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“Aerospace Melody, are you ready to begin your community service?”
 
Princess Celestia’s words brought the unicorn mare’s attention back to the present time. She’d been thinking about the rather unfortunate events that had brought her to a choice of sentences. Being an engineer on the edge of the airship design and construction was a risky business. She’d gotten her cutie mark while riding a poorly built airship down with her father and helping him avoid crashing it too hard, after all. But, maybe, her latest escapade might have pushed the limits of acceptable behavior and risks too far.
 
The Canterhorn peak was never going to look quite the same with a notch cut out of it from where her latest crash had knocked the tip of the peak over.  
Melody looked at the Princess with a bit of confusion, brushing one of her deep blue bangs back over an ear. “Sure, but I’m not entirely certain what my ‘public beautification’ position is supposed to be.”
 
So, she had gotten arrested. It wasn’t so bad, comfy cell, good food. Drawn-out court case, though. They were sort of right, as she had ignored a recommendation or two to hold off on trying to fly her new experiment. Then again, they had been telling her that for a couple of years at that point. It was a bit of a foregone conclusion, and the reckless endangerment charges had stuck to her like a bad case of lubricant.
 
“Nothing much, my little pony.” Celestia replied with a strange warmth to her voice, stretching a hoof towards a small water feature with an orb-shaped pedestal at the rear. “To begin, I just need you to stand on the pedestal there and try to balance on your hind legs.”
 
“Oooh-kay.” It was beginning to become a bit worrying for the sky-blue mare. What kind of ‘public beautification’ position required her to balance like she was in some circus act? There were always rumors, but they couldn’t be true, could they?
 
The Princess had offered the position as an alternative to a year in jail for her felony. It had been rather sketchy from the start, with the Princess remaining coy about the details of what the position would be. She had mentioned that the service period would be a ‘stiffer sentence’ than a year of jail, but that was okay. She’d also promised that she would return the errant aeronautical engineer to her starting position at the end.
 
Aerospace’s hooves slipped a few times on the slick stone as she worked her way onto the square platform around the orb. Something had been recently spraying down the stone—was it marble?—until the smooth surface was slick and dark. She planted her forehooves on it to provide leverage and pushed herself up. And then it got even more peculiar, because her left forehoof was stuck to the orb like glue when she tried to pick it up again.
 
She tried again, and with a grunt of effort pulled her hoof free with a strange grating noise. Aerospace flipped her hoof over, looking at it and found herself taken aback. The underside was coated—no, it was made of a dark stainless steel. ‘Public Beautification Position.’ Right. A legal term for ‘was going to be a statue for her community service term.’
 
“Princess?”
 
“You noticed. You’ll be changed back at the end of your term. Or, we can arrange for you to serve your original jail term, my little pony.”
 
A little cold. Bad pun. Aerospace’s breath was cold; she was cold all over. Made sense, she was taking on the properties of steel. She was steel, at least partially—fully in a little while. Grinding metal on stone crackled in the small—was it a clearing? There was a lot of bushes hiding the surroundings, turning her soon-to-be prison cell into a glade. No matter, she’d be a statue soon, as she wrenched her other forehoof free, wobbling back unsteadily as the unusual pose messed with her sense of balance. Didn’t help that one leg had slightly sunk in and started petrifying at a faster rate.
 
“No, no, just surprised.” Aerospace could feel her heart racing unpleasantly as her right hind-leg rapidly transformed, cooling and wicking her body heat away. Wait, it was—eep! An unpleasant blush graced her face as she scrunched her nose trying to keep dignified. The cool brush against, and then envelopment of her most intimate parts by the encroaching metal sent chills up her spine and tickled all of the most forbidden sensibilities in her head. Was she really starting to get off on being turned into a decoration? In front of Celestia? She was never going to hear the end of this.
 
“Do try to hold your breath, please. I’m about to plumb you, my little statue,” Celestia warned, just before a pulse of magic leapt from her horn to the partially perturbed probationary pony plumbing.
 
Aerospace started to ask what the alicorn meant right before a cold shiver traveled through her numbed and metallic leg, pulsing upwards through it towards her top. It collected in her stomach, which began to stiffen and freeze from the inside out, hollowing her out and hastening her change. It gurgled up hollowly through her throat, and Aerospace could ask no longer as her throat became a pipe. Her eyes crossed, and with a last glorp the water that had come up through her body from the fountain base began squirting from her mouth to splash down in the circular pool before her.
 
Celestia nodded silently as the remaining fleshy portions of the petrifying mare trembled with the sensations of multiple fronts of transformation rippling through her. The alicorn wouldn’t openly admit it, and she’d made sure to hide it in history, but she had experienced it once before. It was a unique experience, and one that could be very enjoyable under the right circumstances. Maybe Luna could—no, that was a terrible idea. Her sister was still trapped in the depths of her nightmare, and it was a few years yet before anything could be done.
 
