This work is copyright 2000-2004 by Xaltatun of Acheron (A Pseudonym). It may be posted on the Internet to any free forum. It may be reformatted to match the forum's look and feel, and the forum editor may make minor spelling and grammer corrections. Otherwise it must be posted in its entirety, including these notices. 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.
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.
There are fifteen stories in the series entitled “Ponygirl Transformation.” At this point, I have no intention of writing additional stories in this series, although I thought that before Engineer burst on the scene. The stories are listed in order of the series timeline, although there are a few overlaps and several continuing characters. The first three set necessary background, the next three cover one formative event from three different viewpoints.
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. Kidnapper
11. Suzie’s Ponygirl
12. Driver
13. Engineer (in preparation)
14. PonyGIRL?
15. Segue to Freehold (in preparation)
Acknowledgements. The setting and several of the characters are taken from a series of books 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.
Some of the characters and settings have been changed, either due to the different legal environment in the United States, my partially successful attempt to make the setting more consistent, and in one case a simple error of memory that got woven into the plot too deeply to back out by the time I discovered it.
In no case should you infer anything about the prior stories from this one. Sir Thomas has substantially different objectives for his 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.
Now on to the story...
Chapter 1. What do you do with a Genius?
Chapter 2. First Trip Outside.
Chapter 3. First Training Episode.
Chapter 4. Loose Lips and all that.
Chapter 5. Susi becomes a ponygirl.
Chapter 7. Leslie and Linnet Meet Team 146.
Chapter 8. Linnet Learns Her New Duties.
Chapter 9. Diana Meets her Ponygirl.
Chapter 10. Excessive Enthusiasm Gets Its Just Rewards.
Chapter 11. The Best Plans are Laid.
Chapter 12. College Interviews.
Chapter 13. Larry and Linnet Meet a BDSM Society.
Chapter 14. How did a String of Sex Workers get into Here?
Chapter 15. Amanda and Connie face a hard choice.
Chapter 16. Official interest.
Chapter 17. Amanda and Connie start training.
Chapter 18. A Ride in the Forest.
Chapter 19. Alice tries to salvage Connie.
Chapter 20. Mistress Melanie’s Stable.
Chapter 21. Space Aliens? Huh, What?
Chapter 23. Amanda starts improvising.
Chapter 25. Linnet Closes a Chapter.
Chapter 26. Boris Badinov and the Space Aliens.
Chapter 28. Recruiting an Academic.
Chapter 29. Linnet Gets Her Reward.
Chapter 30. Amanda’s Ponygirl Stable
Chapter 31. Connie flames out.
Epilog. Another Ride in the Forest.
In the first new Arizona Community story from my pen in over three years, Larry Thompson is assigned to go out to Engineering school. We discover in short order that one of the soon to graduate ponygirls, Linnet, has all the same the psi powers as Alice, so she’s assigned to Larry, and Larry has to learn how to care for a ponygirl, in addition to his already heavy study load preparing for engineering school. All is not quiet on the home front, however…
Larry ambled up to the security checkpoint and leaned on the shelf.
“You lost again?” Tony chuckled.
“Nah. Just waiting for Raindance,” he said.
“Two days in a row,” Tony shook his head. “What’s up?”
“They’ve decided I need to learn my way around the training block, and it’s easier for her to pick me up here than for me to walk all the way by myself.”
“You should get up earlier and take the carriage.”
“I will, once they turn me loose over there.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Tony said as Dancing Waters slowed Raindance’s chariot to a smooth stop.
Raindance slid over, making space for Larry. Today, she wore the standard female trainer’s uniform: a severe black leather skirt that came to somewhat below mid-thigh, black knee length high-heeled boots, fishnet stockings and a tightly fitting white blouse with vaguely military shoulder straps. Her red belt both signaled her senior trainer’s status and served to hold the tools of her trade: a coiled whip, a long white wand with a comfortable handgrip and some buttons on the belt end, a control box with a number of buttons and a phone.
She handed the reins to Larry, who shook them out and then gave them a flick. Dancing Waters leaned into the traces, heading in the direction she was pointed. Unfortunately, that happened to be one of the walls. Larry muttered a chopped off curse and pulled on one of the reins. After a moment, he had her moving the right direction down the corridor.
“What the heck?” he asked Raindance, who was attempting to suppress a giggle.
“She’s perfectly capable of taking us to her station in the training block without either of us using the reins. Yesterday, she was on her best behavior with a newbie. Today, she’s decided that you need some training, so she’s going to play stupid.”
“You let her get away with that?” he asked abstractly, pulling lightly on the left rein as she showed a tendency to drift to the right.
“Get away with what?” Raindance asked. “After all, you
“Humph,” he snorted as he tried to apply just enough pressure on the reins to get her to stop gently.
After a few minutes, he had her pulling the chariot smartly down the street going from the residential dome past the arena.
“I’ve got a question,” he said thoughtfully. “From what we discussed yesterday, your ’girl shouldn’t have been able to tease me like this while she’s in ponyspace.”
“Good observation. You’re quite right; she wasn’t in ponyspace when she did that. She’s been a ponygirl for long enough that all of the cart routine is simply habit. She drifts in and out as she sees something interesting, or not. She learned a long time ago that if she hits heavy traffic, she needs to duck back into ponyspace. She reacts faster and more accurately to the reins in ponyspace, and she doesn’t get flustered as easily.”
“I see. So the ponyspace thing isn’t as simple as it looks.”
“Right. Every ’girl is a bit different.”
