Crowds mingle and lines budge inch by inch as you sort your way through repeated waves of people, dodging the odd costume ear or  wingtip as you go. Anywhere else, this would be an absolute madhouse, the kind of scene you'd want to get clear of as quickly as  possible, but not here, and not now. These are your people, after all! Your sometimes odd-smelling, overly affectionate, colorfully-dressed people.

That's right faggot, you're at Bronycon.

And what a time it is, too! You and your friends have scattered for now, promising to meet back up around lunch to compare purchases and come up with a plan for panels to attend together. That means it's time to drop some cash on useless merch, your favorite  semi-annual whirlwind of discretionary spending that could probably have bought you something, really, really nice by now if not for  events like this. A quick flash of the badge later and you're in the Artist's Alley, going apeshit and throwing down twenties like a man well  over your means.

Plushies! Custom Figures! Etched Glassware! Shirts! Art! Art! Art! Oh me oh my what an adventure this is becoming, your previously empty backpack now laden with all manner of shameful, colorful, glorious sundries. You like to think you don't have any specific favorite  ponies, they're all fantastic, but as far as your money is concerned there's an awful lot of a certain orange-coated, straw-blonde farmgirl pony among your purchases, so you suppose an applefag are you.

And speaking of Applejack, there's an absolutely gorgeous-looking girl in an Applejack cosplay over there! Fit but not overly muscular, a  bit of curve in all the right places and a wonderful girl-next-door smile, she's simply too good for a place like this. You're sure of it. You  always feel like a total creeper when you do, but you've just gotta ask to take her picture! Still, it's hard not to let the spaghetti overpower  you as you do, she looks so good. You're thankful she's decided to draw the cutie mark on her shoulder... seeing those apples peeking  out from above her jeans would really be just too much for the likes of you.

"Uhm, hello." Is all you can manage to blurt out when she notices you coming, spaghetti trembling under the force of her still very friendly gaze and polite smile.

"Hi there, Darlin'. What can I do for ya'?" She drawls out in a faux-southern accent, masking a far more urban tone beneath.

"W-well I was wondering if I could take your picture?"

"Sure, go on ahead!" She replies in excitement, posing with an arm flexed in what seems to be a very "AJ" pose while you hurry to snap a few pictures.

Her confidence is actually kind of infectious, your parting "Thanks, your costume looks great!" comes out without any tremors or awkwardness, your spaghetti in full remission for the time being.

Smiling outwardly after your "successful" encounter with the lovely young lady, you spend a few seconds standing still in the undulating  throng of moving brony-bodies to check over your photos so far. Mm-Mm, lovely ladies all. When you look up from your camera, something glossy and plastic on the ground near your feet catches your eye.

A con badge!

A quick look-over at the name written in tells you that it belongs to an Applejack, but one whose actual name, written in beneath it, is  "Jennifer." You can't be sure, but this probably belongs to the angel who just walked off. Time to whiteknight like a mo'fo.

Amid the sea of hats, hair and pony ears as you stand on tiptoe to look around for her, you spot a couple of stetsons about, but only one  that looks like hers, currently moving out of the dealer's area and heading for the stairs. You're off after her as quickly as you can, but in a  crowd this heavy the most you can really do is weave between people at an odd-half jog, lest you run into someone. Out the dealer's exit  and up a couple half-flights of stairs and the crowd thins out a little, giving you space to spot her despite her substantial lead.

Should you call out? You're pretty sure this is hers, and if that's true her name must be "Jennifer", right? What if she decides it's creepy,  though? You don't know how old this girl is, either. She certainly looks your age, but for all you know she's sixteen and you're about to seem every bit the creepy neckbeard by following her.

She takes another corner and so do you, occasionally gaining ground as she gets stopped for photos. You feel downright awkward at  this point, feeling stuck thanks to the con badge in your hands, but too awkward to really approach her.

Though... speaking of creepy neckbeards, is it just you or has the big guy with the fedora about thirty feet ahead of you been following her  too? He was definitely there when you started following her...

