This work is copyright 2000 by Xaltatun of Acheron (A Pseudonym). It may be posted on the Internet to any free forum, provided it is not modified in any way, and provided that this notice is included in its entirety. It may not be sold, or included in any compilation that is sold, or posted on any forum that requires a fee for access, without my written permission. My permission will require payment, terms to be negotiated. For purposes of this notice, sites guarded by Adult Check or similar packages are considered pay sites. Posting on any site must include this copyright notice.
Adult Content Warning - this story contains adult themes, including non-consensual bondage/slavery and forced sexual acts. If you are under the lawful age for such materials (18 in most jurisdictions) or if you would find such material offensive, please go elsewhere.
There are thirteen stories in the series entitled “Ponygirl Transformation.” I may write others later, but thirteen is it for now. The fourth story, Raw Material, exists in two versions; the second one is substantially longer than the first.
1. Ponygirl Finds Her Place
2. Kinder and Gentler
3. The Sorceress’ Apprentice
4. Raw Material
5. Ponygirl by Choice
6. The Politics of Ponygirls
7. Ponygirls on Vacation
8. Bluebird Grows Up
9. Unregistered Ponygirls
10. Suzie’s Ponygirl
11. Driver
12. PonyGIRL?
13. The Curtain Falls, The Curtain Rises
Acknowledgements. The setting and several of the characters are taken from two works by Sir Thomas (A pseudonym). “Adventures on the Hoof” and “Ponygirls, Inc” are both copyright by the Academy Club. Used by permission of Sir Thomas. These works are commercially available, and should not be on any web site on the internet, except for a short excerpt on Sir Jeff’s ponygirl web site. They may be ordered in the US from Quality SM, and in the UK from the Academy Club.
The character of the lobo-ra has been changed substantially. This is partially to motivate the biotechnology theme beginning in Sorceress’ Apprentice, and partially for other reasons.
In neither case should you infer anything about the prior stories from this one. The authors named above have substantially different objectives for their stories.
There are a number of hidden references throughout to obscure (and some not so obscure) science fiction and fantasy stories. This is a game that some authors play. Should you care to look, have fun finding them.
Safety Warning. This story may contain descriptions of practices that are decidedly unsafe, either in general, or if performed by someone without adequate training. There are a number of good books available on safety in the BDSM scene. Most large cities, and some not so large ones, have organized BDSM groups that will usually welcome a newcomer. I’m not going to point out which practices are safe, and which aren’t. Any practice is unsafe if performed by someone with inadequate training and experience, or if performed when not paying attention. Please think before you act. Don’t make yourself a candidate for a Darwin award.
OK - now on to the story -------
What has gone before. If you’ve come to this work in the middle, I highly recommend reading Raw Material, Part 1 first. It explains how Selma got into this predicament in the first place. If you don’t want to go back, what happened is this: She answered an ad in an Internet sex group, and got recruited as a ponygirl. She thought it was a highly amusing joke, backed up by some very creative videos. As the story opens, she has discovered that it wasn’t a joke, and the indenture she signed was quite real. She has been stunned, crated, teleported to the Community training facility, padlocked to a pole on a platform, tortured lightly, had her clothes cut off, had livestock tags put in her ears, had rings put in her breasts, gagged and wrapped in a blanket. A lobo-ra riding a ponygirl is pulling her stand through the tunnels of the Community on her way to her cell in the training facility.
I also recommend reading the first three stories in this series: Ponygirl Finds Her Place, Kinder and Gentler, and Sorceress’ Apprentice. Some of what goes on in here will seem rather odd otherwise - above and beyond the fact that ponygirl stories are rather odd in the first place.
“Tom,” Jenny said, “good work on your pony in cell 314. She was sold early, so the cell is available. There should be a new girl coming from orientation shortly. You know the drill; check to make sure everything has been delivered. Good luck on this one.”
“Good luck?” Tom was puzzled. “Why are we getting one now? The regular intake isn’t for a couple more weeks.”
“She’s from the new Internet recruiting program. She knows she’s going to become a pony slave, and agreed to it. I’m not certain how that will affect the program.”
“Shouldn’t make that much difference. Whatever she expected, she won’t have expected this, so she should go through the usual stages. Community trainees know what to expect, and it doesn’t affect things. I’ll just roll with it.”
“I expect you’re right,” Jenny shuddered delicately. Her two years as a community trainee hadn’t been enjoyable.
Training team 31 left the ready room to begin their day’s work training their ponygirls.
Dana pulled Foggy Morn around the corner into the row of cells, paying particular attention to guiding her wide. This was the first time she had ridden a ponygirl while the ’girl was pulling something, and she was still getting used to the maneuvers required. Foggy Morn was still getting used to them as well; being ridden and pulling at the same time was confusing her slightly. All things considered, Dana thought she was adapting quite well.
“Hey, Tom,” she called. “Open the door for us, will you?”
Tom opened the door to cell 314, and folded it back so that the corridor was clear. Dana studied the approach for a moment, and then expertly guided Foggy Morn along the invisible line she had drawn in her mind’s eye. Foggy hesitated a moment; she knew 314 wasn’t her cell. Then she followed Dana’s expert manipulation of her reins, her knee signals and weight shifts, and pulled the covered platform with the new ponygirl who had been Selma into the cell.
Tom studied the hitch for a moment, and then unhooked it at both ends. “Hey, Dana, where do you want this?”
“Hang it on Foggy’s wall next to the saddle. I may use it again during the intake week.”
CLANG! Tom closed the door to cell 314 as he followed Dana and Foggy to her cell. “Sit,” Dana commanded. Foggy sat on her heels as Dana swung out of the saddle. “Up.” Foggy came back up to a stand, and Tom unbuckled the saddle and saddle pad and hung them on the wall.
“To the stand.” Foggy marched over to her display stand, and positioned herself so that she was precisely in front of the pole. Tom took hold of the rings on the back of her bustier. “Down.” Foggy brought herself down to a squat as Tom guided the rings onto the pole. “Kneel.” Foggy brought her legs back so she was kneeling. Tom clipped her ankles to the back of the stand, and then bolted the headrest to the top. Foggy gratefully let her head slump back onto the rest.
He then took out her bit. “Open wide.” She opened her mouth wide, and he popped the ball gag into it, and fastened it to her bridle.
“She’s really well trained,” Dana commented.
“I should certainly hope so,” Tom said. “It’s about time she got her new owner.”
The door went CLANG as they left the cell.
The door to cell 314 opened silently on well oiled hinges. Tom walked to the front of the covered object in the center of the cell as Jeff stood off to the side. Lucy pulled the cell door closed with a CLANG, and walked behind the stand with a definite tap, tap of her five-inch heels. While she could walk silently if she chose, noise at this point was a calculated part of the procedure. The new ponygirl should be tracking Lucy, and not have any idea that the two men existed - yet. Lucy grabbed the blanket, and pulled it off with a flourish.
Tom and the girl formerly known as Selma stared at each other in shocked recognition. Or rather, it would have been shocked recognition if either of them had ever seen each other before, which they hadn’t. The instant passed, but Tom remained looking into the new girl’s eyes. “Hey Tom,” Jeff drawled, “You’re supposed to be training her, not memorizing her.”
Tom started. “There’s a lot to memorize,” he said, shakily.
“Pony, I’m your primary trainer.” He looked at the other two trainers. “Let’s get her boots on first.” Each one grabbed hold of a leg and unclipped the restraints. Although the pony boots were open down the back, it took some work to get her feet into them. Once they were settled, they zipped the boots up to mid-thigh, and then laced them up on top of the zipper.
Lucy unclipped her bridle from the headrest, and then dismounted the rest. Then she and Jeff grabbed the girl, hoisted her free of the pole and set her down on her feet with a definite clang as the horseshoes attached to the soles hit the solid stone floor of the cell.
Tom took his prod off his belt and flipped it in his hand a couple of times. “You remember this from orientation, right, pony?” he asked.
She stared at the prod and nodded fearfully.
“So, let’s start training you in your first pony behavior. Have you ever seen those circus acts where someone asks a horse questions, and it taps its hoof for yes or no?”
“Muumph.”
“Did I just hear you try to talk?” he said as he flipped the prod back into his hand.
She shook her head wildly.
“So, tap your right hoof.”
Tap.
“Now do it twice.”
Tap. Tap.
“Good girl. Now three times.”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Good girl. Now do it again. However many times your hoof wants.”
Tap. Tap.
“Good girl. Again.”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He kept it up a few more times, and then started asking simple yes - no questions. After a while, it became obvious that she was tapping twice for yes, and three times for no. In the middle of this, she quit nodding and shaking her head.
“Good girl,” he exclaimed happily. “You’ve learned your first pony behavior perfectly!” He reached over and took out her gag. “How do you like that?”
Tap. Tap.
He held out a sugar cube in front of her. She stared at it a moment, and then stuck out her tongue to take it from his fingers. She balanced it momentarily, and then swallowed it.
“Good girl. Open wide.” She looked at the gag. Her mouth stayed stubbornly shut.
ZZZZ. YYYEEEEOOOWWWW! Lucy hit her with a level two prod.
“Again?”
Tap. Tap. Tap. She opened her mouth and Tom put the gag back in.
“You were a real good girl up until that last little bit of resistance. Turn around. See that chair?”
Tap. Tap.
“Go sit down on it.”
She walked over and looked at it curiously. Up close, it looked like a wooden toilet, complete with bowl and water. She’d never seen a toilet with arms, however. Or seen one with legs, for that matter. There was a device sticking out of the front. She turned around and sat.
“It really is a toilet. If you need to go, just let loose.”
Jeff and Lucy moved up on either side. First, they tied her legs to the chair legs, leaving enough slack to keep the blood flowing, but not enough for her to move her legs. Then they unclipped her hands from behind her, and tied them to the chair arms. They took off the belt and strapped her torso to the back of the chair. When they were done, they left.
While they did this, Tom attached a pair of reins from her bridle to hooks on the back wall, leaving about an inch of slack.
“Next thing is to feed you.” He took a device that looked like a funnel with a horizontal tail from a shelf. “This is called the funnel. It goes in here.” He stuck the tail into a hole in her ball gag, and then strapped the upper part of the funnel to rings on her bridle. Her eyes almost crossed as she looked at it.
He took a bottle of white goop from the shelf. “This is called mash. It’s a carefully compounded mixture of everything a ponygirl needs to stay healthy for years. It’s kind of bland, but the staff changes the taste regularly. We use it for snacks when we’re too busy to eat.”
