Changing Times’ Notes: It should be apparent that I prefer to focus these stories on the good side of changelings rather than the bad. That does not change the fact that some changelings are deplorable beings. Some changelings will never learn, and will always be threats. Some changelings shall lurk in the shadows, waiting to strike, as long as they live.
While it does not delve into the darker side of the rabbit hole, this report humbly reminds me that we must be prepared—just in case the worst happens.
Training the Troops: A Report by Prince Morpheus of House Sicadia
Despite the lack of assassination attempts since Wyrman—or maybe because of them—I found myself taking certain measures to protect Twilight during those times that Hera and I couldn’t be there. Twilight might not need saving in the traditional sense, but Wyrman had shown even she could be caught by surprise. Our primary concern was limited to finding such an attack before it happened so that she or her friends might have a chance to steal the initiative.
That is, of course, assuming they didn’t get blindsided by any acts of desperation again. Ve are still somewhat perplexed over how Twilight did such a good job unmasking Wyrman only to be caught unawares by his suicide gamble.
Cornered rats are capable of many things, after all.
Regardless, the first step I had taken was to order Spi to discreetly tail Twilight much like Hera tailed me. Alas, one watcher did not catch anything, and in time my paranoia returned. After some debate, ve decided to add Wyrman to this duty as well, and still, noling was found.
Thus it was, that I decided even more of a watchful eye was needed, but had I had no more infiltrators with me to help. Ve could have ordered several more to Ponyville, of course, but the most unexpectedly dastardly scheme came to us a few nights before our trip to the Crystal Empire.
Ve had spent the time beforehoof preparing to put it into motion, and—after the brief blip that was the Empire—I returned ready to make a potentially game changing move.
It was just before dawn, but ve were not surprised by the fact that Rainbow Dash was not within her home. There had only been a minuscule chance of finding her there, and I had only stopped by there as it was on the way to Applejack’s. Just in case, ve wanted to cover all our bases. As it was, Dash would likely either be at AJ’s or the farmer would know where her marefriend was.
My wings buzzed quietly as I—or rather Snow Flurry—lumbered through the air. To those below, I was naught but a pudgy, smiling, razzmatazz, pegasus, and ve liked it that way. Snow was a much less known face of mine, and ve did not want to attract the attention of any agents that might be lurking in Ponyville.
The winds carried me over Sweet Apple Acres, and as I landed in front of the homestead, I once more had to push my way through the miasma that formed from generations’ worth of Apple family love.
Knocking on the door, I shifted out of disguise and waited until the door opened to the familiar face of a gentle red giant. He stared at me—our usual wordless greetings passing between us—until he arched a brow.
“RD or mah sis?” He fiddled with the piece of hay he had stuck between his lips.
“Both, please.” I smiled.
“You in trouble?”
“Not exactly.”
“Better stay that way.”
“You have my word.”
He scrutinized me for a few more moments before turning to bellow up the stairs. “Sis! RD! You two got company!” He nodded to me and waved me inside. “Care for breakfast?”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Big Mac pulled another chair from the living room into the kitchen. “Ain’t imposing if Ah ask.”
Biting my chops, I hesitantly nodded. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind an apple or two. Nothing heavy—for me or the girls—although a big lunch would be nice. I don’t want them getting cramps mid-training, but they’ll deserve a reward after what I’m planning to do to them today.”
“Training?” The stallion tilted his head by the tiniest of margins. “Sis didn’t mention no training.”
I ran a hoof through my mane. “Yeah… she doesn’t exactly know about it. Don’t worry, though. The Echo triplets should be here soon to cover for her chores.”
“Ain’t the chores Ah’m worried about.” Big Mac snorted.
“What’s that about chores, Mac?” A scuffled looking Applejack came in with an equally scuffled Rainbow Dash. Based on the extra salty tang to Rainbow Dash’s scent, they had just had a rather… exciting night. The damp manes and coats suggested a rushed shower, but, even with that, there was a leftover hint of leather to their emotions.
“You don’t have any today.” For the sake of politeness, I pretended I couldn’t taste the leather in their apple pancakes. “The Echo triplets are taking your work for the day, AJ, while you and Dash come with me.”
“To do what?” Applejack arched her brow. “No offense, sugarcube, but ah ain’t gonna drop everything willy-nilly for you.”
I glanced between everypony, thoughts whirling. “Pinkie Promise not to tell?”
That earned a glare from Applejack and Rainbow. “Ah’d say we’re all plenty trustworthy enough to not need one.”
