//------------------------------//
// The examination 
// Story: Sky's Changing Secret 
// by Sky Sprinter 
//------------------------------//

“That is a lot of scientific equipment,” Sky said as he looked at the room around him. The room was quite sizable, like most rooms in the castle, and was filled to the brim with rolls of paper, wires, writing devices, a chalkboard, and various other devices for who knows what. 

“Yeah, I guess you can say that, thankfully I was able to get Princess Celestia to requisition some funds to help me pay for all of this,” Twilight said as the two walked towards a chalkboard the center of the room.

The two ponies reached the chalkboard and Twilight asked, “Can you wait for a second while I grab some materials?”

Sky nodded while Twilight used her magic to bring over the a pen and a notepad. “Is that all?” Sky asked.

“For now, I think we’ll begin with question and answer before I get the scanning equipment and all the various other bits of equipment to study you with,” Twilight answered. She then used her magic to grab an inkwell and she asked her first question, “How do changelings feed? Do you simply absorb emotional energy like a sponge or is there a specific way that they feed on ponies?”

“Both actually, I guess. I involuntarily pull emotional energy from around me, it doesn’t cause any ill effects to ponies around me as far as I know. We can also pull energy from emotions that ponies outwardly radiate at high levels. Ponies that radiate high levels of anger, sadness, and happiness could feed a changeling for months, I suspect. Although happiness tends to taste better than those other emotions,” Sky answered, “Another way is through direct contact like hugs and such.”

Twilight wrote all the information down before looking at the notepad using what she learned to ask her next question, “You mentioned that happiness tends to taste better than anger and sadness. So I suspect that every emotion has a unique taste, correct? And do they have a taste similar to that of any foods that we ponies eat?”

Sky answered, “What each emotion tastes like depends on the pony. Pinkie Pie’s happiness taste like pure cotton candy, my sister’s sibling love tastes like a Hayburger, and your curiosity tastes like a nice fresh Apple from Sweet Apple Acres.”

Twilight’s expression changed to one of slight disgust before she hid it away, acknowledging that she shouldn’t be affected by him talking about how her emotions taste, but the feeling that somepony is feeding on you can reasonably be expected to feel weird. She then said, “Next question, changeling social structure, how much of it do you know?”

Sky then answered, “Not much to be honest, having been born in Equestria, I never learned much of it.”

Twilight nodded and then asked, “The holes in your wings, hooves, and legs, what is their purpose?”

Sky blushed a bit at the inquiry, recalling the time he had asked that very same question of his mother. "Well, you see, the holes.... the ones on my legs and hooves that is, they have a lot of really concentrated nerve endings, so they are extremely... uh, you know, sensitive. As to the holes in my wings, no one ever told me why. My guess would be something to do with letting them flap more quickly?

Twilight mulled it over for a moment and realized why he had been so embarrassed at the question. She coughed and quickly glanced down to her notebook, recording the leg and hoof holes as “erogenous zones.” and the wing holes as unknown. She asked her next question, “Your eyes and shell are green while the changelings of Chrysalis’s hive had blue eyes and shells, why do you have a different color on those areas of your body?”

“Eye and shell color are dependent on hive and changelings born without the influence of a queen have a random color,” Sky answered.

Twilight then asked, “It depends on hive? So there are multiple hives then?” She, like every other pony in Equestria, only knew about Chrysalis’s hive.

Sky nodded to Twilight’s question, “What I know about how hives work is that they consist of a central Queen and drones. The drones are independent but they do follow their queen’s orders like how ponies follow the laws and decrees by Equestrian law, except it’s more finely ingrained into a changeling’s psyche and so a changeling’s very mind could become subordinate to his birth queen. Changelings like me however are more like the ponies that I’ve grown up near since I have no birth queen.”

Twilight wrote the information down. It was really exciting that she was getting this type of information straight from a primary source. Her next question concerned magic as she asked, “How useful is that horn of yours and how powerful are your magic and flying abilities?”

Sky wondered why Twilight took his information at face value, surely she wondered how he got that information despite him saying that he lived all his life in Equestria? Whatever the answer to that question was, he could face it later as Twilight waited on an answer from him. 

“Changeling magic and flight ability while disguised follows the observation of horn power and flight ability of the to-be replaced pony or what a changeling feels would cause the least amount of attention in creating a new disguise, along with that changeling’s own ability in those fields. A Princess Celestia or Rainbow Dash disguise is very unlikely to be 100% airtight since no changeling has the power of Celestia’s magic without the help of tons of love and Rainbow Dash’s flight ability isn’t exactly something one can easily match,” Sky replied to Twilight’s question.