He put it back, and picked up another bottle of brown goop. “Now, this is the same stuff, except that it tastes truly awful. In fact, it tastes as bad as we can make it. It’s the punishment for talking. You talk; you get fed this stuff. We call it slop.”
“I didn’t really ignore your little break earlier. You were warned in orientation about talking, so you get to find out what slop tastes like.” He poured an ounce or so into the funnel, and then pushed the piston at the bottom, forcing it into her mouth. She went rigid with shock, eyes wide and staring.
“Don’t like that, do you?”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Well, you’re not supposed to.” She swallowed frantically. He pushed the piston again. “Let’s get all of it out and into you. She swallowed again, tears in her eyes.
“The taste doesn’t wash out with saliva. The only thing that will cut it is mash.” He filled the funnel with mash, and then pushed the piston again a couple of times. She relaxed. “Wash it around, then swallow. Tastes good, doesn’t it?”
Tap. Tap.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes to finish your mash. There’s a trick to sucking it down without my having to push it into your mouth. You’ll get the hang of it eventually.” He pushed the door switch as he walked out without a backward glance. The door rose gracefully from the floor, allowing Selma to see herself sitting naked and bound in a chair, with a funnel stuck on her face.
The door sank into the floor, disclosing a nude, bound girl with an empty funnel attached to her face. “You finished it all. Good girl.” Tom poured a couple of ounces of water into the funnel. “Just wash it down, now. That’s a good pony.”
She finished sucking down the water, and looked at him expectantly. He removed the funnel and put it aside.
“You’re not going to like what happens next. This isn’t really a punishment, even though you rebelled a bit back there. This first treatment is to soften you up a bit, give you some motivation for going with the program. After this first treatment, we use this as the punishment for rebellion. You’ll be here for eighty hours. If you try to sleep, you’ll get a shock. Like this.”
He turned a switch on the wall, and a display lit showing 80:00 in big, red letters. He shoved her head forward. OUCH! She flinched. He swung a small stop behind her head and checked the slack on the reins. Good, there was just about an inch before the shock triggered.
She stared wide-eyed at the readout.
“You may not be here for eighty hours. I’ll let you out when I think you’re ready to cooperate fully. Goodbye until then.”
He walked out, and the door rose out of the floor, leaving a ponygirl staring at her image in the mirror on the back of the door. She could see the readout in the corner of her eye. It said 79:59. Then after a while, it changed to 79:58. It was going to be a long time.
Tom stood back from the trotting booth, admiring his favorite novice ponygirl. She was shaping up nicely. She stood placidly in the booth, waiting for it to signal her to begin her exercise regime.
She held her head tilted back, looking at the mirror and indicators set in the wall in front of her, above the level of her head. The top straps of her black leather bridle crossed just above and between her eyes; one strap going vertically over the top of her head, the other strap going all the way around and meeting the first strap in the back. From the juncture, a pair of straps came down, one on each side of her nose, to rings on each side of her mouth. Straps led from each ring under her chin and around the back of her head, where they attached to the strap coming down from her crown.
The two rings also held a bit fixed between her teeth, and a pair of reins that ran behind her to fastenings in the back wall of the trotting booth. Straps ran up from the rings, beside her eyes, over the horizontal strap and crossed at the crown of her head. These straps held a pair of leather blinders in place, effectively insuring that she couldn’t see out of the side of the trotting booth.
He frowned slightly as he looked at her cropped blond hair. It had grown out a bit in the last two weeks, and was threatening to become a tangled mess. None of the training team had been able to do anything with it during grooming. Something was going to have to be done, since long hair was definitely a sales point. Even if she was the best racer in the world, not having thick, waist length hair would lose her enough conformation points to make her non-competitive.
Her black leather collar fit her neck snugly, but not tightly. It was much higher in front than in back, which was the entire reason she held her head back at that angle. He really didn’t think it did much for her in this posture, but it certainly added to her attractiveness when she was on her stand.
Her black leather bustier pulled her waist in to a classic hourglass shape. The bustier rode just above her hips and below her breasts, defining the area in bold relief. Straps from the sides of the booth buckled to the sides of the garment, and held her stationary in the device. She was beginning to adapt to having to breathe with her chest rather than her abdomen.
Her arms were encased in shoulder length black leather gloves. The wrists were attached to the shoulders, and her elbows were clipped to rings on the bustier. The gloves, with their encased hands, came out at right angles to the wrist. They were called puppy paws, and they were the essence of cute when she was on her stand.
Although he couldn’t see it from his angle, he knew her lower legs were encased in high-heeled pony boots that ended in horseshoes on the front part, and had five-inch stiletto heels on the back. He had occasionally wondered if the heels were really necessary; she certainly didn’t seem to depend on them at all when she was running.
Her tail came out from behind her at a jaunty angle. He wished, not for the first time, that it was a real tail.
Well, he thought. Enough woolgathering. Time to start the session. He pressed ‘start’ on his remote, and watched the booth twitch her reins as the speakers said, “giddap, pony.”
She whinnied and moved smoothly into a march step, forelegs coming up precisely horizontal, lower legs held precisely vertical through the entire maneuver. The position indicators showed a clear green; she was exactly on step. After a minute, the machine shook the reins again and said: “trot.” She whinnied and moved into the new gait without missing a beat.
“You’re doing quite well with her, Tom,” said a voice behind him. He jumped slightly and spun around.
“Alice, you startled me,” he accused.
“Well, I intended to,” she smiled. “Take a break, we need to talk.”
“Tom,” she asked as they settled at a table in the ready room, “what do you think of her sale potential?”
“After just two weeks? It’s simply too early. She’s showing more drive than usual, but that hair could be a real problem. I’ve got no idea what to do about it, or even how it happens.”
“How is easy. She’s got some African ancestry somewhere in her family tree. Kinky hair is common in many of those genetic groups. That doesn’t matter to us; our ponies aren’t exactly pedigreed stock. We’re going to add a genetic check to the recruiting requirements. What to do about her is harder.”
“Couldn’t your people simply zap the gene?”
“Maybe. The Thunderbolt says it’s an interesting problem. Pretty Lemon asked me if I was going to take the heat for unauthorized and untested changes. Leo thinks that if we could improve hair overall it would be a competitive advantage, but he wants to see a plan. Marketing is thinking Hollywood, and Leo is intrigued by the idea.”
“In other words, don’t hold my breath.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ve got one other question,” Alice continued. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
I jumped again. “Well, yes. I know I shouldn’t be, but I don’t know what to do about that, either,” I said defensively.
“I checked the surveillance record of the first meeting, and then did some more checking. As far as I can tell, you two belong together. Unfortunately, my opinion in the matter means exactly nothing.”
I relaxed. Having the Sorceress on my side was a lot better than otherwise. “I could buy her for myself,” I said a bit doubtfully.
“With what? Except for that hair, she’s in the 200,000 to 400,000 thousand dollar range. You not only don’t have that kind of money, you don’t have the income to maintain a ponygirl even if you do win a Pick of the Herd Lottery choice.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know. I just don’t know what to do about it.”
“Well, there are some options. First, the Board is about to authorize a Senior Trainer job category. They want me to clone my training abilities. You’re one of my best students, so you’d get the title right away. That’s enough of a salary jump so you could afford to maintain her.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while!” I enthused. I came back down. “It still doesn’t let me buy her, though.”
“Probably not, if we fix her hair. If we don’t, she’s probably not only not salable, but nobody inside would want her, either. We may have to destroy her.”
I stared at her in shock. “You can’t be serious!”
“I wish I wasn’t. If we’d caught the problem earlier, we’d never have recruited her. Next year, we may be able to fix the hair so she would be salable. Right now, it’s either find an owner that wants her, hair and all, or do something else. Her background shows her as a clerical worker with a bit more facility with computers than normal. We’ve got enough clerical workers, and she’s not good enough with the computers to join Cloudburst and that crew. The Thunderbolt has a suggestion, but the board is balking.”
“Oh? What could make our Board of Directors balk? They can’t have suddenly developed a conscience, can they?”
“Exactly. The Thunderbolt suggested using her for testing genetic changes. It’s a real problem. With the best research, modeling and whatnot, eventually someone has got to have the change applied so she can see what happens. Hair is easy compared with some of the things on the wish list.”
“Oh, my God. You want to turn her into a lab rat?” I can’t tell you how profoundly I was shocked by that idea.
“Now, that would be an idea,” Alice mused aloud. “Lab rat should be easier than toad.”
I must have looked like I’d just been clubbed over the head.
“You should see the look on your face, Tom,” she chuckled. “You really are taken with her, aren’t you?”
I gasped weakly. “Yes. Damn you.”
“Well, lets go talk to her.”
We got up and walked back past the empty cells, waiting for the new intake that would be coming in the next week.
By the time we got back, Lucy had moved her from the trotting booth back to her stand, and had left her happily sucking down her mash ration. As usual, I stopped to admire her a moment. She looked so absolutely darling. The picture would have been perfect if there had been a hand holding the funnel.
We waited for her to finish, and then I unhooked the funnel. Alice stepped up to the stand and looked down at her. “Hi, pony. Do you know who I am?”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“I guess we haven’t be introduced, at that. I’m Alice, occasionally known as the Sorceress. I’m the only person who can let you speak.”
Her eyes went wide and then she looked at me.
“She’s right, kid. If she tells you to talk, you talk. No slop. When she tells you to stop, you stop.”
Alice reached down and took out the gag.
“We’ve got a problem, and I’ve got a proposition. You can turn it down if you want. The problem is your hair.”
The pony looked like she wanted to cry. “I know. It’s just awful; I have to wear it short, and it’s ugly.”
“Well, it also makes you not very salable. That puts us in a bit of a quandary. I suppose you’ve noticed that you’re conditioning exercises are going better than you could possibly expect?”
“They sure are. I assume you’re putting steroids in my mash?”
“No, it’s completely genetic changes. We can do things like that. What we don’t have is a program for hair changes. What we need is someone to experiment on.”
She turned pale. “You mean, like cut me up?”
Alice smiled. “No, not like that. Our geneticist would make changes, and then observe the results. Then make more changes, and so forth. She’s still working on the program; it will take a while. The upside is that it should be reasonably safe for you; very few things can go wrong with hair. I can’t say that about some of the other programs we’ve got on the books. Sooner or later, she’s going to slip up, or Murphy is going to take a hand, and she’ll do something to you that she can’t recover from.”