Big Mac simply whistled as he went from cabinet to cabinet, tossing me two apples and throwing together what appeared to be a light apple and walnut salad for Dash and AJ.
“Fair enough.” I shrugged. “It was a rather dirty move to invoke the Enigma, but ve need you to understand this must stay between us.”
I looked in the direction of Castle where Twilight was most assuredly sleeping off yet another study binge. “Ve do not trust the idea that Mother is running interference on the assassins meant for Twilight and me. Even if she is, she is liable to stop at any point in time simply to test my own capabilities. As such, Spi and Wyrman have already been assigned to tail her like Hera does me.”
Turning my gaze back to Applejack and Rainbow Dash, I made sure to look them in the eyes. “That is not enough, however. Any changeling worth their salt invests in backup plans and redundancies. Ve believe that teaching you two the arts of tremor sense and wind sense—as well as some combat techniques—will add an unexpected and potentially unpredictable element to Twilight’s defense.”
“Does Twilight know she has a couple of stalkers?” Rainbow ruffled her wings and pretended to preen a feather to hide her agitation.
“No, she doesn’t, because I just know Twilight would be uncomfortable with the knowledge that she had a guard.” I flicked my wings. “Also, I can still taste your annoyance, Dash. Ve aren’t sure why you think you need to walk on eggshells around me recently, but I’d prefer you not try to hide it. Hive knows you didn’t have any problems being honest with your emotions when we first met.”
“I’m not annoyed! I was just worried that Twilight wouldn’t like it if she knew! Thanks for considering how she’d feel!” Rainbow’s preening intensified and I made sure to keep my gaze on Applejack.
The farmer looked at me with a casual-yet-calculating look that could give her brother a run for his money. “Ah’m sure she would, sugarcube, but ya should still tell her yer looking out for her.” She elbowed Rainbow. “And stop that! Yer making our guest mighty uncomfortable.”
Still whistling, Big Mac set the finished salads on the kitchen table. He arched an eyebrow at his sister, eyes shifting from her to me.
“Alright, alright.” Applejack sighed, slumping into her seat. “Big Mac is never going ta shut up about it if we don’t go with you. Still thinks we owe you for the concussion.” She pulled Rainbow into the chair beside her. “Just give us a moment ta scarf down break—”
There was a knock on the door, along with two quick message spells from the triplets. “We’re here. Can we seduce Macintosh, now?”
“—fast.” The farmer glared through the wall in the general direction of the door. “Ya mind getting that, Mac? They at least had the decency to knock before you sat down to.”
“I’ll get it.” I waved Big Mac towards his seat, set my apples on the table, and trotted into the hall. “It’s just the triplets, here for your chores.” Nothing else.
“Oh, and Rainbow!” I called over my shoulder. “I forgot to mention that you’re covered, too—not that you’d have much to do on such a bright, sunny, day, but Webber is coordinating things in your absence.” Trotting to the door, I opened it expecting to find the Echo triplets pulling out all the seduction stops.
“Howdy, y’all!”
Instead, a sea of orange and freckles met me as I opened the door.
“Not what ya were all expecting, Mah Lord?” The middle Applejack drawled
“Or is it exactly what ya wanted?” The outer two Applejacks giggled.
I stopped to stare so ve might take stock of the situation. “Ve assume you know better than to seduce Big Mac, then?”
“We had you going for a second, though, didn’t we?” There was a chorus of laughs.
“Yes, yes you did….” I sighed, massaging the bridge of my snout. “Although, ve shudder at the thought of what you were planning to do if Big Mac or Applejack opened the door. Just… just stay on the porch here until Big Mac comes to get you, then. And no playing jokes on him!”
Closing the door, I projected sweet reassurances through the door. They had tried not to show it, but I could taste the slightly sour undercurrent of their anxiety. Pranking a lord was completely unheard of back at the hive. Doing so, even here at an isolated location, must have taken a lot of their nerve.
I walked back into the kitchen and sat down. “They’ll be waiting for you on the porch, Mac.”
The stallion chewed and swallowed his mouthful of salad ponderously. “Eeyup.”
“Also—” I squirmed. “—please don’t get mad if they try to seduce you. I mean, they told me they were just joking, but they’re harvesters, so…” I bit into one of the apples I’d left behind and deposited the other in my corbiculae.
Big Mac took another bite, forestalling his answer once more. “Eeyup.”
“Yes you will? Or yes you won’t?”
Crunch. Chew. Swallow. “No reason to get mad, is there?”
