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"Hey, Apple Bloom. Why'd you want to meet here?" Scootaloo looked from Sweetie to Gray, giving the changeling an oddly creepy vibe. Part of her wondered what happened to the moments where the world seemed to jump and skip—that part kept getting silenced.
Gray found herself bouncing excitedly. "Well, us blank flanks have to meet somewhere!" She turned to the side, showing her awesome potion-related cutie mark was gone.
A look of embarrassment flooded both Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle's faces. "Um, actually," Scootaloo scuffed the ground with a hoof, "Apple Bloom, we… both, sort of got our cutie marks."
Terror and shock passed through Gray, but something blew that all away. It was something warm, something nice. Gray smiled wide at her friends and couldn't help but bounce a little. "You did? What are they?" Genuine excitement flooded the changeling, pride and delight for her friends grew inside her.
"Oh," Scootaloo waved a hoof, "we don't have time to go into that." She gave a little emphasis on the last word.
"And we certainly don't have time to hang out at an old clubhouse." As Sweetie Belle said it, Gray turned and saw the clubhouse she had come to think of as safe, home… fell apart.
"Yeah, we've got responsibilities now." Scootaloo seemed to somehow draw away from Gray, without really moving. The poor drone still hadn't seen her friends' cutie marks.
"But maybe we'll see you later." Sweetie Belle was doing it too now, both the fillies seeming to fall away from Gray.
"Much later." Scootaloo seemed miles away now, almost as far as Canterlot, although somehow she could still see them.
"Wait! Hold on! I can get my cutie mark back… I think." Gray tried to gallop after her friends but the faster she ran the further they got. "I got it once, right? Oh, just wait a second!" She started to scream for her friends, tears staining her cheeks.
The sound of a rooster crowing had Gray jerking upright, she felt like she had run a marathon.
"Breakfast!" Applejack's voice came from the kitchen, like clockwork.
"I'm not so sure sleep is the cure-all Applejack things it is." Gray slowly got out of the bed, landing on shaking hooves. She made her way to the kitchen to find her close family all present. "Uh… Applejack? I know you said sleep is supposed to make me feel better, but I'm pretty sure it's makin' me feel worse." Gray was lost, confused, and felt every bit the small filly she was supposed to be infiltrated as.
The world seemed to get worse, moving in like a timber wolf when it sensed the changeling's mind weakening. Gray's family seemed to have gone mad, swirling around her, talking nonsense.
"Weeell, what do we have here?" Granny Smith looked at Gray's flank, seeing something.
More crazy words spun around the drone, resolving into her brother, Big McIntosh, leaning in and pointing at her blank flank "Truth is, Apple Sleek, it's your cutie mark."
Applejack leaned in out of nowhere. "Eeyup."
The delusions got worse and worse. Gray was told she wasn't an Apple, her cutie mark seeming to change over and over. "I just want to go home!" Gray screamed the words."
The sound of a rooster crowing, followed by somepony falling into mud, woke Apple Bloom from her sleep. The filly looked around and scooted up out of bed. "Alright, this is getting ridiculous." She walked over to the mirror to check her flank and saw it completely clean. "Whoo-ee! I never thought I'd be so happy to not get a cutie mark. What…"
Then when she glanced back at it herself, she saw. "Flowers?" Apple Bloom shook her head and checked herself again, inadvertently checking the other side. "Lollipops?" She began to look back and forth between her flanks, seeing a different cutie mark each time. A glance at the mirror that had betrayed her showed a changeling reflected back, winking.
"I don't wanna see another cutie mark as long as I live!" Apple Bloom stomped a little hoof and suddenly felt a chill breeze. She was back in the forest.
"Back so soon?" The voice was chittery again.
"All right, whoever you are! I dunno what spell you went and cast on me, but I want it to stop, right now!" Apple Bloom's tolerance for this mystery was at its end and she followed the strange shape that skirted around the shadows.
"I didn't cast a spell, on you or anypony else. I only did what you wanted." The voice was mocking, still sounding like… like a changeling. Apple Bloom was scared and furious now.
Screaming her rage, the filly clopped her little hoof down over and over. "Why would I want you to torment me with nightmares?"
"You didn't want to catch bugs, and I helped." The voice seemed to move quickly, shifting through the forest silently. "You didn't want to lose friends, and I helped. If there's a problem with your family," Apple Bloom suddenly had a mental image of Applejack, Granny, and Big Mac, "I'm sure I can help with that too." The voice was identifiable now, it wasn't just a changeling's voice, it was her Queen's.
