“Do you like muffins?”

The blueberry muffin sat between a pair of pink hooves on the cheap linoleum tabletop, fresh out of the oven and steaming lightly. If someone had condensed every carnal pleasure into its basest form, had taken licentious nirvana and weaponized it into a pastry, it would probably have been this single muffin. The blueberries on the surface still glistened with the promise of the tangy, fruity nectar of abandon. Upon wrapping one’s lips on its edge, the overwhelming, comforting heat it emanated would send anyone into the wildest throes of abandon. The light, barely detectable crispness of its outer layer would fall to that first, fullest bite, releasing its meltingly hot interior into the welcoming lips of its newest thrall.

Nix stared at the useless fucking muffin between his goddamn pink horse hooves sullenly, trying to drown out the noise of the cheerful patrons of Sugar Cube Corner. He didn’t eat, the fuck use would he get out of a damn piece of bread? His eyes dragged upwards until they met—sort of—the eyes of the walleyed, grey pegasus sitting across from him.

“Sure,” he said. “Love ‘em.”

A blooming smile spread across the mare’s face, and she began to tremble slightly and shift her hooves back and forth. Again. Before long, her open excitement breached the event horizon of unadulterated jubilee, and she began to stand up in the booth. Again. Nix winced inwardly as the mare shifted her position until her chin was on the back of the booth and her posterior was aimed squarely at his face. Again. The pegasus mare began to shake her rump back and forth.

“Do you like my butt?” she asked.

Again.

Nix frowned and tried to bury the sight in his retarded pink pony hooves. The visit to Bon Bon and Lyra’s place hadn’t gone well. Lyra was clearly delirious, and her stories of “the Dark God” and how he was going to eat all ponykind’s souls was perturbing enough. Not to mention how uncomfortable it was when he suddenly found her pressed against him, imploring the ‘brave stallion’ to stay by her side so she could protect him. The fact that she hadn’t bathed in days and that her fetid breath revealed she probably didn’t brush either didn’t help.

Mostly, it was because she had called this Dark God a monster. He wasn’t. Nix wasn’t.

“Err, my butt’s gettin’ pretty tired here, Mr. Unicorn…”

Nix sighed. “No, Derpy. I do not like your butt.”

The mare’s flanks immediately froze, and she slowly turned and sat back down in the booth. She looked at him with one forlorn eye before turning away. Before she accidentally met him with a second forlorn eye, and turned away further.

“O-okay, Mister. I’ll just...I’ll…” She frowned and her head drooped for almost a minute. Then, she slowly looked up, one of her eyes catching the slowly cooling muffin and the other meeting his exasperated expression. A happy grin spread across her face.

“Do you like muffins?”

Nix ignored her, silently waiting for Dancie, Spike, and...he shuddered. And for that freakishly strong earth pony mare to return. What was her name, again? She had gumdrops on her cream-colored flanks. Probably something related to sweets. Candyass? Sweet Cheeks? He racked his brain trying to think of a nickname he could use that wouldn’t end up with her overpowering and raping him. Like the flower shop mare had tried. Like the mare with the carrots on her flank had tried. Hell, even the Stetson-wearing orange mare that Twilight knew, Hillbilly, had given him enough appraising glances to last him a lifetime.

Thankfully, Pinkie had been around to curtail their—wait, did he really just think that? He pursed his lips and resignedly blew out a puff of air. This would be over soon. He could get back to being a human, and most of these ponies would probably run from him, screaming through the streets to escape the horrible god-ape that their princesses inflicted upon them. Well, except for Lyra, anyway. He’d have to set things straight with her. She was a pony, sure, but at least she wasn’t annoying.

And at least he wouldn’t be naked and hot pink.

A few clopping sounds drew him from his revery as Derpy decided to forego his answer on muffins and began the next cycle of their repetitive conversation. She swung her head around to look back at him with one of her eyes, and grinned.

“Do you like my-”

“Are you fucking retarded?” Nix asked dully.

The grey mare flinched, her crooked eyes widening. She collapsed back into the booth and her eyes began to water. Nix pointedly examined the blueberry muffin, his pink ears flattening against the side of his head. He wished he had his headphones to drown out the sobbing that would inevitably come next.