What? No! C'mon Anonymous, this is a brony con, dude wouldn't seriously be that awful, right? "Love and Tolerance" and all that jazz...

She starts moving again, and you pause for a moment to observe as he does too, his gaze clearly fixated on her jean-clad, well-toned...  uh, flank. Oh dammit, this guy is an actual creeper! Now your whiteknight instincts are in full-blown Red Fucking Alert mode, attempting to  close the gap between her, him, and you as quickly as possible without causing a scene. You just walk right up to her, return her badge, and look Homeboy McWalletChain in the eyes as you do! If he's as beta as he looks that'll be the end of it, and everyone leaves happy.

Problem is, he is already much closer to her than you'd like, scarcely ten feet from her and by the look of things closing in. The crowd is moving against you, but somehow the two of them seem much, much better at swimming against this human tide than you are.

Then it happens. Gorgeous turns in toward the ladies' room and as soon as she touches the door creeper moves in behind her. You see him make contact, but after a passerby blocks your view all you can see is the door swinging shut with neither of them in sight.

Oh. Fuck. OH FUCK! Your heart is gunning at a mile a minute as you cover that ground as quickly as you can, ducking into the small alcove off to the side containing the ladies room door and getting in as quickly as you can without being seen. The first thing you see is Tubby, scarcely three feet away from you and kneeling over her as she lies on the floor, looking lifeless until you see her looking right at you. Rage boils over quickly, a lifetime of lessons as to what kind of conduct befits a man coming to the fore as you fling yourself onto  him, a harsh bellow of "GET THE HELL OFF OF HER!" rising from the depths of your chest with a fury you didn't know you possessed.

At first his struggling is just a loose set of flailing limbs, and as you let clenched fists crash into him you dare to imagine that you're actually going to have saved this girl. Applejack was about to get raped, and you are a bad enough dude to rescue her! Oh hell yeah, time to remodel this guy's face and then go be too cowardly to ask for her number afterwards!

Your swagger ends abruptly when something cold is pressed against your neck, confusion overtaking you only seconds before every muscle in your body convulses suddenly, tightening everything and making it quite easy for him to sprawl you out on the floor. It's not unti  he takes the time to do it again, causing you to froth a bit from the mouth and briefly lose your vision that you realize you've been tazed, your nerves electrified to the point that you can't muster the energy to get back up. You'd like to cry out in pain. You'd love to scream bloody murder from your place on the floor.

Unfortunately breathing is a titanic struggle at the moment, to the point that you begin to fear for your life even as you watch him open the  bathroom door just a crack, hang a "Closed for cleaning" sign on the handle, then shut and lock it. The sound of a deadbolt sliding into place is too much, terror seeping in as you realize that whatever is going to happen in here between him, her, and you, no one is coming  to help.

Your eyes dart back to the poor girl on the floor with you, her lack of movement now easily explained by both the tazer and the visible needle in her arm, though her eyes give her away as not only being conscious, but just as frightened as you. Oh damn, Oh fuck. Please,  please don't let you have to lie here and watch while he does something to this girl. C'mon, idiot, get up and save her! Be a man, for chrissake's, you can do i-

His shadow falling back over you does nothing for you confidence, and the sting of a needle tearing a small hole in your neck is followed  by a general numbness spreading out from there. That's it, you realize. You're both helpless, and Mr. Fedora over here has a free hand to do as he likes. Why bother numbing you, though? Your appearance has pretty much guaranteed that this rape becomes a murder... why  hasn't he just strangled you or something?

The bag he's carrying, a rectangular, structured-looking duffel back gets set down on the floor between the two of you, a look of glee on  his face as Neckbeard gets working on whatever it is he's planning on doing. A clearly fake looking strip of straw-blonde wig comes out of his bag, but it's too small to fit on anyone's head. It's not until you see a long, sharp looking needle on the end of it that you realize with a sinking feeling that it's not a wig, it's a fake tail, and you think you know exactly where it's going.

