Nix peeked over the windowsill, into the courtyard beyond. Its once beautiful green lawn was pockmarked with small craters, some still emitting an unnatural black smoke that twirled slowly into the air, twisting with a sickening grace as the light seemed to warp around the edges of the numerous obsidian tendrils before they evaporated. Cursed rounds. The bastard UAS government had actually completed them. He almost reconsidered his decision to go back for her. Almost. The two heavy mechs facing the concrete barrier on the far side of the courtyard would give most anyone pause. Thankfully, he was not most people. He was just an idiot. Not as retarded as her, though.

He watched with a frown on his face as one of the Mk. III Angel Slayer’s twin gatling guns whirred to life. The barrier erupted in black flame as the explosive rounds shredded into Athena’s cover. The bits of concrete that didn’t explode from the impact of the bullets began to melt in the black flame.

Fucking cursed rounds. Designed to slay things that were...more than human, the damn things would chew through the Goddess of War’s cover in the next few seconds. Nix doubted the goddess’s physical form would last much longer than the concrete after that, and he couldn’t chance her prematurely restructuring. Not her. With a whispered curse, he dropped below the windowsill again and double-checked his black pistol.

‘I named it Umbra!’ a voice sang cheerfully in his head.

‘Shut up, Cal,’ Nix thought back at his sword. His normal shots wouldn’t work against the defensive matrix of the mechs, so he had to charge up a shot. Just like she had trained him. Or tried to train him. He usually lost his focus. He could hopefully take one out before the other one turned and evaporated him with its soul-destroying munitions. The human let out a puff of air, and began slowly feeding his lifeforce into the gun. Motes of light began spiraling around its tip, feeding into the endless abyss of its barrel. An audible whine picked up as the arms of the galaxy that orbited the gun’s barrel began to pick up speed, and the rubble around Nix’s feet began to shudder and bounce as the still air in the room was whipped into a cyclone.

The sound of the Angel Slayer’s gatling guns cut out. Fuck. They had sensed him charging his gun. He stood and leveled the pistol through the window, aiming for the mech closest to the barricade. When he pulled the trigger, every window in the room exploded outwards and the door blew off the hinges, clattering to the ground in the hall outside. A beam of light erupted from the barrel of his black gun—Umbra—and screamed through the air, slamming through the mech’s spherical defensive matrix and impacting the machine in one shoulder. There was a blinding flash of light an instant before a thundering shockwave destroyed the walls of his cover, sending a hurricane of torn wood and splinters towards him. The debris warped around him as it passed, impaling the wall behind him.

The entire outside wall of the room he was taking cover in was gone. He merely stood there, tiny fingers of smoke dancing from the tip of his black gun. Nix stared blankly at the ruined husk of heated slag and angular shards of metal that he had just destroyed in the courtyard.

“Cool,” he whispered under his breath.

Several moments later, he was running for his life in the courtyard as the second mech’s machine guns ripped through the wall a few inches behind him.

“Not cool! Not cool!” he shouted, juking and rolling under the line of fire as he zigzagged his way towards the towering mech. “Cal, I need swords!” Nix commanded, manic desperation making his voice crack as he sprinted towards the towering death machine in the center of the courtyard.

‘But there’s just the one...’ Excalibur whined.

Nix sent a wave of pure, frustrated emotion through the sword. ‘Durandal. Now!’ he thought towards Cal, somehow managing to stifle his panic as a few rounds clipped the edges of his body armor, easily fraying the carbon-60 composite and leaving lingering trails of black smoke.

‘Okaaaay,’ Cal relented. Sometimes, Nix really hated his sword.

A dozen yards before the hulking metal monolith, Nix’s foot dug into the moist grass and he leapt straight towards the Angel Slayer’s glowing optics unit. Excalibur flashed out of its blue sheath in his right hand. As the blade arced off his back, the area around its silver edges began to shimmer, and a translucent sword seemed to shift outwards from the blade. It flipped several times through the air over Nix’s shoulder before solidifying in a pattern of progressive, geometric tessellations. Nix’s leap arced downward towards the machine—a beastly pair of gatling guns rasped hungrily as they refocused on him and began to whir to life—while he snatched his left hand out and grasped the golden hilt of the newly materialized broadsword, the edges of it’s crimson blade pulsing with an unnatural red light.

As the Angel Slayer’s heavy weapons opened fire on the dive-bombing human, Nix’s form seemed to waver before it blurred through the mech in an instant, materializing and kneeling on the ground behind it with both swords held behind his back in a reverse grip. Sparks of electricity danced around the war machine’s shoulders before both of its arms slid from its frame and smashed to the ground with heavy thuds.

Nix turned and, with a graceful flourish, leveled Durandal at the metallic behemoth. “Hah, not so good at killing immortals now, are ya’?!” The lumbering mech turned on him with a hiss of its leg hydraulics, and the panels on its chest opened up to reveal a multitude of rocket tubes. Both hilts of the human’s swords thumped lifelessly at his sides as Nix’s arms fell limp. “Well, fuck,” he mumbled to himself as a battery of missiles exploded from their firing tubes and shot towards him, leaving spinning trails of smoke in their wake.

He felt a sharp tug on the neck of his armored tactical vest as he was abruptly dragged behind the concrete barrier. An instant later, the world around him erupted in a flash of white light, heat, and sound. Flecks of superheated concrete scored his unarmored face before tiny white embers erupted at the source of the wounds, healing him almost instantly. He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to clear the spots from his vision as the rockets’ flames faded. A tinny whistling keened evenly in both of his ears as he tried to make sense of the muffled sounds of battle around him. Through his damaged eyes, he saw a blurry figure standing guard over him.

