Story Draft: A Changeling Perspective

Due to numerous events, namely regarding Hasbro, work loads over the recent few years, and falling out of the fandom for my little pony, (Which can be read about in more detail here , I've decided to release my storynotes, regarding what was planned with each of my fanfics. This one, dedicated to Fallout Equestria: A Changeling Perspective with Aria Web and Co. This one went a bit on Haitus before the other major work, Puppets of Tragedy, which got its own post, but namely due to slowly losing interest after the large series of Fiascos regarding Bethesda self destructing their fanbase with the events following Fallout 76.

While earlier games kept me writing for a short bit, and I still listen to the Inkspots regularly, my passion for both mlp slowly drained with the ongoing treatment of the fandoms characters, as well as a feeling of discouragement to continue writing after Changelings got their 'transformation' into beetles. While my own goals had in mind to turn Aria into something of an overgrown Breezy with shadow elements (Earning her the funny nickname 'Princess Shadow Butterfly', but I'm getting ahead of myself), a combination of events had made me stop writing for the mlp fandom for quite a while to the point I don't think I can pick it back up.

So instead, I'm going to be releasing my story draft and its accompanying notes, so that you might have an idea of what I had planned regarding the story of FE:CP. Spoiler warning, for those who haven't finished what has been written thus far.

The Crystal Empire was going to be a little longer, with the overall goal being uniting 3 tribes of Diamond dog mutants each with their own strain, named after Ammo running, head hunting, and mushroom agriculture, with the three united, they would help Aria deal with getting the third of the three Crystal Heart shards, one of which was held in a megaspell scale giant earth golem that Aria deals with, and the third shard being in Prince Shining Armor's corpse(More on this later).

The Golem would be first encountered by Aria first proving herself to the hunting pack by doing a 'trial of courage' which is more or less if Aria wanted their help she better prove herself as a princess by 'Crossing the Crater of The Empire', which was going to be where one of the megaspells that wiped the city out were partially deflected by the crystal heart into, shattering the legs of the golem with the shard impacting it during the war.

The golem, still piloted by a feral ghoul zebra, would awaken, and attempt to smash anyone who enters its crater, and Aria would of had a hell of a time, realizing that it couldn't really easily escape, Pumpkin gets knocked out and a few broken bones; and unable to leave her behind, Aria takes the fight to the golem to distract it. Sombra, struggles here, as well, given the smoke monster is more terror and intangibility than substance, and has to slowly drag pumpkin away while Aria distracts it.

She flies into its face eventually, slamming into a recess the giant stone hand would break her gun, and leave her to carve out a hole through its eye into the pilot seat, where she would see the Zebra ghoul, all but fused to the stone and kill it, the pilot briefly having a return to sanity, long enough to mouth the words 'Thank You', in the Zebra's home language.

The Ammo clan, was going to have a lot of refrences to both pugs, and the gun runners of Fallout NV, who more or less wants Aria to gather the support of the third clan, before they would be willing to support, while the third, the mushroom cultivators, more or less demand a passion from Aria and her companions, to prove they are 'People' by creating art in some form or shape worthy of being a ruler given the task that attacking the 'Fallen Throne' of the empire would be. Given the lack of (Any)hobbies, Aria struggles with this, while Pumpkin gets along swimmingly, and the two have a conversation regarding origins, hobbies, and more events, Aria eventually makes a song, after painting, drawing and sculpting fail, and (Not on purpose at the time, while shes a bit forlorn, and lost), sings a song about her former companions and how she misses them, driving a few people to tears; and acquiring their help in the process after a funny moment of dogs complimenting the now stage frightened and embarressed Aria who only noticed them after she was done.

