“Okay, you lovebirds, are you ready for this?” Mira’s voice comes, jerking me awake. Huh? What’s...? Okay, I’m still a pony. Why am I in a car and...? oh.

Oh.

“We’re not lovebirds!” I squeal anxiously, scrambling up from where I am currently laying on Nick’s warm, furry side, remembering the potential pregnancy that might now be lurking in my treacherous groin, remembering what he did to me. “We just had a...”

Had a what? Had a sexual mare and stallion th-thing? I look in Mira’s general direction through the blanket and state, “It was just an accident!”

“Two accidents,” Mira points out in amusement. Oh... oh no.

“Three accidents, actually,” I admit guiltily, the blanket sinking as I hang my head.

With an inappropriate giggle, Mira replies, “He is really putting your new vagina through the ropes, isn’t he.”

She has no idea.

“Well enough of that already,” Mira says blithely, “Let’s get you in this cart and head on into the hotel.”

“It took you a while Mira,” Nick says unrepentently, his awoken form shifting against mine under the blanket here. “We had to do something with our time!”

“I’m warning you Nick, if she’s pregnant,” Mira says dangerously, “So help me, I’m going to laugh.”

“Mira you don’t have to protect... wait, laugh?” I ask in outrage, “What’s so funny about me getting pregnant?”

“That you quote couldn’t stop, unquote?” Mira says, sounding confused with herself, “I dunno, maybe I’m just weird, but all this crazy stuff is just hitting us so fast it’s hard not to laugh. What’s next, we get sucked into Equestria?”

“Wouldn’t that be a trick,” I remark wryly.

Our blanket ruffles as Mira grabs it, but then she asks in an uncertain tone, “So are you two... decent under there?”

“Sorry Mira,” Nick speaks up regretfully, “We’re both naked under here. I think somepony stole our horse clothes.”

“We’re decent,” I say, shooting him a look. “We were just sleeping after uh... y’know. After. A while after.”

“Okay then,” Mira says amiably. Her hands pull the blanket off of us with dramatic flair, and she immediately wrinkles her flat nose.

“Whew, you weren’t kidding about the scent!” Mira declares, backing out of the car door and waving the blanket at it.

“Hey!” I declare self-consciously, sitting up on my plush yellow haunches, curling that green tail around me, as if it could mask the... the smell of me. “It might smell bad to you, but it’s an aphrodesi...ac or something to us,” I tell her in muted shyness.

Realizing I stuck my head up where I can see out the window, I feel a little uneasy. “Are we the only ones in here?” I ask, looking around the garage in paranoia.

“No, so keep your head down,” Mira says, and before I duck my head down out of view of the window, I see she’s standing next to an honest to gosh laundry cart. I suppose that won’t attract too much attention? Certainly not more than two little ponies. Mira is also dressed in scrubs, like you’d see someone wearing who had to go clean out a hotel room, all that disposable flimsy blue elastic band stuff.

“Wow,” I say, sticking my neck sideways out the car door below the level of the window, to look at her and her cart, “Did you get that outfit from a janitor, too?”

“It’s a long story,” Mira says, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, hurry up and get in the laundry hamper before anyone sees you.”

Oddly enough, I get inside the hamper first. I just look up at the edge of it, then jump up there, then bound down into it. Then I notice Nick pulling himself over the edge. And I just... balanced on the edge with no problem at all. “How did I do that?” I ask in confusion.

“I dunno–oop!” he says, tumbling down beside me. “But... hopefully you’ll figure it out so you can show me how to do it,” he concludes, using a forehoof to push a towel off his head.

“I bet you’ll be using your horn soon,” I tell him hopefully, “Maybe you can just levitate yourself instead of jumping.”

Nick has long enough to say, “That seems... impractical,” down there in the hamper, before more towels rain down on top of us.

Mira is incredible, that’s all I can say. I don’t know how she got a laundry hamper, or how she got it down the street, all the way to the convention center. The sounds of car traffic resound around us. I’m afraid to look out the top, afraid to even peep. Nick’s body moves next to me, as the both of us are entirely concealed (I hope) by rumpled white hotel towels. At least the towels aren’t trapping our scents as much as that blanket was. I have had enough of Nick’s cock. If 3 times isn’t the charm, then I’ll eat my hat!

I don’t actually have a hat.

I’m actually kind of freaking out about that now. Am I going to be able to change back if I get pregnant? Can I even get pregnant? Why in all that’s holy is menstruation a thing? Am I literally my own daughter? What—oh we’re here.

The laundry cart jerks to a stop. There’s the sound of a rusty, swinging door, and then the noise cuts out, the cart becoming enveloped in darkness.

“Okay, we’re here,” Mira whispers, “Come on out of there, I think this place is safe.”