As his vision fully healed, he realized Athena stood with her back to him, her shoulders flared back imperiously as she held her golden shield high. She slammed the butt of her spear into the ground, planting it and freeing one hand. Releasing a vicious snarl, she raised the hand towards the towering mech. Arcs of electricity raced along her forearm like sidewinders across desert sand, coalescing into a small ball of light before a booming arc of lightning exploded from her palm, piercing the Mk. III Angel Slayer and leaving a smoldering hole in the center of its armored chestplates. The machine shuddered for a second before exploding violently. Nix gaped at the goddess as she turned back to glare down her nose at him, the orange flames of the explosion behind her bathing her silhouette in a golden light.

“Where in the Hell did you learn to do that?! That was fucking awesome!”

Athena snorted. Nix almost thought he saw her blush. Probably just his imagination. “I may have picked up a thing or two from my father…” Her features immediately darkened. “And I was supposed to be covering your escape, you insolent troglodyte!”

Nix grinned at her and hopped to his feet. “Will you shut up and let me rescue you, already? That whole ‘sacrificing yourself so others can live’ thing is sooo two thousand years ago.”

“Rescue me?” She shoved the human before grabbing the straps of his tactical vest and drawing him into better shouting distance. “You fool! There’s an entire UAS Seraphim Guard battalion at this base that’s trained to kill those like us! That I trained personally! We’re both going to die here, now!”

“We are?” Nix said cheerfully. “Welp, guess I won’t get a better chance to-” His lips crashed into hers fiercely as his arms wrapped around the small of the goddess’s back. The kiss lasted only a second before Nix pulled away with a satisfied smirk.

To her credit, Athena only held a shocked appearance for an instant before her beautiful blue eyes began to glow with unrestrained fury. “You dare?!”

Nix laughed as he released her and turned towards the courtyard. A dozen Angel Slayers slammed into the ground from the dropships above and slowly turned towards them. He planted Excalibur and Durandal point-first into the earth, and shot Athena a sideways glance. “Yep, I do. And we’ll both have to live through this if you’re gonna kick my ass for it.”

Athena narrowed her eyes at him before angrily snatching her spear and turning towards the growing number of machines. She tensed and raised her golden shield as she noticed a handful of them spinning up their gatling guns. “I’ll make sure you live to regret that, human,” she said icily, not breaking her gaze from the foes before them. He could have sworn he saw the edges of her mouth twitch upwards for an instant.

“I look forward to it, goddess,” he said mockingly. “Now, let’s see if I can pull off that trick of yours,” Nix murmured to himself as he leveled his open palm at the mechanical constructs in the courtyard, the snaking, snapping tongues of electric arcs spiralling around his forearm and focusing in his hand as a whirring ball of energy.

As Nix slowly surfaced from the abyss of sleep, he realized that something didn’t feel right. There was something wrong with his body, a warm pressure across his torso. When the murk spreading through his mind evaporated as he awoke, he felt a soft rush of warm air flowing across his chest in slow, methodical bursts and something prodding into his side. He slowly cracked his eyes, his vision filling with the soft golden light of the sunrise dancing in through the uncovered window. Some of it, anyway. The parts of his vision that wasn’t filled with the large green head and erratic, burnt orange ringlets of hair—scratch that, mane—that currently occupied his chest. He pursed his lips and let out an annoyed puff of air.

“You know, Dancie, I would think you, of all ponies, would know the importance of respecting personal space.”

The mare mumbled something incoherent and pressed into him harder, nuzzling into his neck. Nix just rolled his eyes. He tried to free his right arm from beneath the sleeping mare so he could jab her in the shoulder. His hand felt weird, though. Numb. Must’ve fallen to sleep under the heavy ass pony laying on his side.

Wait. Since when did his limbs fall to sleep? He could heal severed limbs almost instantaneously. At least he could in most places. Equestria was weird, and he wasn’t anywhere close to being at full power. Maybe a side effect? He shifted slightly, trying to jostle the mare enough to free his arm. He felt weak as Hell. Dancie murmured in protest but slowly raised her head, smacking her lips discontentedly as the curls of her mane fell across her eyes. The human finally freed his arm and tried to prod the mare in her shoulder. A light pink hoof brushed across the hairs of her light green coat. A light pink hoof where his fucking hand should be. Nix froze.

“Urrgh, too early,” the mare grumbled before blowing the strands of hair from her eyes, cracking her eyelids and looking up at Nix’s face. In an instant, her eyes shot open all the way and her pupils narrowed, her mouth working soundlessly.

The stalemate of surprise ended almost immediately. “WHY THE FUCK DO I HAVE A FUCKING HOOF?!” Nix shouted, immediately raising his left limb and finding it matched the right.

“WHO ARE YOU?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY BED?!” Dancie shouted back.

“TWO HOOVES?!”

“HOW DARE YOU PUT YOUR HOOVES ON ME!”

He looked at the spot on his chest that Dancie’s head had just occupied. It was covered in pink fur. “AAAAAH!” he screamed.

“AAAAAH!” the mare screamed back at him, scrabbling her forehooves across his chest as she tried to back away even as her horn began to glow a dark green.

‘And here comes the part where she tosses me through a wall,’ Nix thought dejectedly. The green unicorn’s magic cut out, however, after her fearful thrashing entangled her in the blankets and she crashed off the side of the bed closest to the room’s door. Nix tried to roll to his feet—err, “hooves”—so he could escape the unicorn’s wrath before she freed herself, but his legs felt weird and constrained. He stood and tried to run before his blue jeans, ill-fit and oversized for his new form, caused him to trip off the same side of the bed as Dancie. He crashed into the roiling maelstrom of blanket and fiery orange mane on the floor.

