this flavor. “Then you—” she says anxiously and I’ve already bitten the darn thing, so the squirrel comes with me when I lift my head a bit. It’s all... chewy and slippery!

“H-hold it down with a hoof, and you can pull p-pieces of meat off,” she says, her anxiety dwindling to an open fascination. And she’s... kind of right I guess. It’s weird and gross, and you have to chew it like some kind of demented rubber, but it tastes like freaking pork chops I swear it even has this musky... smoky taste.

I feel really... worried about Janice, just standing there, while I eat her squirrel. Licking my lips because damn I needed that, I try to give her a casual smile, asking, “Y-you want some?”

She closes that mouth that was just kind of hanging open, and blinks. “Me?” she asks dazedly.

“It’s your squirrel,” I say with a shrug of my tail as I back away from it. (No really, there’s this tail flip that just feels exactly like a shrug.)

“I can’t believe it,” she says, with more wonder in her eyes than I’ve seen since I first met her some time ago. “You just ate that!”

“Well, I figured if you were eating it, it’d be okay,” I say, toeing the ground with a forehoof as she approaches her squirrel again.

“And I can just... just eat a fucking squirrel, right in front of you,” she declares crouching down to it, “T-this is really okay, if I do this?” she asks looking up to me anxiously, before lowering her head and chomping on the squirrel, just enough to roll it more to the side. She starts worrying at the skin, sort of... pulling it back. I guess that’s what she meant by... working the skin off.

Then she looks up at me again, and... I’m just sitting there on my haunches watching her, not feeling nauseous, not horrified or terrified or anything. I’m still kind of hungry, actually, and that just... takes the edge off of any weirdness.

I don’t have to say anything, because whatever confirmation she needed, Janice just goes to eating the squirrel in earnest. Crouched over it like before, eyes half closed as she focuses on it, pulling at the tough meat with her teeth.

At one point, she gets a big... strip off, and lifts her head, with the tip of it still held in her teeth, “Want thome?” she asks brightly, and I have to smile at that because yeah, this is what I’ve been missing. Chicken and pig and steak and... squirrel. “Go ‘heh,” she says, when I stand and cautiously move my head towards it.

I bite the other end, and for a moment we’re nose to nose, bound by a piece of rubbery squirrel meat. Her blush deepens at that, though it’s hard to see under her purple fur, and she lets go of the meat, turning away from me, where I’m left with nothing to do but chomp the meat and kind of... lift my head to toss it up so it lands in my mouth, masticating the stubborn thing. Everything tastes and smells like iron, and I feel great.

It takes her a while to finish the squirrel, occasionally giving me little pieces in what feels like the most twisted form of a kiss ever. The squirrel’s all skin and bones now, and a kind of unsettlingly normal head, staring off at nothing.

“Yeah, it’s...” Janice says with a giggle, pawing at the ground with her forehooves, “It’s easy to hide the evidence, you just dig a little hole like this, and...” Once she gets deep enough, into the grave goes that head, skin and bones. She kicks the dirt back over the squirrel’s corpse, and stomps on the dirt for good measure. “P-pretty cool huh?” she asks, strutting a circle on her impromptu squirrel grave, with no indication it was ever there. A bit of her nervousness returns as she searches my face for approval.

Then her expression falls into a mask of horror, and she says,

“Oh my god. Your fur.”

“What about my fur?” I ask, leering back, a little alarmed.

“How are you gonna wash it off?” Janice asks in despair, “Oh no, my fur’s already... practically already blood colored! Yours is yellow! ”

Oh. Oh no. I look at the hoof I’d been holding the squirrel down with, the nail smeared with dull red streaks that are certainly not yellow as the keratin of the hoof.

“Quick, let’s get to the... the creek,” she says, pushing her rear against mine to knock me into motion.

“R-right, if we hurry we can...” I say, as we both go trotting off, absolutely paranoid that somepony will see us like this. Yes I know, my reaction was... strangely unhorrified, but I don’t know if others would be the same, if it’s a pony thing in general. Maybe it’s just me trying to please Janice, or maybe we’re both crazed psychos or something. Thankfully, my creamy yellow fur washes off quite nicely, leaving only a dull stain that could be just about anything.

In fact, Janice makes it “anything,” by lifting up a blob of mud in her blueish green magic, and smearing it all over my snout. I only protest minimally. So then, my face is totally filthy, just like every other part of me, but it’s perfectly innocent, not-blood-related filth.

