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 4. A real offer, at last.
Chapter 5. Morning at the apartment.
Chapter 15. Community Trainee.
Chapter 19. Your reality check is in the mail.
Chapter 20. Training Class, Part 2
Selma, out of work and very much out of sorts with her family, runs across an advertisement on the net for a ponygirl. She�s intrigued, and decides to follow up on it. So she signs the indenture. Then she discovers that it was for real.
She arrives and is uncrated. Then she�s subjected to a deliberately overwhelming introduction to the program. It works; by the second week she�s settled into the routine of being a ponygirl trainee when they discover that she�s got a real bad hair day. It makes her unsalable, and that causes a problem. What to do? Well, we wouldn�t have much of a story if they didn�t figure out something, now would we? She becomes a test subject for the geneticists. When last seen, she�s a very contented ponygirl trainee, just learning how to be a lobo-ra�s saddle pony.
Her family finally tracks her down. It turns out she had a real reason for not wanting to go them when she was down and out: they�re a major East Coast Mafia family, and she had real moral issues with the family business. However, they strike a deal. Selma becomes a community trainee in return for not starting some major unpleasantness.
What�s a community trainee? Well, the next thing that happens to her is that she�s sold at auction, and her new owner names her Raindance. Her new owner turns out to be her old lead trainer, which suits her just fine. Otherwise, it doesn�t seem to be all that much different from any other ponygirl in the community. Of course, her owner is running her through just about every task they ever put ponygirls to, and that�s a bit unusual, however she�s enjoying it. Everything is about to change.
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 said, puzzled.
�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 is 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.
�You know what the procedure is for today,� he half asked.
�Nobody�s told me anything,� I answered him.
�Right! I�d forgotten that you weren�t a real community trainee. You go from here to the community trainee auction. We do one every two months; it�s a combined coming out ceremony for the community trainees that have finished their two years and an auction for the ones that have just finished training. It�s also where community owned ponygirls get auctioned when their owners don�t want them any longer.�
I thought a moment while he worked on drying my legs. �So I�ve got a coming out ceremony? With who?�
�You know, I didn�t really think about that either.� He hesitated, obviously considering what he wanted to say. �Damn! This isn�t going to get any easier. Will you marry me?�
I let out a real startled whinny, and I could feel my leg muscles trying to bunch up to tap on the ground. �That�s the last thing I expected, big boy!� I answered as soon as I got myself back together. �Yes!�
He had the most stunned look on his face as soon as I accepted, but he recovered quickly. �So you�ll come home with me, and then sign up for the reorientation class that all the community trainees go through. That�s run by one of the counselors. There�s a one on one class just for you scheduled with Alice and Lenore.�
�Alice and Lenore?�
�Alice is the redhead you�ve met a few times; Lenore is the head of training. They want to get you oriented to the Community before you start trainer�s class.�
This time I thought I knew what to expect, more or less. As it turned out, I was almost right. Right after my first mash and digest a lobo-ra rode up on her work ponygirl and hitched up my stand, and then the stand rolled after them to the hall where I�d been displayed a year and a half before. This time I wasn�t hooded so I got to see them bringing in the ponygirls and setting up. Today, I was lot 11. I got a lot of attention; I guess just about everyone was interested in someone new!
The coming out ceremony was fairly simple. They wheeled us into the same auditorium where I�d been auctioned off, and then they brought each of us to the front. The same auctioneer read off our accomplishments, and then asked if we wanted to stay ponygirls!
I almost choked on the first one, but she gave a very definite triple thump of her hoof, meaning no. The attendant got her off the stand and took her behind a screen. A couple of minutes later, she came out, dressed in a short skirt, blouse, mesh stockings and heels, and walked down the stairs to exchange hugs with several people that were waiting. I presumed they were her family; at least I could see a resemblance.
A few lots later I found out why he asked that silly question. Lot 8 gave a double thump! He asked if she meant it, and she gave another double thump, and whinnied behind her ball gag. The attendants wheeled her off the stage in the other direction.
Eventually my turn came, and he did me up proud. I almost didn�t recognize myself! According to the spiel, I could have outrun a horse! Of course I said I wanted to come out, so they popped me off the stand, and then I walked behind the screen. The handlers were efficient; they may have set a record for a quick change! I came out, and there was Tom standing below the stage, together with Alice and another man and woman that I didn�t recognize. Well, I didn�t recognize the woman; I thought the man might have been the one that had given me that magnificent screwing on my initiation to the bucking rack.
So I jumped off the stage to meet them. Jumping off the stage in 5� heels wasn�t quite as insane as it sounds; the jump was actually easier than many of the obstacles I�d been riding over in the steeplechase course. I got a round of applause for the maneuver!
Of course, Tom and I clinched right away, to the sound of amused laughter, and one guy who tried to whistle �Pomp and Circumstance.� Then we moved out of the way to let the auctioneer get on with lot 12.
It turned out the other people were indeed Leo, Alice and Leo�s sister in law by his first wife, Lenore. Leo was the Managing Director, Alice was his wife and another one of the Powers That Be, and Lenore ran the educational establishment, such as it was. We moved to the back and watched the rest of the show, while I snuggled up against my new husband, and he massaged my neck.
I found out the reason for all the brass. I was scheduled for two classes immediately. One was the standard coming out discussion group that all of the graduating community trainees attended; it was to let everyone ventilate their feelings and sort the experience into some kind of order before the formal trainer�s training class. The other was a one on one seminar with Lenore and several of the counselors that they�d set up just for me so I could get oriented to how the community operated, and how I was supposed to behave.