“What happens if I say no?”
“Good question. If we can’t sell you, the conservatives want you destroyed.”
She turned pale again and gulped.
“I don’t like it either, but I can’t give you any guarantees. Or any explanations, for that matter.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “And I thought the Mafiosi were only in my mother’s family. How long do I have to think about this?”
“Not at all. When we quit talking, your gag goes back in, and you’re back to being a ponygirl. Ponygirls don’t think about the future. They don’t think about anything, actually, they just do what they’re trained to do. You need to make up your mind now.”
“What’ll it feel like?”
“The hair program? You probably won’t notice a thing until your hair grows out. Then you’ll have the oddest looking hair imaginable as they test variations. Other programs? It depends on the program.”
“If I agree, can I keep Tom as my trainer after I finish training?”
“We’ll see. If I can swing it, you can. He wants you as much as you want him.”
“OK. Let’s do it.”
“Don’t expect changes right away, the ThunderBolt doesn’t need an experimental subject yet.”
“Well,” Alice continued. “Open up. Talk time is over for you.”
She obediently opened her mouth, and Alice installed the ball gag.
The blanket covered form they’d wheeled into the cell across the way twitched slightly from time to time. I lay back on my stand and wondered idly what she would look like when they took the blanket off. She’d probably have luxurious hair. The pony in the cell to her right had a beautiful fall of platinum blond hair, and the one that had been in the cell on her left was a stunning brunette. The lady with the red hair had promised me I’d have beautiful hair too, or had she? I couldn’t really remember what she’d said, and it didn’t really matter. Tom was happy with me, and that was all I cared about. I wanted to be his pony, now and forever.
Steps sounded from the corridor to my left. Was that Tom and Lucy? They came into sight. One of the men was Tom. I whinnied to him. He waved at me, and then they opened the door and trooped in.
“Hi, pony,” Tom said. “It’s time for some sex training. How’d you like that?”
Sex? Tap, tap. I whinnied to him as I felt myself heat up. The dildo in my sex suddenly felt huge.
“You’re ready, aren’t you?” he asked. I could see the bulge in his pants. He was ready too. I whinnied at him. I wanted him NOW!
He came over holding a ring with a short strap on each side. “Open up, now, pony,” he said. I relaxed my mouth as he took the ball gag out. “Wider.” I opened wider, and he popped the ring in, just behind my teeth. I felt him attach the straps to my bridle.
Lucy loomed up behind me as she pulled the bolt out of the headrest and released my ass plug from its holder. “Up.” I rose up on the stand.
“March over here,” Tom said. Over here was a pair of parallel bars that I hadn’t used before. I knew what they were for, of course. I’d seen them used in the cells across the way. In a way, I wish I hadn’t. Watching one of the other ponies get it got me horny and frustrated. He marched me over to stand just beyond one end of the bars. “Bend over, steady there, girl.” I bent over as he held me by one of the rings on my bustier so I didn’t fall. Lucy snapped leather straps from the sides of the bars to rings on my bustier, and then Tom let go. I was suspended in the air, back horizontal, hooves planted on the ground. Tom swatted the insides of my thighs lightly. I moved my hooves farther apart.
I felt him press on my dildo. There was a stirring in my loins as he collapsed the thing, and then slid it out. He did the same for my ass plug. It was the first time I’d felt empty since grooming that morning. My sex and my ass wanted something in them, and they wanted it now. I whinnied and stomped my hoof.
“Sounds like she really wants a stallion,” the other man said.
“Yep, she’s ready, Leo,” Tom replied.
The other guy, Leo, was it, came around in front. He’d taken off his pants. Wow, was he ready to go! He moved directly in front of me. It didn’t look like he needed any coaxing, but whatever the boss wanted, the boss gets. I stuck out my tongue to get a taste of his tool, and then began caressing it, up and down. In a moment, he moved closer to me, and I took it into my mouth. Ummmm. Tasted like every other cock I’d ever sucked, but that didn’t make much difference. The guys liked it, so I did it. It warmed them up, and gave me time to warm up. Sex was sex.
He pulled out suddenly, and walked around back. I felt him touch my lips, and then WHAM! He rammed it in all the way. I gasped, but it came out as a whinny. He pulled back and rammed again, I whinnied again. Then he steadied down to long, smooth strokes. Each one felt like it was going to come all the way up and out the ring gag before he stopped. Tom stepped up in front of me. He wasn’t raging quite as much as Leo had been, but I knew what to do about that. I started teasing him with my tongue while Leo kept pistoning me behind. Lover boy responded nicely.
Leo kept at it as I built up and up. Eventually, I felt that special place that comes just before coming over the top, and I reached my head out and sucked in lover boy’s cock, and then came. I vaguely felt myself pull at the straps as my entire body tried to twist in ecstasy.
Leo pulled out and then switched to my asshole. Being taken up the ass was never one of my favorites, but just after that beautiful starburst, it felt intense. A moment later, he came and then pulled out. Tom pulled out of my mouth at the same time. Was that all? I whinnied plaintively.
No, it wasn’t all. Tom plunged into me in back, raring to go, as Lucy came up and lifted her skirt. Do a girl? My tongue seemed to have a mind of its own. It flicked out to sample her lips and find her clit. Mmmm. Different from a guy. Tom brought me up a second time. I exploded just as both he and Lucy came.
“Man, is she hot!” I dimly heard someone say. Leo? “Pity about that hair.”
“Well, what can you do?” Tom replied.
“Enjoy,” Leo responded. I heard the cell door open and close. Then Tom came up behind me and stuck the dildo and ass plugs back in and tightened them down.
“Ok, girl. Up you go,” Tom said as he unbuckled the straps and I came back to my hooves kind of unsteadily. “Back to the stand, now. That’s a good pony.”
They settled me back on the stand. I kind of wish he’d left the ring gag. I could just see myself with my tongue hanging out of my mouth.
I’d been carrying a backpack in the trotting booth for a while. One day, Tom came in with Dana. At 2’6”, Dana was a perfect doll. I’d seen her in the corridor and riding some of the other girls, but she’d never worked with me before. “Time for some riding lessons, girl.” I whinnied at him. I wasn’t exactly bored, but I did want to learn more about being a pony.
He swapped my ball gag for a bit, attached reins, pulled the headrest and unclipped the ass plug. “Up.” I came up like a well-oiled elevator. He guided me over to the wall. “Down.” I knelt on the floor. “Sit.” I started a moment, and then whinnied. I’d never done that before! “On your heels, pony,” he said, kind of crossly. On my heels? Oh, a memory returned. That’s what he meant. I sat. “Bend over.” I whinnied again, distressed. He pushed my back, and I bent over. Oh.
I heard Dana pull something from the wall. Then I felt a cool, hard thing on my back. She buckled it to rings in my bustier. Then she pulled something else from the wall, and buckled it in back of my shoulders. She stroked my left arm, and unhooked it from where it was latched to my shoulder. She brought it back behind me, and hooked it in back. Then she did the same to my right arm. My arms were now crossed behind my back. She took another something from the wall, and attached it on my back.
She came up on my left, and then I felt a pull. I almost fell over as she swung herself into the saddle on my back. “Up slowly, pony.” I tried to stand, then I felt Tom’s hands on my body, guiding me in the movements he wanted me to make. I came up slowly until I was sitting, then he brought me up to a kneeling position. From a kneel, I stood the same way I did coming off my stand. I could feel Dana on my back, kind of like the backpack I’d been wearing in the trotting booth. If I looked up, I could see her above me.
She started putting me through my paces. We went around the cell as I got used to having her on my back. Eventually, she stopped me by the wall. “Sit.” I sat, and then bent down again. She swung off. Then she swung back on again, and I came up. We practiced that for a while. Then she took the saddle off and put me back on my stand.
“Hey, Stevie boy, is that you?”
“You know it is, uncle Guido. How’s the family?”
“Doing great, kid. But you know uncle Frank, he always worries.”
“Yah, one of these day’s he’s going to short circuit the worry box, and go up in smoke. What about this time?” I hoped he hadn’t heard about my latest fiasco.
“He hasn’t heard from Little Fuzzy for a while, you heard anything?”
“She disappeared. Just plain vanished. Police don’t know anything. I got her stuff in storage before the landlady tried to sell it.”
Shouldn’t be much of a problem, I thought to myself as I opened her PC and extracted the hard drive. Selma was only half smart about the things. I popped the drive into the analyzer and watched the automated cracker look for stuff. It came right up; cracking her passwords was a piece of cake. She had lots of deleted e-mail that hadn’t been overwritten.
“Hey, Stevie, boy, that you again?”
“Of course, uncle. How’s everyone?”
“Uncle is still worried about Little Fuzzy.”
“So am I. I still haven’t heard anything from her.” We talked about this and that for a while.
“Ran across something weird that I thought Mike might know about.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I found a film clip with this totally bizarre dance. This cute chick was dancing with wolves and what looked like real leprechauns. The chick was rigged out like a pony and the leprechauns were riding the wolves.”
“Kinky. Mike might know about it, at that. I’ll ask around.”
You can’t be too careful, I always say. The rest of the family claims I’m paranoid, but it’s quite true. It’s always the one thing you never expect that gets you. Mike had set me up with someone named Pretty Lemon who might know something about the clips I’d found on Little Fuzzy’s computer. You know that itch between the shoulder blades when someone is looking at you? I was feeling it real bad as I headed down this deserted street toward my appointment, making certain I wasn’t too close to anything anyone could hide behind.
I came to lying on my back, looking up at this rather unusual chick. That had to be Pretty Lemon. She had this amazing mane of lemon yellow hair that emphasized she had nothing else worth looking at. The two guys she had with her I dismissed immediately. Enforcers, but at least, they were being polite.
I scrambled to my feet and took in the sight. As I said, she was nothing to look at, although she was dressed to show off whatever assets she had. Low cut white blouse, black miniskirt with a phone and some wand hanging from the belt, mesh stockings and knee length black boots with five-inch heels. Whoever dressed her had to be nuts. The plain ones look better with more clothes, not less. The other thing that was obvious was that she was a butch lesbian. Making a pass was totally out of the question, which was just as well. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by not making one.
“Pretty Lemon, I presume?” Not the world’s greatest opening, but you have to say something.
“Guilty as charged.” She had a kind of throaty, unforced laugh. Something was tickling the back of my mind. Where had I heard of that head of hair before? “You must be Steve.”
“Was the last time I looked. Did you really have to put me out to bring me here?”
