The group had been walking along the path through the dense woods of Everfree Forest for a few minutes now. Zecora was in the lead, then Twilight, with Rogue slightly behind. None of them had said a single word the entire time, and Twilight was about to burst with questions. She was unsure about whether or not she should trust anything this newcomer had to say, but so far he seemed to be sincere. At least as far as she could tell.
Zecora seemed to be content to continue walking on in silence, but Twilight's curiosity had oversome her and she had decided she needed answers to the multitude of questions she had thought up while mostly petrified. Now.
She slowed her pace just enough to allow Rogue to catch up. He was so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn't even notice as he came up beside Twilight. With Rogue oblivious and obviously not going to start the conversation, Twilight decided to start it off. "So what exactly happened back in Canterlot?"
It took Rogue a second to realize Twilight was talking to him. "What?"
Twilight had already made a mental list of several questions she wanted to ask Rogue, so she started off by asking the one at the top of the list. "You said that when I hit you with my Dispersion Spell you were freed from Chrysalis' mind control, but what happened after that?"
Rogue was surprise at how specific her question was. "Wow, you really don't watse any time do you?"
"I'm curious."
"Apparently. Well, that spell you used knocked me out for a while, and when I woke up, I couldn't hear Chrysalis' voice in my head anymore. I could think clearly and remembered...... everything." It seemed that Rogue remembered something very painful, but he quickly pushed it to the back of his mind and continued his story. "Then I saw Brute attacking a unicorn family and"
"Who's Brute?"
Twilight's interruption caught Rogue by surprise. "Oh, He's... He WAS my sqauds Captain. Anyway, I saw him attacking a unicorn family..."
~
The entrance to the Main Tower of Canterlot Castle was the scene of absolute mayhem. Magic bolts fired over head as the Canterlot Guards attempted to fight off the massive Changling Horde. Green streaks of changling ooze were fired in return by the invaders themselves.
Further away from the main battle a few of the weaker changlings entertained themselves by harrassing anypony they could find. Rogue awoke in this area. The feeling of being the only one in his head was so unfamiliar at first.
He slowly got up from the ground where he had been laying, then all the memories of his life that Chrysalis had been blocking, along with everything else that had happened since, came rushing back all at once. The force of the returning memories hit Rogue like an avalanche. He stumbled backwards gasping in shock. He looked around in horror at the destruction he had played a part in. "No!" He stood in place, paralyzed, as a single tear tracked it's way down his cheek.
"Somepony help us! Please!"
Rogue looked over and saw that an short, armored changling had cornered a unicorn family against a building. The mother and father had put up a Barrier Spell around themselves and their foal, who was laying on the ground with a glazed look in his eyes, not reacting to anything, emmotionless.
"Who were they?"
"I don't know, I didn't really think to ask to ask them their names."
The changling, Brute, seemed to be enjoying himself. Cracks were slowly spreading across the surface of the Barrier as he slammed himself into it again and again, occasionally firing an acidic burst of ooze from his deformed horn at the failing spell, weakening it further, and chuckling the whole time.
The parents were obviously worn out from trying to hold the spell against Brute's relentless onslought. Rogue saw all of this, and remembered another instance from his own life remarkably similar to this one. Enraged, Rogue immediately ran over and launched himself at Brute, tackling him to the ground.
Brute easily threw Rogue off of himself within a few seconds, but not before the unicorn family had dropped their Barrier Spell and began to charge up a Teleportation Spell. Brute flew totowards them, fangs beared, but just as they were within reach, the spell finished and they disapeared, leaving Brute with nothing but a wall to greet him. Brute angled himself upwards at the last second and landed hooves first on the wall with a thud.
"How do Changlings walk on walls?"
"We use our ooze to hold on."
Furious at losing his source of entertainment, and still standing vertically on the wall like a fly, Brute turned to Rogue and immediately recognized him. A smile slowly spread across his face, then spoke to Rogue, his deep base voice in direct contrast with his short stature. "Well, well, well, if it isn't Rogue. Turned traitor I see."
Rogue was attempting to stand up, unsuccessfully. Brute jumped off the wall and began slowly stalking towards him. "What's the matter? Having a little deja' vu? Hahaha!"
Rogue was so drained after losing his mental link with Chrysalis, and the rest of the changlings, that he could barely even stand up straight. Brute came up to him and simply pushed him over with one hoof. He then stood over Rogue, smirking, while preparing to feed on his emotions. "Just like before."
"You mean you fought Brute before?"
"Yes! Now can I please get back to MY story?"
"Sorry."
Just as Brute had begun feeding, an explosion rang out from the Main Tower, distracting Brute. "What?" A huge shock wave of magic hit Brute and sent him flying backwards towards a building. The force of the blast was so powerful that when he clipped the roof he went right through it, leaving an oddly shaped hole. Throughout Canterlot all the other changlings were having similar experiences, but oddly enough, Rogue stayed in the same place as before.
Instead of meeting with a solid wall of pure force like the other changlings had, Rogue felt a warm, energy giving sensation. Upon realizing that it was mostly made of love, Rogue quickly devoured as much as he could in the few seconds that he had before, as suddenly as it had come, it stopped.
Now that he had enough energy to stand, he did so, and took a few moments to look around. Was he the only changling left? Where had that blast come from? Why was he affected by it so differently? What was he supposed to do now?
Before Rogue could think of an answer to even one of these questions, he realized that he wasn't alone anymore. A tan Earth Pony with a dark brown mane and tail, an hour glass cuttie mark, and wearing a strange red hat was suddenly standing next to him. He gave Rogue an impatient look. "Are you done daydreaming yet Rogue?"