A few more words, were then planned with Pumpkin after the dogs gathered together for a 'Company Formation Party' between tribes, Pumpkin making a comment about Aria's voice, and Aria making a mention that changelings in the Stable didn't really have art, but since acquiring the pipbuck from Grey, she really liked the music on it. Both express concerns about the day ahead, but the mood is quite jovial for what is going to be most likely a slaughter ahead. Sombra comments, that now is the best time to have such a party, given they might not be around, and the three talk about the Crystal Empire back when Sombra was young for a bit, and how it was ruled.

Sombra's events are a little colored, but they don't paint the one he dethroned in a positive light, as an orphaned foal of another disaster, he reveals a childhood of coal and gem mining, a princess that was more obsessed with material gains than not(Outiftting an entire city to be made of crystals would be expensive, afterall.), than the well being of its people, and that he might of 'over reacted' when the people were apathic to the death of a another orphan from the dirty hard labor, and gone full swing into revolution, then hostile takeover.

There were also a bit on paying off the national debts and desperately trying to avoid a war with Equestria back then while trying to fix things, but he ended up ultimately a scapegoat in Equestria's plans to annex the crystal empire 1000+ years ago before a spell offered by a strange old goat let him banish the empire for a thousand years rather than let Celestia and Luna take over. Foreshadowing Aria's mentor as far older than ever. Without political backing and with foreign aggression, Sombra was forced to become a tyrant and do his best to improve the average living situation by reducing the number of ponies going into the mines in favor of toughening them up as soldiers, indoctrinated or not, knowing that Equestrian warfare was mostly non-lethal unarmed combat, stunning spells, and electrical shocks from clouds of the stunning grade of that era.

He had planned to surrender but something of Celestia and Luna's words made him fear they would just continue the corrupt policies of the previous ruler, and he let his fear of his people being sent back into the mines catalyze into the banishment. The truth of this situation would be covered up over the next thousand years, and give Aria quite a bit to think about. In terms of governments and the right to rule.

With the following morning, the dogs began to dig, which would cause ghouls from all over the city to begin to close in and attack enmasse against the dogs. A long shootout occurs, with Aria focusing on using her mentors Revolver for the first time alongside a rifle purchased from an Ammo Dog merchant given her own sniper was out of comission following the golem trial. Eventually, they power through the attacks, and Aria; alongside Sombra and Pumpkin start pushing through into the fallen tower itself, which is filled wall to wall with strange ice pods that have dimly glowing ghoul members of each race stuck inside them asleep. As they progress onwards, Pumpkin begins to yawn, and Sombra himself, proves not immune to being sleepy despite being dead, which alarms him. As they comment about it, and Aria yawns, Pumpkin falls asleep on the spot, and despite urging from Aria, can't seem to wake up.

Following this, Sombra also collapses, and alarmed, Aria starts to pull her friends over to an aclove, to hide them from any ghouls if they wake up, because dragging them out would take too much time, before pressing on by herself, doing everything from biting her lip till it bleeds, kicking herself to stinging pain that goes instantly numb, until she is almost to the 'throne room' itself. Before she can open it though, she too, passes out.

What was planned after that, was something of a mix between memory lane from fallout 3, and the saints row 4 'Program' at the start.

Aria wakes up, with no idea anything is wrong, as she lives in an ideal neighborhood as a normal 'Ling. A copy of Grey Iron as her dad, and a silent mother she originally only saw in the photograph her mentor kept. Both loving and kind. Aria works at a club as a singer, where nothing sad or unfortunate ever happens. Even the radio is far more upbeat with nothing but sunny skies and a work flow that is only ever enjoyable and never strenuous. Folk talk old fashion like with 'Howdy Neighbor!' and 'How do you do?!', and everything with big wide smiles, and the city is coming together to celebrate another child being born between Princess Cadence and Shining Armor, their twentith! if the news was correct, all healthy and cheerful children. Aria ofthandedly asks about Sombra, who, while not quite a friend yet, was still something of an acquiatance and something flickers. Cheerful smiles turn ever so slightly less cheerful, and things start to become slightly warped the more Aria slowly realizes something is off. Smiles a little unnatural, how a pony could trip and not recieve so much as a scrape, her willpower starts to push through it, before she is called by the guard to come before the Princess.

