Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows


-38-

“I’m still mad that you sheared most of my mane off.” Cadence stated as she sent a glare in Chrysalis’s direction. “It doesn’t help that I’ve already figured out your ulterior motive for making me have this hairstyle for a whole year.”

“Oh, is there an ulterior motive?” Chrysalis took a seat herself at the table and Coco shied away from her towards Greta.

“Getting my hair trimmed for the most of the year would put food in the mouth of changelings. It was going to get out some time sooner or later; aside from love changelings can also eat two other things for sustenance.” The princess of love sent a flat look at the queen as she ran her hoof against the recently cut edges of her mane sadly. “One of which is hair.”

“Wait… they eat what!” Rarity couldn’t keep a horrified look off her face as she turned to the changeling queen, while putting her hoof to her mane as if to defend it from the scoundrel.

“Yes, aside from eating emotional love, they can also consume hair, fur or anything relative like it for sustenance.” It didn’t seem to bother Luna one bit. “It is a rather intriguing diet is it not? She discovered this when she incidentally ate lama hair, it was quite the interesting story.”

“Which is why my talent for being a hairstylist has become all that more useful after I discovered that in the recent year.” Here Chrysalis turned to Cadence who was still glaring a hole into her head. “Don’t worry; I didn’t eat your hair Cadence. I’m actually going to preserve it so I can have something to remember you by when I leave. Say, can a Changeling Queen get some food around here?”

“Of course, I’ll see if the maid Lovely Lengths would part with some of her mane for you while I go see about our Diamond Dog guest’s baked fish.” Nope it certainly didn’t bother Luna one bit as she set off from the room, but the other ponies certainly had looks on their faces as they turned towards Chrysalis.

“Wait, you’re leaving Equestria, who’s going to lead your people then?” Greta seemed more curious than freaked out by what Changelings could eat, not like she had much hair on her body aside from the fluffy tip of her lion based tail.

Rover didn’t seem to care one way or the other and was just wagging his tail at the thought of fish and food alongside having the ability to sit at a table with royalty. Coco was still leaning away from Chrysalis and Trapeze was just looking concerned as she shifted her hat over her pinned up mane slightly. Bernard also seems unaffected by the news and just stared blankly at Chrysalis before shrugging after a minute.

“I’m leaving a regent in my place, his name is Plentiful Thorax and I’m sure he’ll do a decent job of keeping my people in line.” Wool tasted perfectly fine from Chrysalis’s experience, but it wasn’t exactly delectable as pony hair. In fact it always came back to ponies for her, like she was targeting them as a food source out of habit. “I’m going to go exploring space to eventually find a planet for the first Changeling colony ever, preferably a warm one where we can raise lots of sheep for food. Wool is pretty easy to chew on.”

“I believe her ulterior motive is that she has me stuck with this particular hairstyle for a year, where all my trimmings to keep it like this will go to changelings.” Closing her eyes and sighing, Cadence opened them and looked to Chrysalis. “At least I can say that my hair isn’t going to waste, especially if it’s feeding hungry Changelings.”

“Okay, I give, that was my ulterior motive for the year long maintenance thing as a form of punishment for distracting Luna so much.” It was actually Chrysalis’s only motive for making Cadence go through an entire years worth of short haircuts aside from thinking the hairstyle would look good. “Besides you should be more focused on finding love for those who are looking for it.”

Cadence was miffed that they were still keeping up with that lie so well, but the fact that her punishment was an entire year of feeding changelings her mane trimmings made sense. She couldn’t say anything against it because she didn’t want Chrysalis to start talking about how she’d be taking food out of the mouths of the adorable little larval Changelings and it wasn’t that hard to live with. One year of this and she could have her long hair back in exchange for Celestia earning Chrysalis’s services on something really important.

“So are you the worst that has happened to Equestria in recent times Chrysalis?” It was Coco that broached that topic and the silenced the room quite thoroughly as they all turned to Chrysalis.

“Actually I believe the worse in recent history was Luna’s return from the moon two to three years back.” Answered a rather melancholy Cadence, she didn’t see Chrysalis as being the absolute worst thing to happen to Equestria. Even if the queen wouldn’t stop dropping hints at wanting them to be special friends, she wasn’t looking for a herd. Cadence’s wedding might have gone absolutely pear shaped thanks to Chrysalis, but no one was seriously injured by that incident of attempted forced marriage, aside from a lot of Changelings. Twilight thankfully solved that occasion by rescuing her brother who was magically disguised as Cadence.