He begins to wave his hand back and forth over it, muttering a selection of latin sounding gibberish that actually makes you less afraid of him that you were. What, does he think he's casting a spell? Oh jeez, he's totally off his fucking rocker, what a sad little turd this guy is!

... then the needle begins to glow, as if heated by an unseen flame.

Panic begins to overtake you as he concludes his little ceremony, your entire perception of reality crashing down as no other explanation  fits the bill for what you're seeing. He's some kind of wizard, or, or... Oh shit, you're screwed! You're both totally screwed! Is that old joke about turning 30 as a virgin true? The most you can do is flop an arm uselessly as he grins wickedly.

"Pin the tail..."

You can't stand to watch as he shoves the needle in around her exposed tailbone, flesh audibly sizzling from the heat of it and the smell of  burning skin wafting by you. Instead you look to her eyes, visibly pained, shedding tears liberally as she silently endures. Sick fuck!  Miserable little shitbag! You're going to kill him, even if it's the last thing you ever do!

He seems pretty delighted by the rage in your eyes when he turns to look as you, apparently satisfied with mutilating a helpless woman and ready to move on.

"Now, what to do with you?"

He reaches thick fingers over and roughly yanks your half-slung backpack off, rifling through it and taking a good look at all of your stuff.  You're listing off each additional offense against you with every item he touches, making a list of how many blows to the head you owe him for every pony fig he lays his greasy little hands on.

"Hm. Little bit of everything, but you've got plenty of Applejack in here. You're sweet on her, aren't you?" he mocks, gesturing toward the unmoving cosplayer behind him. "Well, I suppose that does it then. You'll act like enough of a tomboy for it, and maybe you'll even enjoy things this way."

What the hell is he talking about? Enough of a tomboy? Enjoying it? You summon as much strength as you can, lifting your chest maybe an inch off the ground and lashing a numb arm out towards him, slapping uselessly against one of his legs.

"Oho! A fighter to boot. Yeah, you'll do nicely."

He moves back over to pull something out of his bag, but movement and color draw your eyes back over to poor Jennifer...

What the fuck? The area around the brutally inserted tail has turned orange, and even as you watch she seems to be getting smaller, he  jeans already baggy around her where they were taut before. It spreads at a crawl, and it's not until it reaches down to the area of her  hips that you realize what's happening.

There, right there before your eyes, a pictogram of three apples seems to fade into being on the side of her body. Impossible. There's just no way. A look at the tail itself gives you pause, though. It looked phony and plastic before, but now it was the same lively  straw-blonde as her hair.

Oh no. No no no! Cosplay isn't enough for him, he wants the real thing, and he's making her into it. Suddenly his talk of you "doing nicely"  takes on new meaning, a satisfied "Aha!" coming from him as he squats over his bag. When he stands back up and turns around, your blood runs cold and terror alone fuels another useless flopping motion on the floor as you try desperately to get away.

In his hands is a small, shiny plastic tail. It seems to shimmer in the light, multicolored and lovely. It's a rainbow. He means to make you  Rainbow!

The look on his face, a victorious sneer, is all the more infuriating as he gets behind you, rolling you over and tugging down the waistline of your pants. Humiliated and terrified, you're barely even able to tense up in anticipation as that same Latin gibberish gets recited,  praying to anyone that would hear you that something, anything could stop him from sticking that thing into your backside.

Your prayers go unanswered. A singular, all consuming pain runs the full length of your spine, cramping worse than anything the tazer did takes every muscle in your body by surprise, even as you feel your skin burning at the point of contact. A small, strangled noise is all that  you can muster in protest, even as you with you could bite down on your tongue and drown in the blood. It's too much! It hurts, even  through the whatever he gave you to paralyze you. You'd give anything, anything at all if you just scream. Chasing the pain around your  body, though, is a new sensation. Something, and you can't even begin to understand once seems to... slither through your veins, chilling  you and churning your stomach. A powerful urge to vomit overtakes you, but somehow it just refuses to happen despite the repeated  heaves your body goes through involuntarily.