There they have a conversation, and Cadence gradually grows more and more annoyed with each topic, and Aria more and more wary, before Cadence sighs, and banishes the guards from her court room as if they were naught but smoke and makes a demand of aria, or more a request, Cadence asks if she would rather be happy with whatever it is she might need or want, and Aria asks if Shining Armor would really want this? Outraged, Cadence goes on the offense about what she would know about what Shining would want, much to a confused Shining Armor suddenly freezing. Aria, having had enough, throws a butterknife into Shining's eye, and the illusion breaks as Cadence screams in denial.

Aria comes to in the sideways throne room. The walls and ceiling lit with glowing Iceblighted pods containing ghouls, and in the center of the room, holding a skeletal corpse in knight regalia with the shard of the crystal heart in it, is the ice blighted ghoulified form of Princess Cadence, who goes on an Alicorn scale rampage against Aria.

Aria, being a bit against trying to take out a regenerative alicorn princess, and with the vague idea of a plan starting to form, begins to fly hard, and fast around the throne room, avoiding the alicorns freezing and lethal attacks as best she can, eventually luring cadence away from the corpse of her lover long enough to swoop in and grab the third piece of the crystal heart which begins to react immediately. The three thirds when exposed to each other, starting to stick to each other like glue and glow with a bright repulsing light that begins to draw the Magical radiation ambient in the chamber to itself; as if trying to both use it to fix itself, and draw the tainted poison out of everyone involved. The radiation however, is also flowing now into Aria whose wings are starting to glow brighter and brighter and hotter and hotter.

Pain building, Aria begins flying towards the entry way, as ghouls are starting to wake up, and dealing with hundreds of ghouls atop of a more or less feral cadence is a fair bit out of her ability, but with the spell broken, her friends should be waking up too. Retreating to the room she left her friends in, a groggy Sombra makes comments about what its like to sleep after a thousand plus years, but an incoming Cadence leaves even him slackjawed a moment. Seeing the crystal, and Cadence, Sombra yells at Aria and Pumpkin to get to the center of the empire, because the crystal heart would be the only thing that could possibly stop this tide, and moves to engage.

Pumpkin and Aria make their way towards the opposite end of the the tower, and with wings full of magical energy, Aria cries internally as she begins to speed up. The changeling, overfueled by magic, creates a 'Shadow-rad-combination of a rainboom, and while in immense pain, enters ground zero out of the bottom of the tower and into the crater where the majority of the balefire bomb that took out the empire started its detonation, glowing radioactive ooze along the bottom of the crater, and an angry cadence barreling towards her, Aria throws the gem into the center, and...

A bright glow of warmth. Aria is caught up in the magical surge, as a wave of magic bursts forth from the crystal heart, consuming the radiation and magic from the crater, and those around, drawing it out and towards itself as it takes hold over the city. Diamond dogs and ghouls alike stop, feral eyes seeming for once confused in incomprehension instead of ravenous and angry, as the crystal heart becomes a shining beacon in the center of the city once more.

The fighting stops, even cadence, blinded as she is, as Aria, near the centerpoint of this spell is for a brief instant given a set of options of what to do with the magic of the crystal heart. Part of her says to clear the city of the radiation, ghouls included, Aria, denies this, as the ghouls are ponies too, and after a long amount of focusing, what feels like an hour in an instant, another wave of energy passes through the tens of thousands of ghouls in the city. An announcement is made, for the folk of the empire to know that the war is over.

Madness abates, and sense slowly returns to the ghouls, part preserved by the spell that left them in slumber, part the heart doing its best to restore the people of the empire.

