“... Nope, nothing seems to have changed,” Morning mutters. Ginny had just activated the Papa Tango for her- and she’d spent a few seconds in her Equestrian natural form, standing in a strange world of clouds. As soon as she’d gotten back, finding herself once again in her humanized ‘Ling form, she’d asked Ginny if it was done- then inspected herself… and looked up at them.
Harry, Hermione, and Silver all have confusing expressions on their faces, but the other three- Ariel is riding Ginny’s shoulder- don’t.
“So, ahh… Shall we go hunt that basilisk?” She rubs her hands together, flashing into her normal disguise halfway through. “That second in the clouds gave me an idea that should render any of our vulnerabilities moot.”
“Speak to me, Salazar Slytherin, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four.” Ariel takes a deep breath, before looking at everyone else in the Chamber of Secrets with her. “Alright, it’s coming.” She glances around. “Wait, where’s Morning?”
Morning, standing casually on the dark ceiling, snickers silently. She’d entered the room last, shapeshifted into a dark-skinned, black-haired version of herself, and walked calmly up the wall. She knows some pegasi can walk on walls and ceilings- but only some. She’s reasonably certain that all three Alicorns of the party are capable of it. On the other hoof, every changeling can walk on walls and ceilings. Sure makes scaling mountains and chamber walls easy.
She sees the massive mouth opening- and leaps off the wall, shifting into a fly. She hasn’t told them that her transformations need not respect conservation of mass; let them think they’ll see her. She shifts back to her normal human form once inside the massive statue’s mouth- and instantly layers the basilisk over with Changeling goo. Specifically, the glue-like goo that any Changeling can form instantly from any part of their body.
Changelings almost never produce this kind of goo; it’s made directly from love, unlike the more biologically-formed goo that ‘Lings can spit. Add that it’s not cheap to make, and the love usually cannot be recovered from it later, and it would have been wastefully stupid for any ‘Ling to make it in Equestria without dire need.
Not so for her, here in Britain. Sure, it cost her a lot of love… but it hardly even touched her reserves, which topped off again in seconds.
She grins, and starts her task. Thankfully, she’d actually been trained to do this before the attack on Canterlot had started; any ‘Ling could expect to have this duty after a successful invasion, and Chrysalis didn’t want to have to wait days for it to be finished.
Mind, she’d been trained with the biologically-produced, spitten goo in mind, and she’s using the much easier to control love-based goo.
Finally, she lifts the enormous, finished pod- funny, she didn’t expect it to be that easy to lift- and carries it to the entrance of the mouth, before dropping it out and using a rope of more goo to lower it rapidly to the floor below, to startled and confused gasps from below.
Once it hits the ground, she swings out into plain view of them, sliding down her goo rope like a fire pole, to land on top of the massive pod before she simply dissolves the rope. That’s one benefit of using love-goo over bio-goo: The love goo can be simply dissolved, and will disappear tracelessly. The bio-goo has to be swept up and carried away.
“Did someone order a basilisk?” she asks, posing atop the pod.
Hidden Light- whose nametag reads Glowing Blue, Morning saw in Myrtle’s bathroom- stares at the pod, jaw articulating wordlessly up and down. She’s pretty sure the girl is trying to be fair, and so is shining her light only in front of her, where she could normally see. Ariel floats slowly to the floor, from where she’d been hovering in the air, staring slack-jawed. Ginny and Hermione are the same, though standing instead of flying. Silver nods slowly, stepping closer to scowl at the pod.
Harry nods slowly at it. “And that would be why it was taking so long,” he mutters.
Morning smiles, vaulting off the pod and sliding down the side of it with one hand, coming to a smooth landing in front of everyone. “There! How’d I do?”
Silver looks at her. “How’d you get up there?”
She grins. “I slipped in while you weren’t looking.”
“So what’s… that?” Harry asks, pointing at the pod.
Morning leans against it, grinning. “I podded it. Most changelings do that to ponies they don’t want messing with their plans, so I figured I didn’t want the basilisk messing with our plans.”
Hermione looks Morning. “Changelings are amazing, you know that?”
Morning snorts. “No, no we’re not. There’s just extenuating circumstances here that let me expend a lot more energy than I normally might be able to.”
Silver tilts her head. “What’s that?”
She grins. “Remember what I said about you being love geysers? That.” She taps the pod. “Most of the time, we use a biological goo. I had so much love, though, that I thought I’d use a more love-based goo. Which means, of course, that only a Changeling can set this thing free again.”
“... Wait a sec,” Glowing mutters. “That’s- That’s not true. We opened lots of pods.”
