My half of the trade with in which his tiny vulpine and :gtsdev:'s pony end up stepped on, and later swallowed, by a Cadence who's too mad about her day to notice the tiny ones. His half can be found here:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9636836/









“Arti, pull on that string there.” Instructed the pony to her tiny helper, her hooves wrapped around some bits of string or wire that were coming out of a post made of crystal. Not that that was unusual given she was in the Crystal Empire, but still it was unusual for her, a tinkering earth pony, to be invited here, to the center of magic itself, in order to serve as a maintenance technician.

“Are you sure about this Retchet?” Asked the four inch fox, remembering the large jolt he’d gotten a few minutes ago when following the earth pony’s advice. He was her helper in jobs like this, able to get closer to the problem than she was and see the fine details while she kept the big picture in her eye and did major pushes and pulls with her hooves.

“I'm positive. At least, I think it's positive. It might be negative though...” She said, pulling out the design specs she’d received on arrival. She’d been contracted by Princess Luna to do a major job here in the Empire, to get some magical energy compression system up and working again, something that had fallen into disrepair while the Empire was…wherever it had been sent by King Sombra.

It was her skill as an engineer that had caused the Princess to give her the job, as her wrench cutie mark suggested. Her talent was fixing things, from plumbing, to lighting, to a few magical odds and ends all over her home town. Being asked to do a big job like this was an honour. It also paid really, really well, but she was trying not to think about that too much, as she turned the paper in her hooves over, and over again, until nodding to herself.

“Yep, pull that one, then plug it into the left most slot and this thing should power right up.” She told the fox, who nodded, and did as instructed, taking the string into his paws and feeling for a moment, that tingle that came with working around magical wires inscribed with runes. Yanking as hard as his tiny body allowed, he pulled the string free from where it had been connected into the wall, getting a slight yelp from him as the power washed over him before he walked towards the left and plugged it in.

Instantly, the pillar of crystal he was inside began to hum to life, the strings about him glowing with little lines moving through the runes carved into them while outside, Retchet giggled with glee, clapping her hooves together and twirling a bit. This had been the largest job she’d ever done, both in complexity and just time consumption but at last, after two weeks of doing this, she was done and she was so happy, she didn't look where she was going. At least until her hoof touched the pedestal the fox was inside, and a flash blinded the pair of them.

Arti, Artistic Fox, was the first to recover, rubbing at his tiny eyes, and looking around, finding the world a much darker place, as the pedestal was now devoid of any kind of magic. About him, the rune inscribed strings lay flat and lifeless, waiting for a spark to re-power them. It was the view outside the pedestal though that made him shiver as he couldn’t see Retchet who’d been standing just outside the opening, making him rush over to it and then look around, calling her name.

“Retchet! Retchet! Where’d you go!?” He cried, scrambling down the pedestal, using the fancy carving in it as paw holds as he made his way down. A heartbeat later, he was on the ground, looking up and around for the earth pony, rushing about the room and calling her name louder than before. He was so focused upward that it came as a surprise when he tripped over something, falling in a heap with whatever it was he’d tripped on and then coming to a rest right near it.

“Ow! Watch where you’re going.” Cried a familiar voice and Arti turned around to find himself staring at Retchet, the formally massive pony, now of a size with himself. Not that he really noticed except in as much as it allowed him to hug her more easily.

“Hey, what’s going… Arti, is that you?” Asked the earth pony, looking up and down at the fox as he bounced away, and nodded.

“That’s so cool, the compressor must have made you bigger since you were inside of it.” She said, looking him up and down, not noticing the room around her until the fox, after putting up with a few pokes from her hoof, grabbed her head and turned it towards the now monolithic pedestal.

“That, or I’ve shrunk since I touched it...” Said the pony dejectedly as Arti nodded.

“So, now what?” Asked the fox after a moment.

“Well, since I want to get paid and get bigger, in that order, I propose we go find Princess Cadence. She can do the former since I did indeed fix that stupid thing and I’m positive she’ll now how to fix the latter.” Said the earth pony logically and rather than wait for conformation, she trotted towards the door. Arti, staring after her, decided to follow.