As suprised as he was at having a pony actually talk to him instead of running in fear, he was even more surprised to be addressed by name. "I wasn't daydrea... Do I know you?"
"No, well, yes, actually, just, not yet." The strange pony looked over at Rogue with a sly grin.
The pony's bizarre answer confused Rogue even more than he was before.
The pony looked down a few of the streets before hearing a group of guards coming down one of them, and then seemed to remember something. "Oh, that's our cue! Follow me!" With that, he ran off down one of the side roads that led to the Main Gate of Canterlot.
Rogue instinctively tried to Change into one of the unicorns he had seen earlier as a disguise. His ooze was charged up by the blast from earlier. Rogue's horn glowed a light green as he drew the ooze out from inside his shell and formed it around himself while folding his wings under their cover on his back. The different segments of his shell popped into different positions as he slightly changing his body proportions to fit into the new shape. But for some odd reason, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get his ooze to hold the form. This had never happened before. He'd never been the best at Changing, but he'd always been able to at least make it hold and look convincing.
Dumbfounded, Rogue mentally pulled his ooze back inside his shell. With the guards drawing closer he wasn't really left with many other choices. So he ran after the retreating pony, partially flying to catch up. Rogue was still confused, so he decided to try and clear a up a few things while following, whoever this was. "Who are you?"
The pony's answer didn't really help matters much. "I'm the Doctor. I'm here to help you."
"Oh... Why?"
"Because I know that you're different from those other changlings."
"Well, yeah, but, how'd you know that?"
Now the Doctor seemed to be confused as well, just not by Rogue's question. Constantly looking from side to side, he seemed to be lost. "I'd love to play twenty questions right now, but it seems that we took a wrong turn somewhere."
"We haven't turned at all, we've been running straight the whole time."
"Oh, well that's probably it then." The Doctor quickly turned down a different road and there, before them, was the main entrance to Canterlot. They were the only two there since all of the guards had been off fighting the changlings, so they slowed their pace down to a walk.
Rogue still had one burning question that he just had to ask. "Can I ask one more question?"
The Doctor turned to Rogue. "Technically, you just did, but fire away."
Rogue pointed hoof at the Doctor's strange hat. "What's that thing on your head?"
The Doctor gestured the item in question. "Oh, what, this? It's a fez, fez's are cool."
Rogue wasn't convinced. "If you say so."
They had just passed through the huge main gates and were now officially outside Canterlot. After turning off the path and going into a sparsely wooded area to the right and out of site of the Main Path, the Doctor turned to Rogue with a serious expression on is face. "OK, so here's what you need to do. The Canterlot Guards are going to be out searching for any remaining changlings, that'd be you, and you need to avoid them no matter what, understood?"
"Yeah, but-"
"Good, you need to get to Ponyville ASAP. Here's a map, it's pretty old, but it should at least get you close." The Doctor pulled out a map from a low hanging tree branch and gave it to Rogue, who was still as confused as before, if not more so.
The Doctor continued his monologue undetered. "When you get there, you'll need to find the purple unicorn from earlier, her name's Twilight, she'll be able to help you."
Rogue had had enough of blindly following orders without question. "Help me do what? And why would this Twilight help me? Why are you helping me? I was part of this invasion!"
"But it wasn't your choice, you weren't in control."
"Well, I could've stopped myself!"
The Doctor looked skeptically at Rogue. "Really?"
Rogue relunctantly realized that this strange pony was right. If he had ever tried to resist Chrysalis' Control Link over his mind, or even thought about it, she would have had him killed immediately.
The Doctor placed a comforting hoof around Rogue's shoulder. "I know you have a lot of questions, but trust me, you'll figure it out on the way."
Rogue finally decided to give in. "Okay, but what do I do when I get there? What do I say?"
"That's what you'll have to figure out. Don't worry, you'll have plenty time. Now, you have fun with all this, but I gotta go!" With that, the Doctor promptly ran behind an over sized bush. There was an eerie blue light followed by a peculiar whiring sound, then, silence.
Rogue walked around the bush that this Doctor pony had just been behind, and surprisingly enough, although not entirely unnexpected, couldn't find a single trace of him. "Well that was weird."
Rogue decided that trying to figure out exactly what had just happened would be too time consuming, if not impossible. He took a moment to look at the map left to him by the Doctor. After finding a route that would lead him to this Ponyville place, while still stayin off the main roads, he set off to find Twilight.
~
"And after that, I basically just stayed off the paths and ended up finding Ponyville in about a week. It took me a few days to find you, and then I saw you going into this forest and followed you. You know the rest."
Twilight was just about to ask Rogue another question when Zecora interupted her. "We have arrived." Time had passed quickly while Rogue was telling his story, and now the three of them were at Zecora's doorstep. Zecora went up and held the door open. "Twilight, I must speak with you inside."
Relunctantly, Twilight sped up to catch up with Zecora. She looked back over her shoulder at Rogue. Rogue didn't know if he was supposed to follow them or wait outside. "What do you want me to do?"
Zecora ushered Twilight through the door before replying. "I need you to wait here, but we will not be long. I must speak with Twilight, to see if I am wrong." With that, Zecora went inside, and the door closed behind her with a soft click.
Rogue walked a little ways off to avoid overhearing their conversation with his very sensitive hearing. Then, restless, he began pacing to try and burn off some nervous energy while he waited for Zecora and Twilight to finish talking. He originally thought about what they might be saying, but after about a minute or so, he was distracted with thoughts about back home. Specifically, memories of his family.