Silence reigned for a moment as even the background din of the bakery seemed to halt, and for a second the only thing Nix heard was the synthetic creaking of the plastic padding beneath his flanks as he shifted uncomfortably. Alright, maybe he shouldn’t have-

Nix jerked his head up at the sound of a loud crack! and the clattering of glassware. The mare, Derpy, was shivering and tensing seemingly every muscle in her body, her hooves occupying cracked dents on the table in between a few empty plates. Her eyes were closed and her jaw clenched and unclenched as her chest heaved with exertion. After a few seconds, her tremors seemed to reach a pinnacle and she slumped slightly. Slowly, the pegasus mare opened her eyes and raised her head. Both of her golden eyes focused on him, and she softly exhaled.

“I was the head researcher at the state-funded Quantum Transmutation Laboratories,” Derpy said in monotone. “A prodigy, they said. They happened to be wrong. I made a terminal miscalculation. Turns out one equation was supposed to be non-linear, instead of the sloppy discrete function I had in place. As complex mathematical systems are wont to do, this minor deviation culminated in a result that was quite different from the hypothesis of our experiment. When accounting for Hoofsenburg’s Uncertainty Principle, it’s no small surprise that the resulting accident scattered my conscious perception across multiple realities, simultaneously. As such, I find it difficult to maintain my full attention span on this plane, or on the others, for any substantial amount of time.”

The mare’s muscles seemed to tense again as she squeezed her eyes shut, and she snorted sharply a couple times. When she looked back up at him, her eyes were still level, but her breath had taken on a ragged quality as her sides expanded and deflated rapidly. On shaky hooves, she stood, rotated, and aimed her rear right at his face again, her tail swishing wildly. She brought her head around in a series of jerky motions and stared him straight in the eye.

“I find your physical form arousing, and request that you engage in coitus with m-,” her voice died off and her muzzle scrunched up. Her left eye started to sink in its socket, and the focus of her right eye seemed to glaze over. She began to shake her gray flanks again as her mouth bloomed into a wide grin.

“Do you like my butt?”

Nix slowly raised his hoof towards the window next to them.

“Oh, look, the muffin train is coming to town,” he said blandly.

“I-It is?!” the mare exclaimed. “Omigoddess, mister, I’m so sorry, I just hafta go!”

Derpy stumbled over her wings, stepping on a few of her primary feathers, as she scrambled to extricate herself from the booth. She rolled off the edge before flapping her wings and shooting towards the entrance to Sugar Cube Corner. The wooden door frame only cracked a little bit when her shoulder slammed into it, sending her spinning through the door and out into the plaza like a rag doll. She lay for a few seconds before her head jerked up and her eyes began scanning two directions at once. She muttered a few words to herself as the ponies outside began to scatter, before clenching her jaw, furrowing her brows, and shooting off into the sky.

Nix peered out the window to make sure she wasn’t coming back.

“Aww, where’d your new friend go?”

Nix fought the urge to spin and strike out as he felt a warm weight press itself against his back. The unamused slits of his blue eyes glared at the tabletop. He somehow managed to narrow them further when he felt a pair of pink hooves wrap around his chest from behind.

“Pinkie, you have three seconds to get your fucking hooves off of me and explain why all you ponies have turned into nymphomaniacs in the span of one morning, or I’ll go snap my own leg off in a chair and shamble around here spraying blood everywhere, scaring all the foals.”

The hooves around his neck tensed momentarily before sliding off his shoulders. A poofy pink mane and a pair of bright blue eyes slowly rose into view behind the edge of the table across from him. Her head finished its lethargic emergence from whatever subspace existed beneath the table, and she rested her chin on the aged, laminated surface between the two of them with a manic smile.

“The fuck-?”

“You called me ‘Pinkie’.”

“That’s your fucking name.”

“Not ‘Ms. Pinkamena’.”

“‘Pinkamena’ is a stupid fucking name.”

“First Luna, then Dancie and Rainbow Dash, and now me!” Pinkie squealed. “Toldja we’d be besties in no time!”

“Fuck off.”

Pinkie cocked her head to the side, squinted her eyes, and poked her tongue out at him. Nix scowled. He was fairly certain his face as a pony was frozen into a permanent frown.

The pink mare’s gleeful visage seemed to deflate for a second and she leaned back in the booth, sitting normally for once. Or what the ponies around here considered “normal”. Nix tried to avoid thinking about a certain mint-colored unicorn splayed out awkwardly across a park bench.

Pinkie’s bright blue eyes scanned around Sugar Cube Corner. The place was packed. Pretty much every booth and table in the bakery was filled. The constant melodious ringing of the tiny bell above the door was accompanied by the raucous, energetic conversations of countless foals and fillies as they streamed in from outside. Nix guessed school had let out not too long ago.

