“How many times is it now, Celestia?” That taunting voice was laced with pain, and a low, gurgling wheeze accompanied every labored breath the Changeling took. “Ten? Thirty? When will you learn how pointless this exercise is?”
Princess Celestia snarled and lunged forward, whirled with the grace of a dancer, and delivered a powerful kick to the Changeling’s side. Something crunched horribly and the bug flew across the room, striking a pillar with a dull thud. As it slid down, a pale streak of green ichor stained the ancient marble.
“What does this bring you, Celestia?” the Changeling gasped, rising defiantly onto three shaky legs, its shredded wings splayed out agressively. “Does this violence bring you joy? Does my pain bring you happiness?”
“You assaulted my little ponies,” Celestia bellowed. “You used the stallion that belonged to my niece, the love that belonged to my niece, and you corrupted it! Turned it against me!”
The Changeling managed a broken, wet chuckle. “So it is revenge, then, Celestia? Retribution?” The Changeling coughed violently, more of that green ichor spraying from its foul mouth onto the tiled floor. “What’s done is done, Celestia. You know as well as I do that I may not die in the same way your other monsters do. So why continue this?”
Celestia growled again, a primal, shimmering sound, and sent forth a lance of pre sunlight. The Changeling screamed again, raw and wet and visceral. When the smoke cleared, it quivered in a tiny ball, both wings now singed stubs of their former irredescent glory. Chunks of exoskeleton lay steaming on the ground around it, exposing charred, goey flesh to the elements.
Celestia walked forwards slowly, her wings spread wide, an avenging angel. She looked into the terrified green eyes of her shivering, broken enemy, looked into them without mercy or compassion. “You took the place of one dear to me and used my love for her to blind me, to ensorcel my subjects. You laid me low before my very court with a perversion of love and harmony. And now you seek me out, and you dare to talk to me about revenge?” she spat. “This is not revenge, this is not validation. This is justice.”
The Changeling’s eyes widened, it struggled to a sitting position, keening and chattering its fangs in agony. “I-If this … is your idea of … justice, then I fear for your subjects... and their safety,” the Changeling gasped.
Rage flared hot and red in Celestia’s eyes, and she struck a killing blow, calling down sunstuff onto the dying Changeling until nothing remained but ashes. She spat on the dusty pile and stalked away, out into the courtyard, out into the night. She breathed the fresh night air, free of deception or hate or that creature’s filth, and finally took wing, flying to escape the Changeling’s final words, the last echoes of the conversation that wormed into her head.
And miles away, deep inside the Everfree forest, the Queen of the Changelings awoke screaming. She looked long and hard at her new body, her new hooves, and tried to stop their shaking. Just as she had the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that....
Hooray indeed. Celestia has always struck me as being rather slippery, and it's always fascinating to see the less-than-magnanimous emotions break through that smiling white facade.
2356349 The way Celestia acted when Discord showed up made me wonder a bit how she would have reacted to his goading if her little ponies weren't there to make her keep her cool. And Queen Chrysalis totally embarassed her in front of the nobles of Canterlot and could have destroyed her relationship with Twilight. So I imagine it's the sort of thing that would make Celestia go off her chain a bit. The possibility that Chrysalis just moves into the next queen's body after death has always tickled my fancy, so when I put the two ideas together I got Celestia repeatedly torturing Chrysalis to death, which is always fun. Glad you enjoyed her borderline madness as much as I did.
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The way she reacts to Discord is particularly intriguing. It's one of the few times where we see her openly surprised and angry.
Justice: Oh heck yeah, badass Celestia is the bestia. Sure, it's the top of a slippery slope and the next thing you know she'll be the Tyrant Sun Corona or, uh, Daymare McSunnybutt or something... Still! It's awesome because she's beating the sh*t out of Chrysalis.
And yes, I agree with Silvernis about the whole 'smiling white facade' thing-- But she said it better, so I'll stick with 'Woo! Smackdown!'
I think this reaction from Celestia is very sad, and very fitting for a number of reasons - part of it comes from my belief that Celestia has always been the extremely emotional, wilder sister and just got better at hiding it out of necessity while Luna was gone, but there's also that fact that Celestia's already lost everything that mattered to her to twisted, manipulative evil before. I can't help but imagine her paralleling what she almost lost with her loss of Luna, and her brutality here as a manifestation of her inability to ever let it happen again. I'm probably way off, o'course, but regardless - I like it a lot. Good stuff.
I have always had this trouble of seeing Celestia as a perfect goody goody princess. She is a princess, yes, but more importantly she is a goddess. The sun, itself, can either harm or nurish the land and its creatures. So it isn't had to imagine Celestia having a hot temper.
2399259 I had way too much fun writing for psycho Celestia. Because in cases like Discord or Chrysalis at the wedding, when she starts losing control of her normally inpenetrable mask, she looks pretty damn mad. And she's got at least 1,000 years'-worth of pent-up rage and other strong emotions that she's had to hide away for Equestria's sake, so when she loses it, she loses it bad. And since I say that this is her only real departure from her 'normal' self, she's wasting Chrysalis like nobody's business. It's unnecessary cruelty, but she's convinced herself that it's for the good of Equestria to make sure that the Changeling Queen can't rise again and take somepony else's life and future from them. Plus, an eternal supply of crunchy punching bags is a nice perk.
Damn, this one left me chilled (because I can see it happening, outside of kid-friendliness restrictions on the show). Also, thanks for the explanation on what happened to Chrysalis there at the end! For a moment I thought "are those some nightmares or something?" rather than "passes on to the body of the next queen", which is probably worse, now that I think about it.
What really gets me is that it seems that Chrysalis was the one who approached Celestia. Was she trying to make peace, maybe find a peaceful solution to her subjects' hunger? And tries again and again out of desperation even if she keeps getting horribly killed? It's just, wow D: