• Published 10th Jun 2012
  • 2,092 Views, 45 Comments

Changing Gossip - KErlend

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Ch. 1- First Suspicions

"There," Trixie rubbed her two forehooves together, brushing off the small amount of dirt and dust that had rubbed off on them. "That's the last of them." She stepped back a few steps to admire her work. A new bookcase now stood against the wall, just filled with some of the books she had deemed useful from Twilight's dumped wagon. Most of them were books with a handful of spells in them, some of them whose methods of obtainment were questionable, but one or two was a reference book that had looked interesting. She had skimmed through the pages of one of them, Monster Manual: A Reference Guide to All Known Creatures of Equestria and Beyond, and it had piqued her interest. She had it set out to read first.

But now wasn't a good time to read. Trixie had promised Carrot Top she'd have lunch with her... in five minutes.

Trixie levitated her hat onto her head and dashed out the door, towards the cafe she was meeting Carrot Top at.

---

My little pony, My little pony
Ahh ahh ahh ahhh...
My little pony
Friendship never meant that much to me
My little pony
But you're all here and now I can see
Stormy weather; Lots to share
A musical bond; With love and care
Teaching laughter; It's an easy feat,
And magic makes it all complete!
You havemy little ponies
How'd I ever make so many true friends?

---

As Trixie trotted up to the table outside the cafe that Carrot Top was sitting at, she tapped her hoof on the table. "Not late this time" Trixie stated slyly as she sat down.

Carrot Top looked at the clock tower in the middle of town. She grinned. "Barely. What kept you this time?" Carrot Top asked as merely a question.

"Filing some books new books I, ahem, found." Carrot Top nodded in response. They both ordered something from their waiter.

"Anything interesting happen lately?" Trixie asked. All she got in response was a thoughtful look that could see straight through the showmare. "Hello?" Trixie waved her hoof in front of Carrot Top's face. "Equestria to Carrot Top."

"Huh, what?" Carrot Top looked around as she was pulled from her thoughts. "Oh, right, sorry. Just what you said reminded me of something. You may want to go see Lyra. She's been acting pretty weird lately."

"How so?" Trixie asked as the unicorn waiter lowered her daisy sandwich in front of her.

"I don't know, something just seems off about her. Bon-Bon says she hasn't talked to her for over a day. And according to Raindrops, she's been playing pranks on ponies. Nothing serious, but still."

"You're right, that doesn't sound like her." Trixie chewed a bite of her sandwich thoughtfully. She levitated the flowers out of the pot on the table and some dandelions off the ground and put them in her sandwich and took another bite. "I'll go talk to her." Carrot Top nodded in response.

Trixie and Carrot Top finished their lunches. Trixie tossed a couple of bits on the table and trotted off. Carrot Top shook her head with a smile on her face. Trixie had paid for her meal and Carrot Top's as well. Carrot Top threw the bits she was pulling out onto the table for a tip.


Trixie asked around and found out that Lyra had last been seen near Sugarcube Corner. Trixie made a beeline for the sweet shop. She asked the Cakes if they had seen Lyra- thank Luna Pinkie Pie wasn't there!- but they weren't sure where she was. "She left 15 minutes ago deary" Mrs. Cake said. It was then that a cupcake the confectioner had been carrying exploded. Frosting and cake batter now covered her face. From outside, Trixie heard a familiar laugh.

"You okay Mrs. Cake?" Trixie asked as she levitated a napkin over to Mrs. Cake.

"Oh, yes deary, I'll be fine" said Mrs. Cake as she took the napkin from Trixie's telekinetic grasp.

"Good, I gotta run. See you later Mrs. Cake." Trixie dashed out the door and listened for the sound of the laughter she heard earlier. After a trolley passed by, she heard a faint laugh coming from the alley next to Sugarcube Corner. Trixie trotted slowly towards it. A seafoam-green unicorn could be seen laughing hysterically under a window looking into the sweet shop.

"Lyra?" Trixie asked as she walked up to the Element of Loyalty.

Lyra sat up and wiped a tear from under her eye as she slowed her laughter. She looked over at the blue unicorn. At first, her expression was one of puzzlement. Then, something seemed to dawn on her. She grinned at Trixie, then quickly got to her hooves and ran off, out of the alley.