Larry had managed to get Dancing Waters to her destination without further mishap.
“This is the trainer’s training complex,” Raindance told him. “We start a new class every other month, so there’re always six classes. You need maybe a quarter of it, so we’re going to put you in with some of the classes for some lessons, you’ll spend some time with one of the regular training crews, I’ll teach you some things one on one, and we’ll send you out for a few things that the owners and their staff have to know that we don’t usually teach our people.”
“In other words, I roll with it.”
“Oh, it’s not quite that bad. Lenore is revising your schedule to fit this in with all the academic stuff and tests you need for admission to engineering school. When she’s got something that might work, we’ll discuss it.”
“Well, I
Raindance giggled again. “Be careful what you wish for…
“We’ve got a couple of lessons for today. Since you’re now officially a student in the ponygirl trainer class, there are two items of equipment you need. First is a new belt.” She walked up to an equipment locker and took a belt out and handed it to him. The belt itself looked like a perfectly ordinary green dyed leather belt, except for the narrow diagonal black stripes that ran at a 45 degree angle all the way around. “You know the color code, right?”
“I think so. Green is trainer, Red is senior trainer. I’ve never seen the stripes.”
“The black stripes indicate you’re a student. Green with gold stripes indicates the training team leader. The rest of the code is that brown is for a ponygirl that’s in girl mode for some reason, and isn’t on her day off or on a special assignment. Gold is for an owner; gold with stripes is for one of the supervisors. Blue is a sulky driver. We use them because we need them during race meetings where there are a lot of people that don’t know each other.”
“OK.” He took off his belt and replaced it with the green one.
“The other piece of equipment is your training prod.” She pulled one out of the equipment locker and handed it to him. The prod itself was a two foot long white wand with a handgrip and a number of buttons on one end, as well as a short strap that could clip to a belt. She pointed at a ring at the top. “This ring is the safety. Turn it to 1, and it will only do level 1 and stun. Some of the teachers believe in doing initial practice with the safety on, some with the safety off. With it on, if you accidentally hit level 2 or 3, you’ll get a mild shock. You’ll get a regular one without a safety when you’ve got the moves down.
“We’re going to practice with this daily until you’re level with the most recent class, then you’ll practice with them every morning. Prod practice continues throughout the year.” Larry hung the prod on his belt.
“Today’s lesson is on the ponygirl cell. The classroom area has two fully equipped columns of cells. Every other month, one of them is in full time use for the mid-course exam, the others are for whenever a class needs them.”
The two of them turned into a fairly wide corridor. The sides of the corridor were made up of steel cell doors, the bars marching down the brightly lit passageway toward another closed door at the end.
“Since this is a training area, it’s all stage two cells. You know the difference between stage one and stage two cells?”
He shook his head.
“Well, the stage one cells don’t have the cabinets on the right. It’s just a wall with some shelves for equipment. The reason,” she continued didactically, “is that we keep them in a stage one cell until they’re ready to learn girl mode. The goal of stage one is to shift their self-concept from that of a girl that’s being trained to act like a pony, to that of a ponygirl. When she thinks of herself as a human equine, and has assimilated that it’s her proper place in the universe, she’s ready to be shifted to stage two. Until that point, she has no use for normal clothing, and having it present interferes with the process.”
“You shift her self-concept?”
“Yes. You’re familiar with the notion that people have a concept of how the world works, and what their place is in it?”
“We got that in class. I let it go by quickly.”
“Understandable. It’s an advanced concept for where it’s placed. It’s there because a few students do pick up on it, and we mark them for further training if they’re interested. Those are the levels we go into to make it work.”
Larry frowned thoughtfully. “I think I see. Their concept of how the world works needs to include the idea that ponygirls are perfectly normal, and they’re there to be used.”
“As well as a few other nuances. We also need to implant that her place in the world is as a ponygirl. Once she’s got that, she’ll do the work of remodeling the rest of her conceptual structure to fit.”
“That sounds like it would be difficult!”
“Well, it’s actually easier than you would think, at least if you’ve got the same training as all of the senior trainers. For one thing, they signed indentures after knowing at least part of what they’re getting into, so they’re already part way there when they arrive. Then the actual training in how to act as a ponygirl reinforces it.”
“Well, I suppose I don’t need to know the details of how you do it. What about community trainees?”
“Most of them are where they need to be already. They grew up around ponygirls after all, and they all know that they’ll spend some time as one. Sometimes we need to do a few tweaks, but it usually isn’t necessary. It’s the community owned ponygirls that we need to work on.”
“Um?”
“Well, this place takes quite a bit of getting used to, and outsiders need to be adapted to it if they’re ever going to come out. It takes a few weeks.
“To continue, once she gets there, we shift her to stage two for girl mode training. The goal of stage two is to train her to act like a ponygirl who’s pretending to be a normal girl. I know it sounds perverse, but there are several legal and practical reasons for it.”
“The Consensual Slave Act?”
“That’s the legal part. We have to give them days off and vacations, and we have to train them to support themselves when their indentures run out. The Act lets them terminate the indenture essentially at will, finances permitting, but the owners wouldn’t like it if a ’girl they paid good money for just upped and walked out.”
“I wouldn’t think it would be possible?”
“The fact that they know they’re ponygirls doesn’t mean they’ll get on with their owner or support staff! Most do, some don’t, and some of those try to get out of the contract. We try to limit it by setting up their self-concept up so they feel incomplete without an owner. The concept we drill in is that ponygirls are livestock, and livestock has to be owned and cared for. It gets interesting; I’ve heard several of ours refer to ponygirls that walk out of their contract as strays, like they were cats or dogs.”