We haven’t really had shower facilities back here, uh... ever, and the water pump for the spray hose is electric, so outside of cleaning off in the creek, we’re a bunch of dirty, dusty, smelly ponies. Who eat squirrels, I guess. I’m honestly astonished that we manage to be so colorful. I’d have thought we’d all be dirt colored by now, but somehow, even a soft yellow like mine seems to shine through.

Cleaned off, I reassure Janice again that I don’t mind if she eats squirrels, and we part ways when we get back to the barn, because I really really really need to talk to someone about this. Not because I need to know, but because I think we all might need to know this, and fast.

“You think the nutritional deficit is because we aren’t eating meat?” Brian presses incredulously, turning her full body to face me, pacing forward for every step I retreat, “We’re eating hay! Hay and grass! Ponies are not obligate carnivores, or even omnivores! Nothing but an herbivore could digest this...”

Her excitement drains as she gazes out over the green, grassy field beyond the shade of the tree, before concluding in disgust, “...shit.”

“I really don’t know a lot about biology,” I tell Brian plaintively, attracting her attention again, “I majored in mechanical engineering, and only took introductory Biology... many years ago. But... I mean...

“Ponies aren’t... ponies.”

She blinks uncomprehendingly, and I look away, waving my hoof at her saying, “No, that was terrible. What I mean is....” Meeting Brian’s purple gaze again, I say, “Okay, so when Twilight lived at my... house, she kept a lot of secrets.”

“Go figure,” Brian says, rolling her eyes, “You were just the first person she duped.”

I persist in my train of thought though, saying, “But one of those secrets was um... meat.”

Brian’s looking at me sideways now, as I tell her, “Twilight hid some... beef jerky under some floorboards. I don’t know why she didn’t tell me about it. She never ate meat in front of me. Otherwise she just ate whatever I ate. And... also hay. But she hid some beef jerky, and I think... I think she might have needed some meat in her diet.”

“But ponies are eating... hay,” Brian insists weakly.

“That’s not all ponies have been eating,” I tell her solemnly.

“What do you mean?” she asks in a quavering tone.

“I... I sorta caught somepony on accident yesterday,” I tell her, “Eating a... a squirrel.”

Brian’s mouth drops open, and I add hastily, “I don’t want to say who it is, because I promised I wouldn’t get them in trouble, but they were, a-and... I think we’re supposed to.”

“Supposed to... what?” she asks cagily.

“She... didn’t even mean to,” I plead, wavering with my tail drooping low, “It just sort of happened. I think some ponies might have some kind of hunting... instinct. Because she could use her magic to... to incapacitate squirrels. Because we’re supposed to eat meat.”

When Brian stares silently at that, I add, “I—I tried some meat. Just... it should’ve been totally gross, but I tried some of the squirrel just to be sure, and... I never tasted anything like it, and it was kind of... good.”

“I... I guess that could explain our dentition,” Brian says, crossing her eyes to look at her own nose.

“What’s wrong with our dentition?” I ask in confusion, “We don’t even have fangs!”

“Um, we kinda do,” Brian says cautiously, “There’s supposed to be a gap in the mouths of normal ponies, between the molars and the incisors, where the canines are small and out of the way, if there at all.”

“A gap,” I repeat numbly.

“Yeah, like between hea and hea,” Brain says, opening her mouth and trying to demonstrate which teeth with her tongue. “But inth...” She stops demonstrating with her tongue, “Instead, there’s little pointy teeth on either side of the incisors.”

I feel at the rows of teeth inside my mouth with my own tongue, and... I guess those teeth could be considered kind of pointy, and a little longer than the teeth on either side. “Wow,” I say, twisting up my muzzle, and smacking my lips and... I have little fangs, I guess.

“I just chalked it up to aesthetics, since Twilight changed us however she wanted to,” Brian says frankly, pacing past the thick trunk of this tree shading us overhead, “Or maybe she randomly left us with more humanlike mouths. I thought it was just a characteristic of transformed ponies.”

“That wouldn’t explain Twilight, though,” I point out, “She’s the one who started out as a pony, and she was eating meat.”

“Yeah, but who could possibly know anything about Twilight Sparkle’s dentition?” Brian laughs, “We haven’t even seen her for weeks!”

Oh. Oh god.