Blue glows fade, leaving regular ghouls instead of blighted glowing ones, and Aria, exhausted, beaten, and with wings that feel curiously numb, decends gracelessly onto a restored polished floor instead of a crater, the tower still fallen, but with numerous ghouls calling her the 'New Crystal Princess'. Pumpkin and Sombra land, Sombra spotting the sheen of the empire, surprised by his own appearance, and numerous slightly crystalized ghouls spotting their own sheen, as Pumpkin congradulates Aria on becoming 'An endangered Profession', before their attention is drawn to the crying huddled form of Cadence.

The glow had abated, somewhat, but the Alicornis weeping, in her own shame and grief, mind restored enough to parse her husband was indeed dead, but a hole filled set of limbs gives her a hug, a few comforting words, a few minutes of crying, and Aria stands back up, but sways, a little as acting as a focal point for effectively a megaspell takes its toll. Her wings disintergrate, having been overburdened by the amount of magical radiation that went through her, and she collapses.

She wakes up a week later, a princess, but one that had another job to do, but that concludes the Crystal Empire arc, more or less.

DLC 2 was to occur shortly afterwards, placing aria into suspended sleep in a tank as her soul went downward by itself into the lands of the dead, Pumpkin also going into suspended sleep, but Sombra does a sneaky by switching the gels to preserve her body perfectly while Aria's blend of gel includes 'royal jelly' that aria starts producing after absorbing so much magic, the changelings body was evolving into an actual princess(Though this was going to be revealed after the end of the DLC.

Sombra leaves pumpkin's soul behind as it sheperds Aria into the land of the dead, but Aria ultimately shows up alone, as Sombra's soul is cosigned elsewhere with simple instruction to head to Grogar's castle in the center.

The summary of events being: Aria goes through what is effectively a medieval kingdom of the dead with only her starmetal weapon of dagger and chain, meets with a bunch of people.

-Gets taught magic by her mentor, and becomes more attune with her elemental magic of shadow

-Mentor is the king of his court, but his court is pretty much one of daggers and poison, in which he is king.

-Souls that 'die' down here become essence, and taking essence down here gives one more magical power but binds one to hell forever, same with eating/drinking anything in hell. Aria bypasses this need by Changeling emotion osmosis, as apparently even souls need to eat.

-Meeting Pinkie Pie In Limbo, which is off the edge of the kingdoms land as a infinite dark unlit abyss, which aria is tricked off of by her mentor, because Grogar wants to in reality, steal Aria's body for her magic and physical form in the world above, which involves a lengthly ritual. So Aria encounters one of the 'Lost' being Pinkie Pie who threw herself off the cliff in Limbo shortly following the events of her end in K Kats work Fallout Equestria, (The scene of apologizing to her friends while the world ended for letting her addictions get in the way). Pinkie Pie is deflated throughout her time in limbo, and goes by the name 'Rock Stone', the entire time. Due to this, Aria doesn't recognize Pinkie Pie until the end of the DLC where shes cheered up enough to get some life back into her.

-Meeting applejack as a random farmer.

-Finding out that 'The Kingdom Of Shadow' is not the only afterlife down there, as Aside from Limbo, Aria also visits the Neighyptian(Egypt) afterlife before getting back to Grogars kingdom via River Styx. But before she can get on the route out, she starts being pursued by a grim reaper.

-She visits Elysium, and meets her dead friends and Grey's long departed wife, on her way down the river Styx attempting to avoid the reaper. They can't go with her, but they dote on Aria, and distract the reaper for a bit while she flees downriver.

They get off before the end of the River and into 'Deadhive' where Aria learns a bit of what it means to be a changeling, an actual changeling, rather than Chrysalis's changes, as there are more 'butterfly' like changelings than the ones we see in Cadence's wedding, which was planned before the show redeemed changelings into beetles.(Ew). Changelings are also established to have distant ancestors with Breezies at this point. The reaper has an issue with purusing Aria here, as every changeling within a few miles is suddenly poking fun at the reaper while disguised as Aria.