“What happened exactly? I’ve noticed that nobody ever actually gave a straight answer in the news when it comes to Luna’s return.” Rarity would rather talk about this then get nightmares about Chrysalis pinning her down to rip off a chunk of her mane with those fangs.

“If I’m sexy and I know it, clap my hooves… oh I’m sorry, were we really going to go into how Luna almost doomed the world? That’s quite a boring tale.” Chrysalis seemed to know the truth of what happened upon Luna’s return, she clapped her hooves twice and had little else to entertain herself with as nobody was paying her any attention or were avoiding her gaze for some reason. “One of my Changelings was there to see it personally in action; her whole Nightmare Moon episode was caught by a Changeling named Frankly Pleasing.”

“It is best if I tell that story of what exactly happened that long night than by a third party witness. The return of Nightmare Moon was a hectic time, Twilight refused to leave my side for a moment the entire time it was going on. I didn’t know it would put us on the path of victory at the time, I was actually trying for a different strategy and Twilight certainly made a mess of things. The outcome turned out for the best however.” Celestia in all her pristine glory trotted into the room to see that they had guests, apparently Luna’s lunch party if she had any guesses as to who they were. Two of which were Rarity Belle and Greta Gollenfer from the train incident the other day, all these people were undoubtedly friends of the two. “I was meaning to ask Luna what she found out about those terrorists, but I guess that will have to wait until she arrives. Now onto the story, long ago, my sister was taken by a parasite of darkness called Nightmare and we lost our connection to the elements of harmony which we used to defeat Discord.”

“Did someone call my name?” A box of doughnut popped up and a Doughnut Discord popped the top of the box. He idly started to eat another doughnut next to him that started screaming in a horrific manner, after he finished Discord turned back to everyone. “Eat me, I’ll promise to go straight to your flanks like all good sugary foods are known to!”

“Ignoring that, I used what last amount of connection me and Luna still had to use the elements of harmony to seal her away for a thousand years. I lost my ability to be called the element of Magic as I had lost my friendship with Luna and she had lost her element of Loyalty as she broke our trust in one another thanks to that parasite Nightmare.”

“What other elements did the two of you have back then?” Rarity had heard plenty of stories about the elements of harmony, there were six in all, Magic, Honesty, Kindness, Laughter, Loyalty and an important one to Rarity which was Generosity. Celestia took a seat with everyone and smiled calmly at her interested look.

“I used to be the element of Magic, Kindness and Honesty. My sister used to embody Loyalty, Laughter and Generosity. Nightmare Moon came back and I was trying to start a plan to reinvigorate the elements of harmony, what I did not expect was for Twilight to cause so much trouble.” Rolling her eyes as she recalled what happened; Celestia started rubbing her face with her hooves. “Twilight my faithful… friend, wouldn’t leave my side for anything even after I ordered her to go make some friends and it was probably for the best that she didn’t. Let’s just say me and her took a journey together to the old castle me and Luna used to live at where we reinvigorated the elements of harmony, which in turn helped me save my sister from the encroaching darkness in her mind. For you see our lost elements of Loyalty and Magic came back to life in Twilight Sparkle.”

“Like I said before, it’s boring! Nightmare Moon attacked Twilight and Celestia several times throughout their travels through the Ever Free Forest because Celestia wouldn’t let Twilight go alone and Twilight refused to see to the plans for the summer sun celebration down in that quaint town.” Chrysalis interrupted with a bland tone of voice.

“Throughout our adventure to the castle we were attacked by Nightmare Moon various times as Chrysalis has already stated, to make a long story short the attacks incidentally helped reawakened the Laughter and Generosity within Luna.” Celestia certainly remembered that Luna helped save herself as much as she and Twilight did; Twilight’s loyalty to her and Luna now was certainly unquestionable. If only Twilight would actually get out more and make friends other than them. “Please do not ask my sister about the element of Laughter, she’s still confused as to why she still carries that particular element even though it is rather obvious to many. I think it mostly has to do with her entirely silly nature, even when she was consumed by darkness she was still acting absolutely silly as a true element of Laughter would. As for her Generosity, she was generous enough to let us reach the elements of harmony in the first place. It was thanks to her two elements still being in play that we were able to purify her and returned my lost sister to me. I had held onto Honesty thanks to finally telling Twilight what was going on after she asked me outright why this was all happening, my Kindness throughout the last thousand years was never in question as much as my element of Honesty was by being a politician. Being a politician has certainly helped me learn the difference between Honesty and the actual truth of things throughout the years. I still don’t like hurting others and that’s the only reason why Chrysalis won that fight against me when she caused trouble for Cadence’s wedding.”

