Hardcore

For all that he was a Kirin, Daitana skulked like he was a fugitive.

“Oh, hello!” said the earth pony mare, stopping as she crossed the street, staring at Daitana with apparent delight. “Are you here to save us?”

“Do you need saving?” asked Kichona. “We’re pleased to meet you. Have you seen a group of musicians traveling nearby? We’d like to hear them perform, and we keep missing them.”

“They played in the town neighboring us, two days ago!” said the earth pony mare. “They’re heading north.”

“So are we,” said Daitana.

She glanced at him again. “Are you well, master? You seem thin. You are hungry! I will go fetch our best unicorn!”

“That’s all right!” protested Daitana. “Never mind that, tell me why you need to be saved! Not that I’m promising anything…”

The earth pony mare frowned, counting to herself. “You speak strangely. For a Kirin, I mean.”

“He’s fine,” said Kichona, “it’s all fine. What’s this about being saved?”

The mare blinked. “Oh! It’s the Monster. Are you here to save us from the weird monster?”

Daitana boggled at her. “Really? But that is only… I mean, um…” He gathered his wits. “Trust my words this day. You are in no danger here. I’ll… uh… scare it away?”

The mare bounced. “Yay! Everypony says there’s the worst monster ever, coming to our town. It came from the seaside and rampages across Neighpon, shrieking and attacking ponies!”

Daitana’s jaw dropped. “But that’s impossible. Don’t you know? The Weird Monsters are only…”

Beside him, Kichona frisked. “Yay! How exciting, I’ve always wanted to see one! Daitana will protect me and this whole town, but I’ll finally see a real Monster!”

Daitana gawked at her, stunned, and hastily changed his statement. “…dangerous to wicked ponies. Um, that’s it. Very exciting, yes, but you’re in no danger from them, I promise that is the most true thing you’ll ever hear.”

The mare blinked. “Are you a real Kirin?”

“What else would I be?”

“I don’t know,” said the mare, “something else dressed up as a Kirin? Sometimes you don’t talk right, and you’re not walking on mists or rainbows, and you seem so thin.”

“We, um, we…” began Daitana, and then struggled to phrase things in courtly Kirin diction. “The cherry blossoms again—talk as well as me—which isn’t saying that much. Ahem… We don’t need to speak—of things dressed up as things, here—just trust me, you’re safe.”

“Safe from what?” asked another earth pony mare, trotting by.

“From the terrible Weird Monster that’s coming here!” replied the first earth pony mare.

“Eee!”

The second mare fell over in a faint. Kichona gasped, and rushed to her aid.

“Poor thing! Don’t be afraid, my darling will protect you!”

“What darling?” blinked the first earth pony mare.

“Daitana, here!”

The first earth pony mare blinked again, and craned her neck, trying to look past the Kirin and find whoever Kichona was talking about.

“Just trust us,” said Daitana urgently. “You are safe. Kichona, please come with me!”

He trotted off to the north, and Kichona followed after petting the fallen mare’s mane and giving her a little kiss.

“Kichona, don’t you know about Weird Monsters?” asked Daitana. “I guess I assumed, since you are my marefriend, that you knew.”

“I would love to see one,” nickered Kichona, “since I know I would be safe with you. I think they’re beautiful. Nature is beautiful in many ways, isn’t it?”

Daitana hesitated. “…yes,” he said, “yes it is.”

“As long as it doesn’t hurt ponies,” said Kichona, “I hope it gets away. And it can be weird and fierce and beautiful somewhere in peace!”

Daitana gulped. “I promise, it will not hurt ponies,” he said. Privately, he thought: pegasus ponies, either outside or inside the Monster, don’t entirely count.

He drew a little nearer to Kichona, his mare, cheered by her fearlessness and kindness. Of course she believed the Monsters were real, yet wished them well. If she was a pegasus mare, decked out in pointy costume, or a unicorn that withheld her energy blasts for the sake of ponykind, then she’d know it was all part of the sometimes horrifying way that Neighpon worked through its impulses. If she was other than an earth pony mare, she would be privy to these secrets. As an earth pony mare, she was allowed to be silly and fooled by the costumed Monsters… but instead of being scared of them like a normal earth pony, she seemed to like them.

“Kichona?” asked Daitana, as they cantered north. “Why do you hope it gets away? The Monster, I mean.”

She nuzzled him happily. “They’re pretty! And… and they’re free. Until the pegasi get them, anyway.” She pouted. “It’s not really fair. Our pegasi are so fierce and savage, that nature’s monsters don’t stand up to them. There ought to be some sort of wildlife preserve for them, so they can be protected from ponies.”

“And so you can see one?”

“Uh-huh,” said Kichona, and nuzzled him again. “Someday. One day I will see a Monster. I’d like to paint a picture of it. We left my paints and brushes behind when we went to find the musicians. Oh, don’t pout, it’ll be all right! I don’t need to take my art everywhere I go. But I’m gonna paint one of the Monsters someday.”

Daitana teared up. You’re centuries too late, he thought, and far too trusting. The real monsters would have eaten you up. But perhaps we can arrange to have you paint the costumed pegasi.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said Daitana. “I’ll find you one, to paint.”


As evening fell, pegasi whirled across the sky, hunting.