-Aria gets cornered by the grim reaper whose floating along the edge of the limbo abyss by the kingdom of shadows, he prevents passage of Aria to this land, because the living should not be in the realms of the dead, but death is barred entry from the kingdom of shadows, and offers Aria a magical contract. Become an agent of the reaper and help him claim souls that have cheated their destined afterlife and death in exchange for augmenting her magic.

-Aria after a long debate, and a short bout with death in fighting, agrees, but gets more agreeable terms from the reaper due to her 'fighting spirit' and quick 'friendmaking' among the dead. Aria's magic can now harm her former goat mentor Grogar. armed with this lich slaying magic, Aria infiltrates the castle for a second time, and has a huge fight with the necromancer, as shadow magic infused with the magic of the reaper fight against him. Things seem lost until Pinkie Pie catches him by surprise and distracts him with a pie to the face, disrupting the goat when he was about to win with Aria pinned in a spell. The elusive pink earth pony dodges everything the goat has to thrown at her, long enough for aria to get free and blast him apart. After which, the castle begins to crumble, and the lands of the Kingdom of Shadow begins to brighten exponentially.

The reaper thanks Aria now that Grogar is gone, he can once more do his job, and reap those who have avoided judgement here. Tartarus and the pony equate of Heaven are restored.

Aria, says goodbye to her new friends, Sombra apologizes for being unable to do anything under Grogar's spells, and both Pinkie Pie and Sombra wish Aria the best before the Reaper offers the two a job as the pony heaven needs a party manager with lots of leadership experience, and who better to punish the guilty than one who was forced to become a tyrant unwillingly.

DLC 2 ends and Aria is given an unexpected treat as she wakes up in an adult body instead of one still growing.

A bit taller and lankier than Chrysalis, Aria gets a ton of clumsy but endearing moments as she adjusts to how much her body has grown in 2 years, when she was mostly static in size as a soul.

Pumpkin is brought out of stasis, ready to fight in the kingdom of shadow, but realizes shes been tricked, and is baffeled by Aria's 'growth spurt'.

The crystal empire has become habitable in wake of previous events, the city starting to resemble pre-war, albeit walled and with a guard. Sort of planned to be styled like a city sized version of Fallout 4's baseball stadium. The bricks of the fallen center kingdom piece used to create a defensive wall around the city from the fallout level threats contained in the winter.

Everyghoul reacts much to Aria walking around as they did Spike when he showed his face again for the first time in the Crystal Empire.

Aria has another bout of stage fright, after seeing a statue of herself made of black glass. Cadence admits to making it herself when she was given moments to spare. Pumpkin laughs at Aria's bashfulness, but is still frustrated.

Seeking the source of her frustration, Pumpkin reveals when she came out here, she had a bit of a deadline, and wasting two years on effectively beauty sleep means shes running out of time to return home.

Cadence reveals the goodnews that somepony found what she was looking for, and Pumpkin stows the document away in her bags, and prepares to leave.

Aria, asks to go with her, and despite Pumpkin claiming aria should be too busy ruling the last 'real city' on the continent, Cadence, having the intuition of the former Princess of Love, pushes Aria to go with her.

Another long journey through the snow, but they show up on the NE side of Equestria's mountain range, by the time they come back.

They make their way towards Shady Hollow, a rather unremarkable city during the war, but it became halloween themed post-war, earning Pumpkin her name, and mask.

Things get a little flirty, Aria is now 'Adult', and Pumpkin has less of an age gap technically speaking due to the gel used to preserve her during DLC2.
>Get wrapped up in some of the events of Project Horizon and Fallout Equestria, more as a distant bystander than anything. Namely the Littlepip version of the Fallout Master.