“As such after hearing that it makes sense that Celestia is in love with Twilight and is in complete denial about it until I got them to actually go on a date during the gala.” The day of the gala was when Chrysalis was planning to launch a rather nasty surprise for Celestia in her spare time. She had plenty of time until the gala to get the right setup she needs going into it to fulfill Celestia’s need of her talents and pull off said surprise. Chrysalis just smiled as Celestia sent her a light glare. “Talk about kinky student teacher bonding, I know a good bondage shop you could use if you want to get all that much closer to each other.”

Celestia stood up and walked around table and slapped Chrysalis across the face, making the Changeling chuckled dementedly at the light amount of pain.

“Would you kindly stop pushing us together like that…” Celestia stated out loud before leaning in closer to whisper into the queens ear. “Where’s this shop that you know about? I might have need of it later.”

Chrysalis whispered something to Celestia and she nodded, before going back to her seat without a suspicious glance sent her way and Chrysalis was smiling like a crazy mare. She probably was a crazy mare so any line of thought involving the Changeling Queen was dropped rather fast.

“Yes, getting onto other topics. Can I do a small performance before the meal princess? You see, I and Bernard have been working on our act and I’m an acrobatic magician and he’s my stage partner.” Here Trapeze stood up and swept her hat off her head and bowed to the princess before placing a smiling fake rabbit back on her head and the hat was no longer in her hoof much to everyone’s confusion. “Okay, Bernard, what did you do with my hat?”

The Lagotorphin shrugged cheekily and smiled while looking away and started whistling innocently, she looked down towards the floor and then ducked under the table setting Bernard on it. Discord had decided to stop being a doughnut and just watched curiously. The meat eating rabbit mimic just reach his right paw into his mouth and down his throat and pulled, what came out was a handkerchief and he started drawing a large amount of them from his mouth until it started forming a circular pile of red, orange, yellow, blue, green, indigo and violet. Even Celestia was intrigued by this turn of events.

“I’m serious Bernard, stop performing tricks without me and tell me where my hat disappeared to?” Trapeze muttered from under the table as she got up and looked about; Bernard just ignored her and continued to pull a continuous chain of handkerchiefs out of his throat that was really piling up. “Fine, be that way, I’m checking the ceiling! This is what I get for not getting a real rabbit to perform with!”

What followed Trapeze’s angry muttering was an expert display of the mare climbing the wall to the ceiling where she proceeded to jump and flip about on very small ledges and she even checked each of the chandeliers while she was up there, the mare certainly wasn’t afraid of falling as she made incredible leaps and flips looking around up there. She was making it all look so effortless and being an acrobat probably meant that she had trained in parkour from an early age to even perform half those stunts she was doing in the rafters. Celestia looked like she would stand up at one point or another, instead she watched on in deep rooted curiosity.

Bernard with a tug finished pulling out the last violet colored handkerchief and let it settle on the small rainbow colored pile before him before he signaled Trapeze and let out a loud squeak. Trapeze expertly performed three flips as she swung and leapt off the chandelier and then bounced off the wall to slow her descent. Where she rolled several time and came to a stop at the table with her hooves slamming down on both sides of her partner and directing an angry glare into his eyes.

“Okay, where is it?” Trapeze asked sternly, Bernard calmly pointed to his pile of handkerchiefs. “That’s it I’m out here, since you can’t take the search for my beloved hat seriously!”

With that Trapeze stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her and Bernard squeaked after her, only he wilted at the slamming of the door. He somberly started to slowly gather his pile of handkerchiefs of to the side which unraveled to show that Trapeze’s hat had somehow gotten under the handkerchiefs sitting right side up. When he flipped it over to leap into it, Trapeze popped out of the brim with a smile and pulled Bernard into a tight hug surprising everyone.

“Aw you found my hat Bernard, I forgive you! Now let’s put up your handkerchief collection and do some real magic, what do you say?” Trapeze only received and eye roll from Bernard and he helped her scoop up the handkerchiefs and stuff it down into the hat while giving her an upset look. “Oh right you can’t talk my language! My bad, there, we’re even with upsetting one another now.”

Trapeze hopped the hat off the table and pulled the rest of her body out of it and flicked it up onto her head, and then Bernard hopped over to stand at her hooves, now everyone was really staring at her.

“Presenting, Trapeze Star and her lagotorphin partner and best friend Bernard Slashuhrough! Apparently Lagotorphins have vicious sounding last names or so I’ve heard.” With that both Bernard and Trapeze took a bow. “Now for our first trick we will now sit down and pretend that I didn’t lose my hat for a minute there!”