The pair became an entangled mess of cloth, fur, and shouting as they rolled along the floor. The door to the bedroom opened with a small creak, a bleary-eyed lavender unicorn standing in the doorway and rubbing her eyes. “Ugh, what’s going on heAAAAAGH!” The blanket tempest crashed into Twilight Sparkle and rolled out onto the library’s inside balcony, the librarian unicorn’s surprised exclamations joining the other pair’s in a cacophony of confused shrieking. As they tumbled past, the timber wolf pup curled up on the floor outside the door cracked one glowing cerulean eye at the trio before snuffing and curling up tighter, dozing off again almost instantly. The rolling ball of ponies and blanket came to a sudden stop with a dull thud before Twilight’s bedroom door, Nix’s head slamming into the hardwood floor. He groaned in pain as the door opened, revealing a small purple dragon yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“What’s the big idea? It’s barely dawn-” Spike groused, his voice cutting out and his eyes going wide at the sight before him. Three pony heads poked out of the top of the blanket that was wrapped tightly around the trio on the floor. Twilight and that unicorn guardpony mare were both screaming and twitching atop a bright pink unicorn stallion, who was rocking his head back and forth while moaning loudly.

Spike blinked a few times before slowly shutting the door. With a quick shake of his head, he turned away from the door and waddled back towards his basket at the foot of Twilight’s bed. Clambering over the edge and crawling under the blanket, he shifted a few times before bringing it up to his chin, his purple claws gripping the edge of the blue covering tightly. He stared blankly at the whorls in the ceiling’s wood grain as the muffled screaming outside the door reached a crescendo before cutting out.

“Well,” he said, with a derisive snort, “that didn’t last nearly as long as Twilight’s stories said it should.”

When more loud cries began to erupt outside a few moments later, he grumbled, bunched his pillow over his ears, and closed his eyes, trying to retreat into a deep slumber.

“GET AWAY GET AWAY DON’T TOUCH ME AAAAAAAH!” Ridge Dancer wailed.

“Why does it hurt so much? Argh, my fucking head...” the pink stallion complained.

“Everypony be quieeet!” Twilight shouted at the top of her lungs. Her voice cut out and she ceased her struggles against the blanket and the two ponies trapped with her. Her horn spurted to life with a purple glow and, with a discharge of magic and a muffled bamf!, she disappeared from the cloth prison and reappeared on her hooves, glaring down at the lime green unicorn and the strange, pink unicorn stallion. The stallion removed his hooves from his head and glared up at her with cold, blue eyes.

“What the Hell did you fucking ponies do to me, Sparky?!” he bleated. Ridge Dancer kept up a stream of high-pitched, incoherent yammering as she futilely continued her attempts to escape from the blanket.

Twilight opened her mouth hesitantly, cocking an eyebrow. She briefly ran her eyes over the pink stallion’s face. Seeing the wild blonde mane and the piercing blue eyes in tandem with the familiar voice led her to the most natural conclusion. After a short pause, she found her voice. “Nix? Is that you?”

“The fuck else would it be?” the stallion groaned. “And what the fuck is poking me in my goddamn ribs?!” Ridge Dancer’s complaints immediately cut out, and she turned her head slowly to regard the pink stallion pressed against her.

Twilight loosed an annoyed growl as her horn lit up with a purple glow. An instant later, the two unicorns in the blanket disappeared in a flash of white light, and reappeared on their hooves in front of her. Nix’s legs trembled for a second before immediately buckling. He struggled momentarily on the ground before his hindhooves became entangled in the ill-fitting blue jeans he still wore. With an aggravated snort, he collapsed back to the wooden floor, staring over his bright pink forehooves. “Fuck this world,” he muttered.

Twilight flicked her eyes between the two unicorns, and said, “Alright, there’s got to be a valid explanation for this.”

“Yes, Sparky,” Nix huffed drily, “the explanation is, ‘Your world is fucking fucked, so fuck you.’” Ridge Dancer stood next to the prone pink pony, regarding him with a curious look and a cocked head.

“Nix, this is quite clearly the effect of a magical curse-”

“Yes, a ‘fuck you, Nix’ curse. I get those a lot.”

“-so if I can get to the root of the magic behind this, I think changing you back-”

“-to my non-fucking-pony, magnificent simian form-”

“-should be a simple matter,” Twilight finished, completely ignoring Nix’s interruptions. “Now, do you remember encountering any hostile unicorns, or dark, glowing tomes, or magical stones with glowing runes, or...pretty much anything that glowed, period?”

“Your horn seems to glow a lot around me, Sparky,” Nix said, his eyes narrowing. Ridge Dancer continued staring at him unabashedly. Her cheeks were tinged a slight red.

Twilight rolled her eyes before they settled on him with a flat glare. “I did not turn you into a pony, Nix.”

“Of course you didn’t,” the former human replied, his eyes luminescent blue slits. He raised his head and slowly pushed himself to four hooves. “I mean, it would be completely illogical for you to assume I might socialize easier in the same form as every. Other. Fucking. Horse-thing in this sanity-forsaken reality. What better way to make friends than as an emasculated, brightly colored fucking quadruped?”

“I only would have under controlled circumstances and not without extensive scientific measurements to record the effects of a sudden transpecies transmogrification on the harmonic leylines and thaumaturgical frequencies that resonate naturally from indigenous ponies,” the purple unicorn said matter-of-factly, her eyes closed.

“Uh-huh,” Nix deadpanned. Ridge Dancer’s blush deepened and she scooted an inch closer to the pink unicorn stallion.

“And only with your permission, a right granted to all sapient creatures under Article 7, Clause 3, Corollary Subclause 2.17b of the Year 843 Magic Propriety Act, which states in no uncertain circumstances that intelligent creatures may only be the subjects of magical transmogrification with their express, written permission,” Twilight finished, her eyes still closed and a satisfied smirk on her face. Her grin faltered for a second. “I probably would have, anyway,” she muttered under her breath.

“Uh-huh. Change me back,” Nix growled. “Now,” he added, taking a step toward the lavender librarian and pawing at the floor threateningly. Before he lost his balance and his jaw hit the hardened wood beneath his feet. “Oh, this is just fuckin’ great.”