She shakes her head. “Not this kind of pod. Those things were made of that bio-goo. Pain to work with, limited durability, and hard to make in quantity, but virtually no love cost to make. This is made of love-goo, with none of those weaknesses- though it costs a lot of love to make. Virtually nothing compared to the ambient here, though…”
“... So, you’ve bottled up the basilisk,” Hermione mutters.
She nods. “I can let it loose again if you want to fight it,” she shrugs.
“Hang on,” Glowing mutters, grinning to herself and rubbing her chin. “What happens if we mail this to Chrysalis?”
Madam Pomfrey rises from her desk, bustling back out into the infirmary as soon as she hears something moving.
“Ahh, there you are,” she retorts, upon seeing Glowing Blue trotting in. A few other students walk in behind her- including, she notices, Morning Sun. And Ginny Weasley, with Ariel riding on her shoulder- and looking somehow stronger than ever. “What happened?”
“Well,” Glowing grins, looking back at the others for a second, before turning back to her. “I suppose it started when Hermione spawned the Muggleborn Lake in a wildly successful attempt to destroy a horcrux.”
Hermione covers her face with her hands. “Oh please,” she moans.
“Horcrux?” Madam Pomfrey asks. “Which one?”
“We figured out what horcrux Ariel used to be,” Ginny spouts. “A diary. Fun fact, turns out she was actually still bound to it somehow, even though it still had a mind of its own.” She shudders. “When she smote it, Ariel felt it- and gained all the memories left in it.”
Hermione groans, pressing her hands over her eyes.
Pomfrey puts a finger to her chin. “She also looks a lot stronger.”
Ginny blinks, looking at Ariel. “She does?”
Ariel blinks, looking down at her forehooves, then back up. “I do? How so?”
“Uh, then after that,” Glowing continues, “since the diary is what was opening the Chamber, we suddenly knew where it was. We discussed what I saw of the basilisk; turns out Morning here has dealt with them before, and so knows a counterspell that renders its gaze utterly harmless against you. So we ran her through the Papa Tango to finish the magic repairs Ginny started with the Whiskey Tango, then headed into the Chamber of Secrets and captured the thing. So by now, I’ve had a much busier day than I wanted to, and I’m going to have to write a rather lengthy report for Bonbon, but I’m also a little exhausted and very ready to get back to bed.” She clambers back into her bed. “By the way, how many days do I have before people start coming back from the holidays?”
Madam Pomfrey blinks. “Uhh…”
“Two,” Hermione states. “They return the day after tomorrow.”
“And all of that,” Morning sighs, “means that the attacks have been ended for good. The monster hasn’t been killed just yet- but it’s been completely immobilized, and in such manner that no one can let it free.”
“We wanted to see if Dumbledore wanted to be part of that,” Harry shrugs, before Madam Pomfrey has time to ask. “And when she says no one can free it, she means it.”
Hermione snorts. “Yeah, definitely. I mean, she did her thing to put it into some kind of very, very durable stasis pod, then Harry wrapped it in one of his patent-pending indestructible barriers.”
Harry looks at her. “Patent pending?”
She shrugs.
Madam Pomfrey shakes herself out. “So, the attacks have been ended? Permanently?”
Ariel nods. “Yeah.”
“And nobody was injured in the process?”
“Yeah.”
She lets out a relieved breath. “Alright. Now then, that counterspell. Does it work on people who have already been petrified?”
“Ahh… No. But there is a way to reverse the petrification.” She walks calmly up to the nearest bed, glancing briefly at the nametag, and puts her hand to Tree Hugger’s forehead. It takes her a second to channel the love properly- but within seconds, Tree Hugger collapses more fully onto the bed, and she withdraws her hand, looking up at Madam Pomfrey. “It’s not instant, unfortunately- just puts them on the path to self-recovery, mostly. She’ll wake up in a couple hours, then need another two or three hours after that to be fully healed.”
I have to admit that I was stunned when I saw this story was cancelled. But at least, you promised to do a rewrite with better plots and plans.
I am looking forward to seeing the improved version of this amusing story. Hope I will see it soon.
A rewrite is probably for the best. Things went really off the rails with no clear reason or direction pretty early on. To be really honest, the more the story got away from plotlines derived from other Harry Potter crossovers, the less sense it seemed to make. The "everyone's becoming alicorns" element followed without any apparent need, served to overpower a handful of select characters for no particular reason, and left everyone else in a lurch. I'd strongly recommend trying to leave out that plot point unless you need it for specific characters. If that's the case, you should make sure that there's a good reason why the number of cast members with newfound alicorn powers is strictly limited.
