Raj sliced his knife through the luminous membrane, a thin ooze leaking from the cut. Nose crinkling in disgust, he peeled the rubbery layer off and reached in to wipe a layer of goo off of the white pony within. As soon as she was exposed to air she drew in a frightened gasp and started scrabbling. Raj pulled her into a hug, “You're okay, you're okay, just breath.”
Rarity did just that and started coughing harshly, splatters of ichor smearing onto Raj's chest. She wiped a layer of ooze from her face and looked around, eyes bleary. “Where... where is... this is my basement. Why am I in my basement?”
“Take it easy, something happened to you, but it's over.” He comforted and lifted her out of the wet cocoon.
Rarity shivered and curled, a chill seeping through her ooze-laden coat. “I... I remember...” her eyes went wide, “Oh sweet Celestia, it was changelings! I was attacked replaced by a changeling Raj!” She grabbed his coat, “You have to warn the others, quickly!”
“Calm down Rarity, it's tied up upstairs. Spike is keeping an eye on it. It's not going anywhere.”
Her breathing slowed as she came down from her panic, tension leaking from her body. She bit her lip. “Alright. Put me down, I can walk.” Raj set her on the step and she wobbled slightly but held up. She shook her head, “Alright, let's go see this doppelganger of mine.”
The thing was bound up in the main showing room of the boutique, a length of decorative chain fed through the holes in its legs and bound up around its neck. Raj didn't know if that would keep it from shapeshifting, but it seemed to have worked so far. Spike sat on a chair a bit out of reach of the thing, scowling so hard Raj was thought his forehead was going to cramp.
He tapped the dragon on the shoulder. “Hey Spike.”
“Raj.” He said back sharply, not turning.
“Anything?”
“No. It hasn't moved since you hit it. I haven't taken my eyes off it though. I've even been blinking my eyes one at a time.” Spike demonstrated, winking in rapid succession.
“Not sure how much that helps but I like the enthusiasm. I'll take over, grab a break, get something to eat.”
“You sure? I could go for longer.” He said back.
“Not needed. Send the message again while you're at it.” He pointed a thumb at the kitchen.
Spike nodded and shot the changeling one last dirty look before leaving. Raj understood his friend's feelings. Spike had a powerful crush on Rarity and the both of them had independently figured out that the thing had likely been eating the positive feelings he had for the unicorn. That alone was worth a lot more than simple anger.
“Is this it then?” Rarity asked, voice a little high. She stared at the curled up bug creature and it stared back at her blankly. “It's not much.”
“Yeah, but don't get too close. It's got teeth.” Raj held up his hand, two puckered holes surrounded by sickly green still visible.
Rarity grimaced at the wound and shot the bound changeling another glare “Filthy beast.”
The changeling snarled and hissed at her, straining against the chain. It let out a whimper a moment later when a coaster bounced off its head. “Enough of that bug.”
The thing winced and fell back. “Eat me mammal.”
“You know, I just might. I hear giant insects taste like lobster.” he shot back, meaning it.
Rarity grimaced at the idea and stepped back from them both. “Ahem, uh, quite. I think I'll get something to eat. Being cocooned has left me rather famished. Raj, would you care to lend me a hoof?”
Raj nodded. “Sure. Spike?”
“I got it.” The dragon strolled out of the kitchen, a plate of carrots and glittering gems in his claws. He plopped down to resume his vigil.
Raj was drawing himself some water in the kitchen when Rarity told him, “That's not one of them.”
“Pardon?”
“That thing out there, it wasn't here when I was attacked.”
Raj frowned. “Okay, well, go over what happened. What do you remember?”
“It's coming back in bits and pieces, still fuzzy. A pair of ponies I hadn't seen before came in all bundled up. They asked for something from my last line, and I went to go find it. They followed me, shed their disguises, and then assaulted me.” She shuddered. “That was last friday.”
“That's when I found out you were sick, so it matches. That means you were podded up for six days. Not a bad execution actually. Probably asked for an old piece to get you to go somewhere isolated and away from any exits, also so nobody would hear you if you made a ruckus.” Raj said.