I pop my head out of the towels, to see pipes and wires overhead, and grey, unremarkable walls that indicate some kind of maintenance corridor. Sunlight shines brightly through the crack in the door where Mira rolled us in, and otherwise there are dim, overhead lights to keep anyone from wandering through here blind. Auto traffic blares in from outside. There’s a hiss every now and again, the steady whoosh of rushing air in the ventilation ducts, and the occasional gurgle of water in the pipes. As I swivel my ears away from the cars though, I hear muffled sounds of conversation drifting through the walls from far away, a bunch of people talking together. I can’t really make out any of the words.

Nick and I abandon the hamper, and I’m feeling a little bit extra naked about this, because for the first time, he and I are in a place where we could be seen. It doesn’t look like anyone’s here, but... well, my tail goes down, and maybe just a bit, I back against the poorly painted wall. Nick seems... marginally more confident, looking cautiously around. I wonder if he knows his nostrils are flaring. I wonder if my nostrils are flaring. I try smelling, but only get the harsh tang of metal, the sooty smell of unsealed fittings and motor oil, and a hint of moldy dust. Oh and Nick, and Mira, and... myself, I suppose. It’s hard to smell yourself, but I think I may smell like towel cleaning detergent.

“Alright, let’s see if we can find the Ventilation System,” Mira says, pulling the map out of her pocket. It’s a printout of the attachment to that damning email instructing Twilight Sparkle where to go in here. It’s a PDF document showing the secret floor layout of the convention center, including all the maintenance corridors that they don’t want people to know about. A bold, red line follows along those corridors, going to a stairwell, to a second sheet of paper, to another stairwell, to something marked “VENTILATION CONTROL.”

The way is obvious. Nick and my hooves make soft reports as we tip-toe along behind Mira, who being able to hold the map, is leading the way. It’s really spooky in here, and my twitchy ears keep picking up the sounds of a bunch of people talking and moving around beyond the walls. I wonder what they’re doing here? Nothing that would deserve being changed into a bunch of little ponies, surely. Twilight probably just picked a time when the convention center was really full, to infect as many people as possible.

“Alright, she doesn’t know I’m a pony,” Nick whispers, “So let’s try to catch her off guard.”

“She doesn’t know either of you accompanied me,” I quietly murmur, “I’ll make her think I came alone, then you and Mira can catch her by surprise.”

We reach the first stairwell uncontested, but have to hurry up its twisty metal spiral and hide, when I hear footsteps coming this way. Nick stumbles on the stairs, but Mira grabs him before he can fall. We actually make it all the way up to the second floor before the footsteps start dying away. Then we end up waiting there for a while, but silence descends again as the footsteps don’t come anywhere near us.

Laughing quietly and flicking an ear, I say apologetically to them, “Sorry about that. Guess these ears are a bit too good.”

“I don’t care if your ears are too good. Keep them trained,” Nick replies equally quietly, “We cannot afford to get caught now.”

I can’t help but notice that Mira is cradling a little pony Nick in her arm, as they stare down the stairwell, his ears trained at the diminishing footsteps. Nick is returned to his hooves, and we continue on down the next corridor, this time with me in the lead for some reason.

We don’t get caught, somehow. Twilight’s agents were right. This part of the building really is mostly unattended. Climbing the second stairwell, there’s a short walkway, and then an iron door swinging slightly ajar. From beyond it comes a steady thrum, that matches with the whooshes of air in the ducts, and through the crack, I can see a tiny patch of purple, in contrast to the grey machinery.

Backing away from the door, I retreat everyone back down the stairs.

“She’s here!” I whisper earnestly to Mira and Nick. “I saw her!”

“Okay, we can do this,” Nick says soothingly, “There’s nobody else who can. Don’t worry, Mira and I won’t let Twilight do a thing to hurt you.”

“If she... if something happens, just do what you have to to save all those people,” I say glumly, “But I don’t think Twilight would kill me. We just have to... stop her.”

“Hello, yes, I would like to report a terrorist bombing,” Mira says quietly over her cell phone. “There’s someone planning on releasing a deadly agent into the Baltimore Convention Center. Yes, yes I’m serious. They’re in the Ventillation Control, where they broke in from the outside. I need you to send your—oh, you’ll send them right away? What? Yes, yes I understand. No, we won’t try to stop them. Yes, we’ll let the police take care of this.”

She hangs up the phone, and I ask anxiously, “Why didn’t you tell them it was Twilight?”

“What was I supposed to say,” Mira hissed back, “A changeling queen from My Little Pony impersonating Twilight Sparkle is going to change everyone into ponies? We need her as evidence, or they’ll never believe us!”

“We can’t tell them, because some of them are drugged by her,” Nick adds, “We need to catch her red handed, or the possessed cops will mess up the few who are on our side.”

“So we just wait for the cops to come?” I ask, worried. “They don’t know how serious it is, and we can’t even tell them!”