“I’ll bet some of them come back, too.”
“Quite a few do, some don’t. Overall, we do a fairly good job of containing the problem.”
“So how do I get in?”
They turned to the first cell on their left. “They’re all set up to open to appropriately authorized people. The only real difference between stage one and stage two cells is that the ponygirl herself is authorized to open the cell door. Just push the handle and roll it across.”
The left wall had a number of items of tack, including several bridles, halters, reins, a saddle, corsets, boots and gloves. There was a thick sleeping pad on the floor next to the wall, surrounded with six small ringbolts anchored in the stone floor. The pad itself lined up with a doorway in the back.
“This is the grooming room,” Raindance said as she led him through the doorway. “We’ve got several different versions; this is the most recent one. Look at the restraint controls on the wall.”
He studied the wall for a moment. “Ok.”
“Now bring them up.” He pushed one of the buttons. A moment later, four covers popped open, and posts came up and stopped when their base was flush with the floor.
“Now close the shackles.” He pushed a button and nothing happened. He frowned at the control panel, and then pushed the same button, but this time he held a second button labeled “override.” The shackles closed with a definite click.
“Now bring it up.”
He pushed another button, and again nothing happened. Then he did it with override, and the four platforms rose another two feet into the air, the front platforms rising higher than the back ones.
“So, what do you think that’s for?” Raindance asked him.
“That should bring a ’girl to the right height to wash her down easily,” he answered.
“Exactly correct. Now do me.”
“Huh?”
She laughed at the expression on his face. “We don’t have enough ponygirls for the trainer’s course: sometimes we bring in trainers for subjects, mostly they practice on each other.” She unzipped her skirt and started to undress.
“We start out here.” She lay down on the floor mat, face down. “At this point, you’ve gotten her out of her night restraints. The first command is: into the grooming room.”
“Into the grooming room.”
She came up to hands and knees and crawled to the middle of the room, hands positioned next to the first two of the four posts in the floor. He looked at her and frowned. “Hands and feet.”
She pulled her feet under her, positioning them so the ankles were next to the other two posts. He pushed the close shackle button, and they snapped closed around her wrists and ankles.
“Before you bring me up, there’s one more thing to do.”
He stepped back and looked at her. Then he looked at the control panel, and pressed a button that said: “open floor toilet.” A keyhole shaped piece of floor sank and slid aside. She said: “Good,” and let go.
He backed up and shook his head. Then he brought the platforms up. When they stopped, her back was horizontal, and at chest height. He put a plastic smock over his clothes, and unclipped a shower head from the wall. He wet her down thoroughly, then lathered her up and rinsed her off. Then he found a towel, and started to dry her.
“Take your time and make me like it,” she told him.
“Huh?”
“That’s one of the secrets of keeping ponygirls happy. Take your time and pay attention during grooming, and they’ll start off the day right.”
“Well, you asked for it,” he thought to himself. Then he started slowly running the soft towel over her body. After a short while, he noticed that her nipples had sprung erect. He flicked one of them lightly, eliciting a ponylike snort. He kept on with the rubdown, finally arriving at her nether end. He ran a finger lightly down her spine as he walked out of the room and examined the wall for a minute. He pulled two items off of the wall, and came back, laying one of them on her back.
“Bring your head back,” he told her. She brought it back, startled, and he swiftly wrapped a collar around it. This was one of their special posture collars that was not only higher in front than in back, but had a rough edge in front to force the pony to keep her head back.
“Wha…” she said. She didn’t manage to finish whatever she was going to say, because he slid the ring gag into her mouth, and buckled it firmly behind her head. Then he unbuckled his pants and let his erect cock free.
A moment later, he was bent over holding her shoulders as she started teasing the head of his cock with her tongue. His breath started becoming more labored, as he noticed her shoulders begin to sweat under his palms. A few minutes later, he pulled away from her tongue and lips, and walked behind her, to plunge into her waiting pussy. She whinnied shrilly as he stroked in and out, and then came noisily. A moment later, he came as well.
He pulled out and leaned against the wall, catching his breath.
“You know,” he said after taking a moment to recover, “I think I need to wash you down again.” He reached for the nozzle on the wall.
“That was pretty good,” she said as she brushed out her hair in front of the mirror. “You seem to be bothered about something, though. What’s bugging you?”
“What’s your husband going to think?”
“That I’m showing better sense in getting laid when I want it,” she laughed at him, watching his expression. “Seriously, we don’t usually give the ’girls sex during grooming, but that’s mostly because there’s a lot to do in getting them all up in the morning and still make grooming something they look forward to. To keep your ’girls thinking that being a ponygirl is better than the old rat race, you’ve got to keep the rewards coming, and sex is one of the rewards.”
Larry still didn’t look quite convinced.
“Look, guy. You went through Sex Ed, right? There’s something radically wrong if a naked, bound female in front of a normal male isn’t getting her brains screwed out. Especially when she’s giving out all the indications of being sexually aroused. If I hadn’t wanted you to take me, I’d have told you so up front. So you can rest easy on that score.”
Larry shook his head. “Well, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it,” he grinned happily.
“Darn right! Ponygirls are sex slaves. It’s right in the job description registered with the FSB. So was there anything else you noticed?”
“Well, you crawled on hands and knees, and then I had to tell you to get onto hands and feet.”
