Common Ground

by LunasCaptain

Queen's-Eye View

"Chrysalis," Cadance snarled, spreading her wings and lowering her horn. "You--you monster! How dare you?"

The queen of the Changelings examined the furious alicorn in front of her. Her narrowed eyes, the sneer on her mouth, the way she pawed at the ground, impatient to fight. It had taken weeks. Hard work, nonstop and grueling, that Chrysalis had watched with widening eyes and bared fangs. She had been sure that it would not happen. Princess Mi Amore Cadenza? Here? In her hive? Never.

But she had arrived. And Chrysalis had to admit, she was kind of impressed.

"How dare I what?" she challenged in turn. She spread her ragged wings and rose to her frail-looking hooves in a mirror of Cadance, taking a step towards her.

The pony princess's eyes widened, and she took an involuntary step back.

"Well? How dare I what, sweet Princess?" Chrysalis pressed, grinning. She knew it exposed her fangs, small but wickedly sharp and rumored throughout Equestria to be precision instruments of torture.

"Y-you stole my life," Cadance stuttered, her wings snapping closed. She continued to shrink back, away from the terrifying queen.

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "Really? You're still upset about that? Come now, Cadance, it was ages ago, and it was only for a couple of days! You didn't even get so much as a cold from your time in those caves. Though," she added, brilliant green eyes narrowing, "at the moment, your voice sounds a bit...off. Are you perhaps under the weather?"

"I'm fine," Cadance squeaked. She was, at the moment, backed up against a stone pillar, her tail soaked by the condensation that gathered on it.

"Are you sure? You're not acting yourself." In one smooth motion that defied her gangly legs, Chrysalis darted forward and placed a hoof on the princess's head, forcing it downward so fast that her horn met with the stone floor at dangerous speeds.

It snapped in half, and Cadance shrieked in pain and horror.

"Oh, quit whining," Chrysalis snapped, stepping back and nudging the horn segment with a perforated hoof. In a burst of green fire, it transformed into the tip of a much smaller black horn. "That can't have hurt."

A similar fire roared up around the weeping Cadance, replacing her with a Changeling drone half her sized. It had bruise-colored eyes and oozing cracks radiating down from the missing tip of its horn, wounds that it immediately began to paw at.

Watching it whimper and try unsuccessfully to staunch the appendage's bleeding, Chrysalis hissed through her fangs.

"Drones separate from the collective," she muttered to herself. "Worst idea I ever had."

Of her drone, she demanded, "Four weeks of practice wasn't enough?"

It took its hooves away from its horn and cowered as she stalked closer. "I'm sorry, Queen Chrysalis, alicorns are difficult--"

"Not for me," the queen hissed. There was a quick flash of green fire, and then Princess Celestia loomed over the drone, with acid-green eyes and Changeling fangs. "Your egg was separated from the rest before it quickened, before the bond could be formed. So that you could think. Was all of that effort worthless, Gossamer?"

"I'm sorry, Queen," Gossamer cringed. The mindless drones that had been watching it perform as Cadance snarled from their places along the walls, their emotions tied into those of their ruler.

"Useless, useless, useless," chided Chrysalis as Celestia, punctuating each word by snapping near Gossamer's already-frayed ears. It flinched every time her jaws closed. "The voice was completely wrong. And the eyes--don't even get me started on the eyes..."

"I'm sorry." Gossamer's voice was little more than a whisper now. The hard bands of its belly rattled against the stone floor as it shook.

Chrysalis sighed in disgust and turned away, changing back into her true self. Not even that fool Shining Armor would buy Gossamer's version of Cadance. Let alone the ponies that had known her their whole lives, such as her hoofmaidens and her personal guards. Perhaps the Changeling queen had been a little bit out of character when she impersonated the princess, but only that brat Twilight had questioned it. Nopony else had. Why? Because her appearance had been spot-on.

"Get out of my sight, Gossamer," Chrysalis muttered. "Come back when you can do that pathetic princess impeccably."

"Yes, Queen, of course--"

Chrysalis left, the snapping of her desiccated hooves against the floor drowning out the rest of Gossamer's groveling. She despised the way that it (he, whatever--it had shown signs of being definitively male but she rarely cared about genders in her drones) bowed and scraped before her, and hated to think where it had gotten that. Gossamer was a near-constant reminder of just how hideous a mistake Chrysalis had made with the sentient drones experiment.