Twilight sighed, trotting up to him and extending a hoof. “Look, I didn’t turn you into a pony, and without a few tests I won’t know how to turn you back.” Nix glowered at the mare for a second, before reluctantly taking her hoof and drawing himself back to his hooves.

He took a few shaky steps, then turned and smiled widely at Ridge Dancer. “See, not so hard at-” His mouth snapped shut. The lime green unicorn’s eyes had glazed over as she stared through him. “Uh, Dancie?”

“So...hot…” she whispered to herself before the fog sloughed off from her eyes. With a quick shake of her head, her gaze became fierce as her eyes bored into him. “I’m sorry, Nix. What did you say?”

“Oh, I said Twilight wants to experiment on me with painful needles and electricity for the sake of science,” Nix replied with a dismissive wave of his hoof. His sudden lack of a fourth hoof sent him tumbling to the floor again. Ridge Dancer shot a furious glare towards the lavender unicorn, who was ignoring the pair and had one forehoove firmly planted on her chin as she stared into space, muttering to herself intermittently. The guardpony’s horn lit up with a vibrant green glow before suddenly cutting out. She whirled around and took a step closer towards Nix.

“You said ‘Twilight’. Not ‘Sparky’. Twilight,” the orange-maned unicorn state simply.

“Yush,” he lisped, not even trying to remove his face from the floor. “Yer pointh?”

Ridge Dancer took another step towards the pink godslayer. “Why am I still just ‘Dancie’, and yet she’s now ‘Twilight’?” the mare asked neutrally, a dangerous light playing behind her eyes.

Nix planted his bright pink forehooves squarely on the floor, staring at them with intense concentration. “Well, you see, Ridge Dancer,” he said after a few seconds of attempting to stand, bringing his head up to meet her eyes with as much confidence as he could muster. “Nicknames are actually a WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!” Nix’s blue eyes widened as he shot a hoof towards the green unicorn, flailing it wildly in her general direction. Twilight remained relatively quiet, her mouth moving silently off to the side of the pair.

Ridge Dancer’s eyes narrowed. “I may not be a city pony, but even I’m not inept enough to-” Nix shot off the floor with a powerful spring from his hind hooves and he crashed into her, resting his hooves awkwardly on her shoulders as she let out an embarrassed meep! He brought his face uncomfortably close to hers, staring directly into her eyes. She gulped audibly as she felt Nix’s soft, warm, measured breath meander its way across her blushing cheeks.

“What,” Nix growled, “is that thing between your legs? And why were you jabbing me with it?”

Ridge Dancer cocked her head to the side in honest confusion. She glanced downward for a few moments, then back up with a horrified look on her face. She repeated the motion several times. “I-is that- Is that a- AAAAAAAH!”

Nix was immediately subsumed by a forest green glow and tossed to the side. His equine form slammed into the balcony railing and cartwheeled over the side. “For fuck’s sa-” He crashed into the first floor with a sharp thunk.

“Get it off get it off get it off!” Dancie wailed as she ran in circles on the balcony above, frightened tears spraying from her closed eyes. Her hoof caught an uneven board in the floor, and her eyes shot open as she sailed through the air towards the stairwell. She impacted with the curved wall bordering the stairs and curled into herself as she began tumbling downward. As she hit the first floor, she unfurled herself and landed on all four hooves. Glancing back at the stairs, she nodded at some internal thought and a satisfied smirk bloomed on her face. She confidently took a step forward. She yelped as pain shot through one of her forehooves and it crumpled beneath her.

Bon Bon did her best to focus on the steady black drips coming from the coffee maker. It gurgled angrily at her intermittently, before falling silent after a particularly protracted spell of animated burbles. She shot a furtive glance to the stairwell. The slight hissing of the coffee machine completing its task and shutting itself off was the only sound in the house. There was no familiar sound of hooves trudging down the stairs from above. Bon Bon frowned, tearing her eyes away from the stairs and snatching the coffee pot with an annoyed huff.

As she poured herself a cup of coffee, her eyes wandered back towards the stairwell. She hadn’t seen Lyra in the last two days. Ever since the day after the party, when the mint-colored mare had stumbled home in the evening, muttering incoherently about the Everfree and dark gods, she had seemed different. Then, a couple days ago, Bon Bon heard the front door open, reminding herself to oil its hinges as it chirped out with a small squeak. She turned around from the steaming pots on the oven to see a green blur racing up the steps before hearing a door upstairs slam shut.

While Bon Bon was always an early riser, her best friend was usually awake early enough that they could chat for a bit before the earthpony mare headed to her job at the family confectionary. It was one of the things she looked forward to, every morning. But these last two mornings…

The earth mare sighed and set her cup down. She wandered up the stairs to Lyra’s door, her hoof hovering for a second before she knocked quietly.

“Lyra?”

There was no response. Bon Bon exhorted an annoyed snuffle, and turned to leave. A barely audible noise halted her hooves. She stopped, turning and putting one cream-colored ear against the door. She heard muffled mewling from beyond and scowled. With a deft flick of her forehoove, she turned the knob and the door slowly creaked open.

A horrified gasp escaped her lungs as she recoiled from the musty odor that assailed her. The walls were covered in tattered sheets of papyrus, all coated in black ink save for two glaringly empty spots of bright beige on each page. They all fluttered slightly at the slight rush of air that came from the opening door, a sea of shadows murmuring silently at her intrusion. An assortment of empty inkwells, trinkets, and ratty quills—their feathers splotched with a clotted black ink—carpeted the floor.

“Uh, Lyra?” Bon Bon asked shakily. Her query was met by a sharp gasp, and the earth mare flicked her gaze to the noise. Her green friend was hunched over her desk, seemingly frozen. Lyra’s head turned slowly, a terrified gaze regarding the cream-colored intrusion into her room. A frightening amount of crusted blood matted her mane and the fur around a seeping wound above one of her eyes.