“Uh, huh. Otherwise you’d have turned into a raving maniac.”
That brought me up short. “Didn’t I hear something about that a couple of years ago?”
She laughed again. “We’re being much more careful these days. Anyway, I’m supposed to put you into the picture while we go see if we’ve got your missing relative.”
We turned a corner, and I saw the next piece of the picture standing there, rigged out as a pony and hitched to a cart. She looked just like the pictures, except that her harness was white leather. This one was worth staring at. She had her head tilted back, allowing her waist length chestnut hair to fall free. Her foundation garment framed her perfectly, from where it hugged the curve of her hips to where it gave her perfect breasts just a hint of support. Her white leather boots forced her feet into a full pointed toe extension. They looked like they might be set on horseshoes. She had blinders on her bridle, a cute chestnut tail coming out the back, and bells on her ears and breast rings.
“Climb in,” Pretty Lemon said. All of us got in. “Do you want to drive her?” She handed me the reins.
“Huh?” I pulled my jaw back up. I hadn’t seen any flies, but I didn’t want to take chances. Besides, it makes me look as stupid as I was feeling at the moment. “How?”
“Just like a horse; that’s the way she’s trained.”
I shook the reins, and clucked at her. She strained a bit getting the cart moving, and then we were off. She did have horseshoes on those boots; I could hear the clip, clop of metal on concrete distinctly. “Which way, ma’am?” Pretty Lemon gave me directions. We went into a tunnel, and then stopped at a security booth. One of the guards gave me a pass. “Don’t lose it.” I promised him I wouldn’t; it didn’t look like a real good idea to find out what would happen.
We came out into a large cavern with what looked like a small town built into it. “Just head up the street to the Arena. We should be in time for the third race.” I grunted; it was taking most of my attention just handling a ponygirl and cart in traffic, and not get distracted by that hair and tail swaying in front of me as she trotted along.
I got a good look at her head when we left her tied to a hitching rack. I scratched her behind the ears, and she whinnied at me.
The arena was like every horse track I had ever seen, except the oval was about half the size I was used to. The stands held a scattering of people. The grooms were wheeling out platforms to set up the third race as we settled into our seats. Each platform contained a kneeling girl stuck to a pole like a butterfly on a board. The grooms got them off the stands and harnessed them to what looked like miniature sulkies. This looked like leprechaun day; all of the drivers looked like little dolls. I could just imagine the fuss if they ever got jockeys that small for real horse races.
They walked up to the starting line, doing some kind of fancy step, every bit as good as several dancers I had known. They knelt precisely on the chalk, and came up like a chorus line. They charged around that track like the devil himself was after them, not that I could see any of the drivers using a whip. They were going so fast, I expected them to turn out to the finish line and collapse. Instead, they turned for another go around the track. Then they took third circuit, and a fourth. When they finally turned out to the finish line they on it knelt like they’d measured it with a ruler. It looked like five girls had just done a mile at a pace that would have been good for a 200-yard dash, while pulling a sulky, and in a uniform that couldn’t have helped their breathing.
“Best steroids I’ve ever heard of. Does the IAU know about this?” I asked.
“Not drugs, genetics. And no, they don’t.” she said.
“Now that’s interesting,” I grinned. “Let me know which ones to bet on.”
She looked confused for a moment. “Oh, right. This is for ponygirls only. It’s not available outside, under any conditions.”
“There are always exceptions,” I said.
“Too true. I don’t think you know which rule this is an exception to, though. You can talk to the managing director about it, but the answer will be no, as in ‘not even if all hell freezes over’.”
Negotiating isn’t my job, so I shut up. Besides, what had been tickling my mind had just surfaced. “You ever heard of someone called Sally Bananas? She vanished a couple of years ago, with the Feds in hot pursuit. They claim she had hair just like yours.”
She laughed again. “That’s me, boyo. I came here about two hours before the Feds raided my apartment. They’re pretty sure I’m still around, but they don’t have a clue as to where.”
“That’s a neat trick. How’d you manage it?”
“I didn’t. They kidnapped me for the ponygirl program here. It was total coincidence that the Feds knocked down my door two hours later. The Sorceress needed a hacker, so here I am.”
“So you’re the one that covered the back trail from Selma’s machine? I couldn’t figure out how you did it.”
“There was no back trail to cover. That conversation never got out of her ISP’s email server and head end router.”
“Huh?” Now I was royally confused. “You penetrated her ISP just to get her?”
“Nope, didn’t have to penetrate anyone. We can read anything, anywhere, and write anything, anywhere. In one way, I’m not real happy about it; it’s too much like cheating. I don’t have to crack passwords or anything any more. There’s no challenge left in hacking.”
“That sounds like magic.” I said in a tone of blank disbelief.
“That’s why she’s called the Sorceress’ Apprentice,” one of the enforcers said.
“Alice is a do-gooder, and the Lemon is a lesbian bitch, and they are the two most dangerous people on the planet,” said the other enforcer. “You don’t want to know what they can do if you want to be able to sleep at night.”
She smiled brightly. “You do say the nicest things, Bob.” He grinned back.
I looked back at the track. They were setting up for the fourth race. This time, it looked like the leprechauns were riding the ponygirls. Maybe I’d wake up and discover they’d slipped me a new designer drug. Please?
The training arenas were in this long room, stacked end to end. Each arena was maybe 30 yards square, sunk about six feet down from the walkway that ran down one side, and separated from each other by a wall. By now, I’d found out that the leprechauns were called lobo-ra, which means wolf-rider in some language or other. They sure didn’t look like the comic books I’d read as a child.
It was definitely Selma in the fourth arena; there was no way I could mistake her, even though her hair had grown out a bit, and was so mixed it would have made a clown cry.
Little Fuzzy was being worked with a cart. Her trainer was in the cart, and one of the little people was on the ground, showing her how various movements went. My appreciation of the ponygirl I had driven here went up; that looked like a very thorough training regimen. After watching a while, the reason finally got through my thick skull. Real ponies acted like ponies; the training we gave them was a relatively light veneer on their normal behavior. Selma had to be trained from the ground up to act like a pony. It looked like she was doing well at it.
Today’s lessons looked like show stuff. She was being trained to bring her leg up folded, with the heel pointed straight back, and then kick it out at the top of the arc before bring it back down to complete the step. As they went through the drill, I could see her getting better, with her movements becoming more fluid and at the same time, more precise. Whatever they were doing for training, it beat anything I had ever heard of. Of course, I’d never heard of the lobo-ra before today, or seen a race with five women in bondage harnesses and high heels absolutely trashing world running records without breathing hard, either.
I never did get to talk to her. They wouldn’t let me break her training discipline.
“What,” Leo asked, “do we do with her?”
Leo was sitting with Alice; Pretty Lemon; Black ThunderBolt; Lenore, the head of the training academy; the head of marketing; and Dave, his security chief.
“Why is this a problem?” Dave asked.
“Her family is getting awfully insistent, and they’re one of the major Mafia families on the East Coast.”
“We could just blow them away,” Dave said. “The police would probably thank us if they knew.”
“It would undoubtedly be an improvement,” Alice said dryly, “But think of what would happen next.”
“So what? Dead is not going to come back to bother us.”
“People would wonder. People would ask questions.” Pretty Lemon said.
“And when they didn’t get any answers, they’d invent them. You’d have an absolute zoo if a major Mafia family just fell over dead with no answers,” Black ThunderBolt added. “Make me glad I’ve got a mountain over my head.”
The head of marketing added, “And some of our contacts know enough to point the finger right at us.”
“Didn’t think of that,” Dave said. “We’ve got too many clients out there to protect them all if it blew up in our face.”
“What about just sending her back?” Pretty Lemon asked.
“She’s the one that doesn’t want to deal with her family.” Alice said. “She wouldn’t have been in the fix she was in if she would have accepted their help.”
“Tom would raise hell,” Lenore said. “He’s head over heels in love with her.”
“Besides, that would establish a precedent,” Marketing added. “I don’t think I want to go there.”
“I don’t either,” Security said. “Too much risk of her talking.”
“What about making her one of us?” Alice asked.
“What?” Dave exclaimed.
“I’d rather not,” Lenore added. “If she gets it, I’d rather see Cloudburst and the ThunderBolt first. At least, they’re contributing.”
“I agree,” Marketing said. “She’s done nothing to deserve it. In all fairness, we’d have to open it up to all the community owned ponygirls, and then we’d have all hell out for noon.”
“That’s going to have to happen anyway,” Alice said, “but I agree, it’s too soon. We need a lot more spadework first.”
“It’s also beside the point,” Leo said. “The basic issue is that we’ve got a Mafia family breathing down our neck on this. Either we fight them, or we do something that lets them see she’s doing what she wants to do.”
“That would mean she’s got to work outside,” Pretty Lemon said. “How do we keep a leash on her?”
“And keep her mouth shut,” added the security chief.
“Sounds like a commitment issue,” said Lenore. “I know why Alice and the Lemon are with us. That’s why I’ve objected to your getting a membership,” she added, turning to Black ThunderBolt.
“Mine should be pretty obvious,” Black ThunderBolt said, “I get to play goddess of the gene pool. I couldn’t do that outside, and I’d have to deal with academic politics. Sometimes you frustrate the hell out of me, but it’s still better than academia. But I’d have to agree with you about Cloudburst. She’s really got no major reason to want to stay.”
“So it looks like we’ve only got two options,” Lenore said. “Either we find a club to hold over their heads so they keep their noses out of our business, or Selma comes up with some reason for us to trust her outside.”
“So, how about this,” Leo said. “We tell her family we’re not going to break her training schedule. That gives us two months. Security comes up with a club, maybe put together a dossier on their drug dealings, or something. When we would normally start letting her talk, we ask her to think about it.”
“OK by me,” said Dave. “I just hope the Board buys it.”
“And the Mafia. I’d hate for this place to come down around my ears,” said Pretty Lemon. “The last thing I want to do is deal with the Feds again.”
The unnamed ponygirl knelt on her stand and placidly let her last feeding digest. Two of the ponies opposite her had not been in their cells for several days. She watched the trainers walk back and forth, and watched the new chestnut in the cell opposite fidget a bit. A redhead walked up to her cell and let herself in. She seemed somehow familiar.
“Hi, pony. I’m Alice, remember me?”
The memory came back. This was the one that had gotten her the lovely blond mane she sported. She tapped twice and whinnied.
“Of course you do. You’re just about done training, and we need to talk a bit.” Alice took the gag out of the pony’s mouth. “Talk time.”