“It’s too close to 1pm,” Nick worried, craning his neck up to look at Mira’s phone in her dangling hand. “She’s already in there. She could release the virus any second now!”

“The police don’t know what they’re dealing with,” I declare soberly, “They’ll be surprised she’s a purple unicorn, and then the possessed ones will attack the unpossessed ones. We have to capture Twilight, so they can’t risk doing that. Then once we get her, we’ll have hard evidence of her crime, that the corrupted cops won’t be able to sweep under the rug. I don’t care what the police said. I—I need to go in there.”

The two look at me in the dim light, before Mira says, “You just take care of yourself. We’ll be right behind you.”

“You stay out of the room while Nick sneaks in,” I tell Mira, “That way if Twilight uses some sort of freaky mind control that only works on ponies, you can rush in and save the day.”

“Yeah, good plan,” Mira says excitedly, “I’ll be your backup!”

Standing before the iron door, there’s nothing left for me to do. I’m gonna have to confront her, this mare who turned my life upside down, the first girl who ever allowed me to make love to her, who’s now planning in ponifying the entire world.

I take two calming breaths, then firm up my muzzle and lift my forehoof, pushing the iron door open wide. “Twilight Sparkle!” I shout angrily. Without my strong baritone voice, it comes out a lot more... whiney than I would have hoped.

“You!” Twilight shouts, spinning around from facing a complex looking machine, to stare at me in astonishment. “What are you doing here?”

The machine looks like some kind of a pump attached to a metal bell jar, with brassy levers and knobs, and an array of crystals all glowing with Twilight’s purple power. Several pipes from it are bolted to the powerful fans that dominate this room: great grey rectangles that hum with moving air and power. Around the fans, tiny skylights let shining beams of sunlight down into the dark, dusty room.

“What are you doing here?” I reply angrily, squaring off against her, “And what have you done with the real Twilight Sparkle?”

A flash of shock goes through the purple unicorn’s face, and then her beautiful snout draws up into an uncharacteristic smirk. “Figured me out, did you?” she says smugly. “You were so easy to manipulate. All I had to do was disguise myself as your favorite pony, and you fell for it hook, line and sinker.”

Lighting up her horn, Twilight’s purple magic raises a ripped off, bent metal pipe beside her, that she twirls in the air, then holds threateningly before me. “This’ll only hurt a second,” Twilight says, swinging the pipe at me!

I dive out of the way just in time, when the pipe whiffs past my ear. “Hold still!” she shouts, as I scramble frantically to my hooves, trying to look out for Nick. The pipe clangs loudly on the thicker metal pipes embedded in the wall beside me, as I see that Nick made it into the room. I don’t think Twilight has noticed him yet!

“Is that the best you can do?” I shout, trying to distract her from Nick. Twilight Sparkle swings the pipe at me again, with blinding speed. “Stop!” I shout desperately, leaping out of the way as the pipe again clanks against the side of the wall where I was just a second ago.

“I thought you wanted me to show you my best,” Twilight says in a teasing smirk to my sprawled form.

“Look, I—whoever you are, you can’t do this,” I tell her urgently, trying to get my hooves under me again, “Your Queen or... or whoever she is, can’t we learn to work together, in peace?”

Twilight blinks at me in surprise, and I think I might be getting to her! Even Nick’s staring at me in surprise. I hope that’s surprise. “It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a beautiful unicorn, or a beautiful c-changeling,” I say, stepping a hoof towards Twilight, “I–I think we can make this work. If not us, then... there’s gotta be somepony out there for you, who can give you what I... can’t. We can get help for you. You don’t have to do this. We don’t have to be enemies!”

“Enough prattle!” Twilight declares angrily—and then my stomach flips as my hooves slip right off the ground and I find myself falling sideways, only realizing that her magic has thrown me across the room after I smack painfully into the wall. Not the pipes, but the flat stone wall, that she pins me against so hard it knocks the air from my lungs.

I can’t... move, as Twilight Sparkle struts towards me, horn blazing, growling, “You think you’re so smart. You think you know me so well. It’s mere foal’s play to deal with you.” Nick’s silently creeping up behind her, and Twilight only has eyes for me. He’s gonna... is he gonna get to her?

Then Nick slams his shoulder into Twilight’s side, and I drop like a stone while Twilight hooks his forehoof, tumbling sideways as Nick keeps going past above her, slamming on his belly as Twilight lands on his back with his arm held twisted painfully against her chest. I scramble to my feet, free of Twilight’s magic, because instead of me, her magic has wrapped around the jagged, torn off end of the pipe, jutting in Nick’s face as Twilight howls, “Who the hell are you?!”

“Nick!!” I shriek, charging forward as Twilight looks up to me in alarm. I can’t let her hurt him! I have no idea what to do! I just run into Twilight Sparkle, trying to push her off of him, but I travel along with her as we both go down into a tumble of limbs.