“Harvesters can be a bit…” Ve hesitated. “...overwhelming when they set their sights on somepony like that.”
Finishing the last of his salad, Big Mac stood. Slowly collecting everypony’s bowls, he put them in the sink before tightening his yoke. “Can’t be any worse than the rest of Ponyville.”
“Both mares and stallions, regardless of which way their wind blows.” Rainbow waggled her eyebrows until Applejack slugged her in the shoulder.
“Ow!” She rubbed her shoulder and pouted in mock pain. “Like his chiseled abs hold a candle to your buns of steel.” She pecked her marefriend on the cheek. “Besides, he snores almost as loud as you do.”
Big Mac gave a rumbling sigh as he opened the window beside him with a practiced movement—approximatly a quarter of a second after Rainbow’s comment. It was almost too slow for Rainbow’s equally quick exit, but far faster than AJ could wind up her lasso. The entire scene—not even a full second in length—had been so in synch that one could easily think it was staged.
At least, ve had the first time I’d seen it.
With measured patience, Applejack lowered her lasso and sighed. “Ya know, if Ah just took a step to the left—”
A rainbow blur rushed back in and out, leaving a feather in Applejack’s mane.
“—Ah could trip her up when she does that? Ah love that gal, but she’s as predictable as the weather sometimes.”
I bit into the last of my apple, levitating the core into the garbage. “I would agree, but the saying kind of loses meaning when we’re right next to the Everfree, doesn’t it?”
“Nope.” Applejack plucked the feather free so she could bind it more securely with the band in her mane. “Living by the Everfree makes the saying just right.”
I thrummed. “Wise words, if ve’ve ever heard them.”
Applejack and Rainbow Dash were failing their first test rather horrendously.
Hera, Wyrman, and Lyra had been following us deeper and deeper into Whitetail Woods for the last fifteen minutes, and they hadn’t noticed yet—not even Lyra, who acted more pony than changeling and was only a harvester. Admittedly, ve had expected as much, but I had thought that maybe—just maybe—they would surprise us.
Levitating my map in front of me, I discreetly hid my message spell. “It’s a wash. Move in.”
A sudden, shrieking, buzz pierced the air as the ‘bear’ that had been lurking near us since we entered the woods burst into emerald flames. Applejack cringed at the auditory assault, while Rainbow outright collapsed. I, myself, knew it was coming, and I barely managed not to follow Applejack’s lead.
Hera leapt from the flames, a hulking behemoth of chitin and muscle. Charging the disoriented Applejack, she quickly pinned the farmer beneath her before she could gain any kind of leverage.
I tsked at the display. “Lesson one: expect the unexpected. Even changeling warriors—blunt and to the point as they are—will attempt to utilize any advantage they can.”
Hera ceased rubbing her wings together to make that hive-forsaken, unearthly, chirp, letting Applejack and Rainbow up. Her azure armor plates were thankfully devoid of their usual spikes—as I’d asked—but I could see she’d taken the initiative to repurpose them instead of removing them. Her ‘helmet’ now also ensconced her horn in a protective layer so thick that ve doubted anypony would be able to disrupt her spell casting with a mere flick to the horn. Even a buck to the head might not do it, depending on how many synthetic painkillers were pumping through her veins.
Saluting me, she ignored the glares coming from the two mares. “Lesson two: know your enemy, if possible. I was able to completely incapacitate Miss Dash—” a flash of heat and spice filled the air before she could manage a filter “—by utilizing her sensitivity to the wind sense.”
“Not cool, dude.” Rainbow rubbed at her ears with her hooves.
Hera hissed out a deep, echoing, thrumm, and I hastily interjected myself between them.
“Ladies. Ladies.” I tried to wave away their aggression. “No need to fight between lessons. You’ll be doing enough of that during class.” I smiled apologetically at AJ and Dash. “Don’t worry, though. When we’re done with you, you should be able to beat Hera seven times out of ten.”
Hera tsked, and I glared at her. “You know you can’t make up for their raw magical strength. Now lighten up before you go making enemies with the two Elements that took the longest for me to placate.”
The warrior bowed her head, suitably humbled, and stood off to the side behind me. Staring stoically into the distance, she dutifully waited for orders—probably simmering beneath her facade.
I shook my head and sighed at the sight of her standing stiff as a rock. This whole thing might send my progress with Hera back a few steps. Still, there wasn’t much I could do about that other than silently try to placate Hera with my dry, lemony-sweet, concerns.