“Erm, quite, yes.” Rarity grimaced. “But neither of the changelings that attacked me had red eyes, they were both the more common blue. I don't think the one tied up was there.”
Raj folded his arms. “Alright, so that means that there are at least three of the things around here.”
“Well...” Rarity chimed, trailing off a bit. “There, actually may be more. I have vague memories of being intermittently... fed upon. It was...” She shivered and clutched at her neck, faint marks from her repeated venom injections visible through her coat.
Raj stared at the puckered little distortions and let out a long breath, thin bits of anger going out with it. He'd read what changelings do to their captives. In the months leading up to their first invasion of Canterlot there had been several cases of parents overtaken by changeling sappers. It was only after all the creatures had been expelled from the city that it was discovered that a dozen or more children had been parasitically siphoned from for weeks or months while their parents had been trapped in venom-induced stupors, having their affections drawn out as food via psychic bug-magic. And Rarity had been subject to that torment.
He let those feelings go. There was not use getting upset now. “Alright, so there are at least two free changelings in the town, possibly more. We've got one captured, but we don't know if it managed to contact the rest of the cell before we got it. I've tried to contact the Princess but she hasn't responded yet. I don't know why. I can't imagine she's up to anything that's more important than this.”
“Winter Wrap-Up affects all of Equestria, she's likely busy with Canterlot's.” Rarity pointed out.
“Glad to know the safety of her country is being ignored in favor of shoveling snow.” Raj sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His hand hurt, a lot, a deep burn that twisted through his veins like lit gasoline. He clenched it, letting it focus him and said, “Alright, I'm going to go. I have to find somebody.”
“What?” Rarity said back sharply, voice cracking. “You're just going to leave?”
“Not for long. I'm going to go get help, someone who knows what's going on and what to do from here. Keep an eye on the prisoner. I don't think it can shapeshift with the chain fed through its legs, but I can't be sure. If it tries anything, hit it good and hard. Kill it if you have to.” He pulled an ax from his harness and set it on the table.
Rarity stared at it like he's just set a burning bag of crap down. She collected herself and stuttered “W-what if the rest of them come back while you're gone? I can't fight them off by myself!”
“You won't have to. Spike will be here.”
“Little Spikey-Wikey? He's just a baby!” She cried out, panic edging her tone.
“A baby dragon Rarity, a dragon.” He looked at her appraisingly. “Rarity, I'm certain that Spike is more capable than anyone gives him credit for. He's tough as nails and has a good head on his shoulders. If anything happens while I'm gone, I trust him to handle it. Just stay alert and calm and you'll be fine. And if things do go wrong, barricade yourself in somewhere with one exit.”
Rarity didn't look convinced, so he gave her a slight smile. “Hey, I won't be gone long, less than an hour. While I'm doing that, try and find your cat. I looked around for her but I think she might be hiding.”
Her eyes went wide, “Oh my goodness, I completely forgot about Opal. Excuse me.” She stood up and hurried upstairs, calling out “Opal! Opalescence darling, it's okay. Mama's fine!”
Raj headed out into the main room, gave Spike a nod, and was on his way.
* * *
Not much had changed with Ponyville in the intervening hour Raj had spent in Rarity's boutique. He was surprised when he saw the time on the clock mounted over city hall. So much in such a little sliver of time.
He'd felt safe here, he realized. It didn't make a great deal of sense, he'd been put in life threatening danger more times here than almost anywhere else. Yet he'd come to see the town, and the ponies in it, as something akin to home. Seeing that thing take Rarity that way, knowing that he had interacted with it while it was wearing her skin, that had pretty well cracked the sense of comfort he had about the place. It was something he appreciated only once it was gone.
It's amazing how much a little thing like paranoia can ruin an otherwise nice town.
He found someone he was reasonably sure wasn't a changeling, a wall-eyed pegasus busy wrestling an errant cloud, and found out where Twilight was. She was organizing Winter-Wrap Up again, so she had the best chance of knowing where Bon-Bon was supposed to be.