“Look, Nixxy,” Pinkie started pensively. “Twilight had this entire week planned out, and I was kinda supposed to spend the day with you, but there’s so much of an afternoon rush here I really did have to help out the Cakes. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to avoid you, or that I don’t want you as a friend.”

“You’re goddamn annoying, and I hope you avoid me in the future.”

A contented smile slowly bloomed across Pinkie’s face, and she leapt across the table, strangling him as she wrapped her hooves around his neck. “I knew you’d understand! See? Besties in no time!”

“I...fucking...hate you…” Nix gurgled out.

She released him and hopped down beside the table. Nix rubbed his throat with his hoof. His stupid, stupid pink pony hoof.

“Sorry about that, Nixxy. But my break’s almost up and you really looked like you needed a hug.”

“I don’t,” he replied. “Ever,” he added coldly. “Also, the second I get turned back into myself I’m setting your godawful pink afro on fire.”

Pinkie giggled and shook her head ruefully, before meeting his eyes with her own twinkling, sky-blue irises. “No, you won’t. And thank you for finally calling me ‘Pinkie’,” she said with more evenness in her voice than Nix thought possible. “Now!” she shouted, the hyper squeak returning. “My break’s over, but my friend here can keep you company until I get off work!”

She reached under the table and pulled out a familiar white unicorn mare with purple-lensed goggles, plopping her on the bench. The mare had a wild grin plastered across her face as she spun the glass plates on the table with her hooves and bobbed her head to an imaginary beat.

“Okayseeyoulaterbye!” Pinkie squealed, disappearing deeper into the restaurant in a pink blur.

With tired eyes, Nix stared at the unicorn mare across from him as her smile twitched and faded in tune with her slowing hooves. After a few seconds, her hooves stopped spinning the plates and her brows creased visibly above her magenta goggles. She clenched her jaw, reared up, and slammed her hooves down on the plates, shattering them and sending ceramic shards tinkling across the table.

“DAMMIT, PINKIE! I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING SET IN PARIS!” Vinyl Scratch shouted. The myriad sounds of gaiety in Sugar Cube Corner sputtered and died, and a couple dozen pairs of eyes stared towards Nix’s table in shock. The DJ tittered a little nervously and sank back into the padded booth.

The edges of Nix’s annoying pink pony lips twitched upwards for an instant. “Thought you ponies used the word ‘bucking’,” he said as Vinyl pointedly examined a piece of broken plate on the table.

“You travel as much as I do, you pick up on the vernacular of non-pony races,” she replied, glancing at him and waving one hoof dismissively as the sound in the room slowly lurched back to its previous harried din. Vinyl dropped her gaze back to the tabletop for a second before her head jerked back up. She leaned forward intently, her goggles filling up a large part of Nix’s field of view. “Ho. Lee. Shit,” she said with a wide grin. “You are fucking hot.”

Nix sighed. “No, I’m fucking hot pink, for Chrissakes.”

“No shit. Don’t find too many stallions in that color,” Vinyl said with a smirk. “Pretty exotic. I kinda have a thing for purple or pink stallions.”

“Great.” Nix leaned his head back against the top of the booth and muttered a small string of expletives about goddamn ponies.

Vinyl Scratch removed her goggles and set them aside on the table. She fixed him with a sultry stare, her half-lidded eyes partially concealing her deep red irises. “So, you’re hot. I’m amazingly hot. Wanna go back to my place?”

“Where the fuck do you ponies get your pick-up lines? Autistic Rapeology 101?”

“Uh, what?”

“No, I don’t wanna go back to your place. Seriously, I barely know you.”

The unicorn mare mulled over his response for a second, and her shoulders slumped. “Is it because I’m white?” she asked softly.

“What?”

“It’s because I’m white, isn’t it?” Vinyl clenched her jaws and glared at Nix. “You’re just sitting there thinking about all the pretty colored mares a cut stallion like you could bed on a whim, but oh, no, you aren’t gonna touch the ugly albino, are ya’?” she said, her voice slowly rising in volume.

Nix pointed a hoof at her mane and said, “Uh, I don’t think-”

“It’s a dye job,” the DJ interrupted, crossing her hooves and pouting petulantly. “But whatever, you wanna be a colorist fuckhead, I wouldn’t want to share a bed with you, anyway.”