“Don’t hurt him!” I shout, trying to grab her arm in my... hoof or... something? Twilight just breaks away from me, hopping lightly away from the fans, back to the center of the room.

“That’s Nick?!” Twilight blurts out, staring openmouthed at the purple haired stallion who was having a harder time getting to his hooves, “Why is he... you... you weren’t supposed to know he was a pony!” she declares, glaring at me angrily, “My agents should have captured him by now!”

“How could they have captured him before I knew?” I demand back at her, “It was the virus you infected me with that did this to him!”

“It was supposed to have a delayed effect!” Twilight retorts, as she stares at Nick in horror.

“We know all about your scheme,” Nick says, heavily favoring a leg, but standing, horn tilted forward like he was ready to charge her. He was probably ready to charge her. “And we know your virus is sexually transmitted. We’ll never let you turn on this machine, and we’re not gonna let you hurt anyone else.”

“Sexually tran—wait,” Twilight Sparkle looks from Nick to me, back to Nick again, and back to me. “Did you seriously...” she says to me, in honest incredulity.

“No,” I tell her defensively, tightening my snout insecurely or... something. “We did not. I—it was an accident. We were just... we were just experiment—”

“You did!” Twilight exclaims at me in astonishment, the corners of her mouth twitching. “You–hoo,” she says, stopping and crossing her eyes, then repeating, “You–hoo hoo ha ha ha ha” and then the purple unicorn just bursts out laughing. Not like, cackling, well sort of like cackling, but like, falling over with gut shaking laughter. Laying on her side and clutching her forehooves around her heaving chest, she doesn’t even seem to acknowledge our presence anymore as we walk up to her.

“Did we get her?” Nick asks in confusion.

“You turned!” Twilight gasps between helpless laughter, swinging a hoof at me, “You! You fucked... Nick! Into a—!”

Ignoring Twilight, I reply to Nick, saying uncertainly “I think we did?” Somehow, I can’t help but feel terribly insulted by this. Twilight seems to find our predicament far too amusing.

“What the heck did you say to her?” Nick asks, looking down at Twilight in amazement.

“Just do the horn thing,” I grumble at Nick, “I’ll go get Mira.”

Soon both me and Nick are on either side of Twilight Sparkle, ready to smack her horn with a hoof if she tries any magic, but actually Twilight has just been passively sitting there between us for the last ten minutes. Not answering questions, not dropping her Twilight Sparkle disguise. Well, it’s not really our job to question her. The cops’ll be able to loosen her up, especially after we have evidence she’s manipulating them.

While we wait for the police, Mira’s looking over the dangerous machine, trying to figure out how the controls work, or how you could shut it off. Powered by Twilight’s magic, I don’t know how it could shut off, persay. Just wait for it to run out? It wasn’t activated though, or something, so while it remains lit up, it isn’t releasing any sort of a virus into the ducts it’s bolted to.

Thanks to Mira’s phone call, the police arrive in force, hurrying quickly up the maintenance corridor in the loud pounding of boots on metal. Mira turns away from the machine, to look over her shoulder at the iron door leading into this room, along with the rest of us, saying, “Oh good the cops are—”

Then Mira snaps back to face the machine, as its pumps whir to life.

“What—?” Mira squawks, as beside me, I hear Twilight Sparkle say softly,

“Bye bye, cutie.”

Her horn—!

Twilight Sparkle vanishes in a bright flash of purple light, just as the cops burst into the room, while Mira tries to get the machine to shut off.

“Hold it right there!” an officer shouts in a deadly frightening manner, him and three other officers all pointing pistols at Mira.

“You don’t understand!” Mira shouts in panic, not even noticing the cops have their weapons trained on her. “We have to stop this or—”

A glowing pink, purple and blue dust floods into the room.

“Mira, no! They have guns!” I shout, getting Mira’s attention as she freezes, turning to look at the police officers in stiff fear.

“Don’t breathe the dust!” Nick shouts, “Get out of here, before it infects you!”

“What the hell is this?” the speaking officer shouts, looking at Nick in alarm. “Is that a—a talking dog?!”

“It’s a virus!” I squeal at them urgently, “Get everyone out of the convention center, before it spreads to them! Go!”

Surprisingly, it works, though the glowing dusty fog floating in the air is probably a powerful motivator. The police scramble over each other to get out of the room, and... hopefully the convention center. There’s an eerie silence after that, only the humming whir of the machine announcing it’s presence.

“That could’ve gone better,” Nick says distantly.

“...Well don’t just stand there,” Mira says shakily. She stalks over and grabs the broken pipe, “We’ve gotta stop this thing!” She has a few good swings of it against the ducts bolted to the vents in the room. Nick’s on top of the machine, trying to find a place to jam his horn, when Mira says queasily, “Oh jeez, this feels weirder than I thought.” Then she slumps to the floor, and... continues to slump even more.