“Shut. The. Door,” Lyra whispered raggedly, one of her eyelids twitching.

“Uh, Lyra, are you oka-”

“Shut the door before it finds us!” she shrieked before immediately shooting both forehooves to her mouth. Her eyes rolled wildly about the room, scanning fearfully for any malevolent intrusion. Bon Bon cocked her head to the side, a look of sad concern on her face, before Lyra zipped passed her and slammed her bedroom door shut. She leaned against it, hyperventilating deeply for a few seconds, before meeting her friend’s light blue eyes. “If you leave it open, the Dark One may find entrance!” she hissed.

“Okaaay, Lyra,” Bon Bon replied dubiously, before cantering forward to get a closer look at Lyra’s head injury. She drew her head back and focused on Lyra’s shimmering golden eyes. “Hon, this looks infected. We should really get you to a hospital.”

“No! The Dark God lies in wait out there. They say he—it—left, but then it found me in the park...It’s not safe out there, Bonnie. Not safe to sleep, either. He might eat dreams. Haven’t slept for days. He won’t get me, hahah!” The aquamarine unicorn slid down her bedroom door into a pitiful heap at the bottom. She slowly raised her head and settled two pleading, amber irises on her deeply confused earth mare roommate. “Please...please don’t make me go out there again. It’s always watching!” She shifted her gaze to the numerous papyruses tacked onto her wall, cringing slightly at the myriad ‘eyes’ on their fibrous surfaces. She flinched when a cream-colored hoof rested softly on her shoulders before Bon Bon pressed her forehead softly into her friend’s.

“Lyra, hon, what are you talking about?” she murmured softly. “You’ve been acting strange the last coupla days, and you really should get this cut looked at.” She drew her head back, scrunching her nose. “It smells infected. You can’t just hole up in your room like this with an infection. You need to see a doctor.”

“But- but-” Lyra protested.

“No buts,” Bon Bon interrupted. “You’re going to see a doc if I have to drag you there myself, and we both know I’m more than capable of doing it.” She smiled slightly. The smile evaporated when Lyra’s hooves shot to her shoulders and began shaking her.

“You don’t understand. You don’t understand! We are nothing before it! We-”

Bon Bon rubbed her friend’s shoulders soothingly. “Shh-shh. What don’t I understand, Ms. Heartstrings?” she asked with soft smile. “What is this ‘Dark One’ you keep whispering about?”

Lyra’s eyes shifted from side to side for a few seconds, before settling on the calm blue orbs of her best friend. She rushed out a hurried, hushed explanation, Bon Bon’s eyes growing harder the longer the unicorn mare continued her tale. After Lyra finished and slumped further against the door, Bon Bon nodded once to herself before nosing underneath one of the unicorn’s legs and throwing it over her shoulder.

Propping the mint-green unicorn up, she slowly led Lyra to her bed, whispering comforting words to her along the way. With surprising ease, she lifted the mare up into her bed and gingerly tucked her in, nuzzling her gently and holding her in a hug until her friend’s breath became more even, her aquamarine chest rising and falling deeply as the unicorn mare slept.

“Now don’t you worry, Ly,” she said softly. “Your best pal Bonnie is gonna take care of things.” She slowly released her friend and slipped off the bed, trodding silently to the door. She gave one last wayward glance to her sleeping friend, a look of haunted pity on her face, before she clenched her jaws and exited the room. She locked the front door to her house as she set off towards the center of Ponyville, her features a hard mask of granite and fury.

Nopony hurts her friend like this. Not even an alien.

Nix frowned as he tore another length of denim off of his blue jeans with his mouth, his forehooves fumbling the strip of fabric as he tried wrapping it around the swollen green limb.

“I have no idea how in the Hell you use these damn things,” he muttered. His piercing blue eyes lifted from Ridge Dancer’s leg and bored into hers angrily. He imagined being a bright pink fucking unicorn lessened the sheer amount of aggravation he was trying to convey to his guardpony. “Tossing yourself down a set of stairs, Dancie? Really?”

“S-sorry,” she mumbled. She was lying on her back on one of the sofas in the library’s main chamber. Dancie’s left leg was wrapped tightly with torn denim strips to immobilize her sprain. Nix was fumbling with one last strip between his mouth and his forehooves, before it slipped from his grasp and his hooves grazed across Ridge Dancer’s shin. She winced and hissed a breath of air between her teeth, inviting an apologetic gaze from the bright pink stallion tending her sprain.

“Shit, sorry. It’s been a while since I had to field dress a wound like this…” Nix chuckled mirthlessly before he looked away. “Sorry I can’t heal your injury correctly.” He had tried. He had drawn from his lifeforce and formed healing weaves the second he was able to pick himself up off the ground and make it over to Ridge Dancer. They rebounded weirdly and seemed to bounce around in his skull before dying an ineffectual death. Nix did the next best thing, and began tearing strips from his blue jeans with his teeth..

Fucking pony world. God-like power and here he was tearing shreds from his pants to set a sprain. The irony did little to mitigate his searing headache from slamming into the wood floor earlier. Figures. A curse gives Dancie a damn phallus, and he can’t even heal his own damn headache. He made a mental note to hate this world even harder than he already did before clamping down on a bit of denim with his teeth and pulling it tight with his hooves, readjusting Ridge’s forehoove and eliciting a pained hiss from between her lips.

“Shh-shh, you should be good after that last one,” Nix intoned softly. The mare beneath him met his eyes for a moment before glancing away, blushing more deeply. Nix drew his head back slowly. “Oh. Oh, no. Not gonna happen, Dancie.”

The mare glanced back at him with a confused gaze.

“Look, I’ve been around enough to know...what it’s like to ‘be around’,” he said, slowly withdrawing from the prone mare. “I have no intention of staying in this form longer than I have to, and I really don’t find ponies’ physical forms all that enticing.”