Luckily, rather than being somewhere public or out of the way, the magical compression device was actually situated in an apartment right near the royal bed chambers. Normally, that made it hard to work as Retchet tended to keep her own hours and the Royal Couple frowned on her working late night. It was a good thing now though as it meant the tiny pair only had to walk for about twenty minutes to get to Princess Cadence’s room.

“Excellent, we’re here.” Said the earth pony, huffing a bit. She was used to long hours, heavy lifting and the usual mechanic/magical maintenance stuff, but jogging had never been her thing and she was pooped from having to do so now. The fox, much more used to his size, said nothing as they pushed at the door to the chamber and after a moment, went inside.

Unluckily, today they’d been working in the middle of the afternoon. That meant that Cadence was off somewhere, apparently dealing with some idiots who’d tried to resurrect King Sombra for an experiment. She’d heard of a unicorn nut job who did things like that but she’d never met him and knowing now what he might do, had already decided to stay far, far away from him in the future.

This all equaled that the pair were where they would be found, but not for a while. So they did what bored ponies and foxes tended to do in situations like this and began to play games. Of course, Eye Spy isn’t that fun when all you have to spy is a bedroom but after a few rounds of Twenty Questions which the fox kept winning, much to Retchet’s dismay, he suggested Hide and Seek.

“You seek, I’ll hide.” Agreed the earth pony, silently tapping a finding rune she’d had laid on the excited fox many moons ago. Not as a cheat mind you but just to make sure he didn’t get hurt. He had a way of finding trouble when you didn’t want him to and the somewhat absent minded mechanic didn’t feel like any trouble now, not with where they were. After all, it might impact her paycheck.

So the hunt began with the fox scrambling away as the earth pony began counting backwards from fifty. By the time her eyes opened, he was nowhere to be found, but rather than use the rune to find him right away, she tried to seek him herself first. That proved to be a bad idea as the door to the room suddenly burst open and Cadence came in, her expression one of rage as she tossed her shoes onto the floor and began to tear off the leg coverings, known to Retchet as socks, she’d been wearing.

“Of all the irresponsible, moronic, downright treasonous...GRAH!!!” She growled as her magic tossed the pair of socks, coated in some kind of ooze, into a nearby chute that would take them to a cleaning room. She pulled another pair near her. Retchet, a bit taken aback by the Princess of Love’s foul mood, was frozen where she’d been standing, only rousing out of her stupor when she noticed a small bit of movement in the shape of a four inch tall fox in one of the socks as the Princess slipped it on.

“I must admit, that was a good hiding place.” She said to herself as she rushed forward, shouting upwards at the Princess who continued to growl, grumble and otherwise make very angry noises into the empty room. Retchet, trying to ignore that and hoping to get to her before she stood up, ran straight towards the Princess, unfortunately, tripping as something came between her and her target. Her head slamming hard into something made of hard crystal that was faintly warm and smelled of hoof.

Recovering from the spinning room a moment later, Retchet was just in time to look upward as a shadow fell over her and then came down toward her. The shadow was a socked hoof with a tiny shape squirming in it and it came so fast that all the tiny earth pony could do was squeak impotently before she and the fox were squeezed between the Princess’ hoof and her hoofwear.

The next several hours were monotonous and rather dull. As the hoof blocked the pair from hearing any sound other than the muffled voice of the Princess herself, most of which sounded angry, or at least perturbed. They weren’t that bored though as every step Cadence took she would give them a thrill, the world dropping away as her hoof raised into the air, sending the two’s stomachs down and then rising them back up as she brought her hoof down, clacking against the crystal floor of her palace.

The pressure made it impossible to talk but Retchet was sure that Arti knew she was nearby as he wriggled and squirmed closer, his paw pressing into her hoof, obviously worried for her, even if he couldn’t say it. Not that he needed to be. The compression that had made her small had made her dense too and the pressure from the Alicorn's hoof against her body didn’t hurt so much as it felt like she was being buried for a moment and then uncovered the next.

What made the experience less than pleasant wasn’t the ride, it was the water. In this case, as the Princess went about her royal duties, she began to sweat a little. Well, it was a little to her anyway, but the drops soon began to drench her little stowaways who felt the sticky, smelly stuff dig deep into their coats, getting that smell into them so powerfully that it would probably take days of washing to finally come out and nearly making Retchet gag at one point when she got a little of the salty liquid in her mouth.