Trapeze took up her spot at the table and tried to look entirely nonchalant about the impromptu performance she just performed by looking off into space and Bernard silently pulled out a pack of cards from behind his back and started to play solitaire with them.

Celestia snorted and started laughing gaily, everyone else started doing so as well and even Rover got the joke and clapped for it. Discord was smiling brightly at the show and was rather impressed even if he could do those tricks himself easily enough, seeing an earth pony do it was what made it all the more special.

“What an amusing pair you two are. Oh, Lady Belle, I’ve been meaning to thank your sister for coordinating our people in catching the terrorists the other day.” Celestia paused when she saw Rarity’s look of confusion.

“What do you mean? I don’t think my sister was anywhere near that train wreck and I’m all the more thankful for it.” Rarity was a little worried Sweetie Belle had somehow gotten involved in that mess and she hadn’t seen her.

“So your sister is not Opalescence Belle?” Queried a confused Celestia, until Rarity got a look of understanding on her face and she brought a hoof up to her mouth.

“Actually, if anything, she’s my daughter considering I coded her myself. She’s an artificial intelligence.” Pulling out her data pad Rarity called up Opal and the response was immediate.

“What is Meowstress, did you get attacked by ninjas all of the sudden?” The voice of the Shining Jewels current system connected AI could be heard loud and clear; Opal sounded a little worried about Rarity.

“Opal, you have a seriously overactive imagination. I’m just calling to let you know I’m doing fine in Canterlot Castle with and I’m about to have a big lunch; I’m even getting the opportunity to meet all the princesses and the Changeling Queen. Also what’s this I hear about you coordinating Trap Bar’s crew?”

“Not just Trap Bar’s crew, but also the Wonder Bolts as well, it is rather strange that she sounds so lifelike.” Celestia didn’t think too hard on it and seeing Rarity turn the screen to her, she could see a pink hair cat looking back at her with a cheeky if slightly frightened. The digital cat gave her a small wave of one of her paws.

“Oh, er… hello there Celestia, Rarity really needed the help and I thank you for responding so quickly.” The poor cat on the screen started to become rather shy.

“I must thank you for organizing the rescue effort and giving my ponies the tactical data they needed.” Was Celestia’s simple answer, she was becoming quickly aware that Opal was more lifelike than she appeared. It just had to be a rampant AI, but she wasn’t going to do anything about it unless the AI became absolutely destructive. “You helped save many lives.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t me, that was all Gilda and Sassy’s doing.” Opal created a screen split into showing two different beings. One showed a griffon that was working on some kind of framework for a vehicle, the other showing an obviously injured pony in a med-bed who opened her eyes slightly to stare at Celestia. “Holy flipping lunacy, Sassy’s actually awake! Vera to Medical, oh wait but how would she see Vera if… I currently don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. Okay Gilda, you go to medical, Sassy needs a friendly present face to be there for her right now and you’re it until I can locate Vera again! I have a hard enough time remembering that she exists.”

Gilda looked up on the other screen with some sense of consternation and immediately, but carefully enough, dropped what she was doing and started flying. She wasn’t exactly the best for friendly faces, but she would do in a pinch.

“Sorry for the interruption princess, but we have Sassy on a month long recovery process and she’s had a bad history with med-beds that…” Started Opal only to be stopped when Celestia cleared her throat, the screen changed so that Opal was giving her some undivided attention.

“It’s alright, I understand clearly and I remember who she is. It has been a while since I’ve seen Sassy Saddles, tell me how she ended up in the med-bed in the first place when she’s so frightened of them?” Celestia was worried about one of her poor ponies.

“Yeah about that, she was involved in taking down the four gunships that knocked almost all the people on the train out with concussive missiles. She took some nasty hits from their material cannons and few other weapons in the course of destroying the jamming device. That she’s even awake right now is a miracle, but she’s not coming out until a month is over with and can be cleared medically. She shouldn’t even be awake with how many drugs she’s got in her at the moment.” Here Opal paused and her eyes twitched to the left and right slightly. “Her vitals are still quite strong; at least she isn’t panicking about where she is at the moment. In fact she wanted to be put into it of her own free will, which according to our crew’s psychologist, before I lost her location obviously, that is somewhat of a good breakthrough for her mentally.”

“I would imagine so if one fears med-beds after a horrible incident involving multiple counts of violent rape.” Celestia muttered somberly, before Luna walked into the dining room with a cheerful expression.

“Lunch will be served in a… what’s wrong?” Everyone turned to Luna who looked confused.