-Fight a confused alicorn mutant as an bug-version.
-Fight more of them.
-Stop sending us your mutants, we have our own alicorn at home!
a brief mention about Cadence, gets the mutant alicorns to stop long enough for conversation.
-Sadness about Cadence still being a Ghoul, and thus unfit for their hive, Aria is left unharrassed as 'The Crystal Empire would surely seek vengence if she went missing, maybe not today, but perhaps in the distant future; which would make their own goals much harder.'
-Lose a hindleg during one of the skirmishes with the alicorns. To be replaced with cybernetic at a later date.

>More confusion when suddenly freed Alicorns later on start wandering around, A-La Littlepip.
>Brief planned cameos of being in the same bar as the Project Horizon protagonist while in disguise, and making refrences to other notable Fallout Equestria writers to promote their fics back at the time I was planning this. (Finding the timelines for a lot of folk is a pain. Some folk have absolutely nothing to do with the FE plot, so its hard to tell 'when' they're involved unless they drop a line about everyones favorite 'Toaster Repair Pony', or are blatantly doing a fallout games timeline.)
>Brief cameo of Project Horizon's 'High-tech-death-city, of whoms name I forget, namely for Aria to go: NOPE. and skirt around it, dragging pumpkin with her.
>Brief cameo of Tenpony Tower, mostly to get drunk in with Pumpkin to focus on a proper romance scene. Also a planned 'meeting with the radiohost of Tenpony, in which she makes a comment about Pumpkin and Aria. But this would be after the visit to the Hollow.

Hollow's halloween town mercenaries be thirteen mercs and their families who live in a small secret community heavily guarded by reprogrammed robots and death traps, given a similar vibe to the Nuka Cola DLC, but with all the coasters and overly flameboyant structures turned into scrap for a heavy metal defensive wall and coated with a dark grey circus tent made to look like a large crooked pointy rock in the forest.

Pumpkin was searching for a way to extend her father figure's life, which has been suffering from radiation induced cancer. While they lack the stabilizing ingredients for preservation gel, Aria ends up providing the solution with vomiting up more Royal jelly to fill the tank. Albeit, it takes a lot of effort to convince the old pony to relent and go into it. Stubborn as a mule, and twice as strong, they said, alongside a 'no offense' to one of the mercs who happen to be a mule.

Pumpkins Mother prods aria along to confess an attraction to their daughter, and after much tsundereing, Pumpkin finally agrees.

A few events with the hellhound variant of diamond dogs attacking the mercs were planned, mostly to press the issues of the dads health further along, as well as get Aria and pumpkin out of there by accepting a new mercenary contract back towards the other end of the wasteland.

Some stress with constant wildlife attacks, and Pumpkin stressing about hoping her dad is alright.

They find a few romantic and calming sights traveling the wasteland.

Tenpony event mentioned earlier happens.

Aria and Pumpkin end up on the outskirts of the Everfree Forest, after being pursued by A few too many raiders for two ponies to handle. They can't just 'fly away' because they got snipers.

They make the mistake of going into the everfree.

Raiders get munched on by the forest, Aria gets afflicted with a variant of poison Joke that mutated called 'Poison Hope', and is sent skyward with a pursuing Pumpkin into the distance.

Aria wakes up in a cloud city alleyway as a young pegasai with no memory and the vague appearance of what a pegasus filly version of what Aria might look like.

>Go over what it would be like living in a pegasus city as a more or less orphan on the street might be like.
>Aria ends up in a dumpster, and wandering all over the place some more.
Two pegasus brothers of the pegasai 'mafia' end up grabbing her by mistake when she accidently ends up in their suitcase instead of the weapons they were trying to smuggle.
>Shennigans occur with two brother pegasai learning that the peagsus foal they have just turned into a changeling foal.
>Of course, when propoganda has made out changelings to be worse than literal devils and killers, Terrified adults of tiny children.
>Adults get over fear to confusion because aria is more cute than scary.
>Adults keep the foal, enlighten child to the society of organized crime and the pegasus oppressive regime.

Generally wholesome family content, aside from the mafia-ing.