“I um... know about Twilight’s dentition,” I say with a heavy blush flooding my cheeks, “Twilight Sparkle didn’t have a gap in her teeth. In hindsight, I’m p-pretty sure she had little... fangs.”

“How did you find that out?” Brian asks curiously.

“We... we kissed,” I admit leerily, “Twilight and me, we were in a... relationship, you know.”

“Oh that...” she says, eyes growing distant, “So you know her... dentition I suppose.”

“Honestly we didn’t kiss a lot,” I recall sheepishly, “Twilight just liked to lift her tail, and you know... tell me to penetrate her. F-from behind, I mean. And we’re not exactly in a good kissing position then.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she absolutely loved it,” Brian says caustically, “What with how your huge monkey dick barely fit inside her.”

“It was a tight fit, but it... worked?” I say with a guilty smile and a helpless shrug.

Maybe not guilty enough, or helpless enough, because Brian just rolls her eyes and turns away from me with an “Ugh!” shouted to the air.

“I’m just trying to say her dentition didn’t have any—” I try to reassure Brian, following after her, but she just flattens her ears and snaps at me irritably,

“I know what you are trying to say. I just wish you wouldn’t be such a jerk about it!”

“A jerk?” I reply in honest confusion. “What?”

Her ears slowly go up then, as Brian frowns at me looking... conflicted. Or ill. Hard to say. “I’m sorry, it’s not your fault,” she says wearily, casting her gaze away, “ I’m just... you aren’t a jerk. It’s just every time I get reminded, you got such a freaking amazing...”

Looking at me soulfully, a green furred, blue haired, winged biologist named Brian says, “Meadowsweet, I was a dude.”

“So what?” I reply, leering back with a miffed little snort, “I was a dude, too!”

“I know! I know!” she says, pacing in a circle of uncertainty and frustration, “And everyone’s all sorry for you, when you got to have sex with Twilight fucking Sparkle.”

“Why does—” I start to say, but she cuts in again, looking at me tearfully and saying,

“You got to do it as a human, too! You were a... a dude, and you just got to g-grab that pussy and just... just stuff your dick inside!”

“Y-yeah?” I say very tentatively, lifting a shy hoof, “So what? I mean, it was wonderful, but... she’s not a good pony. I s-shouldn’t have—”

“It’s not that. It’s...” the lime colored pegasus insists, pausing, torn. Then she blurts out, “I can’t feel that anymore!”

This suddenly emotional mare opens her heart to me, saying, “I don’t get to have that! I’ll never feel...” she blushes, but then frets out, “W-what it’s like to be inside a woman. A-all I can do is lift my tail and just wait for someone else to feel it.”

“Brian, I’m sorry...” I say, holding out a hoof to her, and she doesn’t protest me pressing it to her shoulder/chest, but she’s really tense.

“The m-most I could—the most any of us could do is find some...” she mumbles, her eyes cast down angrily, not at me, just at the ground. And everything. “Some brony,” she grumbles, “And let him feel what it’s like to... to cum inside. Because we’re mares, now.”

“It won’t last forever,” I tell her weakly, taking my hoof back to stand on, “We’ll get changed back... soon as this is all over.”

“Oh, will we?” Brian replies in an acrid tone, looking up at me, “Every time we try, it only gets more people turned into ponies. What if we can’t change back? What if there’s nothing left of us, to change back into? You’re saying you found a pony—a person hunting and eating small animals.”

“Y-yeah, it’s like her pony... instincts or something,” I whimper.

“Meadows, I feel different,” Brian says urgently, sitting down on her haunches and staring at her forelegs, ears low, “I think we all do. I’m doing things I’d never do, and... and I bet I could even dive bomb one of those cute little animals that run around down there. Maybe I’m not... me anymore.

“I want to eat meat, but I love grass, and it doesn’t make sense,” she says hopelessly, “I have wings and they feel totally normal. There’s no reason I’d ever have liked grass before, and hunting wasn’t exactly an urge I thought I’d have to ignore!

“I’m not a human at all,” she concludes in a fatalistic whimper, “I’m just a pony who thinks she was a human, who thinks she was a man. How could I ever go back, when I’ve gone so far, and...”

Standing, and spreading her sleek green wings, Brian says with a hint of wonder in her anguished tone, “I can fly! How are they gonna... how are they gonna take that away from me? Because I couldn’t fly as a human being!”

