Buzzes, buzzes.
Opened his eyes.
Up there, brilliant blue sky with many clouds and many changelings swarming about, moving in all directions—some in armor, some in none. Some stopped in mid-air to give a friendly greeting, and then moved on.
And the buzzes. The incessant buzzes with the rapid flaps of their feeble hole-riddled wings.
Star Tracker got up, felt the rocking of something—pain in some of his joints, but he fought through that and stood on his four legs.
Looked around, saw the bars of the cage he was in and the little walls of the wagon he was on. He drew in breath when he saw the pair of changelings pulling the wagon.
Tracker shuddered, shivered, sweated, felt the temptation to bite his hoofnails endlessly. He grabbed his mane, trying to make no sound but failed: “Wh-What’s going on? What’s happening?! Why am I not in the train?!”
“Keep quiet!” one of the changeling drivers yelled without looking at him. “Isn’t it obvious? You’re captured!”
He let out a squeal. “I’m captured?!”
“Haven’t you noticed the cage?” he asked. “What else could you possibly be? A wedding’s groom?”
“But I’m single—“
“I was being rhetorical!”
Tracker closed his loud mouth.
“One of us found you alone on a train and got you while nopony was looking,” continued the changeling driver while he gave the imprisoned pony a steady view of the grassy and mountainous landscape overrun with more changelings going about—here, a group of changelings took notice of the pony and heckled Tracker from a distance by taunting him and wagging his tongue at him. “I say you deserved it.”
His pulling partner tapped him with a wing’s prod. “How about you ask him about his relationships, Brachy?”
The first let out an excited howl. “Whatever we’ll do to pass the time!” Turning to Tracker while not losing his balance: “What about you tell us who you like and love? Shouldn’t be that hard.”
Tracker gulped. He considered his options, which were not many since the cage was barred on all sides and the top side was a glass ceiling. Then, with tremendous energy, he gathered up, “I l-love no...one?”
Brachy stopped to kick the wagon, causing Tracker to fall down before the changeling resumed the journey. “I could sense that lie if I were blindfolded and deaf! It’s impossible for a pony to not love somepony else. You have a mother and a father, yes?”
“Uh….”
“You have a mother and a father, no doubt about it,” Brachy said, momentarily distracted by another squad of changelings in formation flying away. “Do you love them?”
Tracker was busy trying to stand up despite the road’s rockiness. “N-No?”
“It’s useless to lie to us,” Brachy went on, becoming flustered, “but let’s assume you don’t love them. Any siblings you have that you love?”
“No?”
“Kinda’ easy. Must be a single child, but...you must’ve had friends. Foalhood friends, teenage friends, adulthood friends...come on, now!”
Tracker gulped. He coughed, banged his head on the bars—making the wagon drivers wince at each bang. The pony then declared, “I have no f-friends!”
“Do you have a leader?” Brachy asked, unfazed. “Undying loyalty to your leader is a good substitute for love.”
Tracker shook his head. “N-No?”
“Then why are you here?!” he yelled, fully stopping on the road.
His partner did not pay attention to that and, therefore, got himself snagged by the harness attached to him.
“You’re either doing a bad job at lying or you are a dangerous pony that must be stopped!” Brachy concluded, giving Tracker a mean and unsettling stare judging by those strange eyes. “Either way, it won’t end well for you.”
“But, I’m not! I’m not lying!” Tracker held up his hooves like a criminal guilty as charged. “I really do, uh, not love anyone!”
“And what do you want us to do about it?” he said directly to his face, adopting an unsympathetic mood. “What’s the use of slavery if we don’t take more from you, eh?”
“Eh-heh...” was Tracker’s anxious moaning laugh.
“Face it, whoever you are." A pause as he fired a glower at him. "You’re a pony. It’s only natural you must’ve loved at least one pony, and if you’re not going to confess—“ chuckled “—we’ll just wait and see when we get everyone else....”
“Don’t they say that the deniers hide a lot?” his buddy asked, jolly.
