Dude Looks Like a Lady

This is a short work of erotic fiction containing furry, or anthropomorphic, characters, which are animals that either demonstrate human intelligence or walk on two legs, for the purposes of these tales. It is a thriving and growing fandom in which creators are prevalent in art and writing especially.

****

Dude Looks Like a Lady

"Sh-sh-sh!"

"Quiet!"

"Telling me to be quiet isn't going to actually make me more quiet, you know!"

But, regardless of the mischief the ponies were up to in Appleloosa, dressed up as a gang of musketeers from the Pony Tales books, the trap had been set. A chocolate bar, so innocuous, laid on top of a work bag that a hungry pony could not help but snaffle up after a busy night helping his sweetheart, Sheriff Pinto, run the Nightmare Night hoedown for adults and little ones alike, a family affair that brought everyone out with their hooves tapping.

Axel could not help but devour the thing whole, even though he'd eaten plenty of Nightmare Night candy during the course of the event, so tired that his head hung even as the red-furred pony collapsed like a dead weight into bed with Sheriff Pinto, otherwise known as Serenity, the brown and white splashed paint mare with her eye on the law. Of course, sometimes she had to look the other way and it was with a glint in her eye that she laid her head down beside him, knowing that things would be different in the morning.

The changes took place without their intervention, the chocolate bar working its intrinsic, spell-laded magic as his body shifted, muscle slimming and fat plumping out parts of his body that had never been so full. His mane too floated out across the pillow but it was the changes between his hind legs that would later give him so much more cause for concern, although Axel slumbered on through it all, none the wiser to a single bit of what was taking place without his consent.

The morning dawned crisp and clear, a perfect Appleloosa day. The mare could barely wait to see what had happened, if their prank had truly come to fruition, and nudged her love awake without being too obvious about it, a flick of her tail ruffling the covers enough to rouse him.

"G'morning, darling," she murmured, one eye cracked open. "How are y'all doing?"

Axel yawned and shook his head, flipping back a mane that suddenly seemed too long and flowing. He frowned, sitting up a little more and rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the back of a hoof, although something so simple held an answer that would shock him to his core. For the stallion was, well...

"Hey, hun..."

But that wasn't his voice. That wasn't his voice at all. For the first time, Axel realised that there was something very, very wrong and, with wide eyes, raced to the bathroom as if the hounds of Tartarus were on his tail, a shriek that was far higher-pitched than anything he would normally let out bursting anxiously from his softer lips.

"I'm a... What?"

The former stallion gaped and danced back and forth in front of the mirror, her feminine features impossible to deny. Her mane was longer and more softly flowing than before, the white-grey hairs draping down her neck in a, "yeah, I just woke up like this," kind of way, hips fuller and belly sleeker (not that she'd been eating too many doughnuts or anything of late). Even her forelegs were slimmer, lacking the muscle she built up during the course of her work in the shop, grinding away at vehicles that only her skill could repair, it being her special talent and all. But she was not as she should have been, twisting around with a look of complete and utter horror to stare beneath her stomach where her maleness should have been and simply...was not.

"What the hell have those colts done to me?" She howled, stomping her front hooves. "I'll have their tails for this, y'hear? Oh, they better run fast, those hooligans, why I oughta -"

"Simmer down sally, y'know I was in on this prank here too, right?"

That stopped her dead in her tracks, jaw falling slack as the newly made mare stared at her lover as if she'd grown a second head.

"Y'all were in on this? Serenity!"

"That's right! But don't you worry your pretty little head about anything: y'all are only gonna be Axel Rose for a day!" She chirped, bouncing out of bed on hooves that were altogether too light and happy after such a late night. "It's temporary, darling, but, oh, the look on your muzzle... What a picture!"

"T-temporary?" Axel stuttered, trying to make her voice deeper and failing at it. "It's not going to last?"

"Of course not! You don't think I'd let those colts be that mean to you now, would I?"

But the way in which she batted her eyelashes at her lover told a different tale, Serenity having a wickeder streak in her than Axel had given her credit for. The paint mare giggled with a hoof over her lips as Axel pranced about, showing off her new body without even really thinking about it, although it was not as if any amount of complaining was going to get the spell to wear off any sooner.

"Oh... Okay... A temporary thing... Why did you call me Axel Rose though?" Axel said, shaking her head as her forelock flopped annoyingly into her eyes once again. "That's...not my name?"

Yet she was unsure of even that, her body so much lighter and more flexible than what she was used to as if the years of hard graft had never happened.

"Because that blush on y'all's face is so darn cute, sugar!" Serenity squealed, clapping her hooves together as if she had reverted back to being a mischievous little filly all over again. "Now, c'mon! You've got to get that cute ol' tush of yours to work!"

Axel's eyes widened and she backpedalled swiftly, crashing into the bathroom sink.

"Oh, nooo - there is no way in any Equestrian disaster that I'm going out there looking like this!"

Sheriff Pinto fixed her with her best 'sheriff' stare, eyebrows raised and a look on her muzzle that said that she really was not one to be messed with. Axel gulped and backed up further, her rump squashed up into the wall at an angle that was, of course, uncomfortable but should have been more so if she'd still had her 'stallion' parts.

