Life of a Wanted Changeling Season 4: At Luck's End (Comment Driven Story)

by BrownDog77


Episode 5: Of Public Transport and Shopping Malls

As your counterpart begrudgingly drags himself off the dusty couch, complaining the whole time, you frown a bit in disappointment.

Kersey475’s Comment

Dear Luna, was I ever this stupid and lazy? you think in annoyance.

Well….Selena trails off.

Wait really? You groan offput.

I’m just being honest. I believe in the early days of our adventure you were, but fatherhood forced maturity and responsibility on you for the better.

Perhaps you should make this drunk adopt a child of his own,Sombra snickers.

Oi! Things are complicated enough already! Besides, this guy doesn’t have powers or helpful mares in his head to keep a kid safe, so no thank you. Turning to B2 you say,

“Enough grumbling, it’s just shopping.”

“Buddy, I was drinking all night. I haven’t slept a wink since yesterday, the last ten years have been flashing through my head, and I’m talking to an alternate universe version of myself who claims he’s from some magical pony land. Give me a break.”

“Well…You can sleep later. Shopping time is now so that we can ensure you even have a future,” you declare and start walking. Rolling his eyes, he reluctantly follows you as you both head out through a back entrance.

No need to advertise where we’re staying, you think as you shut the door.

“Alright, where to?” you ask your slowly sobering up other self. He puts a hand up to his scruffy orange chin and contemplates for a second.

AllenNoir’s Comment: I would suggest going to good will or a surplus stor it will save money and you never really know what you might find there from week to week.

“Well there’s a Goodwill down by the liquor store. They usually got good cheap clothes,” he answers.

“Yeah…I’m guessing that’s some sort of second hand or surplus store by the sound of it, but let’s stay away from anything close to booze for now,” you shut down his idea causing him to frown.

“I ain’t got a problem!” he demands.

“Uh-uh,” you say unconvinced. “But we need more than just clothes, we need food and heck, we can even look for tech for me. Any stores like that?”

“Well, there is the mall, they got a bunch of stuff there, but that’s north of the tracks, clear on up in the rich folk part of town.”

“Well we have your weird green paper money now, so maybe no one will notice if we’re rich or not,” you surmise causing your counterpart to concede, thinking it’s a good point.

“Well alright then. Might want to take the bus though, it’s pretty far.”

8bitmadness’s Comment

"Wait, what's a bus?" you ask in confusion.

He gives you a look as if you’re joking but then his eyes enlighten in understanding.

"Right, right…Pony alternate universe. Guess you being a horse you wouldn’t need one.”

“I’m actually not a pony…well not completely. I’m more changeling, but I do have pony in my blood,” you admit.

“You’re a what now?” he says taken aback.

“A Changeling,” you repeat.

“What the hell’s a changeling?”

“Uh…” you contemplate how to answer that question. “I’ll tell you that later. It’s not an easy answer.” He stares at you for a moment before shrugging.

“Whatever. Anyway, you see them gas guzzler’s racing down the road, not obeying the speed limit,” he points to the metallic carriages on the black roadway.

“Yeah,” you answer as one zips by.

“A bus is kinda like those, only much bigger. People pay to get on and they take you where you need to go much faster than walking can.”

“Huh, neat. Well if you think it’s best, let’s try it.”

On the Bus

“AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!” you scream as the scenery outside the gross smelling interior whizzes by at super sonic speeds.

“There’s no track! This is way too fast! I just sat in some gum! Why are the floors sticky?! What's that smell?! WAY TOO FAST!!! WE’RE GONNA BUCKING DIE!!!”

“Dude, sit down! We’re only going like 45 miles per hour. Everyone’s staring,” B2 implores. Turning around on your smelly and sticky seat, you see other humans looking at you with strange looks.

“AAAAAHHHHHH!!!” you yell as the realization that you are stuck inside a hurtling hunk of metal with horrendous creatures strikes you. Your doppelganger just shakes his head.

Later

“I saw my life flashing before my eyes…I don’t wanna go fast anymore…I don’t want to Sonic!” you whimper.

“Jeeze man, I didn’t think you’d freak out that much.”

Indeed Bugze, you’ve driven derby carts, and been on trains at high speeds before.

“My derby racer never reached those speeds, and a train at least doesn’t wobble side to side, or have gross disgusting humans on board!”

B2 just shakes his head at your outburst and places a hand to his head.

“You’re aggravating my hangover man, can you stop yelling? Besides, if you hate lots of people in one spot, you’re not gonna like this,” he says as you both step through the doors of a very large group of interconnected buildings. When you get inside, your traumatizing experience on the bus fades somewhat.