“Uh, what about?” pony said, a bit slowly.
“What we’re going to do with you next. Your uncle Frank has been asking about you.”
“That ... bastard,” pony exclaimed. “He’s the last one I want to talk to. How did he find me?”
“Poor security on both our parts. That’s irrelevant,” Alice said, waving her hand to dismiss it. “What we need to know is whether you want to stay a ponygirl until you fall over dead of old age, or whether you want to join us. If you want to join us, we also need to know why we should trust you.”
“You’d let me go back to being a people again?” She sounded quite surprised.
“Yes, on condition that you maintain some kind of relationship with your family. And, of course, the commitment thing I just mentioned.”
“Damn. I don’t want to let them get their hooks into me.”
“You hate them that much?”
“No, not at all. I’d like to see them again. I loathe the family business, and staying away is the best I can do to keep them from getting me trapped in their web.”
“Well, if you were one of us, that couldn’t happen.”
“Oh, good. Can I keep Tom?”
“You’d have to drive him off with a club,” Alice laughed. “He’s in love with you. We still have to deal with the trust issue, however.”
“I don’t know. What would get you to trust me?”
“Joining us fully. You’d have to spend some time training ponygirls.”
“Hey, neat. I always liked training my cats to do the strangest things.”
“You don’t have any objection?”
“Why should I? I didn’t have any objection to my becoming a ponygirl, why should I have any objection to training other girls?”
“OK, we’ll do it that way. As of now, you’re a community trainee. The thing you need to know about them is that they are our own people. Most of our young women spend two years as ponygirls and then one year in class before starting to train. Community trainees wear white tack, so you’ll get your new tack in a couple of days. Since they grew up here, they’ve got a general idea of what’s going to happen to them. It’s impossible to keep them from having it, so I’ll fill you in. You’ve got another year and a half to spend as a ponygirl. Then you have some time to become acclimated to the community, and one year in ponygirl trainer’s school. Then you spend a few years training ponygirls. Some of our trainers make a career of it, some go on to other tasks in the community.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all I’m going to tell you. You get you new tack when it comes, you’ll be transferred to the new stable when it happens, and you’ll know what your owner wants you to do as a ponygirl when it happens. Our trainees don’t know any more about that than any of the other ponygirls.”
“Oh.”
“Well, that’s all we need to talk about. Talk time is over.” Alice held up the ball, and pony obediently opened her mouth. Alice installed it, and then scratched her behind the ears. Pony whinnied at her as she left the cell.
I came awake like I did every morning. The muffled sounds of people and ponygirls moving outside my cell said everything was exactly what it was supposed to be. A pair of feet walked across the concrete and stopped by my pallet. The pace sounded like Tom. I felt the tug and release as he unsnapped the four bands that kept me on the pallet at night, then the tug and release as the snap that kept my feet attached to my hands unclipped. I brought my feet back, and whoever it was unzipped the leg binder. Then he did the same for the arm binder. As a final touch, he removed my hood. I stole a quick look, oh, goodie; it really was Tom. I’d thought so from the touch. “Grooming time, Raindance,” he said with a light swat to my bottom. I brought myself up on arms and legs and crawled into the grooming room to wait in front of the toilet.
He came up behind me and took out the ball gag. “Talk time, Selma.” Then he went behind to take out the dildo and ass plug. I went rigid with shock.
“What did you call me?” I gasped.
“Selma, that’s your name, isn’t it?” he laughed.
“But, you named me Raindance.”
“So I did, but your time as a community trainee are up. This morning is when you come out. This is your last grooming. Enjoy it.”
I thought a moment as I sat on the pot. “I like being Raindance.”
“You don’t want to come out? You want to stay as a ponygirl?”
“Not that; I just like being called Raindance better than Selma. Especially when you say it.”
“Well, shower next, then.” I crawled over to the shower, lathered myself and washed myself down carefully. He was talking to someone on his cell phone. When I came out of the shower, I crawled over to him, and he toweled me down. Then I waited while he looked at me. The moment stretched.
Oh. Right. He wasn’t going to get me started to my pad to have my tack put on. I wasn’t a ponygirl any more. I got up on my feet and stretched.
“What next, oh lord and master?”
He got up, and motioned to the top of the cabinet. “That’s the most offhand proposal I’ve ever heard, girl. If you meant it, I accept.”
I froze again. Proposal? Accept? I made a wild grab and he reeled me in. Mmmmmm. I’d tasted his dick too many times to count, this was the first time I’d felt his tongue in my mouth. Just where it belonged. I felt myself melt against his body. The number of times I’d imagined doing this!
Eventually, we unhitched. He pointed to the cabinet again. “Clothes, wench. I like you just like this, but people will talk. They’ll say I don’t have enough money to outfit you.” I looked at the cabinet. True enough, there was a pile of clothing on top. Panties, bra, mesh stockings with stay-ups, white blouse and black miniskirt. A pair of long black boots with stiletto heels stood next to it. I flowed into the outfit and gave a wriggle to settle everything, and then spun around to the sound of clapping.
“Delicious, my lady.” I took a bow and then giggled. When I turned back to the cabinet, I noticed makeup on top, as well as some costume jewelry. Time to get prettied up.
“You really meant it about marrying me?” I asked.
“Certainly; I’ve been in love with you ever since I took the wrappings off two years ago. If you meant it, you can move right in with me, and we’ll do the official ceremony whenever it suits us. Right now, we need to handle records and get those tags out of your ears. And remember to hold your head forward, dear. That’s one of the easy ways of telling when one of our trainees has just come out; she holds her head back.”
I giggled again. “I’ll remember; it’s easier to look at you this way.” I stuck out my tongue at him. “Ponygirl to housewife in one step.”
He snorted. “It’s not that unusual. Quite a few of our girls have a steady boyfriend before they become ponygirls. If they’ve declared an attachment, he gets to deflower her in her sexual initiation, and then he gets to do the final grooming, if he still wants her. If she still wants him, they move right in together. As far as the community is concerned, they’re married. Then they throw a party to celebrate with their friends and relatives.”
I took a final peek at myself in the mirror. “What about my hair?” It was still a pony’s mane. “I want it normal.”
“It’ll grow out. The ThunderBolt wanted to give you a wedding present, or at least a coming out present, so you get to choose a hair color. She’ll put it into the system tonight. The style is straight, long and thick, with no split ends or tangles.”
“I think I love her! How do we tell her?”
“Just go to the salon and talk to the ladies. They’ll help you choose.”
I gave him a quick hug, and we walked out of the grooming room, past my mat and stand, and out of the cell. On a sudden impulse, I turned and gave the chair the finger. It didn’t seem to mind.
Everything looked different as we walked down the row of ponygirl cells, each with its ponygirl mounted like a jewel in a case. The outside looked exactly the same, yet different. Before, I didn’t care what was in any of the buildings; I wasn’t going into them anyway. Today, it seemed to be a nice small town. We headed to the services building first. That was where the clinic and the registry office were. We stopped at the registry, where they gave me my card. It had a great picture, and my name, “Raindance Johnson.” I looked at my husband. “So you’re Mr. Johnson, eh?” The clerk behind the counter started a moment and then relaxed. It wasn’t every day a woman got married without knowing what her new last name was going to be! I just hadn’t thought about it. I knew Tom and the details were something I would enjoy learning when I needed to know them.
We stopped at the clinic next. They took out the ear tags and breast rings. I stared at the neat little holes through my ears. “Not much we can do about it, ma’am,” the nurse said. “That’s why you see lots of big ear jewelry around here.”
“Next year, possibly,” the doctor added. “The last briefing we had, regenerating that hole is high on the priority list, just as soon as they finish up work on the sex changes.”
“Oh, good. I don’t look that good with big, ornate jewelry. My style is more subtle.”
“Tell you’re from outside, ma’am.” The nurse said. “Subtle is not the standard style around here.”
We stopped in a little café for breakfast. This was the first time I’d had eggs in two years. Fabulous. I was looking forward to getting acquainted with real food again. Those eggs reminded me of how much I missed it.
Then Tom dropped me off at the gym. “I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours, honey.” I looked at the machines, and my body said, NOW! On reflection, of course. I’d done two hours of running a day until I came here, and I’d been doing four or six hours for the last two years. My body was habituated. Two hours in the gym seemed like a minimum. At least, I’d be able to get some balance between upper body and lower body.
Tom had a nice apartment in the residential block. A senior trainer didn’t rate the executive block. That was another step up. Meanwhile, at three rooms, bath and kitchen, it was great for a couple starting out. I was pleasantly surprised; he seemed to have similar housekeeping standards to mine. I could remember too many arguments with boyfriends about housekeeping for comfort. I settled in quickly and spent time getting to know my new husband. The neighbors came in a distant second.
My training class had ten young women and twelve young men, all of them just over twenty except for me. I felt like an old hag at 26! As the room filled up before starting, I found out exactly how small a town it was; everybody except me knew everyone else. All but one of the girls had just come out of the community trainee program; the other one had skipped it. The guys all seemed to have spent the last two years studying how the community operated. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair, but then, I already knew that the community was totally male dominated. Also, I had this suspicion that part of it was a male/female learning split. The guys needed to have it downloaded into their heads formally, the women picked up most of it in the continual chatter, as long as they didn’t stay hidden away with husband and children.
Finally, the teachers trooped in. Alice was a thirtyish redhead that I’d already met. Nobody mentioned her official position; everybody seemed to know. I’d already put together that she was unofficially called the Sorceress, and everybody was just plain scared of getting on her bad side, not that I’d heard anything about her acting nasty, or anything. That she was the Managing Director’s wife had been mentioned, kind of as an afterthought. It was clear she didn’t have her position because of marriage; maybe they just deserved each other.
Lenore was the head of the training academy. I’d already found out she was the Managing Director’s sister-in-law by his late wife. The other instructors rotated among classes.
Alice started out with a speech. Most of it was the usual rah, rah at the beginning of any program, but one part stood out.
“This class will be a bit different from previous classes. The minor reason is that you have Raindance with you, who is one of the four outside ponygirls that has been given community membership. The reason doesn’t concern you, although it’s not a secret.”
“The major reason is that the Congress has just passed something called the ‘Consensual Slave Act’.” What we do falls squarely under that act, and actually puts us within shouting distance of being legal. You may know that we’ve been moving from kidnapping our intake to recruiting over the Internet. Raindance is one of the first of the Internet recruits; we kidnapped her after she signed the indenture because we hadn’t worked out the procedures for a formal pickup. The kidnapping process is ended.”
