“You’re very unusual, Cheerilee,” Trixie pronounced, as she escorted the schoolteacher back to Ponyville, “I’ve been helping to hunt Changelings for a little over a month now, and you are the first to ever actually ask for mercy on their behalf.”
Cheerilee anxiously looked over her shoulder back the way they had come, before looking her guide in the eye, “I believe everypony and everyone deserves a second chance.”
Trixie’s face softened a little as she turned her head towards the forest ahead, and she smiled a little, “I suppose.”
“How did he know I was a schoolteacher?” Cheerilee asked with a hint of discomfort.
Trixie sighed as she propelled herself over a gorge wall, and created a set of stairs for her escort to use, “Bunsen Burner told me very little about his days when he was in charge of the Royal Science Division, but he mentioned that he had contacts in the Emergency and Infrastructure branches of the government, who kept track of each of the Elements and those they lived near and knew. Whenever they came around to repair damages to Ponyville, he got a new information packet,” she looked away guiltily, “Including when I held my last performance.”
“Where did you go after you ran away from Ponyville?”
The two ponies had to slow their pace so that Trixie could lift away a few branches which blocked their path with her magic, allowing Cheerilee to pass through first, so that the magician brought up the rear. A stray branch had moved the pointed tip of Trixie’s hat to the front, but she absentmindedly blew it back into its usual spot with a breath, “I lost everything here. My home, my props, what few clothes I had. I was so angry at the world and at those who had destroyed and humiliated my life. It all finally hit bottom completely when a few Diamond Dogs tried to take me and trade me off as a slave. That’s how I met Bunsen Burner. He saved me from those monsters,” she shuddered to herself, “and helped to build me back up.”
Cheerilee gave Trixie an incredulous glance and asked, “Are we talking about the stallion back there, or some make believe pony?” before momentarily pausing, and shivering a little to herself, “Not that I’m doubting what you could have suffered.”
Trixie nodded her understanding, “I know he’s cynical, and a tad bit on the extreme side, but he does what he thinks is the best for everypony. Would you be surprised if I told you that the three of us have encountered three dozen Changelings so far, and we managed to pacify around two dozen of them? The majority of them have been put into an artificially induced coma, and were hidden away until they can be awoken, and that’s all possible because of Bunsen Burner’s chemistry skills and knowledge of their species.”
“He actually knows about the Changelings?” Cheerilee blurted as she finally stepped out of the last bits of concealing forest and towards the forest’s final few trees before the open plains.
“He’s fought them before,” Trixie breathed as she finally stepped out into the light of the sun, “He said that without their commanders, what they call their ‘Royal Candidates’, the Changelings might turn docile, like soldiers without a leader.”
“Or like children without a teacher,” Cheerilee intoned, “Lost and confused, without guidance.”
“Hey! There she is!” Pinkie Pie called out from a small group of ponies that had gathered about a hundred feet away from them, and they trotted their way over to the two mares. “Hey, isn’t that-“
“Trixie!” Rainbow Dash darkly yelled as she flew straight up to the unicorn, “You’ve got some nerve coming back here!”
“I know,” Trixie spoke aloud for everyone to hear, “I know when I was here in Ponyville last, I took my act too far, and unintentionally helped to put many ponies at risk with my boasting.”
“That Ursa Minor almost destroyed half the town!” a stallion called out.
Trixie winced before she tried to break through her frustration and continue on, “I know I have done a lot wrong by many of you. I wanted to say-“
“Sorry?” Rainbow Dash yelled as she forced her face right into Trixie’s, which was steadily becoming more angry-looking to match her own, “Well that’s not going to cut it!”
“That’s enough!” Cheerilee called out, shutting up everypony in one breath. She looked to each of the ponies around her, and she frowned meaningfully at them, “You should be ashamed of yourselves!” She pointed to Trixie with her closer hoof, “This mare has made mistakes; we all have at one time or another. Other races may not turn the other cheek, but we are Equestrians. Most of all, we are Ponyvillians! Is this how we should treat somepony who is truly sorry? She helped save my life today, and if she truly is asking for our forgiveness, I think we should give it to her.”
Around this time, Twilight Sparkle had emerged from the Everfree with the last of her friends who had gone into the forest, even as she was listening to Cheerilee, she approached the two mares that had everyone’s attention. Her movement toward them soon caught Trixie’s eye, who turned to her. The crowd silently watched the two unicorns.