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; I knew most of the young women from the coming out group, but I didn�t know any of the guys. However, they all knew each other. The one girl I didn�t know, Lucy, had skipped her chance to be a ponygirl. 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 had ever told me what official position she held; I had finally figured out that she didn�t have one. I�d only been out two or three days before I put together that the �Sorceress� I kept hearing about and Alice were the same person. It wasn�t much longer before I found out why she was called that.
I could understand why people wanted to keep on her good side, not that she seemed to have a bad side. It was just that when she wanted something, things seemed to happen. She was one of the troubleshooters as well so keeping on her good side was almost equivalent to keeping your nose clean and out of trouble. That she was the Managing Director�s wife was almost an incidental afterthought, although it made sense that the alpha male and the alpha female should be married to each other.
I�d not only met Lenore, I�d been having tutoring sessions with her for the last couple of months. Lenore was the head of their education establishment. I�d already found out she was the Managing Director�s sister-in-law by his late wife. Anyway, she�d been one of my two tutors in my orientation to the Community, and she was the one that was keeping careful notes on what I needed to know, and what I was having trouble with. It wasn�t until later that I found out that it wasn�t simply compulsive note-taking, she had a reason she wasn�t talking about.
There were six other instructors; each of them had one class.
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. In any case, I think all the girls know by now.� She got a light laugh on that one.
�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. That�s been causing some interesting changes in the training procedures, since we can�t count on having a hundred new trainees every two months. They�ve begun dribbling in, a few a day. We�re pretty much on target for replacing the kidnapping process with volunteers, so we�re going to shut down the wild ponygirl capture teams. That�s actually going to simplify things; we don�t have to keep the captures separate from the volunteers. The fact that they know that that they�re here to be trained as ponygirls and then sold doesn�t affect things nearly as much. There are undoubtedly going to be a lot of other changes coming down the pike so that we can get into alignment with the Act. The main issue is that the Act mandates that slaves get days off and annual vacations, and how we�re going to do that is a mystery. What isn�t a mystery is that any notes you�ve inherited and have been studying are likely to be out of date.� She grinned conspiratorially, as if she knew exactly what students got up to.
�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.
�We�re going to start with prod practice. 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 together with your new belts. Get one of each 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. The belt was a standard wide leather belt that was dyed a bright green, with narrow black stripes running at a 45 degree diagonal all the way around. I�d already learned the color code: green was for ordinary trainers, red was for senior trainers like my husband, blue was for sulky drivers and gold was for supervisors.
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 it 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.
That had me puzzled for a while until I asked Tom why she hadn�t figured it out. He shrugged and said that she was probably like most people and never noticed what they were reacting to. If she�d wanted to deal with it, she could always talk to the counselors in Community Services.
�Huh?�
�I thought you went over that. They�re pretty good at subliminal behavior mod.� He grinned; he wasn�t any slouch at that himself. �The basic thing is that they�re not going to interfere if someone�s personality quirks aren�t causing significant problems. You have to go to them; they won�t come to you unless you�re causing a real mess.�
Then I put the clues together. �I suppose it�s Alice that comes after you.�
�Mostly. Let�s just say that she�s insidious. If she decides you need your personality revised, it�s likely to happen without your being aware of it. The good thing is that she doesn�t dictate the change, she just facilitates your finding your own way.�
I must have looked puzzled; he grinned and didn�t say anything more. Men!
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 reorganized 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 didn�t want her team to take too long.
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.
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 mine 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 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 most 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 owners� 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. They 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 it had been designed just for her. 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 Mike.
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.�
�Will do, 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.
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 muddled through without too many problems.
That didn�t mean there weren�t any. I was hoping to keep a low profile and just herd the various organized crime figures so they didn�t see the senator, and vice versa. I had to clean up after the Senator�s daughter a couple of times, but that situation resolved itself when Carrie �volunteered� to become a ponygirl. Fran got left holding the bag on that one.
Then I got dumped into a high level political meeting with the Senator and all the honchos. It took me about half of the meeting to figure out what I was doing there; then the light dawned. I was the designated Mafia and other organized crime contact; Leo didn�t want any of his clients wiped out when they cleaned up the Island. So I beat it back to my apartment and called Uncle Frank.
�Hi, Uncle Frank, long time.�
�Sure has been, Little Fuzzy. How they treating you?�
�Busy as all get out. I�m happily married and learning how to train ponygirls.�
�Yeah, heard Mike decided to sell his.�
�Heard that too. I guess all the paperwork from the new compliance rules simply got to him.�
�Could be. He�s got an allergy to that stuff.�
�Heard something real strange going around. Our medical people are a bit baffled by it.�
�Oh?� I could see Uncle Frank sit up in the monitor as I got to the meat of the call.
�Seems like they�ve spotted a new plague on the Island.�
�They ought to be worried.�
�Yeah. They�re trying to get organized to pool their intelligence about why it seems to wipe out some groups, and totally miss other ones.�
�I�ll call around. Wouldn�t want to expose our people to something like that.�
�I wouldn�t either,� I closed the subject since he seemed to have gotten the message. �When�s our next social? I haven�t seen Aunt Susan in ages.�
We nattered on for a few more exchanges, and then hung up. I could see a sudden drop in the population of the Island.
Cleanup after the Gymkhana took about a week. People got their apartments back, housekeeping had a huge list of minor damage to fix, Fran and Dreammaker finally left, 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 yet 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 are 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. I was already two weeks into training before they found out, 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 one of the major East Coast Mafia Families to go to hell.� That got a bunch of startled looks; I guess most of them really didn�t know about my family. �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 adjusted. Most of the rest of the class had it easier; they�d grown up with them. 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� 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 seriously 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, which 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.
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.