Ridge Dancer’s eyes widened. “N-no, it’s just that- I mean, you were-!” she sputtered out. With a frown, she broke the former human’s gaze and sulked. “Stupid stallions.”

Nix snickered slightly before he caught himself, and prodded the unicorn mare on the couch with one hoof. She glanced back at him, and he shot her his most winning smile. She blushed again, and Nix immediately dropped the smile.

“Look,” he said, “you wanna have this discussion again when I’m back to being a flat-faced primate, we can do that.”

“Really?” Dancie asked, her excitement poorly concealed.

Nix regarded her curiously for a moment. “Uh, sure, kid.” The unicorn mare beamed up at him. He did his best not to frown back. “But you should know things...probably won’t change in the least. Most especially my sensibilities.”

Ridge Dancer cocked her head to the side at that, but was interrupted from her thoughts by an excited exclamation from the lavender librarian off to the side.

“That’s it!” Twilight trotted over to the pair from the foot of the stairs, Nix’s charcoal duster held between her teeth. “Probably,” Nix thought he heard her mumble.

“First, don’t touch my fucking jacket. Second, how can you even talk with that in your mouth?”

Twilight spat his trenchcoat out and cocked her head in momentary confusion, before shaking it off and smiling. “I’m pretty sure I know what happened, but there’s just one thing I need to check, first.”

With a scowl, Nix raised one forehoof and twirled it in small circles. Weirdly enough, in pretty much every reality he had visited, the ‘get-to-the-fucking-point’ gesture seemed almost universal. Almost. Part of his aversion to non-bipeds came from a reality where twirling his fingers in a circle like that meant, roughly, “Me love you long time,” to the resident tentacle monsters. Things quickly became awkward. Things were becoming awkward here, too, but at a much more lethargic pace, as a pained grimace formed on Twilight’s face and her cheeks flushed crimson.

“Well?” Nix asked impatiently.

“Well, you see, I just need to verify something. If this is what I think it is, there will be an easily identifiable physical symptom. It’s just, well...err…” Twilight examined one hoof as she pawed the ground anxiously. “I need to see Ridge Dancer’s, uh...her ‘it’.”

“Her ‘it’?” Nix deadpanned.

“It’s just...there should be blue spots...I don’t mean-” Twilight forced out.

“It’s a damn penis, Sparky,” Nix interrupted bluntly. “Ridge Dancer woke up with a cock.” The ex-human didn’t bother registering Dancie’s reaction. He already knew her cheeks were probably a darker red than her hair. “Seriously, what are you, five?”

Twilight scowled at him, before her features softened and she gave Ridge Dancer a sympathetic gaze. The bright green mare was understandably horrified.

“N-no,” Dancie stammered out as she attempted to rise, before wincing and falling back onto the couch, clutching her wrapped hoof to her chest.

“If it’s any consolation,” Twilight said apologetically, “this is just as embarrassing for me as it is for you. If it’s alright with you, it’s best if we get this over with quickly.”

The guardpony rolled her panicked eyes from Twilight to Nix. The pink unicorn shrugged his shoulders. “Look, I know it’s bad, but if Sparky here is gonna fix it, you’re just gonna have to deal. Sorry.”

Dancie pursed her lips and blew out a puff of air in resignation, her features sagging with sudden exhaustion. “Fine,” she mumbled out quickly.

As they were wont to do, things took it upon themselves to happen. But it is rare for things to happen separately, for it is in their nature that they occur at the same time. Usually the worst possible time, but always at the same time. Whether it is that Fate has a sense of humor, or just an acutely honed taste for sadism; or whether Princess Celestia had just chosen that moment to finish her missive and send it to Spike; or whether the mares had decided the previous night that Nix should spend a few days with each of them, and this morning was Pinkie Pie’s day; or whether a silently snickering dragonequus tugged a few strings while summoning a bag of popcorn to watch the aftermath, the end result was the same.

Twilight peered between Ridge Dancer’s hind legs, a horrified grimace on both unicorns’ faces as the purple mare inched slightly closer to get a better view. A potted plant on the edge of the room spurted out a shower of black soil as a pink head popped up, a manic grin forming a gleaming gash on the mare’s features as the unfortunate plant found itself rudely evicted from its home and relocated atop a poofy pink mane.

“I love this game!” Pinkie Pie squealed.

A pair of glittering blue eyes formed the vanguard of a magenta streak through the air as the pony zipped out of the pot, towards Nix. A cluster of hapless flowers spun in the air before plopping down into their original home. The pink blur slammed into Nix, and the pair tumbled a few meters before coming to a stop, Pinkie Pie’s head placed squarely between the ex-human’s pantsless legs. She glared with frightful intensity at his lower abdomen, her features sharpened in razor concentration.

“Pinkie, what the fucking fuck?! What are you-”

“Shhhhh, this part requires the most concentration,” Pinkie Pie hissed, her features scrunching up.

A polite cough echoed through the library’s main room from atop the stairs, where a small dragon observed the four ponies below. He clutched a sealed scroll in his left claw. “Uh, Twilight…” he started, his slitted irises flicking between ponies below.

Twilight jerked her head from between Ridge Dancer’s legs and slowly turned her head towards her assistant. “Spike?! I- I- What are you-?” A grin started forming on Nix’s snout at the horrified look on the librarian’s face as she met her dragon’s eyes. He grunted when a pink hoof slammed into the side of his ribs, and shot a glare towards Pinkie.

“You have to maintain your concentration,” the pink mare chided. “Almost there…” She bit her tongue, focusing harder. The pink stallion beneath her just cocked his head. Ms. Pinkamena had either finally snapped and was going to rape him with her eyes, or she had finally snapped and was currently engaged in something not even he wanted to consider. He glanced at his duster on the ground nearby. If he could get to it, summon the power of shadows…

“Aren’t you all doing this backwards?” Spike asked nonchalantly as he waddled down the stairs, motioning towards them with his free claw.