“Where’d it go? Where’d it GO?”

“This has to be the Monster that knocked Orokamono out of the sky with shrieks! The rogue one! It has to be this one!”

“How is it so fast? Who is even running it? Look, we’re all here!”

“Moeru isn’t, and he usually flies far north after good Monsters! Is it Moeru? He’ll be in such trouble!”

“Moeru got attacked! Kantokusha said so! His head nearly got kicked in!”

“No way! A full-on Monster? How long has it been since we had a Monster that bad?”

“The Kirin don’t like it when the Monster is as bad as that!”

“Who IS it? Where did you see it last?”

“It’s… there! THERE IT IS!”

With a war-cry, five pegasi warriors accelerated to converge upon the Weird Monster they saw half-concealed between the trees.

On reflection, the war-cry could have been a tactical error. The Monster heard, and turned… and attacked.

It bulleted toward them so hard that tatters of cloth were ripped free to tumble in the breeze, and when it closed on the tight formation of pegasus warriors, its padding spared it some of the blows the warriors had for it… but with a flail of a cerulean hoof, one pegasus warrior stalled and spun out, crashing through the trees, clonked on the head.

Seeing this, the remaining four shrieked in exultant rage and snapped into a tightening pinwheel formation, cornering the Monster, blood in their eyes. It was on! They would show no mercy, they’d fight to the death just like the warriors of old.

As one swerved in to deliver a killing blow, an ear-mangling squeak hit it full in the face. Again, a high-speed stall and loss of control, and another colorful winged pony fluttered down to the trees and bushes, even as the first one rose groggily from the foliage to fight again.

The Monster swerved, making a break for it, trying to get over to a wooded area with heavy undergrowth, as if planning to hide there.

“CUT IT OFF!”

“GET IT!”

“NO MERCY… AIIGH!”

The third warrior had swerved too close, a fatal mistake. From the mouth of the Monster came a flickering orange flame, for all the world like a ball of wildly kicking filly moving too fast to see… and the warrior went down, kicked in the head and wing, losing neither but knocked out of the sky nonetheless. And then there were two, plus the groggy pegasus trying to regain altitude.

“HAMMER AND ANVIL!” screamed one.

“ON MY MARK!” replied the other, unhesitatingly.

And out they arced, in two tight curves, and as the Monster dove for the trees and underbrush, the curves converged and accelerated…

WHAM!

“I got it! I GOT it!” cried the groggy pegasus, and she dove to tackle the floundering Monster.

“Ow! Quit it!”

“Hey, that’s ME!”

“Stop, stop, it’s us now!”

The dazed warrior slowed her battering hooves, and blinked. “What?”

As she hovered, and as the third warrior flew up wincing and favoring one wing, the head of the Monster opened to reveal… the two pegasi who’d done the Hammer and Anvil maneuver, intending to smash together and splat the Monster between them. Instead, somehow they were wearing it.

The four gawked at each other.

“Did we win?”

“We got it! And it was you all along!”

“Why’d you hit me so hard? And you knocked out Kemuri with that screech! How did you do that, can you teach me how to do that?”

“I did not! Go check on Kemuri. We were right there with you, it can’t have been us!”

“But did we win?”

The pegasi warriors looked at each other.

“We totally won. Look, here’s its head.”

“Yay!”

“Let’s get Kemuri and go home and show the townsponies!”

“…but who WAS that Weird Monster?”

Hundreds of feet below, concealed in the underbrush, Rainbow Dash, Flight Lightning, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle huddled together being very quiet, until they heard the pegasi warriors go away. Through a tiny gap in the shrubbery, they saw that the pegasi were helping their sonically-stunned comrade along, and that he was stumbling all over the sky but was managing to keep up, mostly. Singing martial songs of triumph, they departed, bearing their trophy.

“We’re gonna have to steal another costume,” said Rainbow Dash, quietly.


As they traveled north and the capital of Neighpon approached, the crowds grew. Big Macintosh marveled, as he set up speaker columns, directed by a fiercely concentrating, attentively listening Octavia. In his experience, the bigger cities got, the cruddier they became. Canterlot was something of an exception because the hoity toity ponies who hung around with Princesses liked to keep their pretty buildings clean and shiny… but all the same, a farm pony only had to look and see that the greenery outside the Canterlot castle wasn’t nearly so well kept. And Fillydelphia… dang! You could say it was well fertilized. That was hard to deny. But it was shabby, from the city streets to the muddy roads to the cheerfully twisted ponies forever helping it live down to its notorious reputation.

Neighpon was different. As the traveling musicians drew nearer to the capital, the greenery seemed to glow from within. The throngs of ponies flocking the streets seemed more cheerful, more prone to ‘yay!’ and frisk. The unicorns seemed haughtier, the pegasi more dramatic and courageous, their costumes pointier.

As they traveled, they played gigs, and word spread far and wide. Octavia stunned listeners with the raw emotion of her expressive bow and put them through an emotional journey they’d not imagined possible from a cello. Big Macintosh kept an eye on her outside of the gigs, for she seemed to practice harder and harder and draw within herself: he’d expected her to have some fun with stallions on the way, but he’d not seen her pick out an audience member yet. And Vinyl Scratch, for all her proud Fillydelphian history, seemed to avoid sex ever since her night with the promoter.

