Woodwose https://itotd.com/articles/6281/the-woodwose/ >Be Littlepip. 18-year-old edgy mare in a world that won't let you be edgy. >CSGU is nice, and Princess Celestia is helping you refine your talent for telekinesis. (Take THAT, Twilight Sparkle! You can do everything else, but TK is MY special talent! MINE!) >Still, it's not edgy enough for you. So in your spare time, you & your best make up stories about wandering through a post-apocalyptic wasteland plagued by horrors: false alicorns created by a hideous magical experiment (that just so happened to take out goody four-hooves Twilight Sparkle and that bucking juggler Trixie), manticores, zombie ponies, other edgy violent ponies... >Blackjack's even edgier than you are. You worry about her sometimes. >In your daydreams, you have nifty futuristic guns. Because flintlocks are BORING! >Then one day in the halls, you overhear motormouth Lyra talking to Moondancer. >"Bullshit, Lyra. A woodwose hasn't been seen in Equestria since the one that married Princess Celestia, & he died five hundred years ago." >"Nuh-uh! Bon-Bon gets chatty after sex. She totally saw one!" >"Ugh, do you have to remind me that you're a giant bucking dyke?" >"Beats being a virgin. Like you." >"Cunt." >"Love you too, Moonie. Anyway, Bon Bon says it's lurking in the old Museum of Sorcery down by the edge of the Everfree. She's going to go check it out tonight." >"She's going to have a long cold wait in the dark for something that doesn't exist." >"Like your sex life." >"You little shit--" >"Well, see you around." Lyra turns and flounces off. >Moonie puts on a stoic expression until Lyra's out of sight, & then freaks out. Hard. >"Eeeeeee...omigosh!" She twitches like someone stuck burrs under her sweater, and frantically trots in place. "They're really real!" With that, she teleports away. >If that's what being a frustrated virgin does to you, you're glad you & Blackjack lez out sometimes. >You do a 180 & head for the Royal Guard's training barracks. You're going to find Blackjack, and then you're going to have an ADVENTURE! >And maybe some sex! >With somepony (something?) besides each other, even! >Be Moondancer. >You can't allow "Bon-Bon" (as Special Agent Sweetie Drops calls her cover identity) to get to the woodwose before you! >She might hurt it, or worse, present it to Princess Celestia as a replacement husbando! >You want to at least talk to it first. If it likes books and O&O, YOU'LL marry it! >And then, phenomenal cosmic power will finally be yours! >Okay, okay, power on the level of Princess Celestia. Still, more than good enough. >You could tolerate the transformation. Yeah, it'd be weird, and rough for a while, but the Princess seems to have handled it well enough. You can do it too! >You scramble to grab a bound notebook, a blunderbuss, and a blunt implement. >You hope it's not hostile. You don't have any date-rape drugs, or even know where to get any. >Gear in your saddlebags, you gallop for the ramp leading to the base of Mount Canter. >Be Anon. >At this point, you suspect it's a law of nature -- every time things start improving for you, something goes wrong. >Fix yourself physically and mentally so that you're no longer the fat neurotic weakling you used to be? >Here's a years-long string of financial crises. >Finally have enough money to move? >Well, now no graduate school will take you because the culture has changed and you're a white male in a social science field (yay, anthropology / archeology). >Throw up your hands, bow to social pressure, give up on being an academic, learn a skilled trade, and finally get a job that pays a living wage? >Shitty women assume that you're a dumb money dispenser because you work in a skilled trade, and most smart women are too status-conscious to date a tradie. (Also, you're now older and can only fuck twice a day.) >Move somewhere that you can actually afford a house, so that you can finally settle down, go hunting, and catch up on your reading? >The universe (multiverse?) decides to fling your truck into an alien world in mid-move. >At least you landed in an abandoned museum. >You initially thought that the frescoes of magic-wielding unicorns were a cultural thing, but the overall preponderance of evidence from artifacts indicates that no, you've landed among tiny sapient Technicolor unicorns... and pegasi... and hornless, wingless horses that you suspect are also probably magical. Then again, they could be a slave race. >Also, their writing system is effectively gibberish at the moment. >Oh, and the museum is home to a pack of giant wood-covered Goliath frogs the size of mastiffs. >Correction - WAS home. >You thought they were solid wood when they initially surrounded your truck and started trying to pry you out. >After you frantically mag-dumped your KS-12 into one, you found out that no, it's some kind of symbiotic relationship that gives the frogs a coat of living, camouflaged armor. Slugs went through it well enough. >Your next mag of slugs was placed more sparingly, and your AK-47 finished the job. >You're out of canned goods already, and while you cooked some cuts off the frogs, you're leery about eating them. >Sniffing around outside reveals that the nearest city is at least a day's hike away. You're not sure if the sapient horses are friendly. You didn't see anything suggesting that you've stumbled into a particularly bizarre take on Gulliver's Travels, but the wee horsies' murals show them pulling off impressive feats of arcane might. >You'll beg them for help if starving's your only alternative, but until you can figure out if they're xenophobes or slavers, you don't want to just waltz up to them. >You've been cautiously scouting around outside the museum at dawn and dusk. >This morning, you discovered that apparently you weren't cautious enough. >Sitting outside the museum's back door is a very obvious net trap, baited with a Philly cheesesteak sandwich and a pair of dumbbells. >You feel vaguely insulted, but you slam the door and shove a table in front of it. >The museum's front door is chained and barred, so you don't really need to worry about it. >You think you'll slip out through the basement entrance and see if the horse that set the trap is still present. >Be Sweetie Drops. >Dammit, that should have worked! >The woodwose balked at a trap that was supposed to be an infallible means of catching its kind. >Then again, there was only one known