“For the rest of it, the Board is doing their justly acclaimed ostrich act. They’re not alone; the Owners Association has their head just as deeply in the sand. This situation will blow up in our face sooner or later. I think that it’s usually better to face reality, and prepare for the inevitable. I’ve looked at the act, and as far as I can tell, it’s the standard legal gibberish. It seems to be catching on outside, however. The main outline is that slaves, and ponygirls qualify as slaves under the act, get days off and vacations. How we’re going to do that remains a mystery, although it’s going to be easier with ’girls like Raindance than with the ones we kidnapped.”
“Lenore will cover the administrative details.”
Finally, they got to the meat. Our head instructor was a dynamic little blonde named Connie. She explained the class structure very concisely.
“I’m going to be your lead instructor for the next year. You’ll have other instructors for specific parts of the class. We do as much hands on as possible, which brings up the question of where you get the ponygirls to get your hands on. Some of the instructors and trainers will be playing ponygirl for demonstrations, and sometimes we will bring in community owned ’girls to let you practice. Most of the time, however, you’ll be practicing on each other. That means both sexes. Remember that the girls and trainers have already been trained; you get to teach the guys from the ground up.” The guys groaned. I had the feeling they knew which experience they were going to be the subjects for, and weren’t looking forward to it. Lucy just looked scared.
“Today, we’re going to start right in with the ponygirl’s first experience of the prod. You’re going to practice with that thing until you can use it in your sleep. Becoming really expert is not only the difference between quashing rebellion and getting hurt, but being faster than a bush rattler can make the difference in training a ’girl. Correct a fault fast, and she doesn’t have time to get her head in the way. Delay, and her mind wanders off in the wrong direction, and you’ve got a mess to clean up. They’re over there on the table. Get one and bring it back to your desk.”
I picked one up and looked at it. It was a two foot long solid tube with a shaped handle, kind of like a long knife or a short sword, except that there was no edge. Instead, it had several buttons where my fingers and thumb rested, and a hook to hang it on my belt.
We spent the entire rest of the morning practicing snatching it off our belts, turning it on to level one, and placing it where Connie said, and then turning it off and putting it back on our belts. By lunch, everybody had two maneuvers down - not hitting herself with it after turning it on, and getting it turned off before putting it back. The yelps of pain from forgetting to turn it off, and the howls of anguish for getting level two by accident would have had a sadist in seventh heaven. We’d even had two people hit themselves on level three. I was beginning to develop a healthy respect for the amount of work Tom had put into his expertise with the thing.
After lunch, Connie broke us up into two person teams. One person was to feign an attack; the other person was to hit them in a specified place on level one. That started sharpening up my form quickly. My partner, Carl, wasn’t quite so fortunate. I’d progressed quite far in my Tai Chi classes before all this happened, and while the forms were different, the basic methods came back. He was having trouble making hits at all, and I was always hitting him. Connie noticed the mismatch, and swapped Carl for Greg. Greg had lots of martial arts experience; we had a wonderful time for a couple of hours dancing with each other.
The next day she started us on more of the basic martial arts stuff: falling and rolling. In the afternoon, we got our tour of the training facility.
Our facility was set up somewhat like the facility I’d been trained in. The main corridor had two columns of ponygirl cells off one side, and a column of practice arenas and another of classrooms off the other. There was also an orientation room, and several break rooms. Each corridor of ponygirl cells had ten on a side, for twenty. Connie mentioned that the real training area had five on a side, for ten in each corridor. The reason we had more would become obvious later in the course. Our introduction to how a ponygirl cell was put together was kind of obvious to us girls; after all, we’d lived in one for two years. For most of the guys, it was either new, or explained things that they had never wondered about.
Then we did the prod sequence from orientation. For this, we were set up into four person teams, although we were short two girls. The guys got to play ponygirl. We put them on a stand, complete with belt and cuffs, and then went through the spiel, reading it from the script. They howled when we did them at level two, but they howled even more when we blew the script. We ran through it, swapping who was on the stand, until the script sunk in to where we could do it like we meant it. The guys spent more time on the stand, but I got practiced on some. Connie had Lucy’s team leave her on the stand during breaks. She looked like she was going to cry, but managed to hold up.
We skipped from orientation right into the foot tapping thing. I looked at the script Connie gave us.
“Hey, Connie?” I called. “I don’t remember being trained this way.”
“Good point. You probably weren’t. You must have had a senior trainer, and they do this section subliminally. You won’t learn how to do that until you go to senior trainer class, and that’s invitation only for career trainers.”
We got to practice in the training area cells. With only six teams, we got staggered down one side, so there was no possibility of the subject seeing any of the other teams at work. We also had a working trainer as a coach.
The standard sequence is pretty hard on a girl; it’s deliberately designed to continue driving in the point of who is in control, and that she isn’t the one. We wound up practicing on Lucy and the guys. I got Terry as my practice pony. The third time I’d hit him at level two because he moved his head while responding, he decided that he didn’t want to be a ponygirl trainer after all, and bolted. ZZZZZZZ YYYYIIIIIII! I stood back to give him lots of room to writhe on the floor. He settled down after a couple of minutes. Fred and Steph hauled him back onto his feet, and I continued with the lesson. This time, he tried keeping his neck frozen while I finished drilling him.
The next day, I found out what the guys were afraid of. We started on the chair. We practiced on one of the trainers. I vaguely remembered being hustled into the chair and tied down quickly; it took us all day to get the ties and knots to our coach’s satisfaction.
The day after, it looked like we were going to repeat the lesson, this time on Fred. Once we got him tied down and fed, the trainer shooed us out of there and left him sitting, staring at his image in the mirror while we went back to the classroom. We spent the rest of the day on the support organization behind the trainers. When we came back from lunch, we got to feed our teammates, but they stayed in the chair. We fed them again at the end of class, and then came back after dinner and let them out. Ten hours in the chair wasn’t the same terror inducer as eighty, but Fred was already cramping, and the readouts showed he had quite a bit of trouble staying awake.
Lucy wasn’t in class next morning. I found out that their team had started on her, rather than one of the guys. She’d been terrified of the chair, and when she found out that ten hours hadn’t killed her, she’d decided to go the full route as a community trainee. They’d put her through orientation that night, and she was settled in her chair, watching the countdown. They were going to give her the full eighty to show her that, miserable as it was, it wouldn’t kill her.
Most of the rest of the class was fun. I’d enjoyed my time as a ponygirl; so role-playing while my teammates learned how to do all the support tasks came easy. The hardest part was to simulate disobedience or hesitation so that the guys had a chance to find out how to deal with it. That was a part I never really liked. Fortunately, Steph was a real brat, and something of a masochist, so we practiced on her. I’ve never understood the attitude myself; either I did what I was told, or I found a way to get out from under. Tom gave me a couple of pointers on dealing with it. Once I found her buttons, I could turn the brat on and off when I wanted. Terry and Fred never figured it out; Connie spotted exactly what I was doing, of course. It took Steph most of the year to catch on.
As a ponygirl, I’d mostly been aware of the training aspect. Much of the class was on the day-to-day routine. I learned stuff I never suspected I’d need. We covered massage and nursing, grooming, conditioning, and how to keep her perky and focused. The psychology of ponygirls was interesting in its own right; building the right mindset and then cementing it in so they wouldn’t try to revert to being a girl was fascinating, if disturbing. Then we had the variations for different personality types, and how to handle different kinds of resistance and rebellion. Finally, we studied the differences for community trainees so that they would come out at the end.
We were about halfway through, and we’d gotten to final shipping. My number had come up first today, so they got me into harness, and then practiced tying me into the box. By now, we’d all gotten the part about how to gentle a skittish pony down pat, so I just lay there and let it happen. As it turned out, I’d never done this part as a ponygirl. I’d been in the box on the original kidnap, but not when I was shipped from the training block to the main dome. The coach checked the setup, and then they locked the box. The sleepy gas kept me so far out of it that I almost didn’t notice. It bounced around a bit, and then space got weird for a moment. I giggled into my gag. Then it bounced around some more, and they opened the box, took me out and dropped me on a stand. When they whipped the blindfold off, I was in a ponygirl cell, with people I’d never seen before standing around.
Panic time! I whinnied into my gag. Then my teammates came around to where I could see them, and I relaxed. They’d almost given me a heart attack. For a moment there, I thought that they’d decided I was better as a ponygirl, and I’d been sold.
After I got bounced off my stand and got dressed, Connie asked me how the experience had been. When I mentioned that the twist in the middle had been kind of fun, she made a note.
We did Steph next. I didn’t bother to turn the brat on; by this time, the pony shouldn’t be resisting at all. I found out what they hadn’t told me about the exercise. Once I locked the box on her drowsing form, they put it on a cart, brought in a ponygirl, and hauled it down to the teleport stages in the warehouse area. Then it got zapped from one stage to another as we watched. Then the ponygirl hauled it back. That sobered me up a bit. If I hadn’t gotten my break, my box would have just vanished, never to reappear in the caverns again.
Then we got the first half exam. We’d been told to show up in clothes we wouldn’t mind losing. The exam ran for a full month. Connie paired our working teams into three teams of seven. I got team A. As soon as the assignments were out, we hustled teams B and C out of the room and crated them for shipping. We had lots of help; this part had to go reasonably fast. Once the last of the crates was on its way to the warehouse, we split back up and went to our orientation rooms. Connie had swapped Steph with Tina, a tall, bubbly brunette with a truly amazing figure. I was always somewhat astonished that she didn’t fall over, although in reality, her biggest problem was having the guys fall over her. We also got eight boxes, while the other team got six. I found out why almost at once; Tina was definitely in charge, and also accurate. Steph simply wasn’t that fast a learner, and I expect that Connie wanted to give her the extra practice.
Tina took over at once, and told me to do the setup while she and our two guys got the first package out of the box. Then we swapped on the next one. She ran through the script smoothly, with only occasional stops to check on what to do next. Our first one was a stallion; we had a special set of ear clips for his livestock tags so we wouldn’t have to punch a hole. Several of us girls had gotten together and worked up a substitute for the breast rings. Connie had been amused when we discussed it with her; were the guys in for a surprise the first time we pulled it on them! She shaved his chest and glued on breast forms! Then she expertly pierced the forms, so he had a pair of gold rings dangling from his breasts. That left him in enough of a state of shock that when she held the gag in front of his face, he opened his mouth like a good boy, and she shoved it in, fastened the bridle, placed the headrest, and draped him in a blanket before he came out.