But, even more than Octavia, she laid it down, and whole packs of ponies attended their gigs and then galloped off as fast as they could to upcoming cities, giving notice and insisting their friends and relatives not miss the gig, and every gig got huger and more outrageous.

When the evening came and Octavia and DJ Pon-3 delivered their musical double-whammy, they played to a sea of pony that surged like a real ocean. It even boasted whitecaps, and that wasn’t only the squirtings of excitable unicorns. Pegasi burst upwards out of the crowd in frenzies of feathery flapping, and one in particular, a white pegasus mare, seemed almost deranged with excitement.

It didn’t occur to Big Macintosh to draw a distinction, but Vinyl Scratch watched the little jets of horngasm with a wry gaze from behind her rose-tinted shades. It was so different from Fillydelphia or Canterlot gigs. There were no magic light shows near Neighpon’s capital, other than the very organic spurts of raw magic which were never enough to cause serious burns or injury to nearby ponies.

The unicorn light shows of Fillydelphia were actually much safer. Back near the coast, unicorns still produced light displays from their horns at dance parties. Unicorns making beams of light could be much safer than uncontained horngasm.

But Vinyl had been surprised to see it, even near the coast.

Unicorns making light beams explode from their horns, near the capital of Neighpon… was very bad form, and so they all bottled it up and spurted magic in a more erotic manner, both more prurient and more innocent… if you knew your history.

Horngasm didn’t resemble the bolts of hostile magic unicorns had once used to make war on other ponies, so near the capital, horngasm was what you saw.

Big Macintosh didn’t often try to join the dancing, anymore. The gigs were so packed, that he couldn’t justify taking up space that the Neighponnese ponies needed, plus he was the size of two of them. The little white pegasus fluttered up into view again: another example of the Neighponnese build. For all that she was slight, she was toned as hell, he thought. Very nice, actually… even her pegasus war garb wasn’t as pointy as the usual sort. It was pretty scanty, too… Big Macintosh’s eyes widened as he realized he wasn’t the only one ogling. She’d been appearing closer and closer to him, and as a unicorn magic-squirt reflected in her eyes, he realised that she was checking him out as much as he’d been checking her.

Perhaps his evening’s entertainments could take a break from practicing on unicorns. If this crowd was any indication, these unicorns were so overflowing with magic that it was no great trick to get them squirting in orgasm. It was like their version of applause.

The white pegasus popped up again, flapping like a crazy thing. A gout of horngasm splashed across her face. She didn’t flinch: perhaps liking the sting, she bared her teeth exultantly into it and that expression persisted as she dropped back into the heaving sea of pony once more.

After DJ Pon-3’s spectacular final beats, Big Macintosh watched the crowd mill about, his ears quirked to the side in puzzlement. He’d lost sight of the white pegasus, and although it didn’t really matter all that much, still he felt disappointed: she really seemed to have a lot of attitude, and he’d had experience with lots of very attitudinous ponies and found ‘em exciting and enticing. It seemed like Hina would have to approve of him pleasuring the sparkiest, liveliest ponies… or would she? What if she expected him to seek out gentle mellow ponies, like Marble Pie back where he came from? Hina had personally overseen his screwing of Marble, and seemed well pleased with him over it.

And then, after that, Hina had turned to him for her own needs. What if he was making a terrible mistake? What if she needed him to be faithful to her, what if she was pining away, never knowing he had crossed the sea and was travelling Neighpon just to be reunited with her? What would she say, would she be heartbroken and cry if she tasted some other mare’s pussy juice on his dick? Big Macintosh gazed tragically at nothing, his lip quivering.

Something yanked on his tail, and he squealed like a filly and whirled around…

It was the white pegasus. She looked even more manic than before, and grinned insanely at him. “HI!” she said.

“Um… evenin’, ma’am,” rumbled Big Macintosh, blushing.

She bounced up into the air off all four little hooves, with a squee of delight. “Yay!”

“Yay?” blinked Big Macintosh.

“You’re perfect!”

“Ah am?”

“You’re beautiful!”

Big Macintosh blushed more. “Uh, uh, used to know a pony that said that. Uh… let’s not talk about that anymore?”

“Give me exciting sex! The music makes my blood fizz! I must vent it!”

On closer inspection, Big Macintosh saw that she was wearing little saddlebags. They clanked gently as she bounced.

“Happens I was thinkin’ something a lil’ bit like that myself…” he said.

“Yay! Come with me!” squeed the little white pegasus, and trotted off with great authority.

Big Macintosh followed her, his ears perked forward, studying his would-be lover with interest. She wasn’t fooling. As she trotted, she winked merrily at him, glistening pink peeking out from between those toned rump-cheeks. He drew closer, and sniffed, and looked closely at her treasure: having had experience of a tiny unicorn who really shouldn’t have been playing with anything as well hung as him, Big Macintosh wanted to make sure it’d be safe to penetrate her…

“WHOA! Hey!” he yelled. She had kicked at him, not once but three times in a wild flicker of movement that seemed barely controlled.

She whirled, then whirled again to show him her pussy, then whirled again to protest, “No no, don’t stop! I didn’t mean it! Keep following me!”