“It feels kind of like you’re falling apart,” I tell Mira sympathetically, as she vaguely looks in my direction, but can’t really move anymore. It’s kind of... disturbing to watch actually. Mira doesn’t look like a half-pony, she just looks like a pile of um... stuff, poorly clothed in cleaning attire. I don’t have time to stare at her though. I have to break this stupid pump!

To our horror, screams of surprise and fright start drifting through the walls around us. Eventually, Nick and I have managed to break off one of the vents out of the machine, and jammed the pipe into it to stop the fan that was pumping its contents into the ventilation. Did I mention it’s really hard to dismantle a machine with hooves? Maybe I should try bucking it.

I have no idea if I can buck.

“Back off, I’m going to try something!” I say, shifting to turn my back to the humming machine. Nick hops back, and I guess I just... um... it’s like doing a handstand, right? Or... hoofstand I guess it would be. Well, jumping up trying to do a hoofstand on my forelegs puts my body in the perfect bucking position, and I... land, without bucking Then I hop up again a few times, before finally I just scrunch my eyes shut and kick back. My legs release like coiled springs. I feel my rear hooves slam solidly into the device, knocking me forward right over my front hooves, to topple into an uncontrolled somersault, tumbling across the room, and flopping out on my back on the floor.

“Did I get it?” I ask hopefully from down there.

The humming of the machine seems to answer me rather succinctly, but Nick says, “No, but the pump’s jammed anyway, so I guess the danger is... passed?”

“Mira, are you okay?” I ask, rolling to my belly and standing up again. (As much as a pony can stand up, that is.) On all fours, I walk over to Mira’s fallen form, saying, “How’s it... huh. You’re furry, at least. Your fur is really um... orange.” Her skin is swiftly bushing out with dense, dark orange fur. Not red-orange, but more of an orangey golden color.

“Oh, here comes her tail,” Nick says, craning his head down to pull aside Mira’s pants, letting out a bright pink and blue tail sprouting over her butt. The hairs thicken and clump into solid blue and pink stripes, as they bush out from the lengthening fleshy core of the tail itself. On her head, Mira’s old hair... melted, but the new hair is rushing out too, in more pink and blue stripes.

Together, Nick and I finish sliding Mira’s pants and panties off with our uh... teeth. Suffice to say, Mira really smells like Mira down there. Her legs flop limply open as they come free of the increasingly baggy fabric. It’s then that I find myself fascinated by her groin. No not in a lesbian way, but it’s fascinating how that part of her changes, to match... me. There’s a brief moment of terror as I worry whether I’ll have to deal with two stallions trying to impregnate me, but Mira’s slit remains a slit. It just... plumps up, the slit thins, and the whole thing droops out a bit, becoming more of a slot than a slit, still a handy entrance into that special part of her body.

While that changes, her legs bend and shift, curling in the shape of a pony’s legs, the shape that Mira’s going to be. Her arms flop up and then curl in front of her like a squirrel sort of, her fingers melting into the forming hoof. Her uh... it’s hard to tell if her neck is getting longer and thicker, or if the rest of her is just getting smaller. Ponies are actually kind of tiny, compared to humans.

“Well, she’s not a unicorn,” Nick concludes. Though Mira’s face is starting to resemble the snout of a pony, there’s no horn growing from her head. I’m still amazed that Nick is one. I’d think Twilight’d turn us all into earth ponies. I guess the transformation’s just random? Mira stares vaguely up at the two of us as the brown of her irises melts into blue, while Nick snuffles around under her shirt.

“Oh wow!” Nick declares, grabbing my attention. “Help me get her shirt off!” he urges, “You gotta see this!”

Mira actually kind of... moves a little to help. When we bite the edges of her shirt and pull it over her increasingly pony shaped head, she lifts her upper torso a little so that we can slide it out from under her. As she does, I can see what Nick wanted to show me. Tiny little bent limbs covered in orange fuzz are sticking out from Mira’s sides.

When Mira drops back to the floor on her side, they stretch out; the top one stretches out, at least. It extends from her like a little hand, then it jerks wide, growing before our eyes. With each involuntary jerk it spreads bigger and bigger, and further out from her. Between each finger of the growing bony hand, I can see an orange membrane of skin stretching and thickening.

“Mira,” I declare in mild astonishment, “You’re a bat pony!”

“Rrrglrr?” Mira actually manages to speak, trying to sit up, or... some analogue. We get her on her back, while she blinks with cool blue dilated eyes, staring with fascination at her own golden wings, then giving satisfied wordless grunts as they stretch with bursts of growth, surging out to either side of her.

