Altered Visage Chapter 15 · 8:22pm Apr 9th, 2016
The hiatus is finally over! Woo!
First and foremost, though the hiatus is over, this story will not return to the previously established once per week update schedule. It will instead be relegated to a "whenever I get the next chapter done" type schedule, and as such will undoubtedly take much longer than a week between updates. Sad, perhaps, but that's the way this is going to be. Now onto the chapter itself.
Lots of stuff happening in this one. First, we get Celestia's answer on what she had to do with Visage's father's disappearance. We get a little bit of bonding time between Chance and Pupa, only for the hypotenuse of this developing love triangle to be murdered later in the chapter. I had debated occasionally with myself if perhaps I should have gone with Drymanid dying instead, or having Pupa survive the attack, but I ended up sticking with the original plan I had.
In regards to why Jade Flare would kill Pupa, he does have reasons beyond him just getting in his way. He is well aware that Pupa is a prince of the Minoan hive, and he's working under the assumption that if his mother heard that Princess Celestia had killed her son, then she would treat that as a declaration of war and would come in to fight the ponies. Why would he want this? Well, once he's taken over the Equestrian hive, he may still have trouble with potential war with the ponies. The Minoan hive would distract the ponies from his own people, and if it looked like the ponies were in a weak enough position, he could join in to take over at least part of Equestria.
Now to rewind somewhat and talk about the dream that's not just a dream. It's primarily from the perspective of Visage, as is obvious enough to anybody who reads it, and we later get basically a fusing of Victor and Visage, even more so then they already were. The character is still Chance, just with a little bit of Visage's added memories and associated emotions added to the mix. Victor is still where most of her identity is coming from.
We get the return of the spell that Chrysalis used on Chance earlier when she scoured her mind so that she could make a portal to get her back home, which allows for Chance to search through Jade Flare's mind where we get several answers. He roused Garnet Targe to consciousness with his telepathy and encouraged her to kill the changelings while he was inside the hidden escape passage in hopes of Chrysalis being killed. He framed Celestia for the murder of Visage's father (one day I may actually come up with a name for him...), he's on the cusp of becoming a royal himself, though stopped the procedure just before the transformation would begin, and let's not forget about how he goaded Chrysalis into attacking Canterlot, which just so happens to be happening at the very end of the chapter.
Time....let's talk about it. One thing I tried to keep in mind was the travel time it would take for Chrysalis and her army to get to Canterlot. Realistically, is it likely that they could have done so in less than a full day? Probably not, as mobilizing her army would very likely take time, but I'm willing to stretch that a bit and say they've been prepared to move for quite some time now. She would have been contacted in the morning shortly after Chance spoke with Celestia, and it's now very early morning the next day (or very very late that night if you'd prefer). I did make sure to mention in a previous chapter that had Chance known how to fly from the start, they could have likely cut the trip from the hive to Canterlot to a single day. It probably wouldn't really be possible, to be honest, but it's not so big a stretch as to be impossible to suspend one's disbelief over the matter, I hope.
That's enough rambling for this chapter. Coming up next (eventually), we have war.
In a way Chance is Chryssie's grandkid. Visage's and Victor's foal. 'She looks like her mother but is more like her father'.
Jade's plan for killing Pupa is a tad weak, but it's advantages do outweight the disadvantages. One thing I have to wonder... Would a competent hive fully believe it? It's one thing for a pony to kill a changeling prince, but the Princess herself? She's had centuries to establish and solidify her personality. Might seem out of character... Still, decent plan.