“Don’t ya want me seein’ your pretty?” argued Big Macintosh. “I thought Ah might fit up it, and then ya went for me!”

“No, you will! You’ll see! I’m sorry! I promise we’ll fix it, don’t give up on me, please!”

Big Macintosh drew alongside her, trotting vigorously, with high hoofsteps. “Now jes’ you calm down, missy, if ya want some Ponyville stallion action all’s ya got to do is ask nicely. Who’s givin’ up on who now?”

She bounced again, and squealed. “Eee! I will! Calm down! You’ll see! Yay! You’re huge!”

“Well y’see that’s why I was lookin’ so closely,” said Big Macintosh, “an’ forgive me if you don’t seem ta be calmin’ down all that much. Guess that’s all to th’ good, though?”

“What for? What for to the good, what?”

“Easy now, missy,” said Big Macintosh. The little white pegasus’s energy level was beginning to scare him. He was reminded of the unicorn who leapt about popping balloons with her horn when she came. He gulped, and continued, “I reckon I am a big feller compared to you, so if you want that pony thunder, you may need to be pretty worked up to take it.”

“Eeee! eee! ee!” squealed the white pegasus, jumping clear over him and back again in a flail of hooves and wings.

“WHOA!” yelled Big Macintosh. This time it was forehooves whizzing around his head. “Will ya cut that out? An’ who are you, anyhoof? Ah’m Big Macintosh.”

At that, the pegasus stopped, and gazed at him… vibrating. “Hisanna! I’m Hisanna. Don’t worry. We’re almost there. It’ll be okay, hurry, hurry!”

Big Macintosh trotted on, looking askance at her. “You figure I’ve got to get on ya real quick before you settle down? It did look like you were kinda small back there but I din’t think it was too much of a problem. Ah kin go gentle, ya know. Please don’t ask me to ram ya with all my strength on account of that sometimes don’t end well.”

“No no,” said Hisanna. “It’s not like that. I’m tightened up far too much, eee! I know what to do. You’ll make me relax. And then we’ll make love and it will be beautiful. Are you what do you say, squeamish?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Blood, are you upset by blood?” she asked, still vibrating.

“Ah double beg your pardon with nuts? Meanin’, are you nuts? Ma’am, Ah been trained by th’ best. If I ain’t bein’ a damnfool, I swear I won’t be hurtin’ your lil’ pegasus pussy. At least not in a bad way, if ya know what I mean?”

“Yes yes! Good way! All the good ways. In here!” cried Hisanna.

She swerved into a rather dingy little house, and Big Macintosh followed. It was a dump, untidy to the extent of Rarity in a major inspiration meltdown: but rather than giving the impression of powerful creative forces causing turmoil, there was a hint that this turmoil simply reflected the energies of this manic pegasus pony. He gawked at untidied plates, books open on top of other open books, an environment that suggested a pony who spent her time nearly exploding with untameable energy, and he followed her through the mess into…

She faced him, and turned her head to frantically wrench at her saddlebags.

The room was white, and tiled. The floor was tiled. There was a drain. And there were stains, and the unmistakable whiff of blood: not fresh, but that drain wasn’t for showering, nor bathing.

The saddlebags came open, and disgorged their contents, which clanged on the ground. They were shiny and metallic and reminded Big Macintosh incongruously of Princess Celestia, because they were shoes, metal shoes. Boots, rather. And if they were Celestia’s, then she’d had a really, really bad day.

Big Macintosh stared at four large spikey metal horse-boots strewn clattering across the shiny white tiles. He looked up at his manic pegasus mare.

“I want you to stomp all over me wearing these,” she said, vibrating, her teeth gritted in a rictus grin, and her eye twitching.

Big Macintosh sat down on the tiles, sticking his lower lip out. “Y’know what Ah want?”

“What, what? Anything, I’ll do anything, what do you want, I’ll get it, I’ll give you ten of them! Name it!”

“Ah want you to explain,” said Big Macintosh. “What th’ fuck is this?”

She actually sagged. She also shuddered, with a grimace of what looked like pain. But then, she had explaining to do on exactly that subject, and Big Macintosh set his jaw. “Ah am waitin’!” he demanded. “I’m a nice pony, I am, and you best make this seem sensible. I got a good mind to go and get a Kirin!”

“They’re never far,” she muttered. “Don’t ruin it for me? We probably have a few minutes. How can I convince you to give me what I need?”

“They’re gonna bust in and STOP this consarned craziness?” blurted Big Macintosh. “I ain’t gettin’ in Kirin trouble over the likes of you!”

“Nooo!” squealed Hisanna, and pounced, and suddenly she was hugging him with her forelegs, her wings rattling, her teeth chattering. “It’s not like that, please, don’t give up on me! They’ll totally let you, I just wanted it super intense! Please can you trample the fuck out of me, I swear the Kirin will understand, you can tell them I made you do it…”

“Ah heard that excuse before,” insisted Big Macintosh. He could feel her heart pounding against his chest. She was shaking. He steeled himself. “You’re another one of them pervert-ponies, ain’t ya? Did Kirin do magic stuff to you so’s pain is pleasure? Ah ain’t playin’ them games. That ain’t for the likes of me.”