“That’s pretty much it,” I tell Mira, and... Nick, too, I suppose. He observed himself changing, but I’m the only one of us who has witnessed such a transformation from an outside perspective so far, when Nick changed as a result of the virus in my um... womanhood. “You should be able to move soon, Mira,” I tell my sister, “And uh... talk, and stuff. Just gotta...” her hips give a satisfying sounding pop, as her legs finish rotating into place on either side of her newly pony snatch. “...that stuff.”

Mira does speak then, saying,

“This’sh so...

Freaking...

Cool!”

...huh.

“Is that me?” Mira asks and her voice has lost any roughness to it, becoming more sweet and melodic, not unlike mine, and... Nick’s. Seriously he’s got this smooth tenor that just makes you want to melt. Or makes me want to melt. Or makes me literally melt, when he fucks me in the back seat of a car.

“Oh my gosh, I have hooves!” she declares, stretching out her fuzzy orange limb into the fluorescent light, to look at it with a childlike fascination. “And I have wings!” she says, twisting around to look at the twitchy orange wings on either side of her body. “Am I gonna have to sleep during the day? Am I gonna hafta eat bugs?”

With a shudder, I say, “If you do, I’m sure they’ll start looking a lot more appetizing. Are you... are you okay, Mira?”

“I’m fine,” Mira says, then clears her throat and says, “Woah, even my voice sounds different!” She manages to sit up fully then, reaching her arms forward and wrapping them around her lush tail, pulling it up to her chest, saying, “My tail is so adorable! Oh I can even feel it!”

There’s something that just... melts in my heart as Mira manages to find such joy in what happened to her. Maybe this wasn’t so bad. Maybe Twilight isn’t... no, whoever that was, it wasn’t even Twilight. But whatever changeling she was under that illusion, the pony we faced was horribly evil, that much has to be true. But they also seemed... sad, somehow. I don’t know how to explain it. Whatever the case may be, Mira’s hugging of her own tail makes me feel better about myself. I feel sympathetic, but not for her pain. For her joy. I have to resist the urge to hug her right on the spot.

Wait, no I don’t!

“Alright, ladies,” Nick says after I impulsively crush Mira’s new pony form in a tight, grateful hug. “Let’s uh... we need to help anyone who got caught in this. We’re the only ones who know what’s going on, and anyone who got changed into a pony is going to be awfully confused about what they are.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Mira says, rolling her large, expressive, bright blue eyes. “But yeah, we should help um, ponies. Gah, why is my voice so cute?”

“Can you stand?” I ask her, releasing Mira from the hug to sit there in a pile of limbs. She looks back at me in confusion with vaguely dilated, cat shaped pupils.

“I dunno, can I?” she asks, completely unaware of her eyes.

“It’s about all you can do at this point,” Nick says flatly. “Listen, I’ll stay with you and get you um... situated. Meadowsw—”

Nick cuts off from addressing me, and snaps to stare at Mira again. “Wait, what’s your name?”

Mira blinks, looking at Nick cluelessly. “Miranda?” she says uncertainly.

“Oh good, that was only a ‘Meadowsweet’ thing,” Nick says in relief.

Mira’s eyes also widen, as she says, “Oh damn I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks for saving my uh... name. Miranda. Right. Miranda Brown. Mi—”

She looks at her arm, then asks, “Should I start calling myself Miranda Orange?”

“Hey, don’t joke about that,” I grumble under my breath, “Next thing you know everyone’s gonna be calling you Adrian too!”

So with Nick taking care of Miranda’s... thing, I have to go, just... trotting out, climbing down the stairs, and trying to find a way out of this maintenance area. The glowy viral fog is everywhere. It’s terrible. Floating all around with weird magic going on, like shifting pink and blue patterns in the air. It doesn’t seem to be affecting me, but I can’t say the same for the people crying out in alarm out there.

I follow my ears, down to the first floor, to wherever people sound more loudly. At last, I come upon a door that leads to a concession stand. There’s a pony slumped on the floor, totally unconscious next to a rather heavily dented cheap tin shelf, tongue sort of hanging out. She seems to be breathing, at least. Uneasily, I nose one of her splayed forelegs onto her chest, then pat it with a hoof. She’ll uh... she’ll be fine.

From there, I move forward, out of the private area into what must be the main lobby. The registration desk is empty, or possibly occupied by somepony too small to be seen above it. There are a bunch of people in the lobby down here, but they’re all ponies, every single one of them. Fur of all sorts of bright colors, some with wings, some with horns, most seem to have neither wings nor a horn. Glass windows and doors shine bright sunlight in to illuminate what looks like a couple hundred people, all changed into ponies! And they’re all lying down!

“Oh no! Are you o—” I start to exclaim, trotting over to one fallen body after another. “Are you okay?” I ask in concern, “Why’re you all lying down? It didn’t hurt, you? I—

“I need you all to remain conscious!” I shout to the room in general, “You’ve been affected by an... agent, of some kind, and you’re all going to be fine, but you have to resist any urges to declare your fealty to an almighty changeling queen!”