“Right. Most of the ’girls will crawl on hands and knees, some of them will walk four footed. Partially it’s about arm and leg ratio, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that if a well trained ’girl crawled in on hands and knees, she should come up onto all fours without your having to say so. It’s a part of the daily routine, after all.”
“I thought…” he said, slowly.
“Well, you can pick up some strange ideas if all you know is overheard conversation. Early in training, they have to do exactly what they’re told, and stop for the next command when they’re done. Once they’ve gotten themselves stabilized into ponyspace, most of them will put sequences together.”
“I don’t understand?”
“It’s pretty simple actually. If a ’girl is in ponyspace, she’ll understand ‘do this.’ Most of them will understand ‘this, then that,’ but then forget the next thing while they’re doing the first one. Some can remember atrociously long sequences, though. She shouldn’t be able to handle ‘this unless that happens’, although you can train in complicated routines if you want. For example, Dancing Waters can take me all the way from my apartment to the training block without my touching the reins in light traffic. She’s done it any number of times, so she knows the route. Since she isn’t trained on general taxi duty, she gets confused in heavy traffic. Not very many ’girls can handle taxi and stay in ponyspace.”
“So crawling into the grooming room, and then coming up on hands and feet is two actions?”
“Exactly. However, if you have her do them in sequence often enough, it becomes one action. You just have to be careful that you always want her do to those two things in that sequence in that context.”
“Exactly. Anyway, to get back to the topic, I deliberately bobbled that part of the routine. Commanding me to get onto all fours was one way of moving it along. What else could you have done?”
“Level two prod?”
“Too much. If you’re far enough along in training for her to do that on her own, just hearing you switch your prod onto level one should be all that should be necessary.”
“I see. I’m just reminding her that she knows what to do next, so do it. Level one is minor corrections.”
“And level two is punishments. Once they’re out of the training block, if you have to use level two at all frequently, either you’re doing something wrong, or she needs retraining to reinforce the ponygirl mindset.”
“There’s still something puzzling me about it.” Raindance quirked an eyebrow. “It seems that if she was in ponyspace, all turning on the prod would do would be to confuse her.”
“Good point. If she was in ponyspace at the time, that’s what it would do. However, they all drift in and out of ponyspace. Dancing Waters drops out of ponyspace when there’s something interesting going on. Then she goes back in when there’s either nothing going on, or she has to do something that she’d be likely to screw up if she wasn’t in ponyspace.”
“Now that makes sense.”
“Anything else you noticed?”
“Well, there’s lots we didn’t do.”
“Right. We’ll get there in time. Washup is enough practice for today. What’s the middle door for?”
“That’s the chair. It’s for major punishments.” He frowned at it thoughtfully. “I don’t really know what it does?”
“We don’t talk about it a lot. We tie the ’girl down on the seat so that she’s got about an inch of wiggle room. That’s enough to keep the blood flowing, but not enough to prevent cramps unless the ’girl has extensive training in keeping her muscles supple while remaining motionless. We used to get one every few years, now we get maybe ten a year. Then there’s an arrangement that if her head falls forward, she gets shocked. That’s to keep her awake. I don’t think I’ve heard of any ’girls that can cheat that since I’ve been here. The last one was Dreammaker, but she was just before my time. In any case, once she starts getting lightheaded with sleep deprivation, it doesn’t matter how well she can do the muscle exercises. She’ll lose it and start cramping up anyway. After 80 hours of that, the typical ’girl is going to be very cooperative, at least for a while.”
“That’s mean,” Larry said, rather obviously disapproving. “I had no idea it was that nasty.”
“It is, isn’t it? While our intake all signed indentures with informed consent, there’s no way of communicating the depth of the psychological reorientation needed, and the average trainer isn’t capable of guiding her through it. In fact, it’s on the edge for the average senior trainer unless she’s softened up first. Even Alice usually uses the chair initially, or at least she did when she was still doing hands on with new ponygirls.” She paused a moment. “Once they’ve gotten to ponyspace reliably, then the step to reorient their self-concept is pretty routine for the senior trainers.”
“It still seems like unnecessary cruelty.”
“Oh, it’s definitely cruel, but unnecessary? I’d certainly like a way of doing without it! When I finished my time as a community trainee, I turned around and gave the chair the finger. Then I found out it was still waiting for me in trainer’s training!”
“Ouch!”
“Exactly. Even the guys do their time on the chair during trainer’s training. It’s to drive the point home that you can survive the experience, even though it’s probably going to be the worst experience of your life.”
She paused again for a comment, and then shrugged.
“The fact is, it softens them up so that we can put the new patterns in without resistance for a few days. Some of them only require one treatment; some of them require two or three. We tell them it’s a punishment, and sometimes it is, but it’s more a programming tool. So how would you use it?”
“Right. You’re not going to be doing initial training. By the time a ’girl is ready to be sold, the programming should be rock solid. That wasn’t true once, but it is now. That’s why we removed them from the Arena and the Executive Dome when we remodeled a few years ago.
“And next to it?”
“That’s the trotting booth. It’s used for physical conditioning,” Larry answered promptly.
“It’s also a simulator for most of the activities.”
“I see. It’s got reins and a set of shafts.”
“And this is a whip.”
“Wow! They thought of everything. You’re going to train me on this?”
“We’ll put you in with a training class for this one. There’s a lot to learn for setting up training programs and for physiological monitoring. You’ll undoubtedly learn the formal stuff best studying by yourself, but learning to use it for real is best done in a class. Expect you’ll spend a fair amount of time in the booth yourself.” She smiled wickedly. “So, what else?”