“Nothing is wrong, just someone needing the comfort of a physical friendly face up here and not a digital one like mine.” Opal was prepared to disappear from the screen and she did so after she finished talking. “I’ll get back to you later Rarity, things are alright up here and thanks for checking in. Please don’t get into any more danger when I’m not looking.”

“Well I suppose that’s that.” Rarity stowed her data pad away and turned to Luna. “You were saying Princess Luna?”

“Lunch is ready, it will be set out in a moment so everyone prepare you’re stomachs for a most wondrous feast!” Luna stated jovially now that she was certain that nothing was wrong.

-

Gilda just looked down at Sassy and calmly placed a claw against the lid; the mare strapped into the med-bed smiled up at her and became more serene in appearance as her eyes drooped a bit. It left Gilda feeling a bit awkward as she tried to return to the smile, smiling wasn’t something she particularly was good at.

When Sassy barely opened her eyes again, she saw Vera and Opal were also looking down upon her now and she knew she was safe in their hooves, claws and whatever else a digital cat could have.

“Do you think she can hear us?” Gilda asked to the ceiling.

“I’m sure she can, though it’s hard to tell.” Vera looked rather happy since she was giving Sassy a bright smile and of course had a drone pointing at her like usual. “We just have to be here for her to let her know that she’s safe.”

“Yeah, well, you can do that, I’m going back to work. I’ve been here for her long enough and I’ve got stuff to build!” Despite her grumpy demeanor and the way she started to stalk off, Gilda stopped and turns back to Sassy. “Get better soon alright? Nobody on this crew is going to die if I can do anything about it.”

Sassy blankly nodded, almost like she could understand what was going on around her, which shouldn’t be possible considering all the drugs she had in her at the moment.

-

“Lunch is going rather well, wouldn’t you say sister?” Happy to be sharing it with new friends Luna continued her merry eating, it was here that Rarity learned that Alicorns could eat their own weight in food and Luna in particular didn’t care much for table manners.

“Yes, provided no one looks in Chrysalis’s direction.” It wasn’t that sickening an act to watch, but Celestia still wouldn’t like a Changeling eating her mane.

“My compliments and thanks to the mare that let me have a chunk of her mane as food.” Chrysalis picked up some blonde hair and put it in her mouth and started chewing, after she swallowed she added. “Her hair is positively delicious.”

“I’ll be sure to let Lovely Lengths know that you find her hair most agreeable.” Luna continued to eat her fried potato sticks.

“Speaking of letting us know stuff, who’s that mare?” Celestia pointed out to Cadence.

“It’s me Celestia… do I really look that different?” Yeah Cadence did look really different; Celestia accepted that revelation rather quickly and had expected something like this.

“Well then, I kind of saw something like this coming, though platinum blonde? I was expecting Chrysalis to do worse to you, but a whole year like that. It’s not too bad.” After Celestia addressed Cadence she turned to Luna. “Luna I think it’s time to talk about the terrorists we captured, what did you find out from their sleep?”

“Are you sure we should talk about such in front of our guests?” Luna tilted her head to the guests she was entertaining for lunch, Rover in particular was enjoying his fish and lacked table manners entirely compared to Luna. Receiving a nod, Luna accepted that and decided to drop what little she managed to pull from the terrorists after their little torture session with Chrysalis. Their nightmares were quite involved when it came to the Changeling Queen. One even had platypus venom covered needles being used in acupuncture as a nightmare that Luna thought was a little over the top in its ridiculousness, where would one even get that many duck beavers loaded with poison from anyway? It was hard enough to milk a platypus, considering they were most poisonous during mating season and you didn’t want to go near one during that time of year. “About all I got was that they are planning something big and that they are part of an organization that’s called ‘The Hands of Midas’. Only there has been no one named Midas on this planet and I’ve looked it up, there aren't even any legends or anything mentioning a name like that.”

“Well at least I know what to have my Changelings looking out for now, aside from keeping an eye out for the Caballeron Cabal in the lower districts and those golden hand symbols. Hopefully the Mauve Mare-auder, or Mare-Do-Well as they’ve been calling her, will stir something up so that we aren’t totally blindsided.” Chrysalis took another thick portion of hair into her mouth and finished that off before continuing. “I bet this organization is the one that’s going to start causing trouble for us and it’ll be the one we have to look out for, I’ll get to it after I spend the rest of the day with my hostage… I mean friend. Yep, nothing better than a good friend to spend time with. After today no one will be seeing too much of me as I’ve got business to attend to.”

“Why am I not reassured as to what the rest of this day will entail for me?” Cadence had to wonder, what else Chrysalis could possibly do to her today.