Sighing, she folds her wings, and adds bashfully, “I—I mean it’s just that it’s a more complex change to my brain structure than just plugging wings into it. It’s not that I don’t want to be human again, it’s just... I feel like it’d be even weirder. I’m... not...

...pregnant.”

Brian falls quiet after she says those three words, turning aside so much, she looks like she wants to hide under her own wing.

“Oh. ...good?” I reply, looking curiously at the suddenly quiet pegasus.

“I mean I went...” Brian says with difficulty, blushing fully now, “I went full girl.”

“Oh,” I say, eyes widening, “Ohh. You hadn’t...”

“I was just talking with... Jack,” she says, looking at the ground, “He used to be called Gladys, I mean, and he said he wanted to know how you’re... supposed to deal with being male. And I knew he was leading me on, but I still kept going be...because I just wanted it, and...”

“And he came inside?” I ask softly.

Brian nods slightly.

“How long ago?” I ask, walking up to the suddenly anxious mare.

“It was two w-weeks ago,” she says, looking at me as I come alongside her, “I haven’t been showing any... symptoms, so I think I dodged the bullet, but... I really enjoyed it.”

Her worry is plainly apparent, as Brian stares at me beseechingly, saying, “I felt like a girl, so much like a girl, and I didn’t even want to be a guy. It was just so amazing just taking him back there, and...”

She starts to look away, saying, “It felt... better than I thought it could. The... the moving in and out. The thrusting.” She returns to meeting my gaze though, saying urgently, “And I wanted it. I wanted babies. I couldn’t stop thinking about... about getting round and heavy, and... and he was putting it in the same place that...”

“That you’d give birth through, yeah,” I say with a sympathetic wince, “It really does sort of... make you want the whole shebang. It goes away after you’re not actually... having sex though.”

“Oh, so...” Brian says, slightly leaning against me, “S-so yeah that’s... normal, to f-freak out about it a little after it’s too late.”

“I dunno what’s normal,” I say with a sigh, turning aside to let her just... lean against me for some reason. Her wing feels so soft. “I was freaking out during, my first time. But I still lifted my tail and... did whatever I could to get... pregnant.”

I sink to my belly, and Brian sits with me, in the shade of this big tree. Pulling her wing out from between us, she lays it across my back in an oddly tender gesture, the responsive, green feathers sort of snugging around me back there.

“So, we’re mares,” Brian says in a forced casual tone, “Even in our... our heads. I have wings, and you um... have a tail. I mean we both have tails but—”

“Yeah,” I confirm, swishing my own behind me, “Tails are weird.”

“And now we’re gonna what...” despite herself, a smile breaks out of her face as Brian holds back a giggle saying, “Hunt small game, to feed our young?”

“Something like that,” I agree, distantly. “I just wanna make sure that it’s okay to y’know... that it’s not crazy to do that. That it’s natural, I mean.”

“It’s as natural as anything else about us,” Brian offers with a wry tilt of her head, “I just wanna know if there’s anything human left in us, to get changed back.”

“Well, there’s our memories,” I point out, “And um... our personalities aren’t that different.”

“...except we’re hunting and eating squirrels,” she counters.

“It’s not as big a difference as you’d think,” I respond, tilting my head thoughtfully. “Janice is still a sweet person, and her friends still like her, and I think she’s nice too. And she was really worried about what other people would think of her. It’s not like she wasn’t herself anymore. She’s just herself, and really... hungry, and just feeling like uh... hunting something.”

“Janice, really?” Brian asks, looking at me incredulously, “I didn’t think she could hurt a fly!”

“Oh shoot,” I wince, facehoofing, “I was trying not to say her name. She seriously is worried about it though, and the meat really is what she needs. She’s not doing it for fun, or twisted pleasure or anything.”

“Wasn’t implying that,” Brian says, continuing to give me an odd look, “I was just surprised. Miranda, I could understand, but Janice?”

“She ate a lot of meat in her diet,” I reply with a slight shrug that Brian can hopefully feel in her wing, “It was just supermarket meat until now.” Giving Brian a worried look, I add, “And I don’t think she’s the only one.”

“Okay! Uh,” the practical pegasus known as Patricia says, before the light of a campfire. The rest of us are all filling the open area in front of the barn, gathered around this crackling bonfire as she speaks, most of us knowing what’s going on, but not many with all the details.