You walk into the mall alongside your counterpart, staring in awe at all of the shop signs. The aroma of different foods hits your weird small nose, and the many glass windows displaying human clothes, and things you don’t even know. And that’s not all, there is a complete second story to this place with humans walking along open paths above you. After a minute or so, you decide to break the silence, though it's not so quiet with all the other humans milling about.

"So, this is basically a large multi level market, right?" you ask.

"That's what a mall is, yes," B2 replies. The both of you begin walking down the main hall of the mall, taking in the sights, although a few people give you and your counterpart strange looks.

"Okay, so what was on the to buy list again?” you ask. He turns to look at you.

“List? We didn’t make any list. You just said we needed to buy clothes.”

“Oh…well what clothes do we get? I’m not the best when it comes to fashion and stuff.”

“What, and you think I am?” He snorts.

“Well at least you’re used to these weird shaped rags,” you complain and tug at your clothes.

“Alright, alright,” he concedes. “If we’re gonna try to get jobs, we want work clothes and boots. A phone would be nice too. Last one I had ended up in some pawn shop.”

“Phone? What, do you just want to set up shop with a rotary or something?”

“Really?” he asks back at your naivete. “Jeeze, how does your world function? Do you have any tech besides trains?”

“Hey, we have TV and video games!” you defend. “I’ve yet to see that in this crazy place.”

He deadpans and nonchalantly points behind you at a video game store, and you see rows and rows of alien, yet nearly similar games to the one’s back home.

“…You win this round,” you concede. “Alright fine, we’ll get those clothes, and our own telephone. And maybe we should get whatever it is a lot of these humans are looking at while they’re walking.”

You point to several humans who are tip tapping and looking down at something that is far too small to be a Joy Boy. Whatever it is, it’s new and might be beneficial to your quest. B2 gives you a smirk you can’t quite read after you say this and chuckles, gesturing you to follow him.

“We’ll hit the clothes store first."

As you follow, you pass by a particularly interesting store.


"Huh, Narnes and Boble," You comment. Underneath the sign in smaller writing, it says COPYRIGHT AVOIDANCE HOOOO!

You look at the smaller text with a raised eyebrow and just shrug and look inside. And what you see is,


“Holy Guacamole, that’s a lot of books.” Sparkle’s library would be jealous at the amount of literature inside this building. Heck, it’s reaching upwards to Crystal Empire Library levels of tomes.

"You sure you wanna go into a book store? We’re gonna be crashing at a library after all,” B2 asks inquisitively.

"Yeah, but for the first time in my life, I actually feel the urge to... read." You respond.


Bugze, are you absolutely sure you're okay? You've been acting strange since we got here.

"I'm fine Selena, trust me," you say aloud.

"Who is…Oh, you talking to the voices in your head?" Your counterpart probes.

"Yep. I'm going to browse inside for a bit. Go get those clothes and whatnot, we’ll be the same size, then meet me at the fountain at what appears to be a food court. That one over there," You comment, pointing at a particularly nice looking fountain by a generic looking Chineighse takeout place.


"You're the one who has all the money though," he points out.

"Right, forgot about that. Here's 500 green paper bit things, "You state, handing your counterpart some cash.

“Well…alright,” he shrugs as he heads off to some clothing store in the corner of your eye. JC something or another as you stare at all the books, and even what appears to be a coffee stand inside.

Before you walk inside though, Selena speaks up with a thought.

TartarusFire’s Comment

Hey Bugze, she says, sounding almost wistful,Do you remember when you're Human counterpart gave you all of the money?

Well yeah, that was what, an hour ago? Also his name is B2 and…wait, what are you implying?

I'm not sure…but he is you Bugze, and you do tend to scheme…

Hey! I do not scheme, I have long and well thought out plans! You defend.

Mhmm, she says thoroughly unconvinced.

Well what about…or that one time when…I…

Perhaps scheme is a bit much, your plans are more heat of the moment.

Hmph. Just you wait until I come up with a good example, you snort. Anyway, what were you going on about B2 scheming?

Well, whether or not he isn't fully convinced you're an illusion is still up for debate, but I find it strange that he would give a random stranger every last bit of a large sum of money. In his mind, You could just randomly disappear forever after all.

Hey that's not true, I wouldn't do that.

Maybe not on purpose, but every now and again things come up, she points out. And also, HE doesn't know that.

Ok, yeah that’s true, but I’m here to help the guy out. Why wouldn’t he have given me all the money from the exchange?

It’s just a suspicion. We gave over about one fifth of our funds, and it just seems like there should have been more by his earlier eagerness.