“Oh, yes, they do!” he yelled back, loosening up and dropping his haughty facade. “If he denies loving his own family and having a friend...we might've just stumbled upon some treasure of a pony right here! A soft heart inside him, loving everyone! Wouldn’t that be a great find?”
His buddy nodded. “I’m sure that would be! But, what if it’s true he doesn’t love anypony?”
“What’s the use of it?” he asked back. “Ponies need to love in order to live. I’ve seen a pony without love and he almost went insane. We had to give somepony for him to love, and then he was back on his hooves and got his marbles back in his head—then, boom! A lunch out of the blue!”
The two of them laughed, their guttural snorts coarse, grating to the ears.
Tracker’s hooves buckled, then he looked up. With his mouth as wide open as it could possibly get: “Uh, wh-what’s that?”
“What’s what?” the first changeling asked. “Oh, you mean the sky? That’s the sky.” He then pointed at the mentioned object. “It’s part of the atmosphere—hey, didn’t you guys teach this in the first place?!”
“N-No, I meant—“
“Hah, we’re the ones who discovered what the sky was first?” He laughed, got some relief by seeing his fellow changelings fly around in the air with their buzzes. “I wish we were the ones who studied the sky, but this pony—he’s both delicious and a comedian!”
“I didn’t mean the sky!” Tracker said in futile defense of his own character. Then, he pointed ahead of the changelings. “I meant that!”
Brachy looked forward. “What? You mean that dusty old city over there?” He let out one last bit of laughter. “That’s Canterlot!”
Tracker staggered to the ground, fell on to the cold metal floor and, with his own eyes, beheld the miserable corpse of the city. “I-I didn’t recognize it! What did you do to the place?!”
Brachy and his buddy burst into a long fit of shouts and laughing roars. “Pretty great, right?!”
The wagon creaked on, letting the splash of a rushing waterfall reveal itself to them.
Canterlot was a dismal city, a ravaged capital by the mountainside resting in the languishing cadavers of its fallen buildings. Here lay its grandiose spires and towers, smashed on to the burned grass their splendid collections of books, artifacts, and relics. Broken and despaired retired the once admirable structures of ponykind’s pinnacle—now crushed, now toppled. The classy stone streets, devastated by overflowing weeds and other plants, vines climbing up the streetlights still standing, and eggs guarded by several armored changelings waiting on their “civilian” counterparts who hauled ponies in their cages along with more food and other supplies in their crates and boxes; also, it smelled horrible here. Stores in tatters, mansions’ aristocracies having long been driven out—there, by one front yard, changelings were burning books they had been able to steal from the bookshelves of that particular manor, with one rather pompous-sounding changeling banishing the literature as “a waste of time when they could be doing more and more work!”
“There are love stories in these books, though,” said his comrade who was carrying out a bunch of books to the burning pile, feeling its warmth and hearing the soft cackling there—in fact, he was fascinated by the sight of paper turning red then black in seconds. “Wouldn’t it be helpful once in a while to give love stories to them?”
“We’ve been through this a dozen times, Dorso!” the pompous changeling took out on him. “Someone’s going to get inspired by these adventures, and then they’ll start another rebellion!”
Dorso held up a hoof and a smile. “I have an idea!”
The pompous changeling was about to head his way back to the manor, but groaned and stayed put for him. “What is it now?!”
Dorso tapped a hoof on the trampled grass, nervous to tell it. “What if we lend them these love stories, make them inspired and have adventures, let them rebel, and before they become too strong, we crush them? It’ll surely break their hearts!”
“Nah,” he said with a hoofwave and a head shake. “We should keep them rebelling for as long as they can without actually beating them. As long as they love Equestria enough to want it back, then that’s a free source of love for us.”
“Good idea!” he said, joyful at this new and better idea.
The changeling groaned and went back to the burning pile. “It ends like this just like the dozen times before….”
Let’s leave these book burning changelings at the front yard and move on.