"I don't want you, I don't want your help! Just get away from me!" Apple Bloom felt tears sting her cheeks, she pushed and shoved at the shadow-shape in the forest, trying to get it away.
"Oh, Gray Sleek, you can't get away from your own shadow." It was a new voice, a warm voice. Apple Bloom looked up and saw the moon itself coalesce into a pony, a huge pony that floated gently down to her.
"P-P-Princess Luna?" Apple Bloom shook her head, the words the princess had used confused her somehow. "My shadow? What do you mean? It's just me?" She blinked and in that moment, Gray's mind restored, her form flickered and she was once more a changeling, a changeling with a long shadow. "You mean I've been doin' all this to myself?" Her voice sounded just like anyling else, but she still had Apple Bloom's drawl.
Luna watched the filly change, realizing what she was again. "Of course, Gray Sleek. It's your dream."
"I've been dreamin' this whole time, why don't I just wake up?" Gray didn't question why a princess was in her dream, nor why the mare seemed to be helping her. It was clearly a dream, facts were not consistent and, apparently, she might be a bit crazy.
"Some times we can worry about a thing so much, the fear can make us feel we're trapped in a nightmare." Luna turned her gaze to the trees, watching as the creature that had been stalking the poor changeling's dreams flowed down, shrinking into just her shadow. Something was still out there, Luna knew exactly what. She smiled to the pony she had brought to the dream, just once, before banishing her back to her own. "I don't suppose there's anything you're particularly afraid of, is there?" The world seemed to fade into the moonlight and Gray was suddenly standing on nothing, floating in the stars. With Luna.
Gray scuffed her hoof on the ground, mimicking an action she knew Apple Bloom used. Of course she had nothing to hide now, she was found out. "Yeah… I guess I've been pretty worried about getting' my cutie mark."
"More pony than you know." Luna's words were so soft only she and the wind itself could hear them, she raised her voice. "Well, that is the same as worrying about who you are." She saw the changeling look intensely introspective. "That is all a cutie mark is. If you cannot accept who you are, your life might seem like a bad dream."
Hovering in nothingness, with just the alicorn before her, Gray tilted her head a little. "But… if I like who she is, do you think other ponies will like me?"
"Of course." Luna smiled.
"Then it doesn't matter what my cutie mark is, or who I am!" Gray felt a freedom of her very soul that was so profound she began to cry at the beauty of it.
Luna leaned down and gently kissed the drone on the forehead. "Indeed."
"But…" Gray's eyes flew open, gazing up at the alicorn, "that's so simple! I must be the only changeling in the universe this worried about who she is!"
"Oh…" Luna began to summon the dream plane's entrances, pulling them into being with her will. "I wouldn't say that."
A door opened and a scene played out for Gray. A changeling, comically wearing a mask of Sweetie Belle, was standing before a whole mess of ponies. "Is she going to do anything?" "Look, she is breaking character." "Can't even slip into disguise properly!"
The drone slumped and looked terrified.
Luna closed that door and opened another. Scootaloo, or at least a changeling dressed up as Scootaloo, with adorable little fake wings, was trying to balance on a scooter and… failing. "I just wasn't good at this kind of thing!" The drone was terrified.
"They… they're both changelings too?" Gray's eyes were wide open, she hadn't even remembered when she had slipped back into Apple Bloom as a disguise.
"It's been a busy night for us all, but I think it's time to bring it to a close. For you." Luna found three new doors, opening them. Gray froze, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, the real ones, trotted out of those dreams.
"Hi!" Apple Bloom waved to the changeling disguised as her, somehow she knew they were. Must have been a dream thing. "Princess Luna told us we would be meeting a new pony tonight."
"You look so awesome, can you do Rainbow Dash?" Scootaloo ran up beside the changeling, bouncing.
Sweetie Belle just walked up and lifted a hoof. She waited a moment before gave a smile and waved.
The Princess of the Moon was standing with all four of them, the three Cutie Mark Crusaders all spotting her at once. "Princess Luna!"
"I know you've all had a lot on your minds tonight, but I think Gray has something she'd like to share before you wake." Luna leaned down and gave the disguised changeling a little nudge.
Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo all looked to the drone.
"Well, I guess I should call this dream meeting of the Cutie Mark Crusaders to order…" Gray Sleek looked down and scuffed a hoof.
"Go on!" "Woo!" The changeling got a few cheers of support from the fillies, clearly accepting her membership.
"I know we all got pretty anxious when we found out Babs got her cutie mark, but I-" Gray didn't get any further.