"Hey!" Trixie shouted as she took off in pursuit. Lyra looked back at her pursuer as she ran through the Ponyville marketplace. She turned around just in time to see a cart full of potatoes a mere five feet in front of her. The seafoam-green unicorn leaped onto the roof of the cart, a good ten feet off the ground, and jumped down on the other side. Trixie's horn glowed as she launched magic at the cart just in time, creating an area on it that allowed her to phase straight through it. She popped out of the other side with ease, and cut off the flow of magic. She continued her pursuit. "Lyra, what the hay?!" The mare ahead of her didn't even turn around. Instead, she ducked into an alley.

Trixie redirected her course and put on a burst of speed. She opened another phase portal on one of the buildings that made up the alley. She popped out on the other side and cut of the magic from her horn. She looked ahead and didn't see Lyra, so she turned towards the alley, waiting for Lyra to come out. A figure of a pony appeared coming out of the alley. When the figure stepped into the light, she was not the seafoam-green unicorn Trixie expected. This unicorn was white with a bright red mane. Had Trixie not been completely astounded she may have realized the mare was familiar. But in her haste, this detail was overlooked.

"Did you see Lyra in there or run past?" Trixie asked the mare.

"Seafoam-green, unicorn, white streak through her mane?" Trixie nodded in response. "Yeah, she ran past me. She seemed to be in a hurry, ran towards the train station, I think."

"Thanks!" Trixie called to the mare as she began to trot off at a run. The white mare smiled mischievously as she watched the blue showmare run off. "I gotta be more careful from now on" she said to herself. "Nah, what's the fun in that?" She chuckled and went back into the alley. A green flash emitted from it as she disappeared from sight.

---

Trixie looked around the train station. A train had just unloaded from Canterlot, so it was crowded with ponies. She looked all around her, eyes darting between ponies, looking for even a glimpse of seafoam-green. There! Trixie thought. She saw a seafoam-green mane with a streak of white through it. The showmare pushed through the crowd towards it. She soon found herself face-to-face with Lyra. Trixie grabbed the musician, much to Lyra's astonishment, and dragged her away from the crowd of ponies.

When they got out of the train station, Lyra looked at Trixie with a mixture of confusion and slight agitation. "What was that all about?" she demanded of Trixie.

"Hmm, where should I start?" Trixie stated sarcastically. "How about why have you been pulling pranks more than Pinkie Pie lately?" This was an exaggeration, as Trixie had no idea how many pranks Lyra had been pulling. Trixie continued. "Why have you been acting weird lately? Why did you run from me?"

"What are you talking about?!" Lyra yelled at Trixie in what the Element of Magic saw to be genuine confusion.

"I'm talking about the fact that you haven't talked to Bon-Bon in at least a day. About the fact that you have been pulling pranks on Ponyvillians this week. And about the fact that when I confronted you in an alley outside Sugarcube Corner after you caused a cupcake to explode in Mrs. Cake's face, you ran off, exemplifying enough physical prowess and coordination to sign up as a non-pegasus Wonderbolt!"

Lyra stood there, dumbfounded. "I honestly have no clue whatsoever about what you're talking about."

"How can you not get what I'm talking about? You did it! You have been doing this for the past day!" Trixie's words then became incoherent mumbling. Lyra looked down at the ground and tried to comprehend the situation. When Lyra looked up, Trixie had stopped mumbling to herself and had pulled out a deck of cards. She had them wrapped in a levitation spell, shuffling them mid-air. Lyra looked at her questioningly. "It helps me calm down" Trixie informed her.

"Start from the beginning" Lyra told Trixie after some thought. "Just what happened today."

Trixie recounted her lunch with Carrot Top, asking around Sugarcube Corner and the subsequent chase, and then finally finding her at the train station. "Well I can tell you one thing" Lyra said as soon as Trixie finished talking. "That couldn't have been me. I had to go to Canterlot unexpectedly to fill in for a cellist friend two days ago. I left a note for Bon-Bon. Then again, I probably shouldn't have placed it on the top of my pillow. Bon-Bon is a restless sleeper... Whatever, all I know is I just got back into town. That was why I was at the train station, I just got off the train. So it couldn't have been me doing all that."