Winding through the decaying roads, one would find himself at Restaurant Row. Despite the numerous changelings having changed it up into a wasteland that happened to be populated with tens of changelings, one could, with a keen enough sense of smell, detect the scents of a distant age—the age when Restaurant Row truly lived up to its name and had, in name and in deed, a row of restaurants from which wafted out a plethora of aromas which told without a lie that there was good food to be had. Nowadays, however, this street was the location of sunken and depressed soup kitchens with changelings berating the very ponies they served with bowls of liquid that somehow passed for soup.
Inside one of those meal centers, a mare whined on a swivel chair, “It tastes even worse than yesterday!” She held her bowl up to the changeling cook/waiter/manager/owner/plumber/semi-electrician/recipe inventor/soup eater. “I can’t smell it, and it just looks like water!”
The more submissive pony customers beside her gave the mare a bad look before they scooted away from her.
The cook slammed the wooden counter with his hoof, shook it right in front of her face. “If you think you can do better, then show me!”
Morning Roast, this unusual mare, hopped over the counter, and, after levitating a cabbage and then chopping it up into fine pieces, she dumped it upon her soup and garnished the dish with some pepper. “Now I showed you!”
The changeling smiled. “Wow! That’s...that’s not bad.”
Morning Roast kept up that smile.
The changeling grabbed her, threw her to the other side of the kitchen. “Now, you teach me so I could do it without your help!”
Needless to say, she ascended to the somewhat respectable job of co-cook which did not bring with it the other occupations it entailed other than that of soup eater.
Beyond Restaurant Row, though, one would find the very former apex of Canterlot itself: Canterlot Castle. Except, of course, it was scarred with destruction—see the heaps of bricks and fabrics together, the remains of a high-standing tower painted in royal white, purple, and yellow; see the debris lumped upon each other in fine pebbles and rough chunks, the husk of a social hall which had borne witness to a great number of social affairs and events, perhaps including the prestigious Grand Galloping Gala itself. But, that did not matter now—now, replacing the pony guards in their stately armor were the changelings in their vile coverings, baring their fangs and inducing fear in the ponies who passed under their shadows, trembling at the mere sight of these nasty creatures.
Past the big double doors, through the great hallways marred with cracked columns in ruins and windows broken, one would find Chrysalis talking with Pharynx by the bottom of a tower’s staircase shrouded from the others patrolling the destruction that used to spice up the corridors.
“...and, how is it going in Mobland?”
“I’ve seen each candidate for them,” Pharynx answered, spacing out his words a little to effect some respectful gravity. “They are as fit for patrol as they could ever be. They will defend our border well.”
Chrysalis nodded, looking pleased. “Good. And, do you have any word from our agents in Appleloosa?”
Pharynx nodded back. “Ortho’s returned. He was almost killed by the ponies there, but Thorax and the others managed to save him and keep their identities safe. It will take a day or two to make Appleloosa ready for gradual takeover, but, hopefully, it will not alter our schedule too drastically.”
“I’ve learned how to accommodate for any circumstance,” Chrysalis said, brushing the dirt off of her cerulean mane which felt like paper-thin glass. “Admonish your brother to act faster, however. We do know that he is quite...lacking,” and snarled at the thought of that.
Pharynx flinched for a moment, preserving a courteous expression for her. “Yes, your Majesty.”
Chrysalis nodded, smiling more.“That is all I need to hear. Report to me again when you hear of important news.”
“As I always will,” Pharynx said with a doubled down bow.
As the sun’s light shone upon them through the open, shattered windows, twinkling on the shards unswept, the shards uncleaned.
Chrysalis then glanced at the sky freckled with her changelings. “Speaking of important news….”
Chrysalis opened the door.
It had been a bedroom. Vestiges of that were strewn about, though hidden by the slime on the walls—there a bed was trapped and fastened to the wall, here a horizontal cabinet was attached to the ceiling, and, by the floor, several spare pillows were stuck to it.
At the far end of the room, the wall looked pretty different, hastily made up of plaster and whatever wet concrete was left behind. Then, at the side of the better-looking part of this rather round wall was an open window.