There had been five eggs initially. The first inklings of the infiltration of Canterlot had been stirring in the back of her mind when she moved them from the primary nurseries to her own caverns--the only place she could be absolutely sure that an errant drone wouldn't pass by and lock the fetuses into the collective. Perhaps she wanted a set of guards creative enough to morph into unprecedented ponies, perhaps she was just curious as to what would happen. It was all a bit fuzzy now. The only thing that she could truly be sure of was that she hadn't thought it through, because if she had, she would have realized that she didn't have the faintest idea of how to care for eggs.

Maybe that was why one had never hatched, one had produced a larva with stunted hind legs (it hadn't lasted long), and the three physically perfect hatchlings were even more irritating than Twilight Sparkle and her cutesy little friends.

(They even called her "Mama" for a few days, but Chrysalis had quickly put a stop to that.)

The whole thing had been a waste, anyway. They developed so much more slowly than ordinary drones. By the time Chrysalis had successfully inserted herself at Shining Armor's side, her intelligent drones were barely out of their cocoons, their wings trapped to their carapaces and their powers infantile. In other words: useless.

But she had kept them anyway. Taught all three to fly and morph while she recovered from being thrown miles from Canterlot, instead of planning her revenge. Named them instead of pitching rocks at the portrait of Cadance she had acquired for reference. Gossamer, Elytra, and Carapace, simply because it was a little more dignified than Black Eyes, Green Eyes, and Blue Eyes. She didn't like to use their titles. Before, "Chrysalis" had been the only name among the Changelings, and she the only bearer of it.

"All of that work--for nothing!" Chrysalis moaned now, hopping into her nest with Gossamer's poor imitation of Cadance on her mind. It was the middle of the day, according to her internal clock, but anything that involved the black-eyed drone always wore her out. Sometimes to the point that lapsed and talked to herself, an annoying habit that she had been trying to break since that embarrassing song in Canterlot (somepony could have walked in on her basically singing her confession to all of Equestria). "Years and years of effort, with nothing at all to show for it."

Gossamer--a failure. Elytra--dead, unfortunately. Carapace--

Chrysalis brightened, lifting her head. She had forgotten all about Carapace.

Her frustration dissipated. Ah, yes, the plan. Even with Carapace playing such a key role, there was no way it could fail. These ponies were so forgiving, so loving.

Unless, of course, it was fool enough to approach them with the truth.

Chrysalis shook her head, dispelling the twinge of fear that that idea brought. Yes, the blue-eyed drone was moronic, naive, and grossly arrogant, but not even it would be fool enough to approach Cadance and Shining Armor's walled city without some sort of disguise.

Right?

A/N: My, look at that, two uploads in one day! Please don't get used to it. On a daily basis, this pace would kill me.

Other things of note: Writing Chrysalis is extremely fun and I am very bad at thinking up title chapters. Also, this story received much more attention than I expected it to. I'm drunk on enthusiasm. Please, don't hesitate to point out the inevitable errors.

Comments

[CanterlotGuardian]

I'm happy for two uploads in one day :D I'm really loving this story. Excellent work!

[LunasCaptain]

1170040
Thank you so much! Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to upload anything for a couple of days. My father recently learned that it's possible to watch television on YouTube, and I expect him to foreclose on my laptop any day now.

[CanterlotGuardian]

1170611
oh wow. do you not have a family computer that he can use for such shenanigans?

[LunasCaptain]

1174287
Well, we did, but it failed catastrophically about a week ago, making mine the only computer in the house.

[CanterlotGuardian]

1174848
ah sadness. I feel you though; I have to rely on library computers to get online

[DeltaΔ]

I felt the first chapter was a bit overdone (you tried too hard), and I almost quit.

Chapter two was a bit better.

Chapter three, though, was at a comfortable readability level.

I'll favor this and see how it turns out.

[N00813]

This is awesome. Please continue.

[LunasCaptain]

1174866
That's much worse than my situation. I'm so sorry.

[LunasCaptain]

1179062
First of all: thank you so much for the honest feedback. Flowery, awkward prose is one of the many things that I'm trying to fix in my writing, and knowing that the readers notice it helps immensely.

Second of all: from now on, I'll try to make sure that future chapters continue in the pattern that you pointed out.

[DeltaΔ]

1184040
Glad I could be of some help.

[LunasCaptain]

1180341
Thank you, and that is the plan.

[Marcellus Spike]

I love Chrysalis!
Cool chapter bro.

[PPS]

Please, don't hesitate point out the inevitable errors.

First error: This sentence is missing a "to". There were other errors earlier, but I'm not bothering to go back for them.

[Crocoshark]

Sometimes to the point that lapsed and talked to herself,

*that SHE lapsed