I turned back to Applejack and Rainbow as I continued to silently sooth Hera. “Now I understand you two are agitated from those tests, but I needed to see where I had to begin.”
I gazed around the remnants of their battlefield, although calling it that was generous. “To put it bluntly, I’ve got my work cut out for me with you two, but, if you stick with me, it’ll be worth it. Once you know all the tricks we can throw at you, then you’ll be prepared to handle them, and you should easily be able to overwhelm any threats to Twilight or yourselves.”
I closed my eyes to thrum in thought. “Not only that, but you’ll be able to find said threats to Twilight and yourselves—which is honestly more important. With her kind of power, Twilight could probably handle an entire legion of changelings on her own, as long as she isn’t caught off guard. With her lack of fine control over her pegasus and earth pony magic, though, I can’t teach her the easiest ways to catch the kind of threats she really needs to be aware of.”
“Tests?” Rainbow looked around as Applejack silently arched an eyebrow at me. “As in, more than one? Are the woods completely full of changelings ready to jump out at us or something? Cuz that would be awesome!”
“The first test was if you noticed Hera.” I pulled out a checklist—encrypted with a basic cypher in case Rainbow tried to sneak a peak—and made a show of going over it. “The second was if you could take Hera. Unfortunately, it seems the changelings you faced at Canterlot were nothing but some of Mother’s conscripts. Ve had thought that maybe Mother had deemed you a high enough threat to merit her elite troops, but both she and her ego must have underestimated you.”
I tsked. “Regardless, more tests will be coming, but first I must teach you two the arts of tremorsense and wind sense. You two are simply at too much of a disadvantage without it, considering how easily Hera was making it for you two to notice her. She ambled into view no less than twenty-seven times as the exact same bear, and you didn’t once get suspicious.”
Walking around the two, I stopped behind Rainbow and poked her. “Wings out! Feel the wind in your feathers, and tell me what it whispers to you.”
“Uhh… Mo? This is a forest. Wind doesn’t really reach this deep.” There was a small whip crack as Rainbow flicked her tail at me, but she nonetheless spread her wings.
“The wind is just a metaphor.” I chuckled. “All of the atmosphere—the very air itself—is constantly speaking to you, much like the earth constantly speaks to Applejack. Normally with ponies, the conversation is one way, but you’ve proven you have what it takes to listen to the wind, Dash.”
With a flick of my wings, I crafted a small breeze, and sent a message through the air such that it avoided Rainbow’s ears yet traveled over her wings. “Ve’re confident both you and Applejack will learn to attune to your respective elements. Now, tell me what the wind says!”
Rainbow fidgeted for exactly ten seconds flat. “I don’t know, alright! How the hay do you listen to wind?! Can’t we just fight changelings?”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Have ya tried actually listening, hon? Ah’m pretty sure a little patience might go a long way.”
“Urgh….” Rainbow rolled her shoulders slowly and arduously—the weight of immeasurable boredom on her back. “It’s so boring to just stand here with my wings out, though. I used to hate when the teachers at flight camp did exercises like this.”
Okay, then…. Clearly, ve needed to reevaluate the traditional plan of approach. Infiltrator training probably wasn’t going to work with somepony who had the attention span of a filly. Perhaps something more nymph level was needed.
“Just try, Rainbow.” I was, thankfully, behind the pegasus still, so she didn’t see me baring my fangs in a predatory grin.
Applejack did, though, and she raised her eyebrow once more, but didn’t actually say anything. Rainbow fidgeted as she futilely tried to listen, and I counted to ten in my head. Just before the ten second mark, I twisted the breeze I was maintaining so that it blew past her ears.
“What was that?!” Her ears attempted to violently swat the air repeatedly.
“You tell me.” My grin threatened to decapitate me as I changed the message on the wind, staggering it such that she had to concentrate on multiple passes to catch it all. Ten seconds later, I sent the breeze past her ears again.
“Eye.” Rainbow’s neck was taut, and her wings were flared. “Ma. Moor. On.”
“You’re almost there!” I buzzed excitedly. “You just need to use your wings to read everything at once! Make the wind do your bidding!”
Rainbow’s temple throbbed as her she suddenly stopped fidgeting. Her feathers twitched in a manner far more cohesive and organized than before before she opened her mouth to scream in victory.
“I’m a moron!”
There was a moment of silence before I began to cackle. Rainbow soon joined me in laughing, and even Applejack couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Oh, I’m so getting you for that.” Rainbow slugged me in the shoulder.