Twilight was coordinating teams of pushers, clearing out fields in record time by having them move in a staggered line. It was efficient and effective, evidenced by the dozen fields he could see that were already bare of snow and it wasn't even lunch yet.
“Hey Twilight, how's it going?” He asked, making a conscious effort to remain casual.
“Splendidly!” She shot back with a startling amount of verve. “The seasonal birds are already on their way back, we're ahead of schedule on the fields, the lakes are on their way to being melted out right on schedule. I'm still waiting on a progress report from the animal team but there's flex time in the schedule if they're behind.” She beamed, positively overjoyed at running such an efficient operation. “How was Rarity doing?”
“Sick, unfortunately, but getting better. She appreciated the soup.”
“Wasn't Spike with you?”
“Umm, yeah. He was.” Raj answered, kicking himself that he hadn't thought of such a simple inquiry. His gut check was to tell the truth, that he left him with Rarity, but his situation at the boutique had shook his confidence about who was who. If Twilight had somehow been replaced, letting it know where Spike was did him no favors, and lying to her could be easily explained away later. “He was feeling a little tuckered out, guess he didn't get much sleep last night, so he went back to the library.”
Twilight cocked her head. “Oh, alright then. There isn't much for him to do I suppose.” She marked a few things on her board and nodded. “One last thing, is Rarity the changeling, or is it Spike?
Raj blinked. “Um, what?”
“Is it Spike or Rarity that was replaced by a changeling? I'm guessing Rarity, she normally doesn't let any illness get in the way of her work.”
Raj stammered, "It's, it was Rarity."
“It's contained?”
“Y-yeah, for now anyway.” He answered back, mystified. “How did... how know things?”
“Well, I was just at the library and Spike wasn't there, so I knew you were lying about that. At first I assumed that he was spending the rest of the day with Rarity and you were covering for him for some reason, but then I smelled the venom and everything fell into place.”
Raj looked down at the wound on his hand, the edges still faintly green. “But what if I was the changeling?”
She looked at him coyly, “Raj, I'm pretty sure you couldn't hide from me if you needed to. I can feel your aetheric resistance pushing against my magic. Kind of like wind blowing into my horn. A changeling couldn't copy that. Which means that you're you, you got in a fight with a changeling, and you're at least trying to act calm so the situation must be under control. Now then, what's going on?”
Raj didn't answer, he was just stunned. In only a few seconds Twilight had figured out exactly what was going on just from a single lie he told. In that moment Raj was sharply reminded that Twilight Sparkle was an unmitigated genius and he was not.
She gave him a prod and that brought him back to reality. He explained everything that was going on, even teleporting some distance to prove her identity when asked. As he explained, her frown deepened until she was practically scowling. “Alright, what do you need from me Raj?”
“I need to see Bon-Bon. I can't tell you why. Seriously, if I do I think your teacher will throw me in jail.” Raj said, not at all joking.
She nodded. Even telling her that much was treasonous, but he was adapting to a changing situation. Twilight pointed, “She's at the crafting station, building bird nests. I'm going to go to the boutique and secure the changeling.”
“Good plan.” he said back a moment before Twilight vanished in a burst of light. A sizable amount of stress evaporated away with the knowledge that Twilight was involved in the problem. As neurotic and touchy as she was, the girl could take care of problems.
Bon-Bon saw him before he saw her. He made eye contact and cocked his head to the side. She said something to the other five ponies building at her table and then headed for a row of outhouses near a heap of snow. Once they were alone, she turned to him and said, “Report.”
“A lot's happened. I took Spike to-” he paused, eyeing her suspiciously. “Bon-Bon?”
“Right, sorry. I gave you a scroll?” She asked, holding out a hoof.
Raj pulled the scroll out of his shirt and held it up. “And?”
“And what?”