Trapped and fastened to the floor by the slime, held in check by numerous changelings buzzing and swarming around her—some even jeering her and pointing at her like a pony with no hope—was a regal white alicorn, her ethereal mane and her tail still flowing though ebbing away. She was visibly tired, groaned—defeated, probably—but she said no word.
She noticed Chrysalis.
“What else do you want to say about me, hm?” Chrysalis said, smiling and closing the door behind her. Tilted her ears, broke out into a warm smile: “Don’t you worry about your sister! She’s fine! We just added to her quarters stronger slime than before. Your rooms are so comfy, why would she ever want to leave?”
“Are you forcing her to sleep upright?” Celestia asked, quiet though growling, her teeth showing reserved rage. Then, relenting but with a guttural voice: “What do you want from me?”
“Is it not a pleasure of mine to see you suffer?” she asked.
Whacked her on the head.
Celestia winced, legs crumpling in shots of pain.
The queen snickered. “Maybe you’re just waiting for the right moment—for that moment when I’ll slip up and say something rash or do something without thinking like...well, gloating about my plans right before you?”
Celestia glared at Chrysalis, her snout downwards.
“Has it ever occurred to you, ‘Princess’—“ added a cheerful giggle to that, and most of her changelings there laughed along “—that I know what I’m doing, that I am not only aware but do my best to be aware of my own self? Of my own flaws and weaknesses?”
She spotted a cocoon hanging from the ceiling. She hovered to it and looked down on Celestia with that egg.
“It was a day I’d always looked forward to...a perfect day.” A pause. “Let me tell you, ‘Princess’, that I have planned everything out. I know what to do if this world is not enough for our hive, I know what to do if one of us joins your cause and rebels from the inside, I know—“ shot a glower at her, flew to her and stared Celestia down on the snout and pushed her jaw up just a tiny bit “—I know what to do for everything you or everyone else can and will throw at us. I’ve mapped out every contingency, every possible path that this can take—as far as I could—and I’ve made sure that my case is air-tight, that our empire is undefeatable!”
Celestia struggled to move her hooves in vain. With spite at Chrysalis: “Then your prideful assurance will be your fall.”
The queen raised her head up. She bobbed her head for a while, keeping her focus on the alicorn. “I know that, too, which is why I am humble once in a while. I do not rest, I do not sleep easy, until I know I have gained good ground on our goals.”
Celestia let out a bead of sweat, trickling down on the bridge of her snout.
“And let me give you your daily reminder of what will happen to you if you refuse to raise or lower the sun for us….”
All the other changelings growled at her, aiming their jagged horns at her.
Celestia sighed, hung her head low.
Chrysalis let out a long sigh of relief. “Isn’t it nice to be here, hm? At least you’re doing your job for your subjects. They can’t live without day or night—but I guess you knew that already.”
Chrysalis trotted out of the room, letting out a maniacal bout of laughter echoing through the halls.
A knock on the door.
Chrysalis stood before a grand set of double doors, adorned with various jewels and gems, sided by columns adorned, too, at the top and the bottom with those precious stones sparkling under the sun’s shining light.
“It is I!” Chrysalis announced in a loud voice. “Open the doors or you’ll face the severest punishment I could think of!”
The doors opened, revealing two changelings who truly did not want to face any punishment of the severest degree.
She entered the grand square room, mostly unfurnished as it felt rather spacious with the lack of furniture or, well, anything to take up space in it. Feeling the polished floor underneath her, the fireplace caught her attention first, well tended to by another changeling who was stroking the fires with a metal stick.
She turned to the other side of the room and made a grimacing grin.
For there, chained on opposite sides of the room, were two ponies, one unicorn and one alicorn. The alicorn, a pink one, was sleeping upright and not lying down, chains bound to her legs and her neck; on her body were scars and wounds, both fresh and old, and, near her but not near enough for her to reach, was a table full of medical supplies and what not. The unicorn, a white one, was bound so, his leg and neck chained, and tainted with scars and wounds of his own as well, not to mention his own medical table.