“It worked didn’t it?” I bared my fangs in a grin and sent forth another breeze.
Her wings twitched and she blushed slightly. “How the hay do you know— What do you mean, ‘Castle is always watching?!’” Her wings flared, and her blush deepened—the taste of rubber fading into leather.
“Umm… Rainbow?” I chittered nervously. “I didn’t say anything about Castle.” Several messages to the watching Spi and Lyra—as well as a glance at the still stock still Hera—informed me that they hadn’t been involved.
Rainbow’s wings twitched again, and she rolled her eyes. “Sure, you didn’t—like how you didn’t just make a fat joke. Quit being immature! You’ve made your point already!”
Twitch.
“Oh, real nice. I bet you say that to all the girls in your ‘secret harem’ the papers are always going on about. You should know I don’t—”
Twitcha-twitch.
“Hey! I can use my shower head however I want, and I don’t appreciate you implying—”
Twitchity-twitch.
“I had to get the whipped cream out somehow! So what if it happened to—“
Twitch. Twitch. Twitch.
“Argh!”
There was a smacking sound as a wing hit my face.
Twitch. Twitch. Twitch.
“Rainbow!” Applejack stomped a hoof. “What in the hay is wrong with you?! Didn’t you just hear what Morpheus had to say?”
Rainbow sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. “The wind was kind of distracting me. I’m guessing the fact that the laughter is still going on means that you stopped a while ago?”
“Yes.” I tentatively checked my cheek for cracks. “ I stopped after I first got you to listen. If you had bothered listening to me and not the wind past that point, you would have realized that. That brings us to the next lesson, however. Lesson three: the wind can be an enormous ass. You must learn to filter the useful info from the drivel.”
“Please let me beat her to a pulp for hitting you.” There was a piteous whine from Hera’s wings, and her composure momentarily broke. As she shifted weight from one hoof to the other, I could see her straining muscles in anticipation of a pounce she had to have known would never come.
“She just assaulted you again, and you’re just… just… argh!” With a vicious buzz and a hiss at Rainbow, she wordlessly expressed her thoughts on what I was doing before I sensed an even stronger filter clamp down over her—an emotional void in the world. Her distrust was the only emotion I could pick up from her—an extra bitter glare directed towards Rainbow as she forced herself back into a statuesque salute.
“Woah. Somepony needs a chill pill.” Rainbow began to hover around Hera, poking at her for a reaction. “Seriously, what’s your deal with me. You never lashed out before.”
“Hera is the epitome of discipline when she needs to be.” I tsked as I felt a small crack. “You haven’t seen her like this before because she usually bottles up her issues with you when you’re near. She does, however, take issue with how you treated me when I first arrived.”
Pulling some carapace cement from my corbiculae, I began to treat the mostly superficial wound. “Ve had assumed she would show just as much discipline here, but ve suppose the chance to vent on you in controlled conditions is causing her to slip.”
Grabbing Rainbow with my telekinesis, I dragged her away from the increasingly bitter and now blistering air around my loyal guard. “Also, stop that. You’re only making things worse. Hera needs to come to terms with you at her own pace, not with you trying to force a chill pill down her throat. Poking at her is liable to cause a repeat—albeit a reversed repeat—of what happened between you and me, and I’d rather avoid hospitalizing either of you with a concussion or worse.”
Definitely worse given Hera’s current state. That wing slap Rainbow gave me had to have been hard to leave a crack. Letting Hera see that was equivalent to poking an already angry wasp nest.
An enormous and enraged wasp nest with a queen the size of a small bear.
“Now, keep this pose and tell me everything the wind says to you, word for word! Ve’re sure you’ll eventually here about some of the… guests and presents I had scattered throughout the forest for today. Learn what that feels like so you can tune out the unimportant stuff.”
Still holding Rainbow in my telekinesis, I set her in a sturdy stance and forced her wings open just like those exercises from flight camp she hated so much. Sure, it was petty, and I felt a little guilty doing it, but I wanted to make sure Hera saw she wasn’t alone. I wouldn’t put up with antagonization from either her nor Rainbow while we were training.
“Eurgh….” Rainbow tried and failed to hold the pose.
I corrected her.
Several times.
“Now, Applejack.” I turned most of my attention to the thankfully level headed-farmer. She was being far more patient than ve had any right to expect. “I’m sorry for taking so long to get to you. Have you ever heard the earth speak to you? Ve don’t expect a yes, but I want to cover all the options. It’s an extremely rare talent among the hive, but working on your farm showed me just how differently we use our earth pony magic. For all ve know, what’s exceedingly rare for us might just be part and parcel for powerful earth ponies.”