“No!” cried Hisanna. She fixed him with a desperate gaze. “Do I have to spell it out?”

Big Macintosh sighed. “Happens ya do. Why didn’t I pick out some nice lil’ unicorn nookie?”

She shook him. “Giant horse… I am small, and tense, and very excited. I desperately want sex from you, and I cannot relax. I am one big knot.”

“So?”

“Including my pussy. I must BE relaxed to take you, and I crave that more than anything.”

“So how am I s’posed to…”

“Trample my wings,” said Hisanna urgently.

Big Macintosh’s eyes flew wide. “Th’ hell you say! You want to have my foal? Wouldn’t be th’ first…”

“No!” yelled Hisanna. She caught herself, and went on more quietly, as if trying to soothe his balky contrariness. “I see the Kirin regularly. Of course I will not make a foal. Nopony said that I would. Don’t you understand pegasus mares? How can you not understand what would happen?”

Big Macintosh stared at her. “Go on. Let’s leave aside them mean-lookin’ horse-booties ya got there. I don’t like them things at all, missy. So you ain’t fixin’ to foal, but all the same you want… are you serious, trampling? Like, me walkin’ on your poor lil’ wings there? I heard of biting, but…”

Hisanna moaned, an even more desperate look entering her eyes.

“Uh, sorry,” said Big Macintosh. “Happens I do understand pegasuses. Mares, I mean. I’m sorry for talkin’ about biting your wings, I know that ain’t fair to a lady pegasus.” He frowned. “But wait a minute. What you want, that’s way the hell more intense. How exactly do you propose goin’ about this? You don’t look that beat up. Are you gonna, like, lie on your side or crouch down or…”

At that, Hisanna broke from him. She flung herself onto her back, her wings spread out across the tiles, and she wailed, “Trample me! And then fuck me! And then trample me more!”

Big Macintosh stared. “Um… you’re holdin’ your wings out flat. Almost like you mebbe know what you’re doin’ and it wouldn’t break nothin’ if you’re careful…”

She started to speak, and then forced herself silent again… and lay there, ready for anything she could get him to do.

“You ain’t foolin’ about one thing,” said Big Macintosh, “doin’ that to a lady pegasus, I reckon that would leave any mare a limp puddle of fuck-me.” He gulped. “Which I guess is the idea, huh? You really want a dickin’, then? And you figure you just cain’t relax enough, any other way?”

Hisanna shuddered, lying on her back on the floor. In front of his eyes, her pussy winked good and hard.

He prodded it with a hoof, and she wailed in sensual anguish. He gulped again. Her story checked out. She’d lubricated like mad, but there wasn’t much limpness to her. Couldn’t see up in there at all. Her body felt tense.

“Ah see it’s this way,” said Big Macintosh. “But… Ma’am, I’ve seen some Neighponnese ponies. If you want this, tell me all of the truth. WHY do it gotta be this way? Tell me th’ whole truth, or Ah walk out of here right now.”

Her ears laid back. She shuddered. But… she spoke, slowly and reluctantly.

“You’re right. There… is more. The Kirin… are thorough. They heal me until I am full of energy and feel no pain.”

“Yeah?”

Hisanna winced. “I need it, giant horse. I don’t deserve to feel no pain. If I feel pain, it keeps me in check. I remember. I remember not to swoop down on innocent ponies. I don’t kick them in the head, instead I can rest for a time. I am not so compelled to fight, if I am c—crushed and broken. I remember other ponies c—can be hurt. And then the Kirin come and take the pain away, and I have to go find more pain. Do you see? I need your trampling. It makes me kind.”

Big Macintosh scratched his head with a hoof. “Y’ever considered havin’ Kirin fix your fucked-up head, ma’am? I’m jes’ sayin’.”

She glared at him. “I will remain Hisanna. How dare you? I am the greatest of warriors. But so many of the monsters are destroyed. I slew a dragon myself, that devoured townsponies, that went after foals as their mothers screamed helplessly. I must remain Hisanna, even if… Do not insult me again!”

“Sorry!” said Big Macintosh, his ears laid back. This was what had been jumping over him, hoof-punching inches from his skull, yanking his tail?

“You are forgiven… you are some foreign horse, doubtless you could not slay a dragon, you are one of those to be protected,” she said.

“Eyup,” said Big Macintosh, eyes wide. “But… okay, let me git this straight. You want me walkin’ on your wings so’s they’ll hurt and remind you to be gentle instead of spazzin’ around beatin’ on townsponies?”

She hesitated, and he realized his error.

“AND because trompin’ on a lady pegasus’s wings is like to blowin’ her into next week with kinky fuckyness?”

“Eee!” squealed Hisanna, and thrashed her wings violently, and then stretched them out again, hyperventilating.

“All right, all right,” grumbled Big Macintosh. “With that last part, now I believe ya. I ain’t wearin’ them shoe things. However, I reckon I kin pop some of your corks, ma’am. And then, Ah will ride ya off into the sunset, which is gonna be much nicer, trust me on that one. Here Ah come. I will step on your wings.”

“ALL of me!” squealed Hisanna, shuddering.

Big Macintosh pouted. “Some of you. And it’s against my better judgement, but ya convinced me. Hold still.”