“Oh god a roleplayer,” someone moans in the crowd, or pile as such.

“How is she walking?” a younger voice pipes up.

“Oh uh,” I say, turning to face the pony who shouted, a little blue and purple filly swaddled in brown pants and a white button up shirt, and then I look around at all the others just...lying there, no longer moaning, all staring at me. Oh.

“Don’t worry!” I call out to them, “You can probably start trying to stand up now. The transformation doesn’t take more than a few minutes!”

“How do we stand up?” a stallion exclaims, while another stallion shouts, “Why the fuck am I a stallion?!” in a nasal tenor and a chocolatey baritone, respectively.

I start counting stallions. There are... not very many of them, that’s all I can tell. I get to ten stallions, before I realize there’s like five mares I’m passing up, every time I count another stallion. Oh dear.

“Are we ponies?!” one of the mares squeals.

“Why am I a tiny pony?” a tiny young lavender and green toddler pony shouts in a shrill squeak. Oh dear.

“I can explain!” I shout, stepping back at the array of ponies lying around the lobby. “You’ve all been transformed into a pony, from My Little Pony! I know it seems strange, but it’s true! There’s a new My Little Pony cartoon that came out, about magical horses, unicorns and winged ponies called—”

“Holy shit, lady!” another mare shouts out, braced up on her sandy brown forelegs, “Who do you think we are?”

“Who you are?” I call back in befuddlement, “I–I don’t know! I’m Meadowsweet, and I know that sounds weird, but it is my actual name. I just want you to know that you are not from a cartoon just for little girls. There are actually a lot of adult fans who—”

“Could you please just look over your head?” one of the stallions says, that chocolatey baritone who’s um... dark olive, with red hair.

“What do you mean?” I say looking up at the ceiling. I mean it’s a very pretty ceiling for sure, but—

“At the banner, lady,” the sandy brown mare shouts, directing my attention to a banner up against the bannister that says,

“Bronycon.”

The ‘r’ looks like a pony’s mane, the tail of the ‘y’ looks like a pony’s tail and oh my fucking dear.

“Stop giving her a hard time!” somepony calls out, “She probably can’t even read our human language!”

I look down at them again, blood rushing to my face, while the brown and... yellow mare says angrily, “Maybe she should have thought of that before changing us all into ponies!”

“Are you really from Equestria?” a grey pegasus filly asks, with wide purple eyes.

“There’s... there’s been a miscommunication!” I call out, stepping back from... them, “I’m a human! Just not a very bright one.”

Ponies get right into protesting, one mare shouting, “Then how are you walking? You move like you were born that way!”

“I’ve only been like this for two months!” I shout at her fussily. “It’s not that hard to figure out. You just have to—”

“And your name’s Meadowsweet?” the brown mare asks skeptically, “What kinda human parent names their child Meadowsweet?”

“Is that your pony name?” someone else asks.

“It’s not that weird of a name,” I protest a little irritably, “But I swear I’m just a transformed human, and it only took about a day of practice before I could walk... sorta. I–I’ve never even seen Equestria!”

“A likely story!”

This is not going as I’d hoped.

The good news is I don’t have to break down crying to get people to listen to me, and also I find a microphone, so I can be heard by all. And I’m not crying into the microphone. They’re all understandably shaken up by this, though perhaps not as much as people unfamiliar with the show. “Please I just want to help you figure out what’s going on,” I entreat them.

“Well, what’s going on?” somepony in the crowd replies.

“There’s a changeling queen turning people into ponies, so that her queen can control them.”

Uh...

“Okay, I know that sounds a little—” I start to say as someone interrupts, saying,

“A changeling queen has a queen?”

“I don’t know if she’s a changeling queen exactly, but she’s very dangerous,” I say warningly.

“If she wanted to control us, why not turn us into changelings? Why are we ponies?”

“I don’t know exactly,” I tell the blue mare who spoke, “But Twilight said that it would um... open the way for her queen or something. Into our minds.”

“Twilight Sparkle?” that tenor stallion asks in bafflement.

“Yes, sorry the changeling was disguising herself as Twilight Sparkle,” I make sure to clairify. “That’s how she got me. She earned my um... trust, and then fed me some infected cookies.”

“How do we know you’re not the changeling?”

“Because I’m... not... evil?” I say, blanking on just how to answer that one.

“She’s clearly not a changeling,” a sandy haired, pink pony more along my age says, looking at me unapprovingly, “A changeling wouldn’t be this bad at covering for themselves.”

“That’s just what she wants you to think!” a mature looking blue and pink mare declares. “She’s only acting stupid to get our guard down!”

“For chrissake, Richard,” a little purple and blue filly groans at the mare, “This is not one of your roleplaying campaigns.”

