//------------------------------// // Chapter 17 // Story: True Blue Hero // by totallynotabrony //------------------------------// Twilight, after knocking Steel Blast the fuck out, looked at Blueblood impatiently. Her modified form towered over him. Her muscular fingers tapped in impatience. ’What am I going to do with you?’ Trudy quoted Twilight. What do you think she means by that? Blueblood had no idea. He tried, “Is this about the library? Because that was totally him.” He gestured at the comatose minotaur. “Well, yes,” Twilight allowed, “but clearly I have to do something about you. You know my secret.” “But you also know mine,” Blueblood was quick to point out. No way did he want to fight Twilight, and no way did he want to fight Twilight as she was at the moment. “Hmm,” Twilight considered. Blueblood wondered if her voice had started to go deeper, but decided not to dwell on it. “No, Roger says I should still do something about you.” Doing anything he could to stall for time, Blueblood asked the obvious question. “Who’s Roger?” “Oh ,” Twilight waved as if it weren’t no thing. “He’s a voice in my head.” “Have you considered that maybe he’s a parasite that’s causing your body to mutate in strange ways in order to manipulate you into doing his bidding?” Hey! Twilight frowned. “While I admit that it’s a little strange that Roger only showed up after I became an alicorn, I find him very useful. It’s like having a personal assistant for my head. I thought perhaps it came standard with princesseshood.” “Or, you know, it could be that it’s actually a changeling hybrid planted inside you by Chrysalis during the invasion and has only just matured,” Blueblood suggested. Veins bulged in Twilight’s…well, everything. “That’s absurd!” “Is it?” Blueblood said. He hesitated, and then added, “Do you really think a pony like me becomes an alicorn because he deserves it?” Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying that I only ascended to royalty because I’ve got a bug inside me? Not because of friendship or because I’m the most magical unicorn Equestria has ever seen?” Blueblood stuttered. Say something that appeals to her and gets her off track! Trudy interjected. Like, um, science. Yes! Try that! “Science,” Blueblood blurted. To his relief, Twilight paused. “What?” Counting on his mouth to save the day, Blueblood started talking. “You like science. I’ve heard you study a lot of things. Let’s do a thought experiment. What happened when changelings invaded Canterlot?” “They locked many ponies up in goo, impersonated some, and generally wrecked things when they were found out,” Twilight replied. “And don’t forget the mental magic,” Blueblood pointed out. “The queen made Shining Armor believe anything she told him.” “That's true,” Twilight allowed. “I heard that you saved the day,” Blueblood said. “I heard that Chrysalis put a spell on you and cast you into the caves beneath the castle. You figured out how to escape, came back, and saved the day all by yourself.” “That’s exactly what happened,” Twilight said. “Now let’s explore the theoretical,” Blueblood said. “What if Chrysalis used mental magic on a lot of ponies?” “I suppose it means she could make a lot of ponies believe anything she told them.” “And what if Chrysalis could plan an invasion of Canterlot, get changelings into a lot of key positions, and replace Cadance, a heavily guarded Princess of Equestria, impersonating her so well that even her own fiancé didn’t notice. She’d have to be pretty smart, right?” “I wouldn’t say that. She lost,” Twilight pointed out. “But what if she didn’t?” Blueblood said. “What if she planted something in everypony, sang a stupid supervillain song while she waited for you to show up, tossed the fight, and made Shining and Cadance use a spell that merely appeared to blast all the changelings out of Canterlot?” “That would mean Chrysalis used her powerful mental magic to convince everypony that they’d won, while in reality she’d planted undetectable infiltrators like ticking time bombs, just waiting to mature and take over their hosts, thereby creating an army of shapeshifting alicorns whose mental companions answer to her.” “Oh shit,” exclaimed Blueblood, having not considered that. “What if that’s actually true?” Oh shit, echoed Trudy. Leave it to Twilight to solve the mystery, even if she was a mutated mountain of a mare with a male in her mind. “Hey wait,” Twilight argued. “Are you saying that you, me, Flash Sentry, this minotaur, and potentially a whole lot of others are pawns in some kind of long-term strategy that Queen Chrysalis has been planning?” “Uh…” Blueblood paused. He thought of Trudy and what they’d been through together. Would she stab him in the back on orders from her changeling mother? Even if she had to stab him in the back from the inside? Hey, I can hear you! Blueblood frowned. Trudy had been, well…truthful with him. And if she wanted to cause him harm, she probably could have done it. Well, I can’t really hurt you without hurting me. So she admitted that she was just keeping him around because it also benefited her. That’s not what I meant! Although if Trudy had bothered to listen further, she would have realized that Blueblood realized that he could trust her. If she openly admitted that she was acting in her own interests, then that meant she was being truthful and probably wasn’t trying to hide anything from him. It might make her a bitch who only looked out for herself, but at least he knew she was being honest and not trying to lie to him. I…okay, fine. Asshole. Blueblood smirked, but then frowned. So if Trudy was united with him, and they both seemed functionally sane, then why was everypony else