As the alicorn mused, Aerospace’s mind bent under the onslaught of the transformative tingles. It felt like she was being rubbed all over with vibrators at the edge of the effect. Each cell, each hair changed was a cold tingle of tickling change; the spread of metal shifting across and through her much as metal would solidify and crystalize from a molten state. Her other hind leg slowly grew stiffer and stiffer, squeaking and squealing as metal replaced her bones, then her joints, and then finally every last bit of fuzzy sky-bluish goodness that was once Aerospace Melody. A hot golden glow grabbed her leg as the monarch realized, and guided it into a more stable position, fusing it ever so slightly with the orb base of Aerospace’s installation and her already fixated leg.
 
The engineer’s special skyship cutie marks were swallowed up; the dark pattern of the ships Aerospace was so inspired to create forming into a dark iridescent patch upon the polished steel flanks of her self-made prison cell. Forelegs tucked up against her barrel. Their trembles of barely contained pleasure slowly erased themselves as the cold touch of metal oozed into them like a loose tub of grease. Metal streaked down their outside, dripping and running like warm wax, then welling up past her knees to her wrists, and then oozed down in a rush to swallow her hooves and affix them in serene place.
 
Her haunches hunched perpetually in a rampant position left Aerospace with little control over the last bits of her rump still untouched. Her wrapped tail—protected from getting caught in some errant machinery in a pleasant way—continued to flick in pleasure from each tingling drip of metal oozing up from the pipe within her, moist from the water spray and a decidedly muskier moment of weakness she had been unable to avoid before that bit had changed. She could feel the golden bands as each hair turned to a fused wire, wrapping around her stout tail and merging with them. A last, solitary breeze ruffled the cropped tip, then it too was frozen solid.
 
The next part came in a rush as the cold front of cobalt-tinged stainless steel pushed through what was left of her torso in a rush. In a moment, it was as if she was in the midst of a blizzard as the heat of her body was wicked through her fountain plumbing; the water steaming hot for a moment before running cold again. Unpleasantly warm to her mouth, but the touch of the water had already frozen everything behind her lips into a steel siphon. Oh for Celestia’s uber-boobs, was she really going to mentally pun all the way to being steel? Especially given the frozen moment on the pleasure cliff that was still distracting her in all the best ways?
 
Aerospace cross-eyedly glared at Celestia, her ears flicking furiously in one of the last bits of communication she had left as the steel tide rose to her chin. Unspoken was the admonishment that by the alicorn’s solar-flaring maregasm she was supposed to explain this stuff and not leave a mare with a raging stiffy in the midst of turning her into a lawn ornament. She’d snort, but some of the last of the air in her escaped her nostrils as a heated final breath, appearing as faint steam. Oh har-har.  
Celestia merely raised an eyebrow as she approached Aerospace, addressing her with a hint of amusement. “Surely you should have understood what ‘public beautification’ meant, my little statue. I’m not entirely cruel. I’m leaving you with a pleasant sensation to think about in between meditating on harmony and your place within it—which includes not endangering the public.”
 
Aerospace’s chin was fixated in place by that point, turned into more of the steel and less of her. Aerospace wanted to nag, wanted to squeal in pleasure as the tingling compression and transformation pushed every last one of her buttons, wanted to cum like the hoof of the north mare from the cold heat in her body. But she was left on the teetering edge as the smoothing steel erased her bemused and embarrassed indignation and replaced it with a benevolent and knowing smile. Coldness took her ears as the steel slid up under her mane and froze them in a pose of contemplating attention. A lens of muted color overtook her vision as her eyes were frozen facing forward, locked into a gaze towards the future. Crackles, pops, and slight squeaks were the last things she could hear as her face went numb; her mane turning into an additional weight upon her head as it became a flowing mane of mirrored metal.
 
Cold trickles rushed across her form, the thin air being a muted shadow of what it would have felt like before despite the magnification of brushing against bare steel. Celestia’s words were a faint echo heard through multiple layers of metal, barely understandable to the meditating metal mare over the internal loudness of her waterflow and the distraction of that insatiable yearning edge between her legs begging to be addressed. It was the hoof running against her haunches, distractingly and tantalizingly close that focused Aerospace.
 
“Well, my little statue, I really must envy you. I’ve been in a position similar to your own, so long ago. Trapped, teetering, cold yet burning hot. You want it so much, don’t you? You remind me of myself, and I am more than happy to help focus you. I could probably tip you over, push you over the peak. Just a slight softening, and a bit of a press, and goodness, you’d have quite the leak. But I won’t. You’ll slow down when ponies are not near to you. Nearly to a stop even. The more students who come, the more capacity to meditate you shall have; more power to contemplate being on that edge, and the edge of the problems you caused. I’ll be back in a few years to see if you have learned your lesson. Have fun and try not to have too much fun.”
 
Was she? Celestia left! She left her hanging! If it wasn’t for the coolness of her form, Aerospace would be so hot and bothered right now! She—she! She wanted so badly to flex her haunches, to rub her legs together until well lubricated. She wanted off the edge, and into that gentle slide of crossed eyes and slick thighs.  
She wanted to—
 
Oooooh, it was right there—she—
 
Bother, she was going to drift off into mental stasis while hornier than Celestia.