Aria slowly recovers some of her memories, but shes been nicknamed 'Lovebug' due to the adults.

Thankfully the powers of disguise are still hers otherwise she wouldn't be able to go out and about.

-An inspector comes by to investigate the mafia with a warrent, but thankfully they find nothing 'worth arresting them over'.

However they do find the child, and after talks with their neighbors, they are fined for having an unregistered child among them, and to the mafia bros disbelief, the inspector steals Aria.

Aria is now internally screaming.

Aria is dragged through the hell of paperwork and investigation for a while. Plays it dumb like the kid her body is. Inspector eventually realizes she 'does not exist' which means one of several things, thankfully a number of ones that would screw over Aria are dismissed as 'Can't be' because 'Changelings are extinct', and the inspector isn't heartless enough to throw a foal back into the wasteland figuratively speaking.

Aria gets granted rights as a 'Citizen of The Clouds' under the name of 'Rose Bugs Loves.' (Much to her internal stressed induced laughter.)

>Breaks out of the orphanage they put her in, and goes back 'home' to mafia bros.

>Get caught, kidnapped.

>Turned out kidnapped by mafia bros.

>Two Pegasai bros on the run with their changeling daughter.

>Inspector catches them on a transport out. Aria convinces them all to let her go.

>No other drama for once other than Pumpkin Barging in blowing up a pegasus toll station, and kidnapping their friend back too, much to everyones disbelief.

>This results in pegasai chasing down the 'Wastelander' who just stole a citizen of the peagsai cloud citizens. Military involvement immediate.

>Pumpkin questions why Aria is so small, but her hair in disguise is still the same as it was normally, and she spotted aria undisguised through a window at one point, and it was a matter of time before she came in for the rescue.

>Aria is stuck as a child, so Pumpkin takes her to a doctor she knows in the area to both lay low in down below, and to fix the curse.

Poison hope is a plant that takes what the user wished for the most, and gives it a potentially fatal twist. Aria wished at one point in earlier chapters she could of had a normal childhood, but given her dead parents, and the limited aspect of magic that isn't allpowerful, it turned her into a child and threw her into the clouds instead.

Cure is disgusting, but Aria is glad to be in control of her own body again, and in her own body as well as her gear comes back into reality with the curse broken.

-DLC 3, A detour into pegasus clouds, is over. Meant to be wholesome content mostly with no real over-dramatic world shifting events, unlike the other two.

>Aria returns to her section of the wasteland, shortly after some rest.

>Pegasus ponies patrolling the skies, Pumpkin forced to abandon orange getup for something cute.
>Aria finds it hard to not concentrate on Pumpkins face, adorable lovebug bes adorable.

>Radio station is under attack by Stable Changelings, Aria and Pumpkin move in for the rescue.

>Damage is reduced, but apparently changelings started a war about a month back.

>Aria uses radio to call in for help, three weeks pass by and most the folk she has ever helped start showing up, and after long talks(Due to changeling infiltrators), to confirm who they are, help arrives. Surprisingly large amount of help as well. From the other DLCs, and adventures shes had included. Summer Smiles brings a lot of robots to the mix, Empire brings actual functioning military equipment, and the Reaper shows up during a quiet moment, to give Aria some hope, which he isn't supposed to do, but Aria's help with Grogar, as well as a few other random 'death avoiders', earned her a favor or two.

>Biggest surprise is a group of batpony night guards that Grey's wife was a member of the clan of, who quietly speak of a debt owed to Grey himself, and his ghost demanded they come. Reaper acknowledges that particular 'favor'.

Big climatic war fight, Aria leads them to the vault, and does her best to disarm as many explosive collars as she can.

Shes fighting against the mental influence of the hive the entire time, but when it looks like they are about to breach into the Stable, the vault doors begin to close, and Aria barely manages to dive in before it shuts, leaving her alone against the scientists and the rest of the hive they've grown.