In the meantime, you should not feel obliged to have a Changeling plot. Lots of different creatures exist in the magical land of Equestria, and you are under no obligation to include them. Changelings are a little too short on their bag of tricks to make for compelling and original storylines, and you might be better off omitting them altogether.
10054151
Yeah, the house-elves need better pots and pans, don't they?
... Sorry, I just had to. You made me laugh.
10054157
Yeah, I agree... I actually scoped out the plot for this thing- and while the initial arc (of, like, six chapters) was halfway decent, the rest of the "outline" I crafted to describe what's already written... looked like a series of bullet points, not an outline. All because this thing had no planning in it at all...
The whole thing with Flutters ascending for no apparent reason? Yeah... That's not going to happen in the rewrite, unless I have a clear reason to make it happen. As for the others, I'm certainly not going to make them overpowered like here... though making one of the Crew into an alicorn might not be that bad, so long as the poor filly has difficulty controlling those powers... meaning, they tend to hurt more than they help.
And personally, I actually liked the changeling element. It needs to have much better planning behind it than this one did, but while they might not have too big a bag of tricks on their own, they have lots of difficulties that make them plenty usable as protagonists. As antagonists, though, they're a pretty classic 'pew they're dead' enemy, for the most part.
10054189
I find that Changelings aren't very interesting as protagonists, either, because their root conflict is always the same one: "they won't accept me for what I am," and spend their time being desperately fearful of discovery. Eventually they're found out, and they're either proven wrong, or proven right about their fear. There aren't any Changelings-among-Ponies stories that I know of that have broken out of that formula.
10054207
Hence why it needs some good planning. There's always going to be some fear-of-discovery that must be overcome, but that doesn't need to be even the main conflict the 'Ling in question sees... especially if I give them convenient knowledge, like Morning's knowledge of the Basilisk's paralysis spell- and various counterspells- here. Which, mind, was a bit ham-handed... but still.
sounds good, looking forward to your rewrite.
Normally, I don't mind rewrites but, to be perfectly honest, on this site, they fill me with dread because of the site's archival-hostile rules surrounding multiple versions of the same fic.
Do you have a Fanfiction.net account you could archive this version to or is it another story where, if lightning takes out my hard drive and nightly incremental backups before I accumulate enough fanfiction to fill a DVD+R, it's gone?
10054383
Well there's no re-write yet, so I suppose you could copy/paste every chapter into a word document or summat...
10054207
I agree that Changlings make poor solo protagonists, their conflict makes them great support protagonists. And their was one story that didn't follow your theory entirely. It's called Dear Pony Book, its more about overcoming trauma and abuse then anything else. I am sure I got the tittle wrong but it's a good read. It's written from Thorax's point of view.
10054484
Primary or supporting protagonist, it always ends up following the same formulas, which is why I'm not eager to see it repeated again. I gave Dear Small Pony Book a shot a while back, but it didn't really float my boat.
Shame to see it cancelled, personally I kind of lost interest after 50 or so chapters when it became clear this was just gonna be one of those stories where the ponies are overpowered for no real reason and then stuff just kind of happens. Honestly, I'll never understand the desire for OP ponies, it works well for shorter stories but the second you decide to go for more than 50k+ words the story tends to quickly hit a wall in terms of how interesting it can actually be. Yeah, the goal is to have the story gradually go off the rails but I have yet to see a story going the OP character route manage to go off the rails and actually end up somewhere remotely interesting that is more than just OP character does stuff followed by humourous reaction from other characters.
When you do a rewrite, leave this story up. I discovered, the bad way, that deleting chapters deletes the comments for them as well. I lost all the comments on my original version.
---
As for changelings. Which changelings? Old changelings, or new changelings? Old changelings are the ones with black carapaces and holes in their legs. Aka, Chrysalis's stupid followers. New changelings are the ones reformed by Thorax. The bright pastel colored ones with no holes in their legs. Aka, the skittle bugs.
---
I might try my hand at writing a fic similar to this one sometime later.
10054531
Agree. You can re-name this one as (old) story just to make them different.
10054383
Yeah no, this story was originally written in Google Docs- and I will be archiving that as well.
10054531
10054631
(And ssokolow, and anyone else wondering about the rewrite)
Yes, I am aware of FimFiction’s anti-duplicate rules. Since the rewrite will be from the ground up, it actually falls into one of the explicit OK categories. When I post the rewrite, this story will stay up as it is. The rewrite will not, however, be named The Gate, or really any derivative thereof. I haven’t decided, just yet, what it will be named.