specimen before now... >You think you'll sneak in through the basement and try to catch it by surprise. >Be Littlepip, student at Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns, telekinetic prodigy...and absolutely terrible at every other type of magic. >In your spare time you are... >LITTLEPIP, THE STABLE DWELLER, INTREPID EXPLORER OF THE EQUESTRIAN WASTELAND!!! >(In other words, the woods and abandoned buildings around the base of Mount Canter. You don't go into the Everfree. You're edgy and imaginative, not suicidal.) >With your best friend (sometimes with benefits) BLACKJACK, THE SECURITY MARE (okay, royal-guardsmare-in-training), you're heading out into THE WASTELAND. >Rumors have reached your ears that a woodwose is lurking in the abandoned Museum of Sorcery. >These forest-dwelling apes are able to bestow phenomenal cosmic powers upon a single mortal mare. >With their dick. >Still, the power comes at a price. >Blackjack seems less concerned about that part of the deal than you are... but Blackjack herself will admit that she isn't a smart pony. >Then again, if Princess Celestia herself was willing to pay the price, maybe it hurts less than you'd expect. >Anyway, enough digression. You don't know where the Museum of Sorcery is... but the mare that you're tracking does. >You mustn't let her get to the woodwose before you do. >You're not worried about her winning its affection honestly - after all, who could love a thin-tufted nerd with grossly oversized teats? >Be Anon. >You sneeze explosively. >Be Littlepip. >No, nopony could love Moondancer, but you're worried that she'll rape the woodwose, stealing both its virginity and its cosmic gifts. >You want the power. You NEED the power. You'll use it to make Equestria a more interesting place. >Be Moondancer, shivering outside the abandoned Museum of Sorcery in the chilly winter air. >You swear you were followed down here, but you couldn't see anypony behind you. Then again, you're not a woodsmare. >What you are is a damn good magician (unlike that bucking juggler Trixie, or little miss "What's literally anything besides TK?" Littlepip) with a bunch of healthy academic and artistic side interests. >And one of those interests is lockpicking. >Littlepip may be the undisputed mistress of telekinesis, but you're no slouch either. >Getting through the chains holding the museum's front door shut is easy. The locks are a few generations old, and they don't take long at all to pick. >You pull the door open and the smell of death hits you hard. >You vomit. >Copiously. >There's nothing to wipe your mouth with except for your sweater's sleeve. >Eww... >The bodies of several giant tree frogs (Hyla arborica gigas) are piled in the atrium. >Eyes the size of softballs stare blankly in death. >The frogs' bark-like symbiotic lichen armor has been hacked through at the hip and shoulder joints, and their limbs are missing. >Did the woodwose do this?! >You thought they were supposed to be peaceful creatures... >It's only now occurring to you that the ancient scholars hadn't bothered asking Princess Celestia's woodwose consort whether his hobbies (lifting weights, eating pussy, reading, and writing) were typical of his species as a whole. >You shiver. Other great apes can be savage creatures. >Still, you've come too far to back out now. >You pull the door shut behind you, but don't put the chains back on, and creep deeper into the museum. >Be Anon, gun nut, savage lunatic, heavy metal fan, well-read ex-academic, and dimensional castaway. >So, except for the well-read ex-academic and dimensional castaway parts, a pretty typical Floridian. >You've made your way down to the museum''s basement and are racing for the trapdoor that leads to the outside. The small horses native to this dimension had wits enough to set a trap for you. >A really shitty trap, but still, you want to turn the tables if you can. >You scramble over the pile of burlap sacks at the base of the ladder, swarm up the ladder at top speed, and throw the trapdoor open. >The door cracks a small pastel horse (in a catsuit, of all things) on the jaw. Apparently, the lil' horsie was racing for the door too. >The small horse shrieks - a surprisingly human sound - and rears up to crush your skull with its forehooves. >You let go of the ladder and drop backwards. >The pile of sacks keeps you from cracking your head open on the stone floor, but the impact still knocks the wind out of you. >Lil' horse overbalances and topples over the edge. >Right towards you. >Shit. >You try to roll away, but you're still stunned from your rough landing. >A hundred pounds of flailing horse lands on your face. >Impact. >Darkness. >Be Bon-Bon. >Given that you're a giant dyke and proud of it, you never expected to end up sitting on a stallion's face - even if that stallion is a woodwose. >You have to say, it's not as bad as you expected, but you don't think you'll make a habit of it. >The ape stirs and starts to come around. >Can't have that. >You lock its head between your thighs and squeeze. >Be Anon. >There's a horse sitting on your face doing its best Xenia Onatopp impression. >You're literally being smothered to death by horse pussy. >While you're sure this is some Ocalan's fetish, you're from Pensacola, dammit! This is not your style! >You try to break loose, clawing frantically at the equine beast's deceptively strong form. >You can't get free. >Powerful thighs are killing you. >As you start to get light-headed, you try a more primitive course of action. >You open your jaws as wide as you can, get a mouthful of spandex-clad flesh, and bite down with all your might. >Be Bon-Bon / Sweetie Drops. >YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! >It bit you! > It bit you right on the pussy! >Oh, sweet Celestia, THE PAIN! >The woodwose works itself free as your hold loosens. >You can't stop it. You're too busy focusing on THE PAIN. >Only your heavy naugahyde catsuit kept the ape from ripping and tearing a chunk out of your pussy lips. >Gritting your teeth, you pull yourself to your hooves. >The ape growls something at you, >{"Sit your ass down, missy."} >Whatever it said, you can't understand it. You're going to subdue this thing, just like Princess Celestia subdued its predecessor 500 years ago. >Okay, maybe not JUST like Celestia subdued its predecessor. >You don't like dick, after all. >But you will subdue it! >Or your name isn't Sweetie Drops! >