“Ah don’t think so, sugarcube?” The farmer rolled her shoulders and poked at the ground. “And before ya ask, no, Ah ain’t ever heard of any earth ponies like that either. Some of the really old rock farm families might be able to do that, but if they can they’ve kept that secret for a mighty long time. Still, might explain that Pairing Stone Pinkie’s family mentioned.”
Great. Yet another mystery to never ask the Pink Menace about. Maybe if ve sent an agent to talk to the rest of her family…
I shook my head before our musings on the Enigma got the best of me. “Oh well. It was a long shot, ve weren’t sure I would be able to help you with that, even with our knowledge on the matter. Our memories on the subject are… confusing…. Most don’t translate well to changelings incapable of the feat—like me. Probably for the best, though. From our understanding, just because someling can hear the earth doesn’t mean it will talk to them, nor will it tell them what they want. Wind may be mischievous, but it is malleable. Earth likes to be as stubborn and silent as a rock.”
Looking back at Rainbow, I corrected her stance—only mildly paying attention to all the mundane drivel her wind sense was feeding her. Mostly jokes or obscene observations. Every once in awhile she’d claim to hear laughing over some pegasus crashing. When I was sure she’d stay in position for more than five seconds, I turned back to Applejack.
“If listening to the earth is out, though, ve are almost positive ve can teach you how to actively use tremorsense. Ve are a little worried you might not be able to read it—given your raw magical strength and the amount of input you might get back—but ve will cross that bridge when we reach it.”
Setting myself into a wide stance, I nodded appreciatively as Applejack copied me without needing to be told.
“Do note: ve are going off of our memories—not mine. I am not comfortable enough with tremorsense to teach it to you.”
Applejack arched an eyebrow but nodded without complaint, and I closed my eyes as ve considered how to start. The lesson would be good for me as well with any luck.
“Now the first thing to do is learn how to make the pulse. Ve want you to focus on a point within your chest roughly where your heart is. Can you do that?
“Eeyup.” Her response was slow and measured.
“Good. Now slowly move that point down your foreleg to the tip of your hoof. When it gets there, bring it back, moving at the same steady speed you took it there. Repeat this cycle—this rhythm—until your foreleg starts to tingle. Tell me when that happens.”
“Eeyup.”
There were several minutes of nothing but Rainbow rattling off the latest town gossip as she picked up a breeze coming from Rarity.
“Try to keep your feathers still. If you just let them twitch at every little breeze, you’ll never learn to read the wind.” The harsh fractured buzz of Hera’s voice had me glancing at her worriedly for a moment, but the rigid emotionless discipline to her form assured me of her intentions.
Hera snorted. “If you keep your feathers rigid for a moment after the wind hits, you’ll get a sense of how it’s trying to shape your wings—and thus what kind of messages it’s giving you. Yes, that’s right. I said messages. You’re getting a bunch at once and just rattling off the small stuff. Figure out how to differentiate between different whispers of wind, and you can ignore the messages you don’t want so you can actually hear what you’re listening for.”
I tried to smile gratefully to the warrior for playing nice, but she was avoiding looking straight at me.
“Ah think Ah got it.”
I internally sighed, turning my smile to Applejack instead. She hesitantly accepted it with one of her own.
“What now?”
“Now,” I closed my eyes again, “I want you to extend that feeling across your body. Start by alternating which foreleg you send your focus down, and, when you get a good rhythm going doing that, move on to splitting your focus down both forelegs at once. When you master that, do the same for all four legs at once, and—if you can manage to do that before I check on you again—try and push that feeling beyond your hooves.”
Silence—relatively speaking—descended upon us once more. Going through the exercise myself, I let myself get lost in the tingly sensation of pulsing down first one foreleg then another. It was a lot harder than I remembered, and I kept accidentally sending full pulses down all four hooves into the earth out of habit.
I lacked finesse, and it bothered me much more than I liked.
Still, I at least had the control to split my attention with the exercise and Rainbow Dash. Hera was proving her mettle once more by giving tips and advice. I could still taste the heated, bitter, air around her, but now it was driven—focused by a steel funnel of resolve.
And then, there was a spike of various oranges and cotton candy—curiosity, surprise, and the euphoria of something new.
“Woah, nelly!”