Despite the purported incoherence, I found this story fun to read. I hope the rewrite comes out as amusing.
Please put a note here when the rewrite is up to tell us where to find it.
10054940
Will do. I also plan to blog about it, but anyone that sees that blog post will also (likely) see the story posting itself.
Looking forward to the rewrite.
I am not surprised...i support the author in this decision, good premise but the execution needed work. Thank you Computerneek.
10054416
I archive each chapter in per-chapter HTML format as I read them. My concern was the psychological burden of knowing that the only available copies were my own backups.
10054897
Phew. That's a huge load off my mind.
I really wish that, for rewrites that are too similar to keep up, they'd offer something similar to how code repositories are handled. Then nobody would have to worry.
10055285
*cocks head*
I do not understand this...
10055298
What, specifically? The archival or the stress of knowing that, if a natural disaster kills my computer, all the insurance money in the world wouldn't get the data back?
(For the stuff I create, even my private projects get off-site backups A.S.A.P. thanks to BitBucket offering free private project hosting.)
10055301
The archival. You seem, vehement.
10055307
I know how fallible my memory is and care about using my computer as an extension of it. I'm also a "data packrat".
I also care deeply about avoiding 404-ing URLs.
10055308
I can understand that. My short-term memory is effectively nonexistent.
10054897
Okay, that works too. I've always thought 'The Gate' was somehow not appropriate for your story since it involved the actual Gate very little. Personally, I'd rather call your story 'Ponies vs Hogwarts' or 'How ponies conquer Hogwarts' or 'Lyra's human world shenanigans'.
I admit to having still been enjoying reading the story, but I understand where you're coming from. So go ahead and spend time building a real outline, and come back with an even better story for it.
10055339
... This story, yes. Even I didn't like how ponies-dominate it became; the point of the story was to explore how Hogwarts reacted, not how the ponies did... and lack of outline plus nebulous magic system quickly added up to produce what we've seen.
The new one... will have a much fairer magic system. The ponies will probably do a lot of stuff that baffles the British... but the ponies also won't instantly know all there is to know about wand magic, either. That's for... Draco... Well, was for him, before his CM power was changed almost immediately after he acquired (and used) it...
... Yeah.
On the other hoof, I've already got the plot for the first arc planned out- you can expect to see On the Implications of Parallel Worlds up probably sometime next week. Don't know when, it hasn't been written... but it will be better. This thing was a mess.
For the title of the rewrite how about "Invasion of the Pastel Ponies"?
10056361
... Well, part of the point of the rewrite is to give the wizards a fighting chance, and remove the invasion aspect- whether intended or not- from it...
Thank you for this story. I had a lot of fun reading it!
My favorite part of this story was Silversong. Will she be in the rewrite?
10057064
I didn't much like it. The Freudian Excuse as a vehicle to rewrite a character away from who they are in canon is not a very good way to write. When tempted, an author probably just ought to replace it altogether with an original character. After all, there's no shortage of students at Hogwarts that were never named in canon, much less written about.
You've cancel it? okay fine.
10057156
I honestly don't know why I like Silversong. I'll have to figure that out later; I'm too tired right now.
You have reasoning for your position, while I have nothing more than "I like this". So your argument should win.
But on the other hand, I have gone back several times specifically to reread the parts about Silversong. And my reading history bears out that while logged in to Fimfiction, I have (re-)read exactly those chapters since Silver was first transformed. I think Silversong is why I keep coming back to this story.
So I don't know. It's possible that what I like about Silver is different than what you don't like about her, in which case there is no issue. Or maybe they're the same, in which case there would seem to be a conflict between good writing and what I have fun reading. As I said, I'll have to think about this later.
By the way, when you mention a "Freudian Excuse", are you referring to chapter 19?
10057472
I mean that they stop being bad because the thing that was wrong with them was magically fixed, and that wrongness was the only reason why they were a villainous character.
10054531
Coughs
Please do not invoke my name with the Crayonlings.
Also please do not associate me with the Old Evil One. I abandoned that hive decades ago.
10057457
It's being rewritten.
10057847
I didn't know there was a user with that name. O_O I got the name for those changelings from another fanfic that I read on here sometime long ago.
10056538
A rename is a good idea. Especially seeing as there's another fic with the same name at https://www.fimfiction.net/story/437025/the-gate . Completely different fic, with a different plot.
Question: In the rewrite are you going to make Lyra and Bon Bon a couple? I really hope so. They really belong together.