“This is the bucking rack,” he indicated a metal framework that was about three feet high, three long and two wide, with a number of rings, buckles and shackles connected to it. “It’s to tie the ponies down for sex.”
“Exactly right. Why didn’t you put me on it?”
“I didn’t think about it?”
“You may not have thought of it, but you wouldn’t use it during the morning routine anyway because she’s not in uniform. These fit into rings on her corset.”
He looked more closely at the frame. “I see. That makes sense.”
“What else?”
He pointed at a three foot square platform in the center of the room. The platform was mounted on casters, and had a three foot high metal pole sticking up, somewhat to one side of center. Two short chains lay on the leather covered surface opposite the pole.
“That’s the display stand. That’s where we put them when they’re not being used for something.”
“Exactly right. I think that’s enough for today.” She gestured toward the door.
A few days later, Susi, Larry’s twin sister, asked: “So what’s this mysterious project that’s got you out of classes and into the Training Block?”
“I don’t want to talk about it yet,” Larry answered as he picked up a forkful of spaghetti.
“Talk,” His father commanded. “I’m interested in hearing what you’ve got into now.”
Larry shrugged. His parents had put in five years as ponygirl trainers when they were younger. She had gone on to some kind of supervisory job in housekeeping, and he managed a section in transport. Neither job was quite high enough in status to put the family in the Executive Block, but both were definitely high enough that they didn’t have any problem getting an apartment in the Residential Block that provided a private room for each of the four children, plus a workroom that Larry shared with his parents. Susi, who had just passed 18, valued her privacy too much to want to share work space, and Diana was finishing up her two years as a community trainee, which left her room open. Edie, at 23, didn’t share the workspace either, but then lobo-ra simply didn’t go in for academics, planning or games.
Larry noticed Edie sit back in her high chair to watch the show. As a lobo-ra, she never got sucked into the strange games that her mother, foster father, half-brother and half-sisters got themselves into. She recognized what Susi was doing, and wondered how Frank managed to get hooked into it for the six zillionth time. This time, well, the rumors on the lobo-ra grapevine suggested that Susi might have put her foot into it too deep to extricate herself.
At 23, Edie was about 2’6” tall, and might grow another few inches. Very few lobo-ra ever reached three feet. She was a half-breed with a normal human mother and another human subspecies that had given rise to all the various legends around the world about the little people. The lobo-ra were different, and the original subspecies was even more so. The half-breeds seemed to uniformly have a passion for training animals, and it didn’t seem to make much difference whether the animal was a wolf, which was where their name came from, or a ponygirl. They were also amazingly good at it.
Larry didn’t know much more about them than that; the entire subject wasn’t discussed openly. What he did know was that in most of the families he knew, the eldest child was a lobo-ra; his family wasn’t unusual in that respect. No one had ever explained the reason for that, but he considered it rather obvious. Since they took about twice as long to mature as normal humans, it simply made sense to give them a head start before they had normal human children to contend with.
“What two problems, young man?” His father wasn’t having any.
Well, you asked for it, Larry thought to himself. “The board has decided I’m getting a ponygirl, and I have to learn how to take care of her.”
“How do you rate getting a ponygirl,” Susi said, scornfully, at the same time her father said: “The Board?”
Larry answered his father first. “The Board has me on a special project. That’s why I’m out of classes and have all the extra studying.”
“You’re getting a ponygirl?” Susi cut in again. “Terri is going to laugh herself silly when I tell her that.”
“You’re not telling her anything,” her father told her. “Board projects aren’t to be talked about.”
“Him? A Board project? You’ve got to be kidding!” she said.
Larry frowned and then came to a decision. He slid out from the table and went to his room. A moment later, he came back holding a long white wand. His father’s eyes widened, and then he nodded minutely. Larry’s fingers slid over a switch, and it started buzzing. “You heard your father,” he said. “One way or the other, you aren’t talking about it.”
“And who’s going to stop me?” she asked, ignoring the wand as if it didn’t matter.
“I’m glad to hear you’ve decided to start your time as a community trainee,” Larry said, drawing the wand over her shoulders. She let out a piercing scream and straightened up, her chair flying backwards. A moment later, he had her lying prone on the floor, a foot on her shoulders. She tried to grab his foot, and he stroked her arm with the still buzzing wand. She screamed again, and then lay there, cursing.
Their mother came back a minute later with a ball gag and cuffs, and efficiently silenced her daughter.
“That,” Frank said, “does seem to be that. Now that she’s finally decided, it’s going to be quiet around here.” He picked up his phone and started punching in numbers. After a short conversation, he hung up. “There’ll be a squad here in half an hour to box her,” he told his family.
“I’d still like to know what’s going on, but if the Board wants to keep it under wraps, so be it,” he added
“I don’t have any problem telling the rest of you; I just wanted to wait for loose lips there to start ponygirl training. By the time she’s out, it’ll be old news anyway.” He smiled. “They decided that they wanted to send me out to college for an engineering degree. What they want out of it is a way to apply the telekinetic technology that Leprechaun Genetics uses in an automated manufacturing application that builds the components for the computer complex, and they figured I was the most obvious candidate.”
“Probably the only one,” his father nodded. “Now, going out to college doesn’t rate a ponygirl. What’s up with that?”
“She can teleport by herself,” Larry dropped the bombshell.
“How’s that work?” Edie joined the conversation for the first time.
“Another Alice?” Laura said at the same time.