Beyond our wildest expectations for the day, Applejack managed to consciously pulse her magic through the earth. There was a slight ripple beneath my hooves as the massive wave of Applejack’s magic managed to warp the very earth, and the rustling creak of trees filled the air as they shifted their boughs instinctively toward the epicenter of the blast.
Then the pulse came back, and I stumbled at the raw information that spilled into my hooves without me asking. I nearly fainted as images of miles worth of terrain flashed through our mind’s eye.
The trees shuddered, and the earth rumbled, and ve quailed at the thought of what teaching this to Twilight might involve.
Finally, as the pulse returned to its point of origin, Applejack bucked and reared, jumping away from the ground like it was lava. A pained and terrified whinny tore its way from her throat before she crashed into earth, unconscious.
Ve stared into the distance, stuck attempting to parse the massive wave of information that was overwhelming my senses. I was vaguely aware that Rainbow had broken her posture to rush to her marefriend’s side, and I only had to correct her posture once or twice before I became aware enough to realize that was not helping.
“Woah, nelly, indeed….” I rolled my shoulders methodically. There was a cracking sound as all my plates popped, and—once I was suitably sure I wouldn’t collapse—I released my stabilization rods from both my fetlock cavities and the ground.
Wait. I had grounded myself? I hadn’t even felt myself deploy those amid the rush of information.
Blinking my haw a time or two, ve finally finished processing all the critical data, and quickly shoved the rest to the side so I could take stock of the situation. A frantic Rainbow Dash was half-nudging, half-nuzzling a mumbling, comatose Applejack, while Hera stood eerily still. Both the warrior and the farmer were no doubt stuck in the same dilemma I had been in. Spi and Lyra—still in hiding—were probably in a similar boat.
“Well, then…. It’d be best for us to figure out a counter to… whatever that was.” I wobbily waved at Applejack only slightly aware that nopony—or ling—was paying attention. “And I think we can all agree that the next step is teaching Applejack finesse.”
There was a series of clicks, clacks, and a piteous whistling chirp as the statue known as Hera collapsed in a heap on the ground. “By the Azure Veil, I feel like I just lost a fight with a mountain….” She blinked several times, and hissed—the sour taste of spoiled milk suddenly curdling the air around her. “Morpheus? Morpheus?! I can’t see you, Morpheus! The influx won’t stop!”
“Lyra is similarly incapacitated. I have regained control.” Two messages came in from Spi, one after the other.
“Assist Lyra with parsing data.” I silently fired back a reply. “I’ll take Hera and Applejack.”
Stepping up to Hera, I crossed my horn with hers and gently probed for a private connection. She acquiesced, and ve were once more assaulted by the data Applejack had harvested. Poking through what my most loyal friend had and hadn’t parsed, ve realized she had accidentally skipped some info that needed to be handled before the process could be safely sidelined. With a small tweak, ve corrected the issue, and Hera hissed once more as her field of view switched back to our local little slice of the woods.
Helping her up, I gave her a small hug. “I need you to restrain Rainbow if she decides to resist when ve’re helping Applejack.
“Affirmative.” There was a stoic nod from the warrior—the most microscopic of smiles curving up the corners of her mouth.
“What’d you do to her, you jerk?!” I was unceremoniously pushed to the side by Hera as a rainbow bullet shot at us with a whip crack.
Hera faced Dash’s onslaught head-on: literally. She caught the pegasus’ blow on her heavily reinforced horn, first deflecting her to the side. As Rainbow passed her, she deftly caught the pegasus’ tail in her telekinesis, and redirected her once more—straight into the ground. Quickly jumping onto her target, she used her extra weight to pin and restrain Rainbow, and she turned the grief-stricken mares head towards me as I got up as fast I could to skitter over to Applejack.
“I’d just love to say ve knew better than to expect anything else from you, but that would be petty and unprofessional.” Hera hissed into her prisoner’s ear. “In the same vein, right now your anger is incredibly petty and unprofessional. I know how much it hurts to see the one you care for the most in pain, but you know better than to doubt your friend by now. See that? See him trying to help Applejack?!”
Rainbow gave a strangled snort that transitioned into a sob, breathing heavily as she watched us work our magic. The connection had been made, but was muddied, and Applejack’s thoughts were sluggish compared to our own as she futilely tried to weather the avalanche of information.
A mountain of information continued to fall on her as her mind ran in circles trying to escape it all. Thousands of pieces of irrelevant information bombarded her like pebbles as she had to sidestep boulder after boulder of the big stuff. She wasn’t even trying to read the information, and was merely instinctually passing it around in an eternal feedback loop—forcing us to go through the monumental task of parsing the entire package.