"What? This makes no sense. How could there be two of you?" Trixie trailed off.

Suddenly, a pink pony popped up between the two unicorns. "Hi Miss Lulamoon" she said. "Hi Miss Heartstrings."

"Hello, Pinkie Pie" Lyra responded.

"Miss Lulamoon," Pinkie Pie said, ignoring the fact that Trixie did not return her greeting. "I thought you were just at your house. How'd you get down here so fast?"

"Wait, what?" Trixie said, confused. "Pinkie, did you just say you just saw me at my house?"

"Yeah! I even said 'Hi Miss Lulamoon' and you were all like 'Hello, Pinkie' and I asked you what you were doing and you said you were getting some things from your house so I asked if you wanted help and you said sure so I went in and helped you get some stuff from your house."

"What was it, exactly, that you helped me get from my house?"

"Let's see, there was an empty box, some fireworks, a flashlight, a box of sparklers, a bottle of alcohol, some whipped cream out of your fridge, a pie, but don't you remember silly, you were there."

"Why did you leave, Pinkie?"

"Well you told me that was all the help you needed so I left your house and you stayed in there but then I heard your screaming so I came over here as fast as I could to find out what it was about and I saw it was you and Miss Heartstrings and that was how I got here."

"When was this, exactly?"

"Oh about five minutes ago. Why?"

Trixie was already trotting off in the direction of her house, Lyra close behind her. "Because that means she should still be there."

"But you're right here, aren't you?" Pinkie said to herself. She shrugged, then bounced off.

Cue commercial

Comments ( 23 )

I'm still getting comfortable with comedy fics, my others were mainly darker. But, whatever.

This is more or less the Lunaverse's equivalent to Bridle Gossip, just not with a zebra and with more mystery thrown in. -SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT- Instead of a zebra, it's going to be changeling. -END SPOLIER- But I've MAJORLY altered changelings for the Lunaverse. They aren't evil, they don't necessarily feed off love, and there is no 'hive', so to speak. If you have a good name suggestion for a Changeling or just a cool name that I could use, let me know. I'm drawing a blank. It will be a female.

If you want to know what Trixie's 'phase' spell looks like, it's what Pumpkin Cake uses to get out of the laundry basket in Baby Cakes.

And there's two 'easter egg' ponies in there, if you feel like a good search.
-KErlend, out

Changelings! In the Lunaverse!

I got my bowl of popcorn at the ready.

Okay, nice. Rather funny, too. :pinkiegasp: A cool name? How's about... bedrieger paard. That's Dutch for trickster horse.

727486- I may just use that name. It has a cool ring to it.
727663- I actually considered that one, but decided Lyra would make it more obviously a part of the Lunaverse.

Prankster changelings? Oh my... :pinkiegasp: that can't be good for the whole 'Feeding on love' thing :trixieshiftleft: this should be interesting!

Also you might want to change your timing, this story referenes the books Trixie got from Twilight Sparkle's wagon, so this should be set AFTER Boast Busted, not directly after File Under 'I' for 'Impossible'.

You also might want to revise this sentence:
"How about why have you been pulling pranks more pranks than Pinkie Pie lately?"
there's an extra 'prank' in there. And you repeat the 'more tha Pinkie Pie' bit shotly after this phrase, a bit repetitive.

- Status changed to contributor;
- Will be adding this to the Lunaverse's canon chronology, though after "Boast Busted" due to Twilight reference.

This is very interesting. I like the idea of Trixie shuffling and playing with her cards to calm down; she doesn't seem like the kind of pony that can just count to ten or something.

One minor quip: While Trixie can learn any spell, she's really focused on illusion and glamor, messing with perceptions and creating false sensation or nonreal images. Phasing definitely fits in with the idea of messing around with perceptions (and cuts out the need for trap doors in a stage if she can just phase through it!), but it "feels" fundamentally different - namely because of years of D&D, I know that Trixie is an illusionist but phasing through walls is Transmutation. There's nothing wrong with this, but because it involves manipulating actual matter rather than glamors and figments, I think it should be noted at some point that phasing is somewhat hard for her, or will at least leave her feeling winded afterwards.