“There's another step here Bon-Bon.” He said, taking a menacing step forward, “Now I'm gonna give you-”
Pain, sudden sharp pain in the side of his neck. He let out a sharp cry of pain and grabbed, his fingers running over the bristly fur of a pony's coat. It pushed off his neck before he could manage to get a hold of it and he fell to his knees, a hand pressed to the site of his wound. From around him he heard chuckling, the ponies from the nest station creeping around the snow mound and the outhouses, wicked grins on their stolen faces. One of them, a brown earth pony stallion, wiped a thin line of red from his fanged mouth. Raj took his hand off his neck and stared at it, red smearing with green ooze, both practically boiling in his palm.
He had just enough time to mentally chastise himself before the burn hit and he pitched forward, a breathless scream hissing out of his throat.
The thing wearing Bon-Bon leaned forward, cooing, “Don't fight it Captain, no sense to it. You got a full dose right to an artery, there's no powering through that. Just give in.”
Rajrishi sputtered, gasping for air. He supported himself on one arm, struggling to stay upright. Tendrils of green snaked from the bite, crawling up his face and into his eye, covering the sclera in emerald lines.
Not-Bon-Bon clucked her tongue and said, “Wow, you're really breaking the venom down quick, but it's coming through in bits and pieces. You really are from another planet, a whole world of monkeys just like you. I can't even imagine-”
Raj exploded upwards, a single fist looping into a wild uppercut. His knuckles hit her squarely on the chin and her head whipped back, neck distending and stretching as she flew into the snowbank. A flicker of green ran along her frame and a shiny black bug took her place, its head twisted back at a tight angle.
The disguised changelings stared in collective shock for a moment. The brown stallion shouted “Murderer!” and hissed, form flickering back into a burly bug. Its wings unfurled and it launched itself forward, mouth wide and ready for another bite.
Raj blocked and it ended up sinking teeth into his forearm. The thing clamped down, pulling and savaging with its long fangs. Raj yelled in pain and drove a knee into its chest, sending it fly back hard enough a pair of its fangs broke off in his flesh.
“This is impossible!” one of the disguised bugs cried out as she backpedaled. “Something his size should be in a month long stupor with that much of a dose.”
“Your goo doesn't put me to sleep.” Raj grunted as he extracted a needle-tooth from his arm, “It just pisses me off!”
That wasn't quite accurate. Whatever hypnotic magic that was in changeling venom was getting eroded by his aetheric resistance, but it was far from harmless. His head felt cold and on fire at the same time, cloudy and muddled and full of razor blades all at once. Searing pain radiated from the bite on his arm, enough that his joints threatened to lock up.
The changelings weren't interested in the particulars however. A red pegasus shouted, “Plan F everypony!” and the collected doppelgangers scattered in all directions, one of them taking the time to gather the body of the dead one.
“Oh no you don't.” Raj threatened. He took two steps forward before the pain became overwhelming and he fell back to a knee, vision swimming. A low-grade roar tore through his ears, throbbing with his heartbeat, loud enough he expected to hear his eardrum split. He started to roll forward, unconsciousness threatening him.
He screamed out and caught himself, every muscle in this body tensed. His jaw clenched, tendons in his neck stretching tight like bowstrings. It hurt, it hurt a lot, but that's all it did. It was just pain, raw, debilitating pain. Adrenaline poured through him, practically boiling his veins. If he passed out, people would die. He was the only one that could stop them.
With that thought galvanizing him, he stood up and began his slow, agonizing walk.
It wasn't graceful, each step had all the agility of a zombie whose legs had fallen asleep, but it got him moving back to the city square. Each step gave him jolts of agony, like someone had stuffed his muscles with ground glass, but still he pressed on, refusing to give up. Tears streamed from his eyes, their trails feeling like fire on his face.
It took somewhere between ten minutes and a year for someone to find him, and in a fit of mad luck it was Rainbow Dash. She hovered in front of him, staring at him in wonder and shock. She rasped, “Dude, Raj, what happened?”
“Rainbow!” He shouted, roughly groping for her. “Rainbow, you have to listen, listen to me. Its...” he trailed off, words turning to nothing.
She put a hoof on his chest. “Raj, stop, just stop. Crusoe just came running into town yelling his head off. He said that you went crazy and attacked Bon-Bon. Why did you do that?”