“This is just a head’s up, for anyone who’s not sure, or doesn’t know about this already,” Patricia continues loudly, declaring, “Ponies are not horses! We’re a lot different from regular ponies, and that includes our diet! I know you’ve all been eating hay, but uh... the soup we were eating when Twilight was with us had meat in it, and several ponies have found... ways to keep meat in their diet. We can’t call it a scientific study or anything, but it’s pretty obvious that ponies can eat meat!”

The startled and nervous murmur that goes through everyone seems more like guilt than surprise, as Patricia continues, “So this might seem disturbing, but you might find yourself catching things, and even eating them, especially now that we’re out of store-bought sources of protein. If you do, there’s nothing wrong with you! We’re all feeling this sort of thing. It’s not human, but... there are a lot of not human things about us now! So it’s okay if you... end up doing that sort of thing, and there’s nothing wrong with you if you stop feeling... revolted about it! That’s what you really need to know, but um... Terra here has had some experience with hunting and trapping, so he—she is going to talk now, and hopefully we can get past this new... part of ourselves without being totally stupid about it. So Terra, what advice have you got for any pony who ends up doing a little... hunting?”

Terra steps forward into the light, a young earth pony filly whose colors I can’t quite tell in the orange flickering firelight. Authoritatively, she squeaks, “First off, hunting is dangerous, and you probably shouldn’t do it! Not because it makes you evil or anything, but animals bite back! We do not have access to any medical facilities, so if you get bitten by a squirrel, or a rabbit, or a turtle or anything, or gored by a deer... there’s a good chance you’re gonna die! That said, some of us are gonna end up hunting anyway. So I wanna teach you how to not get hurt, and especially how to deal with an animal you’ve killed. We’re not dumb animals, and I think... we can find ways to butcher, clean, and cook our meat. We don’t have the proper tools, or the... hands to do so, but I think what I know can be adjusted to fit with our really weird situation!”

She frowns then, and somehow manages to make her adorable face with those puffy cheeks look scary, as she says, “So anyone who’s squeamish about this stuff, or has any sort of phobias about blood had better leave now. The rest of you, this is sort of important for you to hear.”

Maybe a third of our group retreats to the barn to sleep, and not... learn about nasty bloody hunting stuff. The filly calling herself Terra then goes to describe in not so pleasant terms how to go from a dangerous living animal, to tasty, and safe meat. It’s all stuff that I never heard of at all, though it’s definitely stuff a deer hunter would know about, whether or not he resembled the pony version of a twelve year old girl. I certainly didn’t know that you have to drain all the blood out of your meat, not because of religious tradition, but because blood spoils extremely fast, and is only really edible in freshly killed meat, even for carnivorous animals.

Stuff like that we’re taught, like how letting an animal run is always a better idea than trying to stop it from running by attacking before you’re ready. Some sort of metaphor with wolves, how they let their prey think it got away, but keep hunting it or something. And prey, at least here on Earth, will be dumb enough it might forget it was being hunted at all, very quickly.

I think that filly teaches me more about hunting in one night than I ever wanted to learn my whole life. About all the unicorns are staying up to listen in on this, and afterward they’re talking excitedly in a little blessing, before one breaks away and trots over to me. It’s Janice.

“Meadowsweet, thanks,” she says in relief as she approaches, prompting me to turn her way in surprise. “I should’ve known you’d listen in on that speech,” she says appreciatively, smiling at me in the firelight, “You’re really tough, in a wimpy sort of way!”

“Thanks, I think,” I say warily, “But shouldn’t you be thanking Terra over there? I’m just here to learn about this stuff as much as you are.”

“Not about the hunting, about...” she pauses, shifting on her hooves a moment, unsure. “About hunting me down,” she says at last, “And not... giving up on me. I was so scared I was some kinda monster, and you were just... so totally okay with it. And it turns out that other unicorns were doing the same thing!”

“Other unicorns, specifically?” I ask skeptically.

She just honestly nods at that. “I can’t imagine earth ponies haven’t tried,” she replies with a sympathetic wince, “But you just can’t beat one of these things.”

Pointing a forehoof up at her own horn, Janice smiles, saying, “It’s just so super perfect at disabling whatever critter, and making it... safer. It’s like unicorns are all just earth ponies who come with built-in forehead guns.”

Blinking, she turns slightly and adds, “Okay, that came out a little weird. But you get my point.”

Nick also breaks free and heads over our way, as I venture to Janice, “Maybe it’s just that Twilight taught you stuff that’d be good for... hunting?”