And a minor note - it might be best to leave open the possibility that while *this* changeling is just a trickster, it might not apply to *all* changelings.

As for her name...

...Doppel.

727936- Thanks for the tips, I'll fix it.

728097- Thanks! I usually do the card shuffling thing to calm down. And I figured since Pumpkin Cake was able to do it quite easily, Trixie should at least be able to do it, albeit it being taxing. I'll put something about her being drained of magic in the next chapter.
Changelings I guess are up to what you want to do with them, but I suggest leaving out the whole 'hive' thing. Have them be a more independent species. This one in particular is a trickster because she chooses to feed off mischief. The way I see it, they can feed off any emotion.
And that is almost definitely the name I will use.

And you both are right, I overlooked that part. Thanks for that.

ZINZANIE! Everyone's favorite daughter of Discord is BACK! Starring in an all-new LUNAVERSE STORY! :pinkiehappy:
Go Zinzan! Go, go, GO Zinzan!
Now, write moar of this awesome story!

728449- It was more of a cameo appearance, but yeah. And I'm on it!

728097
'Actual matter'? Pfft, that building was obviously a mere illusion. How else could Trixie walk right through it? :trixieshiftleft::trixieshiftright::pinkiecrazy:

Hmmm. This is a promising start to things. Let's see if this version of changelings is accepted group-wide.

Suggestion for allowing your plan to work without precluding the possibility of including Chrysalis and her hive in the future: Have multiple groups of changelings, some joining together in hives and some not. It could also explain why Chrysalis' whole hive eats love whereas the solo changeling eats mischief (which I'm not convinced is an emotion, but that's a totally separate matter). Basically, assuming my knowledge of how bee hives work is accurate and assuming that the hive-based changelings follow a not-too-different format, almost all of the changelings would be produced asexually and therefore pretty much be totally identical, which would presumably extend to preferred food assuming that it's a biological predisposition rather than just mood.

This is the sort of comment where I'm either going to sound like a genius or an idiot, but I'm not really sure which, lol.

733263- I get what you're saying, I think I'm gonna make this Changeling one that questioned the morals of what they were doing and branched off. I guess my wording was off when I said mischief was what was eaten, it's more of a mixture of laughter and confusion. Most people laugh at themselves when they are pranked, so it works. Mischief was a poor choice of words. The asexual thing kinda makes it confusing, I'll leave that out. I'll just have it that they can feed off any emotion, just some are more 'wholesome', so to speak.

And on record, you did sound like a genius, lol.

Off to an interesting start, looks very promising. I'll definitly be keeping an eye on this. Could use a good proofing, but I'm hardly qualified to do a proper job of that myself, nor in the mood if I were.

728097 728160 733263 733394
I'm going to basically agree that, trying to completely recast the entire changeling race as a whole is probably a big mistake. The Lunaverse might be something of a Bizzaro world, but it's mostly in terms of the choices characters have made and how that has resulted in them living different lives, but the fundamental mechanics of the world itself are largely the same, so as a species changelings should still be exactly what they are in mane-line Equestria.

That said there's still nothing wrong with the premise of this story, just maybe tweak a few details. The idea that it's just this particular individual works well enough, though I don't much care for notion that it's due to conflicting morality. No amount of morals can change a biological imperative, and if the changelings seen in the show could feed on a wider spectrum of emotions than just love I'm sure they would do so. Having this changeling be some kind of mutant could work, but I think it's still overcomplicating the issue.

At the most fundamental level, what the changelings are is largely a type of shapeshifting fey. Fey can come in many varieties, and while some may have similar powers and abilities, they need not be all that related to each other. So maybe the best idea might be to go looking for a type of prankster fey to use for this story.

What is this 'Lunaverse'?

748229- It's an alternate MLP universe started by RainbowDoubleDash. There's a group for it.

735435
Well, 'exactly as they are in mainline Equestria' still leaves some room to say we've only seen one particular breed of changelings from one particular hive or something, and other changelings are different.

Rereading this one... and you need to replace "bits" with "jangles" to fit Lunaverse canon...

I totally call changeling.

I'd say Ink Spot would be a good name for the Changeling.

I want to see more of this :fluttershysad: And apparently there used to be more of this, so why did it go away?

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