“What?” Twilight gagged out in a high-pitched whine.

“Well, in those stories you’re always writing, normally this part comes before the part where the mares and the stallions get underneath the covers together.”

“What?” Twilight managed to wheeze out in a ragged whisper, rounding on the violet dragon as he approached.

“You know, those stories you keep in the chest at the foot of your bed?” Spike prodded. “When you pass out on your desk I usually have to put ‘em away before you drool on them. They’re really good!”

“Wha…” Twilight’s eyes had glazed over at this point, gazing at a point in the wall well over her small assistant’s head, and her mouth worked soundlessly.

“I even sent a coupla the good ones to Princess Celestia,” Spike explained, his eyes closed and the parchment held out towards the purple unicorn. Pinkie Pie wore a frustrated grimace as Nix failed to halt his heaving chest, plagued as it was by an unrelenting spell of snickering.

Twilight shook her head and her eyes focused on her assistant. “You what?” she muttered in a barely audible whisper.

The dragon arched an eyebrow. “I sent some of your really good stories to the princess? Like the one with that guard, Captain High Staff?” Spike paused, rubbing his chin. “Or was it Hard Staff?” He sighed. “I forget. It was the one with the three mares in maid outfits, though. That much I remember. It wasn’t nearly as good as The Art of Plowing, though. I even made a copy for Applejack since I figured it would be right up her alley!”

Spike beamed up at Twilight. The unicorn stared through her small assistant as her mouth gaped. A tinny squeak escaped from her constricted throat like a strangled mouse attempting song. Nix threw his blond-maned head back and roared with laughter.

“Be. Quiet!” Pinkie shouted harshly, her eyes narrowing on Nix’s pink lower abdomen. “If you don’t, I’ll-” Nix’s stomach gurgled loudly, and the earth pony’s eyes widened immeasurably. She immediately leapt into the air, squeezing her eyes shut at the apex of her jump as confetti shot forth from her mane. “Yessssss!” She landed next to Nix, and immediately shot out a pink hoof to help him up. He grudgingly accepted, slowly pulling himself to his four hooves.

“I’m the Grand Gastrointestinal Gurgle Glaring Champion,” the pink mare explained in a rush of breath. Her eyes suddenly narrowed. “It’ll be a warm day in Tartarus before a mare can make a stallion’s stomach grumble before me.”

“Oh…” Spike said with a hint of dejection in his voice. “I thought you were doing something else.”

Twilight jolted, shot her head to the gathered ponies, and squealed, “THERE’S BLUE SPOTS IT’S POISON JOKE I’LL GO FIND THE CURE’S INGREDIENTS!” Nix watched with a grin as the lavender unicorn zipped through the door to the kitchen and, presumably, out the back door.

Spike waddled up next to him, eyeing the departing mare with confusion. “Huh. I wonder what’s gotten into her.”

Nix clapped him on the back with one hoof, eliciting a small, proud smile out of the dragon. “Well, Ser Spike, she’s probably just humbled by her own talent as an author.” He wrapped his pink hoof around the dragon’s shoulder and a grin bloomed on his face. “Tell me more about these stories she’s writing.”

“What?!” Lieutenant Stone Wall blurted out, his expression incredulous. “Guard-Captain Glancing Shock is advocating military action against the Diamond Dog quarry near Fillydelphia? Is he mad?! They’re technically Equestrian citizens!” Stone sat down on the soft, red velvet carpet, and shook his head sadly. “Princess Celestia, I trust your judgment unconditionally-”

“But?” Princess Celestia interrupted blandly, only half paying attention to the Royal Guard stallion below. Her eyes scanned a few more lines of Twilight Sparkle’s hoof-scribed book, The Art of Plowing, before she closed it and set it aside with small tendrils of a telekinetic weave from her horn. She met the lieutenant’s eyes and arched one eyebrow slightly.

“Well, Princess, it’s just that…” Stone Wall let out puff of air, breaking her gaze and pausing, no doubt thinking carefully of how to best call into question Captain Glancing Shock’s competence without openly making himself seem a better choice for Guard-Captain. He brought his eyes up again and said, “It’s just that some of the Guard is talking. They say that whatever happened in Bayrut changed the Captain. That he has it out for diamond dogs because of it. And, this is just between you and me, but they’re also saying he, well,” Stone paused here, for dramatic effect, no doubt. Celestia noticed that the lieutenant pointedly left out mention of Shining Armor, who was party to the same military debacle as Captain Shock. The stallion before her had already inadvertently called into question her choice of Glancing Shock as Captain of the Royal Guard, and probably dared not suggest her mental faculties had proven apparently inadequate twice, now. Did all of her subjects truly think her so vapid? Stone stared straight into her eyes, his features stone. Again, another deception. It was too easy to see the signs of his inward nervousness. Celestia took a sip of her ‘tea’, meeting his gaze evenly, and passively waved one hoof for him to continue.

“They believe he is violent as a result of his...condition.” Stone Wall quickly raised one hoof towards her and shook it slowly, as if to ward off any rebuttals. “Not that I agree, mind you. While Shining Armor was an exemplary Guard-Captain, almost iconoclastic, Glancing Shock’s competence and experience cannot be denied.” If Stone was as idiotic as she feared, she hoped she wouldn’t have her fears confirmed by the next words out of his mouth. The stallion prostrated himself before her, and she mentally groaned. Surely she couldn’t have been considering Stone Wall as captain of her Guard if he were this intent on undermining his own commanding officer?