This unicorn, however, was awake and cast a glance upon Chrysalis.
“You changeling!” he roared, then jumped at her, then yanked back by his fixed chains, falling to the floor with a moan.
Chrysalis laughed. “Of course, I am a changeling, Shining Armor. Do you expect less of me?”
Shining then glowed his horn.
He faltered and moaned, the light dimming
“I’ve got four entertainment schedules to take care of,” Chrysalis began, “eight changelings to promote, fifteen more ponies to feed off from the last hour, sixteen stacks of bread and other foods to keep you and your friends safe, twenty-three changelings to patrol a small park, and forty-two...I don’t know, those funny little silly books they’ve just stocked in the library.” She tilted her head, seeing the wry and anguished looks on Shining’s dwindled face. “What do you make of that?”
Shining drew in breath, no matter how frail he felt. “We’re...we’re...we—“
Chrysalis shook her head. “Don’t bother. It’ll all be gone by tomorrow, and it’ll be something else.”
Shining shook his head in return.
Chrysalis turned to Cadance, unconscious in her doze. “And, what is this we have here? Is she feigning her sleep? I don’t quite like the look of it, but...if she’s quite dead, I’ll take that over—“
“She’s not dead!” Shining shouted.
Chrysalis smiled. “Perfect.”
Opened her mouth, consumed the love from him, those pink intangible streams floating into her mouth as Shining struggled to keep his composure.
Then he fell, slumping to the floor prostrate.
She laughed as the love kept pouring into her. “See how love blinds you! You know that our main source of energy and nutrition is love, and you don’t even have the mind to hate her—and she doesn’t have the mind to hate you!” She scowled. “I can never understand how you work! But, what does that matter to me? If it works, it works—let everyone else understand it for themselves!”
She closed her mouth and the stream disappeared.
Shining puckered his lips, coughed, close to collapsing on to the floor. Shot a mad look at the queen. “I’ll never think a single thought of hatred against my beloved wife!”
“Look!” Chrysalis said, flying up into the air. “Look at how pathetic you are! You could be killing us slowly by just not loving her! It’s strange to think that you can use love to defeat us.” She scoffed. “That’s like saying you’ll use fire to fight fire! It only makes the problem worse! And, well, there’s freedom, too, but...” she smiled. “Do you know what comes before that?”
Shining gulped. Gasped. “No...no!”
Chrysalis grinned, her fangs showing. “Crime.”
Inside a decaying opera house where the curtains shone pretty under the glaring spotlight, the seats were filled with happy changelings and their caged pony companions. There was not much else to say about it; a few aproned changelings flew around, carrying trays of popcorn and sacks of water.
Everyone became silent as the curtains opened.
There, two changelings on stage, facing the spotlight.
“So, uh, hi!” the first changeling said, waving a hoof at them. “I’m Humerus! And this here—“ he motioned to his companion beside him, standing stiff and looking stiff “—is Nastic! We’re here to, uh, tell you a joke and, uh, m-more jokes that will surely make you laugh so hard, you’re going to regret coming here and you might as well, uh, refund your tickets!”
“But, I didn’t come here with a ticket!” a changeling cried out.
“That’s great!” Humerus said. “Because that’s the joke!”
All were silent.
“Hah. A-hah. Hah-hah. Hah!” Humerus then coughed.
“You’re making us look bad in front of our food,” Nastic whispered to his ear.
“That’s also part of the plan!” Humerus shouted in great confidence, gesturing wildly with both of his forehooves. “Yes, we are bad for your own laughingstocks!”
“But, I don’t have stocks that laugh!” that same changeling cried out. “Wasn’t that an invisible thing you can sell?”
“Then, why don’t we exchange them?”
“Wait, what do you—" That changeling rose from his chair. A smile came over him. “OK, I get it!”
All the changelings laughed at that.
As Tracker shrank back in his cage, listening to the laughter cloud out his thoughts—that pony, sitting alone in that cage and closing his eyes, freeing himself from the sight of those unqualified, inept comedians.