Stealth, shadow magic, and reaper magic, all this leads to the events shes been building up for. Growing pains in her head as the hives oppressive presence is slowly driving into her, shes only lucky that its a blanket influence, and as long as she doesn't give too much of a mental bite back at it, she won't be noticed.

>Steals the guise of a scientist pony, and infiltrates the stable of infiltrators. Seeking the Overseer for the master release.

>after much trouble, reaches the Overseers office.

>Enters, and is bombarded by dozens of minds at once.

>overwhelmed, the overseer thanks her for her effort and demands she surrenders herself to the hive like the good little soldier shes supposed to be.
>Laments how much of a waste her escape was, and just how much trouble shes caused.
>Talks bad about her dad.
>No one talks bad about her dad.

>Overwhelms the hivemind with fury.

'Princess Shadow Butterfly' 'Lovebug' Aria Web becomes a proper Changeling Queen in full resplendent glory. She throws her dagger, it goes past the overseer and nails through the reinforced glass into the 'Emergency override' for the stable.
>It was a fake. It was an emergengcy detonation button for the collars instead.

>Through immense psionic telepathic teamwork, a large number of the collars are ripped off and thrown away, but 4/5ths of the adult hive dies.
>So too, does most the mutant hivemind nodes, leaving Aria alone.
>Despite the immense pain, the gratification and thanks shes getting from the changeling slaves as they die breaks her a little inside.

Overseer: calls her mean names, angry, smashes her in the face.

Aria is knocked to the ground, and in confusion realizes something now that the overwhelming presence has been reduced.

>The Overseer is a changeling.

-He reveals he was the last of the naturally born ones, but due to his status as a hive caste royal guard, he wasn't able to make a hive, but was forced to rely on ponies to make him new ones, but he couldn't produce them himself, nor would the hive listen to him to take over Equestria after the war.

-He had made sure no royalty would arise as he set about on his crusade of vengence, not willing to surrender the position of top ling he was going to be a war lord if not for Aria and wipe out everyone else.

-now he has to wait several dozen more years, but as an immortal, what is that for a wait?

Aria kills him in fury.

The remaining changelings take matters into their own hooves against their captors. A lot of the adults are dead, but most of the young pre-teens and kids are fine due to when collars are applied at the start.

Horrifying scene of carnage in the halls, but Aria leads them all out into the light, after a bit of tension, Changelings have now become a proper member of the wasteland.

-Aria lets them self determine their rule, too depressed by her own failure to save them all, and declines becoming the Queen of the Changelings. Despite this, they follow her anyway.

-Pumpkin Gives Aria much needed comfort, and We cut to epilogue.

While most of the changelings stayed in the Stable using it as a city, several have ended up following her back to the Crystal Empire.

Aria is adjusting now to being a Princess, but finds her time with her now Wife, Pumpkin, far more enjoyable. She occasionally makes the trip to visit Grey's Grave, and order hunts for would-be lich's, but lives as a beautiful contrast image of The symbol of dark as the Light of the Crystal Empire. As a mare who held scientific facilities of the pre-collapse in one hoof, sat upon the throne of a city-state empire, and wielded a hive on the other. With a radio calling her out as a hero, and as a mistress of magics of shadow.

I had no more notes regarding the other folk who would show up to help, but there was going to be a lot of dice rolling involved to help randomize who lived and who died during the brief Stable v wasteland war.

-That ends all my notes on the changeling perspective's main story.

-Sincerely Irid Wind.

Comments

[Btf16]

Thank you very much for doing this. I know it would of been fantastic to see this story fully to the end I can understand that life and other things can get in the way. Having this kinda closer is very much appreciated, I was looking forward to more as this story had such a odd but great perspective with the main character being a changeling.

Thank you again for your hard work and may your future be One of Great people, Great Friends and Fun and Adventure.

[pokeperson1000]

Thank you very much for sharing what you had