I got a filly for my first one. She was shook. I soothed her down, and then offered her the water. She sucked it down gratefully, and asked if she could go to the bathroom. I had to check my script, it said to tell her to wait, she’d be able to in a couple of hours. Then I did the prod demonstration, gave her the warning about talking, and let her pick whether she wanted to be gagged now or later. Of course, she’d been through it all once, so she said later. I was remembering Sandy’s relentless chatter, and I tried to duplicate it. She started getting scared when I cut her clothes off; well, she’d been told to wear something she wouldn’t mind losing. She already had holes in her ears, so I simply inserted the tags and crimped them together. When I went to work on her breasts, she lost it, so I hit her with a level two to shut her up, and gagged her.
Doing her breasts was tricky. We had a form to use to guide the needle, and we’d practiced on dummy breast forms until we could do it smoothly, but still, the first time you do a breast piercing is kind of intense. It came off nicely; I really do think those rings just below the nipples look cute. I made a note to discuss it with Tom; if he liked them, I wanted to keep them this time.
We shoved our last one out the door while Steph was still finishing up hers. Connie handed us our assignments. We got one filly and one stallion each, except Tina, who had two stallions.
The next task was to get them off the stands, teach them to do foot tapping, get them on the chair and feed them. The procedure was that there were to be three trainers in the cell at all times until they had been through the chair experience.
I got my filly up first. The whole process went smooth as silk; it looked like she was just plain scared of what could go wrong. We got her boots on, got her off the platform to where she was standing, and taught her the foot stamp code. Of course, she knew it, so there wasn’t a problem. I was thinking that she might have forgotten to hold her head steady, but she remembered perfectly. We got her tied down to the chair, fed and the countdown started.
We took a bit under an hour for each of the rest, and then staggered home. Our instructors had brought in some help to feed our classmates; otherwise, it would have been really horrible.
Connie had us spend the next three days going over everything we had done, and I mean, literally everything. We inspected the surveillance tapes and the coach’s notes, and wrote up notes on each of our subjects. That was an intense three days.
We stopped the countdown on most of our charges before the full eighty. Eighty hours is three and a third days. We wanted to give them, and us, a good night’s sleep. The first few went for eighty, but for the rest, it wasn’t possible. I got my two charges out of the chair and asleep on their pallet with reasonable efficiency at the end of the third day.
There’s not a whole lot you do the first week after the chair besides conditioning, simple dressage steps, and rein training. Normally, the initial gangbang comes in the second or third week, when their mouth has expanded to take our 2.6 inch ring gag. We moved the gangbang up early, and otherwise concentrated on the daily routine. I think that was the first time it really sank in to the male members of the crew what the enhancements did. We had the ponygirl’s running machines set to where they would have killed any of the men outright if they had tried it. The girls, of course, thought they were on vacation; we didn’t have any reason to really get them back into racing condition.
At the end of the ten days, we let them out. It was now Team B’s turn.
Tom reminded me to wear something I wouldn’t mind losing. I’m glad he did, I kept having images of that chair grinning at me. I was really beginning to regret giving it the finger much of a year ago. Superstitious? Tom had let me out after thirty hours or so; we had let our classmates go for over seventy-five. As it turned out, the woman who did orientation and my chief trainer did a cautiously professional job. I now knew the difference between thirty and eighty hours. At thirty, I was still coherent, if lightheaded and hurting. At eighty, I was incapable of any form of thought, let alone a coherent one. The entire world was composed of pain and mental fog. I would have done anything they told me to, not out of fear, but simply because I wasn’t capable of thinking. If a command registered at all, there was nothing between it and the muscles.
It took me several days to recover from the chair. After that, the last few days were enjoyable. It didn’t really dawn on me that this was a training class exercise until they released me at the end of the tenth day. The chair had put me back into the mindset that I was being trained as a ponygirl!
The next day, Team C started in on me. I had essentially the same experience. When they released me at the end of the tenth day, it was a complete surprise.
Then I got the next surprise. I knew the Gymkhana was coming up, but I didn’t think it would affect me. I just hoped they would give us some time to see the races.
What it turned out was that they were critically shorthanded. We all got assigned to some variety of support for the duration. The guys all got security, and most of us girls either went to housekeeping or personal service. I got personal service, which meant I got tossed in with the community trainees and got a quick course on how to behave like a slave girl, mixed in with what our guests should and shouldn’t know and be allowed to do. The chaos looked like it was sorting itself into order when the shit hit the fan. The rumor mill overheated its bearings enough that the Managing Director made an official announcement.
It turned out that the Feds had located one of the owner’s ponygirl establishments, and we had been exposed. We were going to be stuck with both an FBI agent and a US Senator, so we needed to be on some kind of best behavior. I figured I was too far down the pecking order for it to affect me. Then the Managing Director called.
“Raindance, we’ve got a problem.”
I did a quick check of anything I’d done wrong. “Not me, I hope.”
“Not you,” he chuckled. “All your reports have been exemplary, and the senior trainers are convinced you are fully committed to us. No, it’s your relatives again.”
I grimaced. “Well, I shouldn’t complain about them too much; they’re why I’m out and about.”
“But still, yes, most of us have relatives we would rather not have. In this case, however, a couple of them are also ponygirl owners. I want to keep them away from the FBI person and the Senator as much as possible. Also, they know you, and they’ve been getting rather insistent about when you’re going to come visit. So I want to handle two issues at once.”
“OK, boss. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m going to put you into the transportation logistics crew for the moment. We’ve got several crime lords on our list of attendees, including one of your relatives.”
I grimaced. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“That’s right. By the way, your training notes say you can probably take a teleport awake.”
“I didn’t know that, I’ve never tried. If you need it, I’d be glad to try.”
“OK. Call Security and have them run a test. Then call Fran Donaldson; she’s working the outside contact part of transportation logistics for us.”
Security’s check was simplicity itself. The put me on one of the teleport stages in the warehouse and told me to report while they dropped weights near me. They started about thirty feet away, and then moved them in. It was the most bizarre experience I’d ever had, including several drug trips. It wasn’t scary, however, just bizarre like a funhouse. They dropped the last one into my outstretched hand. Not a problem. Then things whirled around me for a moment, and I found myself on a different teleport stage. I picked myself up, shook to settle my clothing, and walked off. I was cleared to teleport without sleepy gas.
Fran turned out to be a tall honey blond who just exuded dominance. She was one of those people that made the room she was in look like an afterthought. I knew that feeling from several of my relatives, but none of them were this powerful. They dominated by scaring you. She dominated by divine right. I got assigned five crime lords that were owners, beginning with my cousin Mark.
I beat it back to our apartment to start making calls. They’d originally moved us in with another family to free up the apartment, now they moved us back because I needed the spare room for extra equipment. One of the security staff came with me to show me how to use it. It turned out to be simple enough to scare me; I could see what would happen if it ever fell into my relatives’ hands. One more reason to stay here, hooves firmly planted.
“Hey Mike, how you doing, guy?”
I could see him stare at the phone in disbelief. This surveillance system was too good to believe. “Is that you, Little Fuzzy?” he said, cautiously.
“Sure is,” I confirmed. “Heard from Uncle Frank lately?”
“Yeah, he’s still worried about you.”
“Well, he should be. You’re the first person in the family I’ve talked to for what, three years?”
“About that, from what I hear. What ever happened to you?”
“Down on my luck, and you know me. I’d rather die than accept anything from the family.” He snorted at that. “So I decided to become a ponygirl. My name is Raindance now.” I watched him look at the phone again, and then put it back to his ear, very carefully.
“Did I hear you say ponygirl?”
“You did. Should see you when you come out in a couple of days.”
I could see the wheels turning in his head, and finally come up with two horseshoes and a joker. “Since when do they let ponygirls talk on the phone?”
“Oh, I’m not a ponygirl any more. Uncle Frank got kind of insistent, and we made a deal. I’ve settled here. Got a husband and a career as ponygirl trainer.”
I saw him look at the phone again. “Then maybe you know what the arrangements are. All I know is that someone will call and tell me.” I saw the wheels spin again, and come up two horseshoes and a light bulb. “Is that why you called?”
“What, you think I wasn’t just panting to hear your dulcet tones again as soon as they let me near a phone?” I paused, but not long enough to let him answer. “Partly, at least. I’m supposed to tell you and several other attendees how they’re going to get here. You sitting down?”
“OK, tell me.”
“We teleport you in.” I could see the wheels turn again. This time they came up with two male nurses and a straitjacket.
“Teleport?” he said, weakly.
“Yes, here’s the drill.” I told him what he needed to know. “I’ll call you when everything’s ready and walk you through it.”
“Sound’s doable. Something’s puzzling me a bit, and you might know. I heard a rumor that Jeff Donaldson’s got raided.”
This time it was my turn to stare at the phone. I hit the “security attention” button. “I thought they had that covered up in concrete.”
“Well, you know how it is, people talk and Dizzy got worried.” Dizzy was another crime lord on my contact list.
“He should be worried. Everything’s on hold for high level politicking. Jeff’s daughter is here on site, working on what needs to be done. Compliance with the CSA will be one of the major topics.”
“Compliance?” This time I didn’t need to hear the wheels turn. They turned up a badge, a gavel and a cell door. Mike was well known for a viciously nasty streak, especially when the victim couldn’t fight back. I’d already checked his three ponygirls, and wasn’t happy with what I’d seen.
“I may not be able to make it, after all,” he said.
“Sorry to hear that, just when I was looking forward to seeing you again,” I lied.
“Yeah, too much work. I’m even cutting back on some of my hobbies. You know of anybody in the market for three preowned ponygirls?”
“In what kind of condition?” As if I didn’t know. “I’ll ask around. Say hi to Uncle Frank for me, guy.” I gave him my contact number and hung up. I felt like heading for the shower, but I knew that soap and a scrub brush couldn’t deal with this kind of slime.
I cancelled him off the attendee list and called Alice. She called back and I told her the problem. She was not pleased, to put it mildly. She called back about an hour later. By then, I’d talked to Dizzy, and he’d cancelled and put his four up for sale.
“I’ve talked to Leo, and we’ve come up with a holding action,” she said. “Get them as cheaply as you can, and we’ll transfer them directly to the time slowdown tank. Then we’ll deal with it when all the outsiders are off the premises.”