Nix stared at her flatly. “It’s not because you’re white.”

She brought her head up and narrowed her red eyes at him. She held the glare for a few seconds before her eyes widened and her mouth gaped.

“Oh. Ooooooh!” she said, her bitterness dissolving in an instant. “Oh, Goddess, I am so, so sorry!”

Nix cocked an eyebrow.

“Look, much as it sucks that a stallion as sexy as you are is, uh, batting for the same team, I just wanna let you know that I completely support same-stallion relationships if that’s really what you’re into. Tartarus, I could even hook you up with a friend of mine in Appleoosa if you’re looking for a faghag friend.” Vinyl grinned innocently.

Between all these goddamn ponies and Nix’s apparent lack of regeneration in his pony form, his face was really starting to feel sore from the amount of frowns he was flashing in the last hour. He clenched his jaw.

“I’m not gay-”

“Oh, you’re not?! Well, shit, my bad. Wanna go back to my place?”

“-I’m the fucking alien who you called retarded at that tree party a few days ago. I came into contact with something called ‘poison joke’ and it turned me into a stallion, and apparently made every fucking ugly-ass snoutnose within ten yards of me want to jump my bones.”

Vinyl considered this for a moment. “Wait, the party at the big tree library in the center of Ponyville?” Nix nodded slowly. “Dude, that was, like, two weeks ago.”

“Whatever.”

“So, if you’re actually that illiterate retard trapped in stallion’s body…a sexy, cut body rippling with muscle...” she mused with a small shudder before leaning forward, nearly pressing her snout against his. “Would you like,” she stated, enunciating every word clearly and slowly, “to go to my house...and stick your stallion parts…into my filly hoohoodilly?”

Nix slammed his hoof into the table, cracking it. “I’m not an idiot, and no!”

Pinkie Pie let out a small squeak as she popped up beside the table. “Is something wrong here?”

“Nah,” Vinyl said, waving a hoof. “Just trying to get this guy here to go home with me.”

“Ooh, sounds like fun! Can I come?”

The white unicorn grinned. “Tell ya’ what, Mistress-”

“Just ‘Pinkie’ in public!” Pinkie hissed, glancing towards the door as the bell rang and a familiar light beige mare entered.

“-Pinkie...you promise not to pull me offa my tour for a month, and I’ll make damn sure you come.”

Pinkie’s eyes widened, her blue irises sparkling like the small waves of a lake reflecting the afternoon sun. “Really?!”

“Tartarus, I’ll make sure you come multiple-”

“That’s it,” Nix interrupted, throwing his hooves up before tapping the table a few times in surrender. At his gentle taps, the numerous cracks in the table spider-webbed out and, with a clinking shudder, the table collapsed, spilling silverware, plate fragments, and a still-cooling blueberry muffin to the floor. With a shake of his head, Nix pushed a few remnants of the table off of himself. “I’m out.”

He hopped out of the booth and started walking towards the door. He was approached by the cream-colored mare as he made his way to the exit. Bon Bon, was it? Nix couldn’t be assed to remember.

“Nixxy, come back!” Pinkie wailed. “Our day’s not over yet! There's still plenty of tables! And other, more bedroom-like furniture we could break through repetitive, concussive motions!”

Bon Bon put up a hoof to stop him as he tried to pass by. “‘Nixxy’? Thought your name was Bennu?”

“Nah,” Vinyl said, sidling up to the two of them, her goggles back in place over her eyes. “Dude’s name is Nix. I remember that much from that badass party a couple weeks ago.”

“Wait, ‘Nix’?” Bon Bon asked, frowning slightly.

After a moment, her eyes narrowed and earth pony mare fixed him with a glare of unrepentant hatred. The next thing he knew, Nix had a heavy, cream-colored hoof flying towards his face.

Author's Notes:

Yeah. Split up the chapter again because this would've ended up as a diluted, 15k+ word monstrosity if I didn't.

Expect some foreshadowing, the next vignette of Nix's memories of Athena, and Nix's confrontation with Lyra in the next chapter. Which all used to be part of this chapter before I remembered I'm a terrible writer. In the meantime, enjoy some painfully suggestive slice-of-life goodness. (When I started writing this story, I almost tagged it as Slice of Life, before deciding I wanted a bit larger scale for the story.)

But, at least you didn't have to wait months for the next update, and you won't have to for the next one, either! Yay!

As always, comments and/or criticism are not welcome, technically speaking. I actually crave them.