“If it was, my sanity would be around 25!” the mare fusses in a harried confusion, “Everyone’s a pony, and I sound like a woman!”

There’s a cough.

“What?” she continues, looking around in confusion. “No stallion in the show would have this voice!” she protests.

“Anyway!” I all–too-loudly interrupt her train of thought, “Everyone needs to stay here, and avoid contact with humans. I mean—uninfected humans.”

“That weird glowy dust is gone though,” the blue and pink mare says testily, “That was what changed us into ponies!”

“That dust was a virus,” I explain urgently, “One that can spread through the whole world if it gets out! We’re all—I mean—you all have to consider yourselves contagious now, until we figure out how it spreads! It’s really important that nobody leave the building!”

“Why’re you worried about that?” a stallion asks in a displeased growl, “You’re the only one who can walk!”

“Oh, right, I uh...” I smile hopefully saying, “I could maybe teach you how to walk. Or at least help get you standing.”

“Standing would be good!” somepony calls out from behind the registration desk.

This is definitely some serious trouble. While I’m trying to get everyone back on their feet—er—hooves, more ponies come trickling in, speaking of a purple haired grey unicorn stallion, who taught them how to escape their booths, or use the elevator. There’s people in the service area in the back, who are now all ponies. People keep getting surprised just because I’m able to walk pretty well, over and over again. It’s overwhelming!

And worst of all, Twilight’s virus pays absolutely no respect to gender boundaries. So many mares are freaking out upon discovering they have a vagina. Internally, I’m screaming at them “How would you like to be pregnant, huh?!” while I try to calm them down, and reassure them that they can handle this. And just as I start to get a handle on that, there’s a dark brown stallion in my face, demanding to know what she’s supposed to do about being a guy.

“I don’t know!” I squeak in fear at the angry brown and red stallion getting far too close for comfort. Why does he have to be he so freaking big compared to me? “Nothing? You don’t have to worry about getting pregnant or anything!”

“But what if I want to get pregnant?” he asks tearfully, “I want to start a family someday! What’s my boyfriend going to think?”

“Your um... boyfriend is here, isn’t he?” I ask very uncertainly.

“Yeah he’s...” the stallion looks over his shoulder to a mare of red hair and bright green fur, wobbling in place with her head craned down, trying to get into the pockets of a fallen backpack with her teeth. Her uh... tail’s all bobbed up and stuff. Definitely a mare. “What am I supposed to do?” the stallion asks, drawing my attention again.

“Just... help... him... her, I guess?” I tell the poor stallion/lady. “I don’t know. I’m her! I’m trying to deal with this too!”

“Well, what would you want, then?” the stallion says irritably, “What would you want, if you had a girlfriend like... like ugh my voice is so low, this is terrible...”

“I um... really like your voice,” I tell him honestly, “So she’d... he’d probably like it too. It’s just biology, I mean.”

“If you had a girlfriend, who changed into a boy pony,” the stallion insists, “What would you want her to do?”

Visions of Dusk Shine fanfics dancing in my head, I tell the stallion, “I’d be scared and um... vulnerable. Nobody could ever just come up and... impregnate me before this happened. It’s really unsettling to know you have a... thing going into you, that’s made for making love to a man, and you have these... urges to use it. So just... make sure she knows she’s safe, not gonna get... violated or anything, and that you still like her even though you... switched. Oh and whatever you do, do not hide under the same blanket as her, unless you want something to happen.”

As the stallion sways on his feet, making the ardurous 10 foot trek to his marefriend, who used to be “her” “boyfriend”, I hope I said that right. The mare he approaches doesn’t even look anxious like I was, but they share a couple of words, and the green and red mare does reflexively cover her muzzle with a forehoof blush shining through her blue tinted fur. I think that’s a good sign. At least they’re talking again. Honestly, I’m just amazed there was a girl attending Bronycon in the first place!

This year, people of a wide range of ages are attending the convention. They didn’t start out a wide range of ages, though. I’m counting my blessings, and Twilight’s lack of despicable cruelty, that there aren’t any elderly or obviously aging ponies here. The oldest one there looks maybe Twilight Velvet level at best, where you look at her and say, “Wait, is that Twilight’s mom, or her sister?” Anywhere from little fillies and colts, emphasis: fillies, to adult mares and stallions, emphasis: mares. So many more females than males, it’s no wonder I got...

...

It’s all so complex, is the thing. Twilight Sparkle couldn’t have picked out each and every one of their individual fates. So that means every guy who turned into a mare did so not because of her, but totally randomly, or if not randomly, then because of something about... himself. What does that say about me? I don’t get to ponder that question long, because that’s about the point when a dozen soldiers in hazard suits barrel into the convention center, and surround me with a forest of assault rifles, all pointed at my face.

Author's Notes:

A question to ponder for the—wait what?!