“Well, she’s not another Alice. She’s actually so sweet she’d make an ideal ponygirl for one of the block associations with young kids. In fact, that’s probably where they’d try to put her if she didn’t fit on my project better.”
Frank nodded. “That actually makes sense. Son, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“That’s what the pile of textbooks is for,” Larry said with a bit of trepidation.
“Larry,” Edie said into the silence.
“I’ll talk to you privately,” Larry said, picking the 23 year old lobo-ra out of her high chair. “There’re some things I want your viewpoint on anyway, short stuff.”
A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Frank opened it.
“You’ve got a pickup?” The taller of the two men said.
“Yup. Right this way.” He lead the men to where Susi lay sprawled on the floor, still gagged and hands neatly shackled behind her.
“Well, let’s get her packaged,” the other man said, scooping her off the floor and dropping her in the coffin-like box that lay open on a cart. He shoved a plug up her nose, and connected it to an outlet on the side of the box. A moment later, she quit glaring, sighed and closed her eyes.
“Sleepy gas,” he said unnecessarily. “She’s still awake enough to know what’s going on around her, she can’t move and she just doesn’t care.”
He took a knife and slid it under the waistband of her slacks, slitting them down the center. A moment later, he put some lubrication on his finger, slid it into her ass and followed it with a squat butt plug. He twisted it and then jiggled it to make sure it had seated securely.
He ripped open a sterile package and slid a catheter up and into her bladder, neatly connecting it to a bottle. Then he removed the ball gag and replaced it with a mouthpiece that had a small fitting in the center. He put a rubber tube onto the fitting, and pushed a button. “This sucks up saliva,” he said. “Wouldn’t want her to drown in her own spit.”
He enclosed her head in a padded hood, and then fastened her unresisting limbs into restraints that were permanently attached to the sides of the box. He closed and padlocked it, and then handed a clipboard to Frank, who signed the form. The two of them wheeled the box away down the corridor.
The next morning, Larry swung Edie onto his shoulder as he made to go out the door.
“Where are you taking her?” his mother asked.
“Raindance wants us to watch Susi going through orientation. She’s taking the opportunity to introduce me to the process.”
“Isn’t she kind of young…?” Laura asked.
“She’s 23, mom!”
“You know they don’t mature emotionally as fast as we do.”
“True, but she’s a lobo-ra. Watching Susi get put down won’t bother her a bit.”
“That’s true,” Laura sighed. “Much as I work with them, it still doesn’t always connect that they’re not human. So you’re getting your introduction to orientation already. As I remember, it did come up towards the beginning of the class.”
“Yeah. She had me study the teacher’s notes last night after I called.”
“Can I drive her?” Edie bounced up and down on Larry’s lap.
“Let her try,” Raindance said. Larry handed Edie the reins. She held one in each fist, and pulled lightly, getting the feel.
Dancing Waters leaned into the traces, starting the chariot smoothly. Edie pulled her one way and then the other gently, watching with single minded intensity how she performed, as Larry or Raindance told her where to turn.
“Is this her first time?” Raindance asked.
“As far as I know,” Larry told her.
“She’s doing very well. How old did you say she was?”
“23.”
“Well, that explains it. Your parents should probably have been letting her drive for the last couple of years.”
“Uh?”
“We tend to be too protective of our lobo-ra daughters. They look so much like cute five year olds that it just doesn’t register. Edie’s got my ponygirl under firmer control than I normally use, and she’s showing the effects.”
“I don’t see anything,” Larry confessed.
“I know you don’t. You don’t have the eye for detail yet. She was showing a bit of rebellion at the amount of control Edie had the first half mile or so, but now she’s just relaxing into it, letting Edie guide her without thinking about it. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t put her through a bit of touch-up.”
A little while later, the three of them walked up the corridor on the other side of the training block’s teleport stage to Orientation Room 4.
“Why room 4?” Larry asked.
“Habit, mostly. A long time ago, we needed four rooms because of the way we acquired wild ponygirls. We got a hundred at one time, every two months, and it kept all four rooms hopping for a week processing them. Now, we average two or three a day. A woman named Molly did orientation for years, and Room 4 was her room in the old days. Kelly’s our current orientation specialist. All the trainers know how to do orientation, but most of them have never done it outside of class. I suppose I’ve probably done it recently more than anyone else except, of course, Kelly. We use the other three rooms for supplies.
“Oh, hi, Raindance,” she said as she turned. “I take it this is our wunderkind, and who’s this?”
“I’m Edie,” the lobo-ra piped up.
“She’s my sister,” Larry added in explanation.
“I like having a lobo-ra here,” Kelly said in a low voice so it wouldn’t carry to the back of the room. “They’ll know about them soon enough, but it shakes them up to think there’s a five year old watching.
“We’ve got three this morning,” Kelly said in a more normal voice, waving her hand at the back of the room toward a long coffin-like box, and two young women sitting on their heels, cuffed hands clipped to their hobble chains and mouths gagged. “The boxed shipment is your twin sister? I suspected she might decide to do it traditionally.”
“It wasn’t exactly up to her,” Larry answered.
“That’s what I meant by traditional,” Kelly responded as Raindance giggled. The two bound girls at the back of the room looked from Larry to the coffin-like container as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were hearing.
“Let’s get started,” Kelly said. “Now, the first thing we do for a boxed shipment is open the box.” She unlocked and removed the padlock. “Next we take off the restraints, add a set of cuffs and hobbles, and then pull out the plugs and remove the inhaler last so she doesn’t give us any trouble before we’re ready to lift her out of the box and drop her on the stand.” Kelly did each step slowly so that Larry could watch. A minute later, Kelly had Susi’s bondage rearranged.