“What? I, no, I, shit.” He muttered, incoherent. This was part of their plan, to get the town to turn against him by claiming he went crazy. And he was in no condition to argue otherwise. But to sell it they would need some proof.
It hit him like a bolt of lightning. They were going to kill Bon-Bon, they were going to kill her and say he did it.
Mustering as much composure as he could, he focused through the blinding agony and focused himself more than he ever had. “Rainbow, I need you... Boutique, tell Twilight what's... tell her the changelings, just-” He sputtered, gorge rising in his throat. “Go tell her now!” He managed to shout before a wave of vomit splashed onto the wet earth.
Blessedly, she listened, and was gone in a streak of color.
* * *
“-and when I came in, it looked like he was drowning Rarity in the tub. So I blew him into the wall with fire.” Spike finished explaining.
“Wow.” Twilight said as she stared at the man-shaped outline in the wall. “And he was fine with that?”
“Fine enough. He understood it was a mistake. He would have done the same thing in the same situation.” the little dragon shrugged.
“So you blasted him into a wall and he was just fine with that.”
“We had more important stuff to do. Like, the changeling?”
Twilight rolled her eyes skeptically, “I don't-”
The window exploded inwards and Rainbow Dash slid along the tile and smacked against the toilet. The porcelain cracked and a thin trickle of water ran from the tank. Rainbow groaned and rolled, rubbing at a bump on her head. “I thought Rarity's toilet was on the other side of the room. Ugh.”
“You're thinking her downstairs bathroom.” Twilight said as she picked her friend up.
“Oh, right.” Rainbow shook her head, memory of why she was there coming back in a flash. “Twilight, you need to get to the square, quick!”
“What's going on?”
“I don't know! Ponies are saying Raj attacked Bon-Bon but then I saw him and he was all shambly and veiny and stuff and he told me to come get you and he said some stuff about changelings and I don't know what's going and why can't Winter-Wrap Up ever be easy?!” she yammered, words coming out in a torrent.
Somehow, Twilight managed to get what she was talking about and thought about it for a second. Thankfully, a second was all she needed.
She turned to her assistant. “Spike, go keep an eye on the prisoner and get ready for more. Take Rainbow with you and get her up to speed.” The dragon nodded in affirmation and started pulling the confused pegasus out of the room.
Twilight focused herself, charged her horn, and grabbed at the distance between her and the square, yanking herself along the gap in an instant. She appeared in she square with a slight pop.
“Twilight! There you are.” said the Mayor as she walked closer. “We have a situation. I believe Captain Raj may have gone crazy and attacked Bon-Bon!”
“No believe about it!” shouted Lucky Clover. “He musta done it. Should have ran him out soon as he kidnapped them foals!”
“I knew it was just a matter of time.” shrugged Flitter. “He eats meat, eventually he's gonna want to eat us. That's just biology.”
Toe-Tapper nodded, “Frankly, I'm surprised we ever let him live in the town in the first place. He's dangerous, we've all seen that. He rode in on that giant dragon, scared everypony in town.”
“Won't somepony please think of the children?!”
Twilight frowned, putting on a good front of ignorance. “Who is making these accusations?”
“I am!” shouted a brown earth pony stallion, his face swollen slightly. “He attacked Bon-Bon and then came after me. See?” He opened his mouth, showing a pair of gaps in his teeth.
“Anypony else? Step forward!” Twilight yelled, looking concerned.
Three more stepped forward, two pegasus mares and a unicorn stallion, four in total. The unicorn stepped forward and said, “I don't know what caused it, he was just talking one moment and the next he was-”
Twilight interrupted him with a beam of magic split into four, each one striking the witnesses squarely in the chest. They grimaced for a moment and then burst into green light, their disguises stripping off and revealing them for what they were. They looked around in confusion for a second before Twilight lit her horn again and conjured up a series of heavy manacles looped through their legs.
The assembled ponies stared in mute shock, the sudden presence of the alien monsters quieting everyone present. The first to speak up was Snips when he pointed his hoof at the captured changelings and shouted, “Sweet Celestia, Twilight just turned them into weird bug-monsters!”