Luckily, it had been the afternoon when they’d been trapped, and so it only took Cadence a few hours to deal with everything before finally shooing away her servants and returning to her room. Once there, she tossed herself onto her bed and just laid there, her mind buzzing with the day’s activities and the punishments she was going to deal out to a certain purple unicorn once the dumb butt had been found.

Sighing, she tried to relax, knowing her husband was on the job and he would find the idiot and bring him to her to receive her vengeance and/or justice, depending on what condition he was in when found. For the moment though, she rung a bell by her bed and within a breath, she could hear a dumbwaiter moving up from the kitchens to her room with a nice Emerald Leaf Salad in it. Licking her lips at the thought of her snack, the Princess levitated it to a small table in the corner where she had romantic dinners with Shining Armor, before starting to undress.

First the crown and the chest piece were placed on a nearby dummy and then a small clatter could be heard as she dropped her shoes off right by her bed, not noticing a tiny form hanging from her sock as she did so. Nor did she see the tiny form as she used her magic to pull the socks off and then tossed them like boomerangs into to the chute, a pair of tiny forms flying from one.

The forms, Retchet and Arti, were quite surprised to be free and even more so to be flying, the pair of them letting out some breathless screams as the air was ripped from their lungs before they found themselves falling with a splash into some liquid. The stuff tasted sweet in their mouths and burned a little as they tried to open their eyes before they both went limp and let the water carry them to the surface, emerging with a splash from beneath the liquid.

“*Cough, cough, cough*…where…what…huh?” Was all that came out of Retchet’s mouth as she looked around, her mouth still getting a lingering taste of the liquid which she recognized as a Crystal Berry Wine vintage, something very sweet and also highly intoxicating. Trying to ignore the buzzy feeling in her head, the earth pony grabbed the fox that floated beside her with her hoof and swam towards the edge of the glass the pair found themselves in, looking out onto the massive form of Cadence as she ate her dinner.

The Alicorn was lightly nibbling at the leaves of lettuce on her plate, levitating them one at a time and then acting like a rabbit as she ate one after another, causing Retchet to giggle a little before remembering the wine and instead trying to pound on the glass. Unfortunately, since her legs weren’t touching the bottom of the glass, she couldn’t put any force at all behind the strikes and so they weren’t loud enough to be heard.

The next thing Retchet knew, she was dragged beneath the surface again, getting a lungful of the wine that went straight to her head, making her thoughts less than focused as the world swished around her. Outside, Cadence was swirling the wine in the large goblet she’d requested, getting the wine to the perfect texture before opening her maw wide and levitating the glass towards it.

Inside, the pair surfaced once again, a hiccup coming from the fox which was accompanied by a small bubble. The earth pony, faring only a little better, was just sober enough to look forward as the glass tilted, seeing the visage of the monarch in the glass and then staring as her mouth opened slowly filling the entire view until the rim of the cup touched her lips and the wine began to flow into her.

The current was impossible to resist, even if Retchet had been of her right mind and so the fox and the earth pony were swept away, sliding across Princess Cadence’s tongue before falling off the back of it and landing into the soft, supple flesh of her throat. The pocket of skin around them curled and moved, undulating as it gathered as much of the liquid as possible before sealing the pair into a bubble of wine that then moved down the Princess’ neck with a 'Gulp'.

The two tiny creatures found themselves rolling and swirling about the bubbled of wine, the bulged of which vanished into Cadence’s chest as she licked her lips, finding the salty aftertaste a bit unpleasant but enjoying the warmth of the alcohol despite that. Soon, Retchet and Arti were tossed out of the throat of the Princess, landing with a splash and a squelch in her stomach, both laughing from the effects of the wine and neither really understanding where they were.

“Wee- *HIC* -eee,” Said the fox, rolling to a stop in a fold of flesh in the Alicorn’s belly. Looking around, the earth pony smirked at him, finding him via a slight glow coming off from the walls of the stomach they were in. Still smirking and giggling a little, she swam towards him and sat down with him, enjoying the steady drumming sound in the background as the world continued to fill with wine, enough to quiet the Princess’ headache and send the pair off to a blissful sleep to awaken later after they’d been found.