He stepped forward, and she began to pant and shiver, and with a deliberate motion and careful shifting of weight, Big Macintosh stood upon the shank of her pristine white pegasus wing.

Hisanna screamed, and began to thrash. Hastily, Big Macintosh stepped on the other wing, but then jumped back in haste, for her forehooves kicked madly up at him and connected solidly with his massive chest. “OOF!”

He stood well back, and she wept and begged him, “Again!”

“Eeenope!”

“Use the shoes, you have to use the shoes, it’s the only way!”

“Nope twice! Dang it, ma’am, you’re worse’n Fillydelphia, an’ I am outta here!”

“NO!” she shrieked. “I love you, I’ll kill you, no! Don’t leave, you have to finish this! You can’t stop now!”

Big Macintosh set his jaw. “Not helping. Right now, Ah want to stick my dick in you about as much as I wanna stick it in a wild griffin’s beak. Ah am a gentlepony, ma’am, and I’m gonna give you jes’ one more chance. What do I have to do ta fuck you without you flailin’ and beating the daylights outta me?” He hesitated. “My, uh, a pony I used to know, he always liked nippin’ mare tail to quiet ‘em down. Not the tail, o’ course, I mean bitin’ their bum. Am I missin’ something, maybe that would do you good? You ain’t quiet and that’s a natural born fact.”

Hisanna shuddered, gritted her teeth, spoke in a voice that was only slightly quavering… “Step on more of me. And I’ll relax. Not just wings. And please, the shoes?”

Big Macintosh glared at them. Then he glared at the drain in the middle of the white tiled floor.

“Not th’ shoes. Ah will do m’ best. Hold fuckin’ still.”

This time, as he stepped forward, she didn’t kick up at him. She held still, and shuddered horribly as Big Macintosh walked with little mincing steps right up onto her body, and as one hoof crushed her wing against the tiles and his hind hooves sunk into her inner thigh and left hock, and his right forehoof hovered in the air looking for a place to come down, Hisanna made a weak agonised keening noise, her neck stretched out against the tiles, and gazed up at him in desperate longing.

…and struggled to place her neck under his descending hoof.

“Aw, fuck you, ma’am,” said Big Macintosh despairingly. He’d managed a sort of limp dangle-dick, but felt it shrinking up and trying to hide inside his sheath rather than be too near his pegasus doormat. He shook his head, lowered his hoof gently, and then a quarter of his weight was on her neck and her eyes rolled back in her head…

“Rrrrkkkkckkkkk! kkckk!” wasn’t the most sensual cry he’d ever heard, but it was what Hisanna had to offer.

He could hear her pussy winking, clenching on itself, smell the mare-ooze that came faster and faster. She hadn’t lied to him. He felt her body shudder in orgasm beneath him. It seemed incredible that she could survive his full weight… but really, if he’d been laying on top of her it would do her no harm. The only difference was a pretty big difference: no sane pony wanted to be walked on with another pony’s hard hooves.

Big Macintosh blinked. Oh, yeah: Rarity, of course. Her spa treatments sometimes included Vera walking on her back, carefully balancing, with socks on her little hooves. But Rarity would never expect a hulking farm pony to tromp cruelly all over h… no, maybe she would, all he could really say was she’d never asked him to do it. And he’d never seen her sporting injuries to suggest it. No, there was that one time she’d been protecting Derpy and got herself good and trampled by panicking townsponies! And she’d been real proud of herself, but all the same she hadn’t asked for that. And Rarity’s terrifying inner sanctum, now fallen into disuse, had never contained a tiled floor or a drain.

He realized he’d been shifting his weight to balance. Hastily, he withdrew his forehoof from Hisanna’s neck, and then prodded her head with the same hoof to see if she reacted. It proved unnecessary: the white pegasus drew deep shuddering breaths, her eyes rolled back in her head, cute little pony tongue hanging out, but while he’d been thinking of Rarity she’d been sinking into a sort of erotic trance. There wasn’t a trace of resistance left, and she was as limp as a puddle of applesauce.

Big Macintosh frowned, worriedly. While balancing atop his would-be lover, he adjusted his stance, trying not to apply too much pressure in any one place but assuming she would require more thorough attention. He frowned worse, as he struggled to reposition one hoof after another. How was he supposed to do this without tearing her poor hide, why couldn’t he have got himself a hooficure? It could’ve been worse, he could’ve had a sharp fashionable edge put on his hooves, and then she’d be in real trouble. But he flinched at every chip and rough edge on his mighty hooves, as he saw the bulky keratin sink into her unresisting flesh.

He frowned worst of all at the nasty spiky shoes that lay, ignored, on the tiles. He set his jaw and, scowling, tried to knead his hapless pegasus mare into something that would satisfy her crazy desires. Damned if he would make her bleed, or break her bones, or anything nasty like that. Nope! He just plain would not. If he moved carefully enough, he thought he’d most likely be able to avoid it.

It reminded him, suddenly, of treading on grapes like they did in the Sisterhood Social. Except he wasn’t about to jump up and down and trot up a storm! And to hell with the drain, and for that matter to hell with this crazy pegasus: she’d just have to deal with something more like a spa massage, and like it.

She’d been shuddering continuously under his hooves, barely making a sound, and it seemed to be subsiding. She felt softer. Big Macintosh looked down.