Kelly pulled Susi out of the box without apparent effort and held her over the first stand in the row. Larry noticed the two girls in back watching the procedure with wide eyes. He chuckled to himself. Kelly had obviously brought her upper body strength up to match the lower body strength she’d acquired during her time as a community trainee. It seemed that the more recently a woman had been a ponygirl, the stronger she was. He knew it was a matter of gene mods and rigorous training, but still the effect was startling.
Susi had never been one to cooperate with the inevitable; however it seemed that a night spent in a shipping container had made her a bit more compliant. The fact that Kelly had a thumb resting on a nerve point might have had something to do with it. She brought her feet back so she landed on her knees, her hands on the other side of the pole from her body. Kelly swiftly bent over and clipped her ankle shackles to short chains at the back edge of the platform.
Kelly looked at her and shook her head slightly. A night in the box certainly didn’t do much for her appearance. Well, it didn’t matter. She took off the hood and removed the gag, then she turned and picked up the glass of water that sat at the front of the first line of implements on the table.
“Would you like a glass of water?” she asked the new community trainee, starting the procedure that hadn’t changed significantly in several decades.
Part way through the process, her phone rang. “Get it for me, would you?” she asked Raindance without taking her eyes off of the girl whose breasts she was currently piercing.
After a short conversation, Raindance announced: “We’ve got another one on the way.” She thought a moment. “Would you like to do her?” she asked Larry.
“That’s awfully fast,” he answered. “Sure! Give me a chance to watch the next couple.”
“Well, you’ll watch one of them anyway,” she said. “Right now we need the setup. There’s a printer in room 1, and Orientation Planning said they were ready with the pick list.”
Just before he walked out the door, he looked at the girl kneeling on her display stand in the middle of Kelly’s work area. She looked like she was done: her ears sported livestock tags, and her breast rings had little bells. Her head lay back on the rest, ball gag holding her mouth open in an expression of surprise. He walked over and kissed her on the forehead.
“Goodbye, Susi. Have fun for your two years.”
She glared at him, the bells in her ears and on her breast rings and the chains pinioning her ankles to the platform tinkling as she moved.
Orientation Room 1 turned out to be lined with storage cabinets. There were three stacks of bases for display stands, and racks of poles, neatly organized by size, in half inch increments. He spotted the printer, and turned it on, and then started inspecting the storage cabinets, shaking his head in wonder. Hadn’t they ever heard of excess inventory as waste?
A minute later, he heard the printer spit out a sheet. He walked over and picked it up. It had a picture of the wild ponygirl. He ran his eyes down the list. It started out with the pole height. The next entry was: water glasses with straw, two, full. Then it specified a bridle with size, a ball gag with size and a headrest with bolt, one. The ear tags had an International Ponygirl Consortium registration number and a size. After a space, it listed an ear punch, power sheers and breast rings. Then after another space, it listed a training team and cell assignment in the training block, followed by a collar size, boot size, bustier size and glove size, all specified in black and marked tentative.
He looked around, found a wrench, and assembled the stand and loaded it with the listed supplies. He looked at the list again and noticed that the ear tags were missing. A couple minutes of searching turned up an odd looking machine next to the printer. He turned it on and punched in the tag size and IPC number. A moment later, he was rewarded with two livestock medallions with the number impressed into the metal.
“Lay it out on the other table,” Raindance pointed at the one she meant. She walked over and watched as he lined the material up on the table. “Good, you got everything. Next we wait for her to arrive.”
He went back to the table he’d been sitting on next to Edie, and sat back to study what Kelly was currently doing with the second girl. It turned out to be the ear tags. He nodded as he listened to her patter and matched it up with what he’d studied the previous evening.
The fourth wild ponygirl arrived as Kelly installed the ball gag on her current work item. The security guard led her into the room on a leash. She walked a bit hesitantly, which wasn’t all that surprising considering she’d probably never walked any distance with her feet hobbled. He led her to the back of the room and pointed to the floor next to the third girl. She sat down, and he bent back and fastened her hobble chain to her cuffs, making it almost impossible for her to move anywhere..
Eventually, Kelly finished the third trainee ponygirl. “You do the last one,” Raindance told him. He checked the layout again and then picked her up with a bit of a grunt at the effort. He carried her over to the stand he’d just assembled and dropped her down, making sure that the pole went between her body and her arms. Then he unclipped the hobble from her cuffs. She let her legs down in relief, which allowed him to clip her ankle cuffs to the edge of the platform.
He walked back to the front and looked at her. A pair of muddy brown eyes stared up at him over the gag. He unclipped the strap on the ball gag and walked back to the table, returning with a glass of water. By the time he got back, she had pushed the ball out of her mouth with her tongue.
“Would you like a glass of water?” he started the conversation. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times.
He held up the white wand. “You’ve seen this, right?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at it warily.
“It’s called a hypersonic prod. Why the hypersonic I have no idea, but it serves the same purpose as a cattle prod. This is level one.” He switched it on and lightly stroked her arm.
“Ouch! That bit!”
“It’s supposed to. That setting is for training and to get your attention. This one is a punishment.” He touched another button, and the whine went up in pitch. Then he stroked her other arm. She howled.
He bent down and held her for a moment. “That hurt, didn’t it?” he asked solicitously.
“Yes, it did, damn you!” she said shakily.