Three little voices shouted out in unison. "Babs got her cutie mark?"
The dream snapped, the shock of it breaking not just the three fillies from Luna's care, but Gray as well.
Apple Bloom, or Gray Sleek, was sitting in the far corner of the farm. She had seen an odd note on her pillow when she woke and had practically raced down here.
"You followed my message?" Dark, huge, smiling. Luna stepped from out of Gray's view, accompanied by Twilight Sparkle. "Gray Sleek, you are a very special pony."
Gray blinked up at the two princesses. "I… I am?"
"But you need to stay here a little longer." Twilight reached out a hoof to clear a little bit of sleep from the filly's eye. "You see, I am doing something amazing..."
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Wait, I thought that changeling was named Thorax.
7495590 Who, the one disguised as Apple Bloom? I tend to name changelings after their talents, what they are good at (sort of like ponies) with the odd name that just doesn't make sense (like ponies).
You've gone too far into just regurgitating the episodes with slight tweaks. I'd prefer chapters like the previous ones, which gloss over the normal episode content and jump right to the bits that are actually your own work.
Edit:
Also, an "Ask".
Twilight, are you doing all of this so that Chryssi will have no choice but to pursue you romantically in order to regain her hive?
Also
Celestia, when did you start listening to Twilight instead of brushing off all her ideas?
Certainly, Chrysalis must know something's up by now. Question is, how will she react when a town full of her changelings opposes her?
Question for Spike's doppelganger: how did you manage to figure out dragon fire messaging?
Keep going! ')
7496453 The problem was, I was changeling a lot of little bits here and there, I did gloss over big chunks of the episode and tried to only stick to the bits that had specific changeling-esque reasons. Will I go into so much depth in an episode again? Only if it is important to see how the particular changeling integrates themselves and reaches acceptance with just being nice.
As for the asks, I will try and get Princess Celestia to reply, she is horribly busy reading friendship reports. Could you imagine how much worse it is, when Twilight is reporting on dozens and dozens of friendships, and not just her own?
7496489 I really should do a chapter where ol' bug-butt gets to have a few words. As for Spike, I am sure I could find him to get an answer or two.
7496536
I'd think that, as a necessarily accomplished spymaster by virtue of her ten century sovereignty, Celestia would almost certainly be more comfortable with reports about a whole network of interactions on a constant basis as opposed to sporadic information about a very narrow group. In fact, I'd expect her to be enjoying the whole thing a good deal, much like an experienced survivalist can still have a great time at a camp site when there are friends with them.
Okay, all asks have been forwarded to their targets, due to logistics I could only get them one question per post. The two questions are:
Question for Spike's doppelganger: how did you manage to figure out dragon fire messaging?
Twilight, are you doing all of this so that Chryssi will have no choice but to pursue you romantically in order to regain her hive?
Awesome story :) the concept is very funny. But I agree with Clockwork here. I enjoyed the other chapters except the previous one. Some slices of the show are nice, but i enjoy more what you add :)
Ask to Angel Bunny: did you not noticed at all that you were living with a changeling or do you not mind as long as your salad is on the table? XD
7496656 Chryssi! Of all ponies, I thought you would love Friendship Green the most!
Also, yes I got the 'Don't hug me, I'm scared' reference
7496613 Fair enough, will go a bit easier on such. There are a lot of episodes, and I want to get through all of them, but I also want a LOT of chapters, which means there are going to be plenty of non-episode-related ones. Including a very special one, and I think everypony will be looking forward to it as much as I am.
7496658 awesome, that means more changelings fic to read xD
7496768 Mwahahaha, I assure you, I will always have plenty of changeling fics to read.
If you don't mind mature, I would highly suggest Shining Chitin, the first version was done as comedy, but now it is back, gritty, but still kinda adorable and cute.
7496772 oh man! You are a life saver! I will check it out.
I have been in a shortage of lovebugs for a while because my inbox is a bit deserted.
I even have begin to
slaughter the English lnaguagetry to write some of my own7496780 Not a problem. Probably about 2/3 of my stories have changelings as a major theme. Following you back, so when you publish (and you had better) I can read your stuff.
7496781 i will check you too :)
I feel stalked xD
You dont know what you are asking for, but okey ;p
7496786 Not stalked, but my phone beeps whenever I have a reply on here, so I know...
7496789 the wonders of modern technology! Well i will cut the silly comments and beeps and will keep reading
7496781
Are you my doppelgänger? Because all of my fics involve changelings in some shape or form. I’m not sure why.
Actually, on second thought, I do know exactly why. Changelings are awesome.