You look to poor Jennifer, keenly aware that she must share your suffering, and feel only horror when you do. She's grown too small for all  of her clothes, panties and jeans now loosely covering only the bottom half of her legs, now with fully rearranged joints in place, a shiny orange color covering every visible inch. Your own clothes begin to feel too baggy as you lose mass, the urge to vomit ever present as  your legs begin to undergo rearrangement, feet extending, toes vanishing, shins shrinking even as your hindquarters seem to grow  exponentially.

The awful burning sensation returns, this time further forward, and your vision blacks out as your mind reels. Your genitals feel as though  they're being scorched away, a singular point of such unbearable pain that the taste of blood and bile fills your mouth as you finally vomit.

For a moment you dare to hope that with your head turned so high you'll be able to drown in it, but your slimy wizard seems to know  better than that, lifting your head and pointing it straight down, your limp jaw releasing it all onto the floor before he tosses your head and  upper body aside, apparently more keen on keeping you out of the puddle than on not hurting you. He's over with his first victim now,  pulling the still-shrinking Applejack out of her clothes and casually stuffing them into your bag. A sudden clatter on the floor adds true  insult to injury. Her con badge has fallen out of her shirt. She never lost hers, you followed the wrong girl.

All of this... your life, your body, your manhood, given up for a misunderstanding? No! No no no goddamnit! You still tried to save her, didn't you? You still did the right thing!

More... Magic, you suppose, slithers up your arms, and by now you're fully resigned to what's going to happen to you as your fingers bloat  and merge, your nails fusing and growing, though to you it feels more like someone's pulling them out with a pair of plyers. Another turn to  look at your companion yields a new horror, her changes seemingly complete as she appears to be 100% Applejack, but she's still shrinking! Even now he's holding her up in two hands as though she were a little filly or something, and she's getting smaller by the  minute!

The degree to which you have shrunk down yourself becomes apparent to you as the collar of your shirt looms over you, blocking out the  lights even as little bits of multicolored hair find their way into your vision. Massive, thundering footsteps move towards you,, and while you're getting some control over your warping body back you're far too hobbled by the pain to do more than roll around in your own  clothing. The world turns around you as your pants and boxers are pulled away from you, exposing what you'll guess is a fully Rainbow Dash'd rear end, considering you no longer feel any pain there. Your tail flopping down along with your legs is a new sensation, forcing  you to recognize that what had been an inanimate object a few minutes ago was now somehow a part of your body as you feel it twitching on it's own.

Your shirt being pulled clear of you brings new terrors, as a single hand slides under your chest and lifts you with ease. You're barely the size of a housecat and still losing weight! Why won't it stop? Why is he making you so small? Being turned over and inspected by the giant is the last thing you want, but weakly pawing at him with your hooves is hardly effective at warding him off. He seems more amused  than anything else, using another hand to hold your head still as he watches your muzzle grow in and your eyes expand. As he touches you, though, something seems off...

You skin is smooth! There's no fur at all, in fact, just like poor Applejack over there you seem awfully glossy for a little horse. You've no  time to ponder that, though, as all the slithering, mutating feeling suddenly pools in your back, overpowering all other sensation as new...  things grow out of you. His face is ecstatic, you wish you could spit in it for all it's worth as you're turned back over so he can watch your wings grow in.

Your eyes are drawn to a tiny Applejack, limbs twitching weakly as she lies on the floor next to him. She seems to have stopped  shrinking, at least, at least reassuring you that you will eventually stop shrinking as well.

"Have you figured it out yet, Dashie?" He croons, a strange sort of affection oozing from "Dashie" in such a way that you think you might vomit again. You're far too weak to play along with whatever stupid game he's playing at, now listlessly hanging in his sweaty palm and letting tears flow freely.

"Here's a hint."

His free hand goes digging around in your backpack, eventually pulling out a pony toy you'd bought, an Applejack figure, then holding your poor fellow victim for a size comparison. She... she can sit in the palm of his hand...