Hmmm…You do have a point there. But still, the five hundred paper money I just gave him seemed to be enough…

It might be nothing, but still it would be best to have a contingency just in case. I would rather not be taken advantage of.

Okay then. You've got me curious. Any plan?

Well back in the day when I suspected misinformation, I would confuse my target as much as possible, and ask the same question later. If the responses did not line up, I knew they were lying.

Sounds complicated... and tedious. Do we have to? Drunk and homeless he may be, but even I don’t think I would be that much of a jerk to hold out, you complain causing her to sigh.

Alright fine. Just keep your guard up just in case, she implores.

“Yeah, yeah…” you mutter as you turn back to the strangely named book store. “I’ll put that to the test later, but first let’s see what’s up with this place.

And with that, you head inside.

8bitmadness’s Comment

The first thing you see catches your eye, a cardboard cutout of some sort of rectangular device. It kind of looks like a bigger version of whatever it is that practically every human holds in their hands.

"Nook? What's an e-reader?" you wonder as you walk over to the display counter and look at the display table.

“Stores books digitally and lets you read them easily? How the heck does that work? It’s just a black mirror and…Oh….” Your eyes widen in awe. You had reached out your hand to touch the device, and it suddenly came on with a soft glowing light. “Oh this is so cool. It’s like some sort of futuristic note pad or something like on Star Trek. A Joy Boy screen’s got nothing on this!” you exclaim and pick the device up, using all of your willpower not to accidentally drop it.

You then tentatively use your fingers to swipe with it, and you see words displayed upon it. “Oh heck yeah. This thing is definitely going towards our tech scrounge. Heck, if Jack doesn’t end up using it, I’ll just get it for Nightshade. I bet she’d freak over another world’s stories.

It could be a nice memento of the trip seeing as how we have no way to take photographs.

“Oh right…I’m gonna have to get a camera at some point. But yeah, we’re definitely buying it, plus it's not too expensive, only $99…Now how do I get books on it?”

About a half hour later, you manage to extricate yourself from the book store with a brand new device and several dozen books loaded on it. It had taken awhile to explain to the Human Lady behind the desk exactly what you wanted, and to your surprise, you found that the humans have their own Daring Do series. You then had her put anything similar to that on as well.

“Alright, I’ll have to have B2 show me how this thingy works properly tonight. I can’t wait for when Nightshade gets a load of this. Maybe then she’ll do more reading…I wonder how she and the old bug are doing?”

Meanwhile, in Equestria

Kersey475’s Comment

"Do I have to?" Nightshade whines as she sits across from Grandbuggy on the train.

"Sorry grandsweetie, but you gotta get some learning in ya," Grandbuggy firmly insists.

"But I don’t want to read boring old books. There’s not even any action in them.”

“Kid, if we’re gonna be questin for these ancient knick knacks, it’s best if you start learning their history.”

“But this isn’t fun reading, this is like homework. Daddy never gave a buck about homework!" she argues.

"And look where that's gotten him," Grandbuggy snarks. “It’s still a long train ride to go kid, it’s either this or nothing.”

"Fiiiiine." Nightshade groans as she looks back down at the textbook,

"Starswirl the Bearded-"

"Pffft. More like Starswirl the Jackass." Grandbuggy scoffs before he changes into Starswirl with a brief flash of green changeling flame,

"Oh look at me, I know everything just cause I have a long stupid beard and know a few advanced spells so everypony should always listen to me." 'Starswirl' says mockingly.

"Uh, isn't that specieist against donkeys?" Nightshade asks.

"It was the DONKEYS who gave him that title!" he says flashing back to his pony form.

“OK, but why do I have to learn more about him?” she asks in confusion.

“Kid, there’s a general rule about magical whatchamahoozits in this world. They were either created by him, or they were created by other idjits just as arrogant as him,” he instructs. The filly just shrugs at this sagely wisdom.

“If you say so Grandbuggy…Do you think Daddy’s doing alright?”

Grandbuggy looks up in thought for a moment. “Well, if I know my boy well, he’s either on track, or doing something stupid…”

In Human Land

8bitmadness’s Comment: I mean, we could always have him buy a crap ton of ball bearings and use them as emergency ammo for the Second Law, turning it into what is effectively an air blunderbuss.

TartarusFire’s Comment: like 2000 snow globes or something You never know when 2000 snow globes will come in handy, trust me.

“Come on Selly. You never know when 2,000 snow globes will come in handy. Plus they’re all on sale.”

For the last time, no Bugze! she orders, and you can hear her facehoof. You are standing in a knick knack shack, and in your hands is an order pamphlet usually given to other store chains.

“Alright fine, what about a crap ton of ball bearings then? We could put them in Second Law if it still works here and turn it into a full on blunderbuss!”