“Aw, for…”

Very carefully, he stepped clear. Hisanna had passed out, her expression an odd blend of ecstacy and agony. She’d barely made a sound… and most of her body was covered in obvious, livid bruises. Some were sharply delineated, and others were broad areas of ruddy blunt trauma like the Fillydelphian ponies got from floggers. He had not broken her skin once, nor had he heard a single bone snap, but for all that he was a heavy, heavy pony, and he’d given her everything she wanted after all.

Big Macintosh stared for a minute as her battered chest rose and fell, and then he turned and walked quietly out of the room. He stepped through her living room, through the detritus of her shabby and ill-kept life, to the front door, and he seized the handle in his teeth and yanked it, opening the door and looking up.

“Thought so,” he said to the team of three Kirin he saw waiting outside.

One bit his lip, anxiously. “We saw she had found a stranger horse. Are you all right?”

“Yer askin’ ME?” retorted Big Macintosh.

“Yes,” said the Kirin. “Yes, I am.”

“Ah’m jes’ dandy. What th’ pony hell, gentlemen? Just, what th’ pony hell is all this?” said Big Macintosh. He found he was heaving deep, panicky breaths, was beginning to shout. “Ah thought you was s’posed to be NICE and what the HELL is this?”

“Check on her,” ordered the leader Kirin, and the other two pushed past Big Macintosh to get to Hisanna.

“She’s fine!” said Big Macintosh. “Mostly! In fact she don’t want to be healed! Did you know that?”

“Yes,” said the Kirin.

Behind Big Macintosh, one of the other Kirin called back, “Amazing! She is appeased, from only contusions! She might have days, a week of peace!”

“Really?” said the leader Kirin.

“Get him out of here!” said the third Kirin. “We will comfort her. He needs to be out of town right away!”

“She TOLE me to do that! An’ worse!” protested Big Macintosh.

The third Kirin fixed him with a stern look. “We know. Now, do you want to stay here and do this over and over when she demands more, until your mind is distorted by what she demands of you, and in the end be hunted by the Kirin when you lose all sense of normal pony decency?”

Big Macintosh boggled at him.

“EENOPE!”

The third Kirin bared his teeth, and Big Macintosh flinched.

“Then go away, at once. There is comfort for this mare, for a time, but it is not for you to give.”

Before Big Macintosh knew what was happening, he was being dragged away, by his ear, and the leader Kirin was muttering “S’rry! Scuse me! Th’s way!”


They sat on a lovely, picturesque hill. Big Macintosh was shaking. The Kirin sat primly on its haunches, looking very sad.

“Did Ah do wrong?” asked Big Macintosh.

“That is a very hard question to answer,” said the Kirin.

“That means yes,” said Big Macintosh. “On account of good is simple. You jes’ see it. So, now what?”

The Kirin frowned. “No. It means it is a very hard question to answer.”

“What are ya gonna do with her?” said Big Macintosh. “She don’t want to be healed. Are you gonna heal her? She needs to go around hurtin’ to stop her attackin’ other ponies.”

“Is that what she told you?” said the Kirin. “What do you think she is doing now?”

“You tell me, mister!”

“Crying,” said the Kirin, solemnly. “Like the gentle pony she once was.”

Big Macintosh’s expression crumbled. He hung his head. “Damn it. DAMN it.”

He felt the Kirin’s nose nuzzle the side of his face, heard the whisper. “Please listen. That was your gift, but you cannot return. If we are lucky, you broke through…”

“That is jes’ exactly what I was tryin’ not to do! Dammit…”

“What?”

Big Macintosh wiped his eyes with the back of a hoof, and then glared at the hoof. “She wanted me to wear them spiky boots! If I’d done that I dang well woulda broke through, she’d be in chunks by now.”

“We keep taking those away from her,” said the Kirin. “She makes more, hides them.”

“What kinda monster is she?” asked Big Macintosh, sniffling. “What th’ pony hell?”

“You may not return to her pony hell,” ordered the Kirin. “We have removed three ponies already, when she became attached and fixated upon them. Maybe you will be the last. It’s possible you succeeded where others failed. We can but hope.”

Big Macintosh just stared.

“Ah would like for you to explain what the hay was goin’ on,” he said. “An’ I promise, I ain’t never goin’ back. I thought we were gonna fuck, not… whatever that was!”

“You did not have intercourse?” asked the Kirin, quickly.

“Aw hell no!”

“It is well,” said the Kirin. “Our chances improve. Our elder, Daiyam, thinks part of what’s been trapping her in this was the sex. She would lure ponies into this behavior, and then have intercourse, and Daiyam thinks it was both distraction and reinforcement…”

“If you ain’t punishin’ me, are you punishin’ her?” asked Big Macintosh. “It just ain’t right.”

“How much did she tell you?” asked the Kirin.

Big Macintosh blinked. “She’s a great warrior. An’ she gets so worked up she starts attackin’ ponies. Dang near bashed my head in, I believed what she said. She’s gotta be hurt to keep her in check, when she hurts she remembers other ponies kin be hurt, and she’s gentle. For a while.”

The Kirin bowed his head, and a tear glinted in his eye.