She shakes her head though. “Twilight taught us some scanning and basic self defense stuff, but nothing really hunty.”

“I don’t think she was at all interested in teaching anypony anything that might be able to stand up against her,” Nick puts in, drawing Janice and my attention with his smooth tenor.

We both look at him, waiting for him to continue.

“Hey don’t mind me,” he says, with a blush, “You were saying?”

“O-oh, right,” Janice says, shaking her head slightly, and continuing, “All the unicorns who were hunting, everyone was just being... creative with what they knew, like how I used the stun spell, and Robin was using the levitation thing to spook things towards him.”

“I’d probably use the anti-bug spell,” Nick postulates, “It’d shock anything for long enough to... um...” he looks at me uncomfortably.

“...tear its throat out?” I offer, amiably.

“And, okay! Not pulling any punches around Meadowsweet,” Nick exclaims at me with some alarm, “You have the sweetest voice, you know?”

He looks at Janice and says, “N-no offense.”

She just rolls her eyes, saying wryly, “None taken.”

“What about my voice?” I ask in honest dismay. Mike’s voice is way sweeter than mine! “I can’t exactly stop sounding like this!” I fuss.

“Well, it’s just when you say... never mind,” Nick says with a sigh, “Anyway, I was thinking more like cleanly breaking their neck, so they don’t suffer. If you could even find the spine.”

“It’s pretty easy once you bite down,” Janice says, still looking palpably relieved that she can talk about this freely, “It’s kind of... this hard stick in the back of the neck, that you just bend until it snaps. Kind of weird um...” she blushes, perhaps not feeling totally free about what she says. “It’s weird how you can feel stuff inside a critter while you’re biting them. That’s normal for ponies though, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it’s your special talent?” I suggest thoughtfully.

Janice seems horrified at that though, for some reason, rearing up briefly and exclaiming, “Oh holy crap I do not want a dead squirrel for a cutie mark!” Oh that’s the reason.

“T-twilight had a cutie mark,” I fuss as Janice turns in worried circles looking at her own blank purple ass, “But nobody here’s gotten one yet. You don’t feel... cutie marky, do you?”

“Who knows, maybe in the real Equestria they have a different way to get cutie marks,” Janice says, relaxing now that she sees her purple hindquarters are not sparkling, shining, or otherwise changing in appearance from being smoothly blank.

“Seems like the more we learn about this, the more questions it raises,” Nick postulates with glumly drooping ears.

“At least it explains why Applejack kept pigs,” I say, flumping fully flat to the grass and mumbling my nose into it, “Truffles, my butt.”

Our life changes again, after all that. Squirrel tastes... better cooked than you’d imagine, but still pretty um... musky. It’s weird, because ponies are so little, so even a squirrel is like... they look like they’re as big as a large cat to me, or even a dog. Mice are the size of baseballs, not golf balls.

I um... don’t hunt at all, to be very clear. I sure wouldn’t know how to catch anything, much less safely! For the most part our hunting... parties tend to be unicorns. Pegasi can sort of dive bomb stuff like a hawk, but...

Okay I’m not saying ponies are evil or anything, but I never had to dress a corpse before, certainly not with my mouth, and it’s not as... disgusting as it should be. I mean I’m happy to help out where I can, if I can’t actually be out hunting things, but I just don’t feel like I could’ve done this as a human.

Was Brian right? How different am I from before I met Twilight? I guess maybe I’m socializing more, but I don’t exactly have a store manager breathing down my neck any time I try to talk with my “coworkers” here, so I can’t tell whether that’s a pony thing, or whether it’s because we’re thrown together by circumstance.

Unfortunately the only one of us who knows how to do this meat dressing stuff (squirrel, not stallion) they only had a year working in a meat processing plant, like a decade ago, but fortunately, it’s not all that hard to figure out. You have to get rid of all the blood, because the meat lasts longer that way, and... other than that, it’s just taking a knife or a hook we had lying around the farm and... cutting open the... I mean the skin pretty much slides off once you get all the ligaments and...

Suffice to say when washing the blood off my face, from dressing the corpse of a deer we had hanging in a shed, finding the fur on my muzzle stained red again isn’t what I would call... not-evil.

Thankfully I’m not hooves deep in butchery when everything changes, and Dawn returns to us for the last time. Oh, it wasn’t a surprise. We knew this was coming. Maybe we suspected it from the very start. But it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing one would look forward to.