“You’re going to be a good girl, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I guess so,” she said dejectedly.
“Now this,” he said standing up and shifting the prod so the whine went even higher, “is a take-down. It’ll put you down on the floor in convulsions. It’s to stop escape attempts and open rebellion. I’m not going to demonstrate it.” He paused as he shut it off and hung it on his belt. “You might see what it does some time. Some of our trainees think they’ve gotten in over their heads, and a few of those are stupid enough to try to escape.”
He picked another tool off of the table. “Power shears,” he said. “We’ll supply whatever you need to wear.” He took the shears and slid it under the neckline of her blouse and ran it down one arm, taking the bra strap in passing. Then he did the other arm, and finished by running it down the front of the blouse. Then he grabbed the sundered garment and pulled it off, taking her bra with it. He tossed the rags into a bin at the side of the room.
Then he bent down and placed the shear along her side, sliding it inside her panties. He slid it smoothly down her leg, opening the entire side of her slacks. He did the other side, and then pulled it off of her. He walked around her, pulled her shoes off, and removed a necklace, two bracelets and a ring.
Then he held the stunned girl’s chin and tilted her head back so she was looking at him. “Once you leave here, while you’re being trained, you won’t be allowed to talk. Ever. Under any conditions. If you even try, you’ll be punished severely. We make it relatively easy to remember; you’ll be gagged most of the time. I can gag you now, or I can gag you later. If you want a few more minutes to talk, it’s ok. Which is it?”
“I’d rather talk. What’s going on? I certainly didn’t expect this!”
“I’m preparing you to be trained.”
“That didn’t tell me anything!”
“It wasn’t intended to.” Larry noticed Raindance trying not to giggle.
She sputtered for a moment as Larry turned to the table and picked up another tool.
“The next step is going to be painful. Can you take it or should I gag you now?”
She looked at the tool. “That’s what you used to punch holes in their ears?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll grit my teeth and bear it.”
He slid the punch over her right ear and pressed the handle. She tensed up and drew in a swift breath, and then let it out.
“Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Larry said brightly as he walked around to the other side and positioned the punch.
She opened her mouth to answer him as he pushed the handle. She gasped again.
“Good girl,” he praised her. “Now, we just put the medallions in like this.” He held up a flat piece of metal with a hollow post in the center, and slipped it through the hole from the back. Then he put the piece of metal with her number on it over the post, and used another tool to crimp it shut. “Now we’ll just do the other one,” he said. “By the way, this is your registration number,” he held the metal circle in front of her eyes before placing it on the post and crimping it.
“Registration number?” she said, puzzled.
“Ear tags used to be traditional for livestock,” he answered. “We’ve never switched over to the implants. Besides, there are other reasons for the tags you’ll find out later.”
“Livestock?”
“You’re a smart girl; you’ll figure it out before too long.
“Now this next thing,” he said before she had a chance to respond, “isn’t going to hurt at all. We use anesthetic for your breast rings.” He swabbed some goop on her breasts, just under the
“Now for the piercing.” He put a template over her breast, and threaded a needle through. Then he followed with a short rod that extended out each side. He picked up a semi-circular ring from the table, and fit it onto the rod, and then tightened it with a curved pliers.
“There, one done. Next…” He did the other one. “Let’s see…” he muttered to himself and then shrugged. “Well, bells are traditional.”
“Now, we do measurements,” he told his subject, taking a tape measure from the table and turning the printed sheet over.
“That’s for my new outfit?” she asked.
“Yup. It’s hand made.”
“Cool! I always had to buy off the rack.” Larry managed not to crack a smile.
Kelly and Raindance came over and watched as he ran the tape measure over the pinioned girl, checking each measurement. Occasionally one of them would correct the place he started or ended a particular measurement.
“Open up.” He held an assemblage of straps and a red ball in his left hand. She started to clamp her mouth shut.
“Eep!” she yelped as his prod hummed and stroked her breast.
“See what livestock management is all about?” he asked her as he fastened the strap securing the ball behind her head.
He dropped the headrest onto the pole, secured it with the bolt and then pushed her head back. She tried to resist, and then went limp with a muffled sigh as his prod started to buzz. “Like I said, level one is for livestock management.” When he was done, he draped the waiting blanket over her. Then he attached the data sheet to the blanket and rolled the new ponygirl out to the corridor.
As he watched, a lobo-ra riding a ponygirl came up and stopped. The lobo-ra turned her steed so she faced away from the platform, and then pressed her ’girl’s shoulder. She dropped to one knee in the prescribed position, and then dropped further to sit on her heels. Her diminutive rider climbed down from the shoulder saddle, and dropped a pair of curved poles to the floor, which she then hitched to the front of the platform. The curve allowed the ponygirl to pull straight forward without pulling the platform up. The lobo-ra climbed back into the saddle. A moment later, her mount came up and began walking, dragging the platform with its pinioned ponygirl towards the start of her new life. Larry thought he’d probably never see her again.
Larry’s sister sure put her foot in it – or did she? The fact is, one way or the other she was going to become a ponygirl for a couple of years. Are these people ruthless, or are they ruthless? (I just realized – there aren’t any characters named Ruth in the series…) On that note, let’s get to the next exciting episode of Engineer!
If you enjoyed this story, please e-mail the author and let him know. He likes to hear from his loyal fans,and it gives him some motivation to keep writing this stuff. Of course, if you're a publisher and you'd like to buy some of these stories, please let him know. The starving author in the garret makes a great story, but it sucks in real life.