“Twilight Sparkle,” Trixie began, “I had never hated somepony so much as I hated you. Without you, though, I’d never be who I am today, and that someone is much better than what I once was.” She then sighed as she tried to bury her pride a little deeper, “I’m sorry for what I’ve done. Will you please forgive me?”
Twilight was silent for a time. After thinking it over, she spoke, “Trixie, you did cause a lot of suffering when you first came here, and you will be accountable for that.” She looked in the direction of the dawning sun, “But even though forgiveness isn’t one of the Elements, I think it would be what Princess Celestia would want.” Twilight’s eyes misted over as she thought about her departed teacher, before she looked at the magician in front of her again, “Yes. I forgive you.”
Trixie smiled a little upon hearing those words.
“Cheerilee!” a large red tank of a stallion yelled out as he parted the crowd to get to her.
She smiled and embraced him as they finally found each other, “Big Macintosh!”
“Ah was so worried,” he said breathlessly, as he had begun running back from the Everfree the minute he had found out she was alright.
“I know,” she said as she continued to hold her forelegs around his barrel like chest.
“The homestead was burned, and when Ah heard the schoolhouse-“
She shushed him by putting her hoof to his mouth, “That doesn’t matter now. We have things we both need to be doing right now, but when you can, I would like to talk to you in private.”
“Alright,” he said quietly, as he held her a little closer for a minute, before finally letting her go.
“Excellent,” Bunsen Burner declared while approaching Twilight from behind, dumping the catatonic form of the Changeling arsonist near her hooves, rather effectively killing the mood of the moment, “Now that that’s out of the way, we can actually get to the nationally relevant matters.”
“What happened to the second one?” Fluttershy asked in her usual quiet but dulcet tone of voice.
“It escaped our capture,” Bunsen Burner sighed to himself, “This is the first time this has happened. Still, it was bound to eventually. Now the Hive will know there are those who know the truth behind the civil war, and that they are being actively detected and hunted.”
Twilight gestured to the pink earth pony, “So it looks like your hunch wasn’t all that off after all, Pinkie.”
“Iiiit’s what I do!” she smiled as she kicked her backhooves up onto the table.
Bunsen Burner clear his throat, “I have reliable intelligence from the interrogation of two high ranking Changelings about the Hive. One informed me of its system of hierarchy and biology, the other only offered that the Queen, Chrysalis, would be after something more complex than random acts of terror and spiteful retribution for your six’s humiliation of her.”
“Bunsen Burner,” Applejack stopped him in his tracks, “We know what yer methods are from the last time we saw you. We don’t agree withum in the least. Not only that, you just stirred the hornet’s nest, and you could’ve just endangered the lives of everypony in this town.”
“It was an accident that we even came this close to Ponyville to begin with,” Trixie said as she came closer to the library roundtable, “We had been chasing those two Changelings for several miles, and they seemed to be homing in on Ponyville for some reason, so we followed. By the time we got here, they had already committed two of the three fires.”
“Regardless,” Bunsen Burner continued, “We’re here now, you are now aware of the true threat behind all these incidents, the question at hand is what are you going to do about the matter?”
Bon Bon growled to herself as she threw her hooves up in the air, “Stop! Everypony, just stop!”
The room quieted down very quickly as the normally quiet candy maker blew up.
“Look at us,” she waved her hooves to everypony in front of her, “We’re afraid. We’ve been living in fear for so long now, we don’t even know what to be afraid of, much less what to do about it! Prince Shining Armor’s efforts at martial law are crumbling. All the Princesses are missing, ponies are fighting and even killing in their name, and no one can stop this, except you six.” Bon Bon pointed to each of them in turn, “You are the last public faces that represent the government that are untainted by this pseudo civil war. You have a duty not just to Ponyville, but to Equestria!” She then pointed her hooves to her heart, “I’ve been a basket case of anxiety a lot in my life. I’ve been scared of change, especially when Lyra went and found Adam and introduced me to all sorts of change I never knew. But now everything is different! The way we all look at each other, what we think about others, our basic trust in what we see being what it is is gone.” Bon Bon then looked up with determination, “Well I’m tired of being afraid! I want things back to normal, and I want the Equestria I used to know, my Equestria, back, and if you all are too afraid to help me, then I’ll just go and do it all myself!” She began to breathe deeply as she calmed down from her tirade.
The Elements, Bunsen Burner, Trixie, Umbra and Nox all stared at her.
Rainbow Dash blinked first, and then she began to smile, “Well, I like the idea! Let’s do it!”