Bugze, she sighs, those metal balls fired from that weapon would tear organic matter to shreds. Do you really want to end up killing someone?

“Oh…didn’t think about that,” you admit, forgetting just how squishy humans are compared to ponies.

“Well if that’s the case, then I guess I won’t be getting anything from this fine establishment,” you grunt as you throw down the paper and walk away from the confused human behind the counter.

“Who the hell was he talking to?” the blue girl with long white hair and glasses asks aloud in confusion.

After leaving the knick knack shack, another store catches your eye and you rush in.

Down With Chyrsalis’s Comment

There are so many clothes to choose from!

They are costumes Bugze. This is literally a costume store. The other You is in a real clothing store, she tries to dissuade.

I… you start to plead while holding some sort of black superhero cape before you relent and sigh. Oh you’re right like always…Dang it! Why can’t I have a better fashion sense!?

Calm down Bugze. Despite everything you did manage to pick out sets of clothes relatively fast back in Equestria. You just have to go to a real clothing store, and not wear what fictional characters do. Sighing, you put the cape back up.

“Yeah, alright. Besides, this cape would have been tainted anyway. Bat-MAN? Bleh!” you gag at the thought of the caped crusader being humanized.
“I guess I’ll just go find B2 and see what he picked out and-OH SWEET LUNA LOOK AT THAT!” you declare pointing down an aisle that has pictures of what you swear is the human equivalent of Neighponese Anime characters.

At the end of this aisle, displayed on a mannequin is something glorious. Your eyes almost pop out of your head as you stare at what you believe is the perfect new coat to wear.

Its a roughly mid-calf-length coat with a standing collar and chains attached. You can't help but stare at it in awe as you think,

It's...perfect!

Oh not the coat lust again, Selena groans.

It’s not lust, it’s Love! You walk up to the coat and feel the material up and down, the sensitive hands for once being perfect for the task. It’s absolutely perfect! Nothing can make this be-OH LOOK AT THAT HAT!

Your eyes sparkle as you see a visored, ornamented cap, torn at the back above the coat You practically rip the two articles off their placements and giggle giddily as you head to the changing room. As you do, Selena sighs before letting out a chuckle.



Hehehehehe....In a way this is refreshing, knowing that despite the sudden set of competence, you’re still the dumb lovable bug I know.

“You say something Selena?” you mutter as you observe your gloriousness in the mirror.

Nothing my bug, nothing at all…


“Alright then,” you say not really paying attention as you bask in your glory. Good Grief, this coat and hat combo make you look like kickflank as Tartarus. The hat is kind of weird in that it’s torn at the back, but your spiky orange hair seamlessly bends into the look.

“Oh I’ve got to show B2 this,” you say giddily as you walk up to the front to pay. After doing so, you walk out in coat and hat, which the counter girl called a Jo Mo costume or something, you weren’t really paying attention to her.

Making your way towards the fountain from earlier, you spot B2 in the food court, with several trays full of different foods, chowing down like Nightshade on a good day.

“Good Grief,” you mutter tugging the cap down over your eyes at what a mess he’s making.

“At this rate he’s gonna need another shower.” You then see that he has bags of clothing around his table. “Well at least he got his job done. Oh, knowing me he’s gonna freak when he sees this co-“

“Ah hahaha! Look at that pig over there daddy. He’s got his slop and everything,” you overhear a very familiar filly voice.

“There ain’t nothing funny about that princess. Filth like that shouldn’t even be allowed in such establishments,” replies another familiar voice, but it sounds wrong somehow.

You look over and see a human stallion and filly, and they are looking at B2. One with amusement, and the other with disgust. With the coloration of her hair and skin tone, not to mention the jewelry on her head, the little one can only be Diamond Tiara, so the frowning adult must be,

“Filthy Rich?” you gasp out.

“That’s Mr. Rich to you!” he says grumpily, almost automatically as he turns to face you. He looks at your face and sees no familiarity there which causes a slight look of confusion to cross his face. “And who exactly are you supposed to be?” he asks looking over your jacket and hat.


What the buck? What’s up with the tone and scowl on this guy?

Indeed, wasn’t his counterpart more jovial?


Diamond Tiara looks over at you and she raises an eyebrow.

“Hey, isn’t that costume that from that weird anime with the fighting ghosts or something?” she asks you.

“Uhhhh….” You drone.

“Hush princess, don’t talk to the riff raff, Daddy will handle this,” he orders her as he pushes her behind him, away from you, before fixing you with a superior look.

Seriously, what the buck humanized Filthy? Why are you acting like you’re stuck up wife?


WHAT DO YOU DO?