“I did no such thing.” Twilight yelled, “These changelings infiltrated the town more than a week ago, and Raj was trying to root them out. He was-” She was interrupted by the struggling and hissing changelings, so she covered them in a domed force field before continuing. “He was hurt badly by these changelings and they were trying to turn you against him, and it sounds like all of you were eager for any chance to turn against him!”
Everypony in the square looked down, ashamed or at least embarrassed at being fooled. Twilight snorted, “Now go home. Winter-Wrap Up is on hold until further notice.” The assembled ponies muttered weak apologies and shuffled off.
Once the square was clear, she let out a long breath. There was so much to do. She needed to check on her friends, as Elements they were priority targets in any attack. She also needed to find Raj and figure out what had happened to him. Likely another complication from his alien biology, something worth studying and researching along with the thousand other things that were on that pile of tasks. She'd need to write the Princess, preemptively draft a letter to her parents to let them know she was okay before they heard about this on their own and worried themselves to death. Shiny would need some time too, anything involving changelings made him nutty.
She was on the third mental draft of her letter to convince Shining not to come to Ponyville when one of the changelings bumped the inside of the dome. Present concerns for now, future concerns for later.
She turned her attention to her prisoners. She dismissed the bubble over them and stepped back when they started hissing and spitting at her, dragging uselessly at her chains. She was considering asking them what she needed to know, but they seemed uncooperative. The direct route would have to work.
She picked the one with the busted teeth, as his injury would likely soften his will. She focused, building the components of a complex spell, and fired a twisting, iridescent ray of light at the changeling's face. Its eyes went blank and it's jaw slack like it was sedated.
Twilight cast a part of her consciousness down the beam and entered the changeling's thoughtspace, its brain looking like a giant ball of glowing thread. She read matrices of confusion there as the changeling tried to understand what was happening to it. She needed to find what she needed before it did, the energy expended on a contest of wills stood a fine chance of obliterating what she was looking for.
She learned a lot in the next few seconds. This changeling was named Alate, he was seven years old, had a bit of a crush on another changeling in his cell called Strigae, and had been disguised as Crusoe Palm for about five days. She saw Raj kill the one disguised as Bon-Bon, felt the pain of Alate's teeth getting yanked out, and felt the crushing anguish of knowing he would never get to tell Strigae how he felt. And behind it all was the looming, eyes-over-the-shoulder feeling of the changeling hive mind feeding a little bit of everything he experienced back to their queen.
And most importantly, she saw the ambush and subsequent capture of the mare he knew as special agent Sweetie Drops.
She still didn't know what their overall goal was infiltrating the town, but she could feel Alate realizing what was happening and decided to cut it. Anything else she needed would be there when she wanted it. Twilight dropped out of the mental invasion spell and called up another bundle of chains to secure the creatures. She focused and warped them to the boutique in a cluster, hoping the others were prepared to receive them.
She took a breath, imagining the room she saw in the spell. It was an attic in a house, whose house she wasn't sure, but that didn't matter. It was always dangerous teleporting to an unknown location, so she took her time. After a minute of mental preparation she popped out of existence and popped back halfway across town. Immediately, the acrid smell of changeling ooze his her nostrils and she sent her magical senses out, getting something akin to a sonar scan of the room in an instant.
The changeling was standing over a prone mare, a large hammer held in his knobby hooves. The pony on the floor was wet, cleaned of any goo and about to be killed by something that resembled a human fist, all to better sell the story that Raj had killed her.
The thing had a scant instant to realize someone was in the room before it was blasted in the side by a beam of raw magic, enough force behind it to blow the thing out the wall and into the branches of a tree.
Light streamed through the hole and Bon-Bon/Sweetie Drops opened her eyes groggily, “Hmm, what's... where am I?”
“Take it easy, something happened to you but it's over.” she comforted, ignoring the ache in her head. That was a lot of magic to use in such a short time, but she had the feeling there would be a lot more before she was done.