losing their minds? Maybe…I have a theory. Everypony else has love. Think about it – Twilight turned into an alicorn after some shindig with her friends. Flash Sentry is apparently in love with Twilight. Shining Armor, if he’s one of us too, has the freaking Princess of Love for a wife. This thing...maybe it’s activated by the changeling infiltrator feeding on love. Meanwhile, I’m unaffected and not doing changeling stuff because I was instead born out of your jealousy and hatred for Twilight. “Holy shit,” whispered Blueblood. “Hey,” said Twilight, waving one of her massive limbs in front of Blueblood’s face. “You kind of spaced out there. I was just asking if you thought that you, me, Flash Sentry, this minotaur, and potentially a whole lot of others are pawns in some kind of long-term strategy that Queen Chrysalis has been planning.” “Yes,” replied Blueblood. Twilight sighed and rolled her eyes. “That’s stupid.” She paused and frowned. “Actually, now that I review the evidence and everything we just talked about, it makes a frightening lot of sense.” Twilight’s voice suddenly deepened. “Because it’s completely true.” Run! Blueblood scrambled for the door, but a gigantic hand clamped down on the scruff of his neck and hauled him back. Legs kicking and wings beating ineffectually, he was raised to eye level with Twilight. “What are you going to do?” he stammered. “I’m going to take you to the library,” Twilight began. “Then, we’re going to sit down and you’re going to help me find some research that can help us fix this.” Blueblood blinked. “Uh, yeah, sure! Let’s do that!” “You aren’t going to try to run away, are you?” “No!” “Because I would be very angry with you if you did.” “I understand.” Twilight put him down. “All right, let’s go look at some books!” She pushed her way out of the room, fitting her broad shoulders through the door. Well, what are you waiting for? Trudy prodded. If you don’t go read with her, she’ll pound the crap out of us. Blueblood hurried out of the room and after Twilight. He muttered, “I guess this is preferable to that. Although I’m a little surprised she hasn’t done it already. It’s pretty clear that this Roger is pretty active.” “What did you say about Roger?” Twilight called from ahead of him She turned her head to look back. Shit, she even has muscular ears. Make something up quick! “I was saying that you and Roger seem pretty active,” Blueblood began. “I was wondering about your, uh, workout routine.” He couldn’t cringe or Twilight would see. Trudy helpfully did it for him mentally. “Well, now that we know that Roger is probably evil, I realize he’s probably been trying to take over my mind,” Twilight began. “Even if I didn't acknowledge it until now, I’m guessing the constant struggling back and forth has really improved my own control.” Leave it to Twilight to defeat her mind-sucking parasite without even realizing she was fighting. After retracing their route back towards the library, Blueblood and Twilight reached the hole that Steel Blast had made in the wall. Twilight looked at it for a moment and then magicked all the debris back into one seamless piece of wall, good as new. “You know,” Blueblood pointed out, “it would have been better to do that when we were inside the library. Now we’ll have to walk all the way around to the door.” Twilight frowned. “Oh yeah.” Blueblood wanted to suggest that she should just bust down the wall and fix it again, but didn’t. The two of them walked down the hall and around the corner to the door. The library was wrecked as if a minotaur had been rampaging there. Blueblood saw a particularly large vein in Twilight’s temple begin to pound. Might want to get out of the way. Blueblood stepped back as Twilight lit up her horn and forcibly rearranged the whole library. It had to have been thousands of books strewn around, and she neatly reshelved them, sorting the titles appropriately. It was eye-opening for Blueblood. While he was no student of magic, he knew that complicated spells were harder to cast than ones that simply required a lot of force. Twilight, not surprisingly, could do both. It was a good thing she was at least not actively hostile. She’d squash Blueblood like a bug. Different word, please. Like a grape. Better. Twilight lumbered over to the first shelf and studied the contents. She selected a book and picked it up. Glancing at Blueblood, she said, “Well, aren’t you going to start searching for something helpful?” “S-sure.” He hurried to the stacks. “I’ll start at this end of the room, okay?” Finding a way to the back of the library where he was sure Twilight couldn’t overhear, he and Trudy planned their next move. “So we think Twilight is stable and in control, but definitely not as stable and in control as when she was merely Celestia’s student. Which, to be fair, was really not all that stable and in control.” Agreed. We can work with her, but as long as Roger is still in the picture, I don’t think we can trust her. Blueblood thought about that. “Is there any way we can take Roger out?” Hmm…I know you aren’t going to like this, but maybe the answer is in one of these books. Blueblood sighed. “Okay.” You take the left eye, I’ll take the right. Tell me when you want to flip pages. And so the strangest day of Blueblood’s life to date became even weirder, quietly sitting in the library and reading with his archenemy. Well, not really. She’s sitting on the other side of the room behind all those shelves. And is she really your archenemy if she just saved your skin from Steel Blast? “I can still hate her for who she is and all the incredible power she has and the undeserved royalty she was bestowed with.” True. Okay, let’s hate her for that.