I look forward to the rewrite someday.^_^
10057156
The way I look at it, he was the Bad Guy at first because that's what was expected of him. Later, he grew into the role and became irredemable- chose it. What Silver ended up being was an early out- the opportunity to escape what was expected, and be herself... which then resulted in a secret identity construct for her to grow into instead, allowing her to play a role much more like Snape's in later life.
10057472
Yeah... me neither. But I know that I really like Silver as well, so she's definitely sticking around- but you can expect her personality to show on the rewrite even before she's first transformed... likely only when I write stuff from her POV, but...
10057934
(So happens Skittlebug isn't just any old user, but an editor of this story... And of the rewrite, too)
But no worries
... And that would be old changelings. They've got fairly unique challenges to them, that give rise to some rather unique character quirks. Thorax' reformed 'Lings are no different from low-powered Alicorns, so they are never canon to my stories- in my opinion, the reformation sucked all the racial character depth right out of them. Not unlike the Crusader's cutie marks, and how those completely destroyed their characters...
10057993
Answer: Yes. In my headcanon, they are a couple- so in every one of my stories, they either are, will be, or were, a couple. That last of which hasn't been seen at the start of any published story, but I've got a tragedy on the back burner where they're both deceased at the start... May be months or years before I work that up to my satisfaction, though.
10056538
Clearly then, the name should be "Defending Hogwarts from Ponies."
10059173
... The point is, it's not an invasion, and it's not an attack, so there's no defending to be done... and as much as ponies-dominate has a certain gratifying appeal to it, it doesn't make for very good long-term stories, so it won't be one.
... Frankly, I'm amazed The Gate got as far as it did before I had to cancel it, given how lopsided the power balance was...
Oh, it was on the crazy side. Yes.
It is hard to write ponies as balanced, because most writers forget that the typical pony only learns a few spells -- TK, light, one or two related to their skill. Unicorns that learn anything and everything are rare.
They just do really good with the one spell main spell that they do have.
Think "golden age of super heroes" -- heroes with one power that they can abuse the heck out of.
I'm waiting for a good take on the idea of "Ponies in hogwarts are mana starved, they are used to high mana environments; wands are great focusing devices. Pony spells are wasteful, general purpose, using large amounts of ambient energy; wizard spells are highly specific, highly focused in purpose, and you need to learn many specialized spells instead of one general purpose spell."
On earth, ponies should underperform wizards because they don't have the specialized spells (but this is a school) and they are used to high-mana environments (so they are starved).
On Equestria, ponies should out perform wizards -- pony spells are more flexible and better adapted to the high mana environment -- except for the few wizards at the top of the power level that can adjust to use the higher ambient power along with the more efficient spells. So Voldy and Dumbledore would have an epic, Tirek vs 4 alicorn, DBZ level battle.
I can see draco malfoy gender swapping, but not harry. I think harry would be uncomfortable as a girl.
If you could do a huge solid for me (and others) by putting a link to the rewrite as an extra chapter in this one. Things like that tend to slip through the cracks for me, and I’d hate to miss this.
10061509
The issue with that plan is that it's against FimFiction policy to post anything that isn't a chapter as a chapter... including links to rewrites and other updates. You can be sure I will blog about it, post it to my Patreon, and announce it on my Discord server, though...
Kinda a shame to see it go. There were admittedly some idiosyncracies where the ponies would suddenly catch the Idiot Ball after usually doing so well, but it was overall a fun read.
I admit that I normally read a fair amount of HP fiction, but for some reason I normally can't be arsed to read MLP/HP stories, which is weird since I enjoy each on their own. Even with that, I did still enjoy this one. I hope the rewrite keeps whatever made it that good.
I still think something Worm/MLP might be fun. I should send you some of my notes if you're interested. Stupid busy schedule... I have no idea when I might get to it otherwise.
I mean, if you look at Worm superpowers, everyone has a unique talent that's given to them via a multidimensional symbiote. Admittedly, the one giving them out is a lot less benevolent, but it makes a fair explanation for MLP if you assume that one of said power-granting Entities decided to collect some data on its own. And thus it made ponies, which are not only able to use powers directly (and thus innovate) but also look adorable (and thus insinuate themselves into any society they encounter for more data collection). It's also a great explanation for why they live on a fluffy hellworld: it gives them more chances to use "magic" (Worm's powers caused conflict, which the Entities viewed, in their idiot-savant way, to be a wonderful cause for innovation, and thus training of the symbiotes).
10062683
You must be a fan of Worm...
Unfortunately, that's one of the things I'm unlikely to ever do on my own, for unfamiliarity with the work.
10063225
Whatever might have given you that idea? :D
I wish you luck with your next project, regardless. :)