Me, Patricia, Mira, and an orange and blue unicorn stallion named Robin end up drawing the short straws, so to speak. It’s not like I didn’t volunteer myself, just... it’s not the most pleasant feeling, leaving the settlement, and heading far afield to meet something you never thought you’d meet. Someone who might attack you, try to capture you, and put you in a little white room until you dies.

But I still go, because what choice do I have? There’s nobody else to trust, and the government could just pardon us all, no matter what terrible crime we committed in casting that spell. So me, Mira, Patricia and Robin all line up on what should have been a well trafficked road. Standing there resolutely, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble, the four of us await the arrival of Dawn’s convoy.

About a week earlier, Dawn flies in with some big news. Like, really big news. “Are you serious?!” the mare next to me squeals incredulously.

“Dead serious!” exclaims the blue pegasus with her pretty mane of golden orange, currently... cut short down to a slight orange mohawk. There’s something weirdly disturbing about that, in the way that a dead squirrel isn’t. “I haven’t seen them myself, but my CO has!”

A few of us are standing out by the barn when Dawn rushes in, immediately huddling together with us to tell us the big news. Well, specifically to tell Patricia. Dawn seems to think she’s the leader or something. There are five of us who hear the news, Nick and Mira, me, a male bat pony by the name of Peter (one of the lucky ones) and a female pegasus pony named Patricia (not one of the lucky ones... she just decided to change it.)

“Why would the President want to speak to us?” asks Peter in that soft, deep voice of his.

“Because we’re awesome!” Mira declares, swooping into the air with a beat of her wings. Like Mira, Peter’s a bat pony, though instead of her orange fur, with hair in sworls of pink and blue, he’s got a bright purple coat of fur with hair that’s orange, but kinda red, a captivatingly predatory look in his cool blue eyes.

“More like we’re screwed!” Peter retorts, not leaping gleefully into the air at all. “This is our fault! They’re gonna blame us for—”

“No, no you got it all wrong,” Dawn cuts in, urgently leaning forward. “Mira’s right. We... you all had training from Twilight Sparkle! You know more about... about being a pony than a hundred other people combined! That’s what the President needs to speak with you about. That and the... uh...”

“Apologize?” Nick cuts in crossly, “Promise to be a good boy? Dawn, these people hurt us. Peter could have died if his...” he glanced at an uneasy looking bat pony, “If his wing had set wrong,” Nick concludes soberly.

“People are going to freak out if they see a military convoy headed this way,” I tell Dawn, tail low as I try not to remember. “The last time the military got ahold of us it was...”

“They were desperate, and... and didn’t know what else to do—” Dawn starts out, and I’m not exactly shrieking when I interrupt, replying headily,

“They locked us in solitary cells for weeks, until we were saved from them! It’s only thanks to Twilight that—”

Okay... where did that come from? “That... nobody died,” I say uneasily. “I just... I know she’s evil and she totally screwed us over, but they were worse!”

“Maybe not statistically, but definitely personally,” Nick agrees, walking up to my side as I feel a warm sense of relief that I’m not alone in this. But he doesn’t get close enough to touch me, instead looking at me evenly and saying, “Do you think she would’ve hesitated to kill ponies, if that got her whatever it is she wanted?”

“I... I swear I’m not crushing on her,” I insist, blushing into the crook of my forehoof, before pulling my nose out and facing him, “W-whoever Twilight was, she was bad. People are gonna die because of what she did. I’m just...” shrinking back now, “Kind of scared, okay?”

“That’s why we need your help,” Dawn insists, stepping towards my demureity, “Think of how many lives are in danger because people don’t know how to be ponies. I swear it’s not... not gonna be anything like...” she huffs and adds angrily, “Look, my commanding officers are ponies too now. Nobody thinks you did this, and they really need your help.”

As compelling as her argument is, another pony steps up beside me, saying challengingly, “And how are we supposed to trust you, Dawn? Your commanding officers captured us, and tortured us!”

“Look, the fact that I’m still here means they’re not doing that anymore, doesn’t it?” Dawn says, hopping up in the air with a flustered wingbeat. “There’s no way that was done with any sort of approval. It was definitely illegal and— and I just...”

She lands, saying with difficulty, “People need your help. If you could just... talk to us.”

“We have to ask the others,” I urgently say, “None of us here can say if everyone in our group would be okay with this.”