“You mentioned love in your answer but not any other emotion, does love have a special power that other emotions don’t have?” Twilight asked.

“Power, along with it’s terrific taste and being quite a healthy emotion, makes love the most useful emotion that a changeling could consume. Enough love could push even a little changeling foal to Chrysalis and Celestia power, although getting that amount of love would be pretty hard to accumulate. I’ve wondered why Chrysalis focused on love so much after the invasion even though it should be so obvious to me. The hear-say from the period after is really interesting concerning the rumors that spread. There was one crazy pony who after seeing the love wave began following it. When he arrived, a friend of mine entered a long conversation with that stallion. I guess the guy thought that Chrysalis was some sort of messiah or something, that’s the impression that my friend said he got,” Sky replied.

“This friend of yours, who is he?” Twilight asked wanting to know the identity of this pony Sky had befriended.

“Oh he’s nopony, I haven’t seen him for a few weeks actually,” Sky said hoping not have said to much about this friend of his.

“Now come on, Sky, I know there’s more to what you’re saying, just tell me who this pony is. I just want to know his name. No harm can come of that,” Twilight said now really interested.

Sky finally resigned to telling Twilight who this friend of his was. “His name is the Doctor, he’s quite a cool pony actually.”

“Doctor Who?” Twilight asked as the name sounded familiar but she wasn’t too sure.

“Exactly, he’s just the Doctor, although he’s been open to nicknames though,” Sky answered.

“And this ‘Doctor’ is there anypony associated with him? Family? Friends? A significant other? And what does he look like?” Twilight then inquired now thoroughly interested in this pony who had a name that seemed to ring some bell in her mind.

“N-no he’s not really with anypo-” He began to answer when a look from Twilight interrupted him.

“Sky, that is a lie and you know it,” Twilight said bluffing.

Sky didn’t catch the bluff and instead replied, “Alright alright, he does have a marefriend, no family, and he’s a light brown pony with a brown mane and an hourglass cutie mark.”

That description sparked a set of memories in Twilight’s mind, “Did he usually appear with a grey-ish colored mare? What was her name again? Ditzy Doo? Derp Hoof?” Twilight asked hoping to cement the memory.

“Derpy Hooves, and yes he did,” Sky answered.

“Oh now I remember, strange pony, talked a lot about some blue box, hated pears with a passion,” Twilight said as she fully remembered the pony.

“Yeah, that sound like him,” Sky commented.

“Onto the next topic, I think I’ve gained as much from this Q&A session as I could and I think next will be the physical examination. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to conduct a full examination of your external anatomy,” Twilight said as she wanted moved on to Sky’s external physiology instead of just answering questions from a possibly lying source, although she had no reason to believe that Sky was lying outside of what she had already caught him trying to lie about.

Sky wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea of somepony studying his native form so closely considering he wasn’t completely comfortable with his natural looks, but his inability to disguise due to that darn spell disabling his ability to shapeshift meant he was going to have to get used to anypony around him seeing him like that. He only nodded in assent to the next part of this study.

Before Twilight could get close to him though, Spike appeared in the room as he called Twilight’s name. “Twilight, there are two ponies outside, they say that they are Sky’s sisters,” the little dragon called.

“Alright, Spike, we’ll be over there in a second,” Twilight called back.

Sky, meanwhile, was close to having a mental breakdown, simply repeating, “Oh no”  to himself. The day he was fearing, among many other days that he feared, had come. “My sisters are gonna know, the secret is ruined,” was added half a minute later.

Twilight felt pity for the poor changeling, his entire world had come crashing on his doorstep and he had no control. “Don’t worry, it’s gonna be alright, Sky,” she said to him trying to calm the changeling down.

“No no no no, it’s not gonna be alright, this is almost the scenario that I’ve been fearing, except I’m not in a dungeon cell forever, but still it’s close enough! And, um, something is gonna happen to my family,” Sky said.

“There’s no need to worry, Sky. Listen, I promise no harm will come to your family. As long as they’ve lived on the legal side of life,” Twilight said.

“A-are y-you s-sure?” Sky asked.

“I Pinkie Promise, cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye,” Twilight said while doing the motions of the Pinkie Promise.

“Alright, I’ll trust a Pinkie Promise,” Sky said. Nopony breaks a Pinkie Promise.

“Nopony…” A voice like Pinkie’s said in his head. That caused a shiver in his spine, his first encounter with the Pinkie Promise was quite a doozy.