“Sounds workable, but it’s going to raise merry hell when the word gets out. A lot of our people are deluding themselves that our girls are treated well by the owners.”
“True, but this needs to be dealt with anyway. I’d rather deal with reality than more delusions that are likely to come back and bite us when we aren’t looking. Leo agrees with me.”
“Hey, Mike, how you doing?”
“Doing great, Little Fuzzy. How you doing?”
“Quite well. Hey, I’ve got a buyer interested in taking that scrap metal off your hands for recycling.”
“Oh, what are they offering?”
“They’ll take care of shipping and handling as long as there’s no new damage.”
“What do you mean, scrap metal? Those cars are in good condition!”
“Yea, right. Care to explain that to the guy at the Gate with the Book?”
“Why bring him into it? How you going to handle packaging?”
“Just get your people out of there, and we’ll handle pickup and delivery.”
He hung up. I waited for him to give the orders, and then switched viewpoints to see what was going to happen. What happened was that they yawned, collapsed against the pole on their stands, and then disappeared. It looked like my briefing on the system hadn’t mentioned a remote stun. Not that I minded; some toys are too dangerous, etc.
The rest of the crime lords on my list were easier to deal with. They liked all their possessions to stay in good working order and reflect their power and glory and all that b.s. Their ponygirls didn’t have it easy, but they were in very good shape. We got everything worked out, and then I took a long, hot shower with plenty of soap and a strong brush.
The actual Gymkhana was a madhouse, but then, huge parties are when you’re on the staff, especially when most of the staff is green as grass. We got through it handily.
Cleanup after the Gymkhana took about a week. People got their apartments back, housekeeping had a huge list of minor damage to fix, the ponygirls came out of the time warp and took up as if nothing had happened, and our training class reconvened at the same time the news hit the grapevine.
The student’s reaction ranged from shocked disbelief to outright denial. When Connie walked in, she was deluged with questions.
“Unfortunately, it happened. We’ve got seven badly damaged ponygirls on our hands. The damage ranges from beatings and malnutrition to loss of body parts. Lenore is on the committee figuring out what to do about them. The board only found out about it this morning, and they’re out for Leo’s and Alice’s blood for not telling them sooner.”
“Well, why didn’t they?”
“Alice didn’t want it to come out with outsiders on premises,” I contributed. “We had to wait for Fran Donaldson to leave.”
That got everyone’s attention. Apparently that tidbit hadn’t hit the grapevine yet.
“How do you know that?”
“I’m the one that found out about it, three weeks ago when we were doing setup. Alice decided to put them in the time warp and deal with it later.”
That was met by demands that I tell them all about it. Connie told them to hold it until she could get all the classes together. I told my story to the two hundred or so students in the academy. Lenore came in at the end.
“That’s a very good summary of what happened, Raindance,” she said. “Here’s what’s going to happen, short term.”
“Four of the ponies are missing body parts, mostly arms, tongues and eyes. We’re putting them back into the time warp until Black ThunderBolt can regenerate them. That may be a while. We’re recommending that the board add to the genetics staff. Some of that stuff is unbelievably complicated, and the ThunderBolt doesn’t know nearly enough to do major regeneration programs.”
“The other three have only suffered beatings, burns, bruises, brands, malnutrition and other general abuse. We’re feeding them up and working out a therapeutic plan for each one. They’ve all suffered speech deterioration. Two of them didn’t come from here, and don’t understand English.”
“Long term, Leo is getting the board calmed down so they might be able to deal with it. From what I’ve heard so far, opinion is about evenly divided between getting out of the ponygirl business altogether, and making certain this doesn’t happen again. There’s a few people who figure they should be able to do anything with them they want, but they are a very small minority.”
“Let me give you another perspective, or rather, I’m going to ask Raindance to give you her perspective. She’s an outsider, and she came in as a ponygirl, so its not one of the standard viewpoints.”
Think fast girl. “Well, what Lenore said is quite true. I came in through the Internet recruiting program. I was down on my luck, and on the outs with my family to the point I would rather die than accept anything from them. That’s not just stubbornness, one of my family members abused three of those ponygirls.”
“I’ve got naturally kinky hair, and I always wore it short enough that it didn’t cause problems. The recruiter didn’t catch it. When they found out about it, I was already two weeks into training, and Black ThunderBolt needed a lab rat for her hair research. They asked me to volunteer in return for becoming a community owned ponygirl. I agreed. At least this place speaks English, and I was told I had a very large chance of winding up somewhere I couldn’t understand anyone.”
“Then one of my family members managed to track me down by way of a security breach in the recruiting program. That’s been fixed. As I mentioned my family isn’t very nice people, but Leo didn’t want to deal with the fallout from telling them to go to hell. So I got community trainee status in return for assuring my family I was alive and well, and committed to life here in this community.”
“I was quite happy as a ponygirl. Whether I would have stayed happy is anyone’s guess, but I wouldn’t have let myself be recruited if I hadn’t have thought it was a reasonable career choice. I’ve got no qualms about training other young women who want to be ponygirls to be good ones, and placing them where they get a chance to show how good they are as ponies.”
“You can put me quite solidly in the second camp. There are girls out there that like the idea of being ponygirls, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have that choice.”
I got a thoughtful silence as a response. Then one of the girls shot up.
“That’s very well, but I didn’t ask to be a ponygirl. What kind of choice did I have?”
I had to think about that one for a moment. “I don’t have a good answer. My family is that variety of Catholic that thinks they can violate all of the Lord’s commands daily, then go to confession and memorize a Bible verse, and it will be all right. I currently think that you decide up front what you want out of life before you’re born, and that free will doesn’t extend to changing that decision on the fly. From that viewpoint, since you were born here as a girl, you clearly wanted to spend two years as a ponygirl. I wouldn’t venture to suggest why. That’s just my opinion, yours is probably different.”
She looked like she’d been sandbagged. I suspect she knew exactly why. As it turned out, two days later she was no longer in class. I found out she was back in a ponygirl cell at her request, undergoing touchup training before being sold outside of the community.
Lenore told us we could spend as much time discussing it as we needed, but to stay in the classroom area while we did. The next few weeks were intense. Opinion eventually solidified around the second option: if people wanted it, why shouldn’t we provide it?
We slid right into the second half of the training class. The first half was breaking the new ponygirl, and supporting her properly. The second half got down to actually training her to do something. What that meant in practice was how to support the lobo-ra while they trained her.
Working with the lobo-ra was a trip and a half. At first, I thought I’d got a bad batch of acid; it was that kind of a trip. Eventually, I, and most of the class adjusted. The lobo-ra were really alien, and I had to flex in places I didn’t know I had to handle it.
The thing is, they had character traits I couldn’t begin to describe. Being around them convinced me of one thing for certain. Lots of my, and everyone else’s, character traits I had always been taught were part of Homo Sapiens’s vaunted flexibility were hard wired. For example, they had a group coherence that I literally couldn’t understand. Describe, yes, but there was no way I could feel that much coherence in my gut. They found it literally impossible to even consider doing something that wasn’t in the best interests of their collective. They found what we did to each other on a regular basis to be equally baffling, if not appalling. They regarded us as dangerously out of control carnivores; they had more respect for their wolves, who at least tended to keep their intra-pack aggressiveness mostly to the level of friendly play. They got on with us because we were in a position where we had to cooperate internally; as a community, we’d painted ourselves into a corner where we had no choice. However, that explained why they were universally trusted. They simply weren’t capable of acting against the interests of the community, as long as it was their community.
I also found out that one of my community duties was to have a lobo-ra daughter. They strongly recommended I have her first, and fairly quickly. I would barely notice the pregnancy until about the eighth month, and it wouldn’t inconvenience me all the way up to term. The genetics staff, several medical technicians in the services area, and something called the council, would handle the details. We were told explicitly not to ask questions; if we ever got to a position in the community where we needed to know, we would be told.
Another thing was that although they all looked female, they were sterile mules that had about as much interest in sex as a rock. As far as they were concerned, it was simply another behavior we had, which at least had an understandable object. I almost asked the obvious question, and then reconsidered.
Other than that, they specialized in cute. Most of my classmates were taken in; I’d long ago lost any illusions about any necessary relationship between cute, cuddly and harmless.
Once we got our relationship with the lobo-ra straightened out, the rest of the course was fun. We learned how to support them in training for riding, cart and both types of sulky, and learned how to drive cart and heavy sulky properly. We didn’t use the guys for subjects any more. We girls got used for subjects a bit, mostly to show how to teach several flashy dressage steps.
We got assigned to real training teams for the last couple of months. Most of us were in the training block, Steph and one of the slower boys got an assignment in the main dome. I found out that meant they were only expected to do routine support; they wouldn’t get actual training. When I ran into Steph later, I found out she’d taken it quite well; she actually had a fairly well developed sense of responsibility, and had been worrying herself sick about messing up one of the girls.
We got assigned to different training teams, and got specific ponygirls to work with while they were being trained. That also solidified our mastery of the ponygirl’s daily routine; by the time class ended, I could work smoothly with my assigned team on anything except breaking a new girl.
Eventually, we graduated, and I got a permanent assignment with a team in the training block. I had arrived.
The twin hits of the Consensual Slave Act and the ponygirl abuse caused massive changes in the way we treated community owned ponygirls. The community eventually quit dealing with owners that abused their property. It took a while to integrate the whole concept of days off with the ponygirl mindset, but we eventually managed to get a “girl mode” that was more a ponygirl playing girl than a girl playing hooky from being a ponygirl. Every one of our ponies did girl mode a little differently, which was quite all right with me.
I’m now a senior trainer. I enjoy seeing my girls develop into ponygirls that live in the eternal now, without any care or thought of the future. It’s something we lost as a species when we got intelligence. I think it was a good tradeoff, but I enjoyed my years in the now of the ponygirl, and I think that others want to sample it, if only to make the tradeoff more poignant.
I had my lobo-ra daughter early on, and then let her mature for a few years before I had Tom’s children. Since lobo-ra mature much more slowly, I felt I needed to give her a head start so they were all mature enough to understand when Tom’s and my children raced past her on their way to adulthood.
I spend most of my time as a senior trainer, but I’m quite often on the road, training owner’s staff and doing other jobs for the community. Since I came from outside, I understand it in ways that most of the community doesn’t. Every once in a while, I have to pull a chestnut out of the fire for my family. One of those chestnuts got way out of hand, and started a most profitable sideline, with its own set of moral choices. But that’s another story, and really doesn’t have much to do with ponygirls at all.