Unfortunately, Stone managed to slightly surprise her by continuing, “Therefore, I think it is good to place at least some merit in my Guard-Captain’s estimation of the situation, even if I believe his solutions to be a bit...hyperbolic.” If she still allowed herself the ability to express her emotions to her little ponies overtly, she might have raised an eyebrow at his admission. Particularly because of Stone Wall’s treatment of his own subordinates being somewhat hyperbolic and unrealistic. However, the fact that even Stone was willing to admit that Captain Shock’s concerns held weight lent credence to the new Guard-Captain’s efforts to defend Equestria, even if he appeared to have some difficulty in obtaining the loyalty of his own lieutenants in the process. Given his short tenor, the latter was to be expected, and his perceptivity in the matter of the disappearances in Fillydelphia suggested the situation might be more delicate than she realized.

She let out an almost imperceptible sigh, both because of the conversation and because of her student’s recent literary exploits—The Art of Plowing was most decidedly not about farming techniques. Could she, in her near ageless wisdom, even begin to broach the subject to Twilight without fragmenting the young unicorn’s sense of propriety? She shook her head slightly, banishing the thought. She cared for her student, but a greater issue deserved her attention. She moved to take another sip of her tea, and feigned imbibing another drink after suddenly finding her cup empty. Celestia fought off the urge to let her tired eyes droop, but spared a wistful glance towards Twilight’s book.

“Your highness?” Stone Wall asked hesitantly.

Her student’s book was crass and uncultured, and quite what she’d expect from the youth of her kingdom. But it was also free, its words twirling fae twitting through the breeze and ruffling skirts and offsetting scholarly glasses, its bindings mute to conflict beyond the safe confines its author scribed. She glared at the book’s impetuous bindings, resenting its freedom and ignoring the stuffy guardpony not a few hoofsteps away. Was that music she heard? Such beautiful music, such pining sorrow in its lilting melody that she couldn’t help but-

A side door to the throne room slammed open, crashing through her fugue, and her sister’s blue head poked through the entrance with a wide grin.

“Sister!” Luna cried. “This latest one from thy faithful student features tentacle monsters! Tentacle monste-” Her voice cut off, a mortified expression on her face as she noticed Stone Wall staring at her, one eyebrow raised.

“Lieutenant Stone Wall,” Princess Celestia said levelly, regaining the soldier’s attention, “your report here has been immensely informative. I thank you again for your enduring service to Equestria.”

Stone Wall knelt and bowed his head deeply. “The honor is, as always, all mine, my Princess,” he replied gravely, slowly raising to his feet and turning to go. He paused halfway to the grand double doors of the throne room, and turned his head back. “Tentacle monsters, my Princess?”

“Oh, yes, Lieutenant,” Celestia said with frigid sobriety. “Terrible creatures. My student sent me a report that mentioned they prefer to make their homes in dark, moist crevasses.” She levitated the tea cup to her lips and gazed over its edge at him neutrally.

Stone Wall grunted and held himself straighter. “Then have no worries, Princess. I shall make doubly sure that our stallions take extra care near such treacherous canyons.”

“Wise words for any time, and for any stallion, Lietenant Stone Wall.” She lowered her cup and nodded slowly towards him. “Dismissed.”

Luna and Celestia shared a glance as the doors shut behind him, making sure to wait a few moments so that the departing Lietenant could not hear their peals of laughter.

“And that’s how my great-great-great-great-greatgreatgreatgreat grandma Gruel Pie got Gastrointestinal Gurgle-Glaring banned from the Equestrian games! It took two weeks to clean it all up!” Pinkie squealed as she hopped around.

Nix pointed a hoof at her. “How is she making those squeaking noises when she jumps?”

“Dude,” Spike said gravely. “Pinkie is Pinkie.” He waved one claw dismissively, but bit his lip. “We all try not to think too much about it,” he muttered. “Whatever. I should go help Twilight hunt down the ingredients for Poison Joke’s cure. It seemed like something was bothering her…”

As he waddled closer to the front door of the library, Pinkie Pie suddenly froze. “Ear-flop, eye-flutter, knee-twitch,” she whispered hoarsely before diving for the floor.

Spike turned, eyes wide. “What did you just-” There was a loud crash as the door behind him exploded off its hinges, sailing straight towards him. Without looking, the purple dragon crumpled to the ground faster than Paris before an invading force. The door spun through the air over his head.

“Oh, for-” Nix mumbled as the airborne door shot at him. It paused a few centimeters from his sullen, defeated unicorn features, caught in a dark green glow. “...the sake of my awesome, pyschotic guardmare,” he finished with poorly concealed relief, shooting Ridge Dancer a small glance. The glow around her horn vanished, and the door clattered to the floor at his feet. She turned towards him and flashed a bright grin.

“Where is he?!” a demonic voice howled from just outside the door. Dancie’s grin faltered and she looked worriedly towards the entrance. It came towards them, then, a pale pony on four thundering hooves, the pink and purple whorls of mane on her head rippling like bruised, welted flesh, framing a scowling mask of murder, hatred, and adorably cute blue eyes. The demon-mare stopped and stamped her hoof, sending a jagged crack through the hardwood of the library floor. Her sapphire eyes glinted coolly around the room.

“Where’s the human?” Bon Bon hissed.

Author's Notes:

Executive decision time: This chapter is even shorter than I intended, even after deciding to split it a few weeks ago. That, there, is the problem: 'a few weeks'. My productivity has plummeted, so I've decided to make a gamble. I'm bipolar, and the fall/winter months effectively mean I sit around moping, being lazy, and generally sucking at life. Come spring/summertime—and barring home invasions by fucking beehives—I pretty much exist on a manic high. I started this story on one such maniacal binge of fucking crazy, and you earlier readers remember 4-11k word chapters once a week, or in even less time. So I'm going to bet on my history that I've got a spurt of productivity incoming, and give you this chapter as a peace offering until then.

I am honestly very, very remorseful that I haven't been getting you all chapters as often as you deserve 'em. You all are seriously awesome, and I mean that. Trust me when I say things are going to start happening very quickly, and that the only bits I left out of this chapter are their foreshadowing. Again, sorry about my update rate, and my abysmal grasp of story pacing. At the very least, I hope you get a laugh out of this one.