“How do we do that without panicking everyone?” Peter asks, tail tight against himself in worry, “We’ve already lost so many. People’re gonna flip if they hear that the government’s headed this way!”

“We’ve lost so many?” I say, blinking back at the stallion.

He nods, clarifying, “Yeah, people... ponies are just taking their chances. People have lives outside just us, y’know. People they care about, and how are they gonna check on them? By leaving!”

“I honestly hadn’t been counting,” I say with a nervous grin, “I mean, Brian’s still here, and... um...”

“The only reason people are still here is that none of us are used to walking hundreds of miles,” Nick says grouchily, “We can’t just get in our cars, and drive cross country. Or what, we’d take the bus?”

“A-actually, bus service has been resumed, in... some of the major cities,” Dawn says with an apologetic wince, “Certainly not anywhere near here though.”

“Well, I don’t want to tell anyone if it’s going to scare them enough to ditch us and go out on their own,” I muse in frustration, slowly shaking my head, “People leaving to find loved ones is fine, but if we tell them about this, they might leave out of fear, and get in trouble!”

“I don’t really think there’s any avoiding it,” Patricia, the other pegasus says, holding a hoof up like she’s shrugging, “Somebody else in our group might have an idea what to do about this, and it’s not really right to keep something like that from everyone. I think they’re all listening around behind the building anyway.”

A chorus of ‘awwws’ comes from just around the corner of the barn we’re standing next to.

“If they’ve known where we are,” squeaks a voice from the much larger assembled crowd of ponies that Dawn now has to face, “Then why haven’t they come and taken us by force, yet?”

Okay, now Dawn’s talking to everyone, and nobody’s listening behind the barn that I know of. She stands before our big group, out in the early morning sun beside the barn we’ve been all living in.

“They don’t know where we are!” Dawn protests to our entire group, “I haven’t told them anything about where we are!”

“Then how did they know that we caused it?” some other pony asks.

“I... told them what I had to,” Dawn says, the orange and bluish pegasus fidgeting as she admits that, “But they don’t want to kidnap you any more than I do. They didn’t even ask where you are. They need your help not your... containment!”

“She has a point,” says a somewhat sonorous stallion’s voice, “Kind of impossible to contain this any more.”

“If they know what city Dawn was in, then they know where we are,” sighs sadly a morose filly among us, “They could just use their drones to canvas the area, or pick us up on satellite.”

“Except anyone who knows how to do that is probably a pony,” the mare next to her points out, “Doubt they’ve got any of that stuff working, with just hooves.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah!” the filly perks up with a happy smile.

“Why don’t we meet them halfway?” a sea blue furred, orange-haired unicorn stallion I’d come to know as Robin says, “Send out some of us to meet them like, in a safe location?”

“That’s a good idea!” Mira declares, fluttering up to the stallion excitedly, “But who’d go? What do we do if they don’t come back?”

“Well, I’d go...” Robin says reluctantly, “But I wasn’t uh... I was in the original containment camp, where they actually fed us, so maybe I’m biased.”

“Why would you be biased?” I ask critically of the stallion, “Someone who got starved would be biased!”

“Well, maybe I don’t know how bad they are,” he counters, “Not like there’s anyone we saved who would go meet the government.”

“Hey, I’d go,” I snip back, “I bet there’s lotsa people who would. We could meet the President!”

Less than enthusiastic murmurs surround us.

Dawn is with the entourage, flying ahead of them at a slow clip to lead them to the rendezvous point. It had to be alongside a road, but with plenty of foliage around to hide in, and a creek to cover our tracks, if it comes to that. While the orange and blue pegasus soars down, descending to the ground before us with a worried but pensive look on her face, several heavily armored vehicles rumble up behind her.

Of course I don’t question how ponies could’ve driven a car, because... they didn’t. The vehicles grind to a halt on an asphalt road that had thus far been only occupied by little ponies. The moment the door opens, we all scatter into the bushes before the troops can come pouring out.

Wait... shit, there are no troops pouring out. Instead, what steps out of that van is something I might have found familiar, if I hadn’t been living with ponies the last two months. I stare at him, we stare at him, peering out from the bushes alongside the road, hardly believing what we’re seeing. Not even sure what to believe at this point. It’s a single, toweringly tall, bipedal being...

A human.

Author's Notes:

Horses actually do have fangs.