“That… was all bullshit, huh?” asked Big Macintosh.

“Not exactly,” said the Kirin. “Did she really say that? She remembers other ponies can be hurt?”

“It caught in her throat a lil’ bit,” said Big Macintosh. “But eyup, that she did say.”

“It would. Let me tell you about Hisanna,” said the Kirin.


Once upon a time, there was a little white pegasus mare. She was fleet of wing and swift of hoof, but she struggled to amount to much as a warrior, because she was a gentle thing and didn’t want to do harm. There were few monsters left to battle, and she wondered if her way of life was truly necessary. Still, she trained in the ways of pegasus combat, and rose to become a respected martial artist, peculiarly gifted as a teacher, for she could execute the fiercest attacks while holding back her blows and feinting only.

The Kirin found this charming, but it didn’t sit well with other pegasi, who expected more ferocity from their kind. Most of all, it didn’t please her lover, a bold and strong sandy-colored pegasus stallion. He was a reckless and rarely-satisfied fellow, who would joke about having a foal with her, and that it would be the only warrior better than him: combining his killer instinct, with her speed and dexterity. It was only jokes, for they weren’t allowed to breed. In the absence of a family life, unable to keep up with his mate in martial arts sparring, this pegasus stallion took to roaming far and wide, trying to find monsters to slay.

The two invented the Hammer and Anvil attack, where two pegasus warriors would combine their velocity magic into a destructive force that could slay any monster. Hisanna and Shinchu enjoyed celebrity beyond any pegasi in Neighpon. Through Hisanna’s gentleness, they were even able to teach their Hammer and Anvil attack to other pegasi, without killing them.

And then, a day arrived that would live in tragedy. Shinchu flew into town in great excitement, declaring that he had found a mighty monster. He woke Hisanna from a nap, insisting that she help him fight it, crying out that it was urgent for her to take to the air right away.

And where now is the monster? asked Hisanna.

It is here, declared Shinchu, and then screams tore the air into bloody tatters. He had flown back home, allowing it to follow, thinking he and Hisanna would destroy it in front of everypony for their own glory, using their signature move. Instead, it rampaged into town and attacked a school while Shinchu tried to rouse Hisanna from sleep.

Shinchu and Hisanna burst from their home, to see this carnage. Neither had ever seen a real, wild dragon before that day. Fierce Shinchu lost no time: even as the limbs of foals dripped from the monster’s huge mouth, he cried ‘Hammer and Anvil!’ and tore into their practiced and synchronized attack. In the blink of an eye, he tore around in a loop and converged on the beast’s head.

Hisanna, who had never seen a monster before that second, flinched.

The peaceful virtuoso of martial arts did half a loop, her form a shambles due to her shock and terror, and stalled out ten feet from the dragon’s head.

From there, she saw that Shinchu had completed his loop… and come to rest, with no opposing burst of velocity magic, inside the dragon’s mouth. And her flinch took only a second, but a second was long enough for her to watch her lover crushed to death in the dragon’s terrible jaws.

Hisanna went berserk. Ponies fled in all directions from the screaming, the whirling hornetlike madness, the confused roaring of a huge beast that did not understand why its body was being torn apart by the mauling attacks of a relatively tiny flying pony. They say that Hisanna took less than one minute to reduce the dragon to pieces the size of a house, or smaller. They say she collapsed, near death, still trying to tear the dragon apart.

From the time that the great warrior Hisanna again awoke, she was hopelessly insane. She had lost no martial abilities, and indeed she claimed to be the mightiest pegasus warrior in all of Neighpon: but her behavior was erratic, she woke screaming with nightmares, she behaved aggressively to earth ponies and stampeded them with roughhousing… and, most worryingly of all, she did not remember Shinchu had ever existed.


Big Macintosh stared helplessly at the Kirin.

“So did Ah do wrong?”

“That is a very hard question to answer,” repeated the Kirin. “You must now leave that story. It will continue, without you.”

“But you said, maybe I broke though!” said Big Macintosh. “Do you mean, she might remember? On account of the wicked things I done?”

The Kirin frowned. “Daiyam believes some part of her is trying to remember. He thinks she seeks to re-enact, upon her body, the doom that met Shinchu. So far, she has only perfected her grief and madness, and seduced several foolish ponies into taking part.”

“What happened to them?” asked Big Macintosh.

“We haven’t lost any of them to evil, yet,” said the Kirin, “but have had to move one to another town, and two farther still. We had to resettle them, because they had developed a desire to trample and harm other pegasi. The memory of ponies can be long, and some remember the dark times when pegasi were just another sort of monster to them. In that sense, what you did is something we’ve spent centuries teaching earth ponies not to do. In that sense, you did do wrong…”

The second Kirin came walking out of the darkness, weeping.

“What happened with her?” said the leader Kirin.

“She remembers everything,” said the second Kirin. “Come and help her grieve.”

The leader turned to Big Macintosh. “Leave here. Now.”


As the dawn came up, Big Macintosh was still pulling the cart along pristine, manicured Neighpon roads, the town miles behind him. He walked slowly, exhaustedly, trying to avoid bumps because Vinyl and Octavia were still asleep in the cart.

“Hina wouldn’ta said I done wrong,” he muttered, and kept moving.