It took a good fifteen minutes to manage all the critical info—to build the superstructure that would house all the nitty-gritty—and, when ve did so, ve miserably realized ve were forced to continue, as it seemed pony minds couldn’t pause the influx once it began like changelings could.
Another hour passed with nopony moving. Rainbow had calmed and was quietly sniffling into Hera’s chest, while Applejack continued to mumble incoherently before me. Hera sat without complaint, thrumming a nameless tune to comfort her current charge.
At some point, Spi and Lyra had shown up to help—as had Webber and the Echo triplets, who claimed to have felt the wave of magic all the way in Ponyville.
In the end, we all had to parse a detailed survey of a twenty mile radius that included a good section of the woods and most of Ponyville. We had discovered two infiltrators tailing us—certainly long gone—five infiltrators still in Ponyville that weren’t known members of the Everfree Hive, thirteen harvesters that Lyra vouched for as either being from the Everfree or from a neutral third-party hive, and one fellow lord who was most likely Mother despite the oddity of the readings.
Applejack was now gently snoring, having curled right up under Rainbows wing after it had been deemed safe to let the pegasus go.
“I am so sorry, Rainbow Dash.” Hanging my head, I kicked at the ground. “Ve didn’t expect this as an outcome even in our wildest projections.”
Rainbow nuzzled her marefriend, brushing her lips against Applejack’s forehead. “If anything, I’m the one who should be apologizing, flyboy. If I’d just stopped to think for a moment.”
“Your reaction was natural.” Hera tsked. “Do not beat yourself up for it. Merely ensure you do better next time.”
“Urgh….” Rainbow’s wings twitched restlessly, causing Applejack to wrap her tail more tightly with Rainbow’s own. “Does there even have to be a next time?”
“Yes.” I sighed. “What you two did here today only convinced me that ve were right to start training you. The amount of information you both picked up was staggering in both range and depth, and it takes an extremely well fed changeling to be able to emulate what you both stumbled onto with minor training. If ve can just figure out how to teach you both control… or maybe just teach you how to redirect your magic to a group of changelings to parse everything for you…”
Rainbow reached over to her other wing to preen a few feathers. The few she plucked were carefully inserted into Applejack’s mane before she turned back to me. “Whatever…. If it’s for Twilight, I’ll do it, but make sure you come up with something so that this doesn’t happen again.”
“Of course.” I bowed my head once more. “If I had known just how much a difference there would be in the scale of what you two could collect, I would have done that sooner.”
“Rainbow?” Applejack stirred. “You there, hon?”
“I’m here AJ.” Rainbow leaned over to nuzzle her special somepony.
“Good. Do me a favor, then, and slap Morpheus like the varmint he is. The only pony allowed to make me feel anywhere near that good is you.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Do… Do you mean you…?”
“Not quite, sugarcube, but it was pretty darn close when that wave came back and knocked me nine ways to Sunday.”
“Mmrgmf…” Rainbow snerked, trying and failing to hold in her laughter. “I guess you— Ha! Ahahaha! I guess you could say that— Ahahahahahahahaha! I can’t even get the joke out! It’s too funny as it is! Celestia, I was so worried, AJ.” As the pegasus pulled her lover into an increasingly long, tongue-filled, kiss, everyling sans Hera and I decided it was high time to vacate the premises before the budding taste of leather overwhelmed the lemony concern in the air and progressed past the point of no return.
“Ahem.” I coughed politely.
They failed to break apart.
“Ahem!” I tried much louder this time.
They still failed to respond.
“Ahem!” Hera coughed with a deep thrumming buzz—finally netting the attention of the two lovebirds.
“Thank you for stopping in time.” I droned in a deadpan. “Now, since AJ’s finally conscious, I need to run one last check on her to make sure everything is all fine. If you’d please refrain jumping each other until then, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
“Killjoy.” Rainbow snorted, standing and shaking herself like a dog. “I guess you got a point, though. Want me to grab Zecora?”
“If you’d please.” I hovered over Applejack, poking and prodding her. “Ve should have fixed everything, but it’s not like ve’ve ever performed a procedure like this on a pony before. Another opinion would be nice.”
“Got it!” There was a sudden lack of Dash as she rocketed into the air.
“And come back to the farm when you find her!” I shook a hoof at the retreating Rainbow. “At least that way, you two will have a room when we’re done!”