"W-what? You can't... No!"

But Sheriff Pinto was not a pony that took no for an answer, regardless of the situation. Besides, there was one last little part of the prank that had to come together first.

"Didn't you say you have a big project to finish up for a client?" Sheriff Pinto said, one eyebrow timely raised. "I don't think you can put that one off, honey, so...you know..."

And, so, the mare-stallion (or just a mare, as embarrassed as she was about it, for the moment) was left with no choice. With her head hung low, the mare shuffled about her morning routine, legs all over the place, and a permanent blush colouring her muzzle. Getting to her workshop was another problem entirely, however, and she slung a blanket over her body to hide her changed features, stammering and stuttering as she tried to make her voice as low and as deep as possible, feigning that she was ill after Nightmare Night and really not feeling up to snuff.

It didn't work one bit.

"Are you alright, Axel?"

A concerned townpony that Axel really had little dealing with hesitated in the garage doorway, his head tilted with concern. Axel grunted and shrugged herself a little further under the blanket, the radio blaring in the background. Hopefully, it was loud enough to mask her voice, at least a little, but there was only one way to find out as she gathered her courage, hiding her face with a corner of the blanket and a suitably sheepish half-shrug.

"Uh, yeah," she grunted, rasping the best she could, although her voice still certainly didn't sound like hers...his. "Just...sick...You know..."

That was one way to fob off an acquaintance but it was her friends that were a little more persistent, Twin Star and Round-Up bouncing in with not so innocent looks on their tan and brown pony faces.

"Axel - my stallion!" Twin Star, despite his name, was not a pony from the Appleloosan parts. "What's got you so funny there? You sound...different... Is something different about you?"

Axel scowled and thrust him away, ears pinned and a look of pure vehemence on her muzzle.

"I can't believe you two! And I can't believe Serenity didn't stop you either! Just what kinda prank do y'all think this is?"

But she was too shrill and trill and her friends snickered helplessly, their sides vibrating as they tried and failed to so very desperately contain their mirth.

"If y'all hadn't eaten the chocolate..." Round-Up howled, beating his hoof on the ground, his black mane roached down to his coat. "Oh - oh! We knew y'all would eat it!"

Axel tried to scowl but it came out as more of a pout on a feminine face, which only set her friends off into further peals, staggering about as they struggled to stand upright.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she said, rolling her eyes. "I get it, it's all real funny, like, but I'm not gonna be stuck like this forever!"

But she was to be interrupted by a stallion who was new to town and, well, a little on the overly friendly side with a handlebar moustache that no one was really falling for, believing that it was 'real' in any way. The showy attire that was not suited to the plains of Appleloosa further set him apart as an outsider but he seemed to get along alright in the local bars, even if he was rather...forward with certain mares.

"Hey there, honey," he crooned, leaning against the doorframe, his eyes on the 'mare' before him. "What you doing tonight? I could pick you up, take you somewhere nice..."

Axel snorted and rolled her eyes, turning on her friends with her tail tense and clamped.

"'Scuse me, but I think you have the wrong...pony. The wrong pony."

The stallion leered.

"Oh no, I think I have a fine piece of flank here that I'd like to put my hoof to!"

Crimson with rage, Axel threw herself at him, the blanket falling completely away from her body, losing all pretence that she had over her voice and tone.

"Y'all get the hell out of here," she roared, fearsome even as a mare. "Or I'll see that hide of y'all's tanned for my trouble! How rude can you be to a mare? Is that how you talk to all the mares? I'm a stallion, darn it!"

Wide-eyed and stuttering, her admirer fled with his tail between his legs, Twin Star and Round-Up howling and half-falling to the ground as they tried to gather themselves, a seething mare hot on their tails.

"And you too! Out, out - all of you get out!"

She lunged for the blanket, cursing as her ears lay flat to her skull once more. But they'd gathered a small crowd outside and there was no way to hide herself as she scrabbled for it, waving a hoof at them even as it slipped, revealing her body to the amusement of all but her.

"I'm going to kill the two of you!" She shrieked, the blanket falling away completely as they fled the workshop in fits of laughter, tears streaming down their cheeks. "Don't either of y'all dare come back now, y'hear?"

And then, the kicker: the radio.

"I'm told we have here a special song to play for a mare by the name of Axel Rose - what a pretty name that is!"

The radio host trilled on prettily, a truly feminine voice soothing the masses as it blared in the workshop, but the song that played was anything but feminine as the first notes hit Axel's ears and she crumpled to the ground with a groan, hooves pressed very firmly over her ears.

"Dude looks like a lady!

Dude looks like a lady!

Dude looks like a lady!

Dude looks like a lady!

Cruised into a bar on the shore,

Her picture graced the grime on the door,

She's a long lost love at first bite,

Baby, maybe you're wrong,

But you know it's all right, that's right!"

"Begging your pardon..."

A voice from the door bid her look up and, desperate for anything else to distract her, Axel turned her gaze on a very confused Braeburn standing with his hat in hoof and a look of pure shock on his face.

"I thought a stallion worked here?"