Oh god.

You're not ponies. You're animate, thinking little pony toys. Your weak struggling resumes as soon as it dawns on you that your coats are glossy by design. Are you even "alive" in any true meaning of the word? Even as you put up a pitiful fight, the tingling sensations finally stop, and you realize that you're no longer hanging in his hand...

You're sitting in it.

His other hand appears next to the one you're sitting on, the giant face looming over you the very picture of gleeful satisfaction even as you cower. You've got to run. Gotta get away, somewhere, anywhere, go!

Flinging yourself off his palm and letting gravity do the trick buys you some time, and on a lark you try flapping your wings only to feel a bit of lift from them. Until his voice booms out a single word.

"Freeze."

And you do. Wings, legs, head and neck all stop obeying you at once, stopping in the exact position you were in as you continue falling. Striking the ground is painful beyond compare, landing directly on your face and skidding to a halt on the floor, lying motionless and with a fixed gaze on the wall your body was facing until his hand returned, lifting you back up with trivial ease. Your mind races in absolute hysterics. You can't move! Just a toy now, a thing! You can't scream, can't cry, just staring at him with your face fixed in shock.

"Unfreeze."

And you do, collapsing in a heap onto his palm and sobbing feverishly, Applejack doing much the same somewhere to your right.

"If you ever try that again, I'll freeze you and leave you on a bench somewhere outside. Anyone could find you, and they'd think you were just a toy. Got that?"

He seems to take your mutual silence as acknowledgement.

"Good. You okay there, Rainbow Dash? Anything I can do to help?"

"Wuh... What?" Is all you can manage to squeak out, dumbfounded by the shift in tone and the nature of the question. Yeah, it'd really help  if you weren't three inches tall and shaped like a little pony! He frowns at you, and with a small "Tsk, Tsk", reprimands you on your mistake.

"The correct reply was "No! Nothing! In the name of Celestia, just sit there and do nothing!". It's okay, you can both practice your lines before I make you act."

You'd like to confirm that he's completely insane, but him suddenly standing up is a dizzying experience, vertigo messing you up quite quite a bit as you collapse back onto his palm. His steps rock the both of you back and forth, and once he cups his hands together you find yourselves clinging to one another in terror for safety, her hooves just tight around you as yours around her.

"D'aww" he coos, "You two can stay together for now. Now remember, if I hear so much as a peep I'll freeze you for the rest of the weekend, got that?"

You don't know what to do or say. Your eyes are shut, still praying for this all to be some kind of dream.

"I asked if you understand. Answer me."

"Y-yes!" You cry in unison, her faux-southern drawl now replaced by a perfect match for Applejack, your own mild tenor now raspy but feminine.

Vertigo returns in force as he lowers the two of you over something in his bag, you still can't quite make out the details.

"Remember, not a peep."

His hands are suddenly gone, and your wings go nuts for a moment softening a rough landing for you and Applejack... at the bottom of a glass jar?

"Wait, no!"

You gun your new-found wings for all they're worth, but by the time you're at the lip of the jar a lid with a couple of holes in it slams down over you, trapping you inside. Like a mouse... like a bug.

You look wildly around, still reeling from being able to fit in a duffel bag at all. Your prison... your jar... is held in place in the bag with a small strap and there are other empty jars all around-

No, only some are empty. Looking at you from the jar to your right is a breathtaking Twilight, leaning against the side of her own jar and  crying silently... You're not the only ones. If he's got a Twilight, a Dash and an Applejack... Oh no... he's going to complete the set.

He means to take more people.

You maintain eye contact with Twilight from within your own jar, the two glass surfaces distorting your vision of her as you let yourself fall  to the bottom of the jar. Applejack is with you in a flash, holding you and crying. You and Twi just keep staring at one another, both sort of  frozen in despair now that it's clear that he means to have a collection.

You keep looking at her, even as the flap overhead closes and the zipper is pulled shut, leaving the three of you in absolute darkness.