//------------------------------// // Chapter 13 - Twilight // Story: To Be a Changeling // by PlagueRat //------------------------------// Twilight was having a very stressful day as she pored herself over page after page of applications; all from potential students wishing to attend her school. Luckily she had the help of some friends. Alas, just to see the rooms other three grumbling occupants she had to stand on her chair and stretch her neck over the stacks of essays, which had annexed the majority of her desk. Spike, Twilight’s faithful adolescent dragon assistant, was currently sitting on a wooden stool, scratching the mulberry colored scales on the side of his head and looking over a particularly long scroll. A bobbing quill stuck out of the side of his mouth, while he scanned over the paper with furrowed brows and green reptilian eyes. When he lifted the scroll to read the next part it ripped in half, having somehow gotten tangled up in the legs of the stool. His shoulders slumped with a sigh and he puffed out a small plume of grey smoke from his nostrils. Starlight Glimmer, the former student of Twilight and now the schools guidance counselor, was chewing on her lower lip while scrutinizing an essay that she held in the grip of levitation magic. Her violet blue eyes were squinted in concentration and the turquoise glow from her horn highlighted some out of place strands of her purple and aquamarine striped mane. The paper suddenly balled up and flew across the room when she read something so apparently offensive that it caused her muzzle to scrunch up. Last was Trixie, a traveling magician, who was actually more Starlight’s friend; currently asleep, sprawled on her back in the middle of Twilight’s office rug. The azure unicorn had balled up her purple cape and placed it behind her cornflower blue mane to use as a pillow. Somehow she also was managing to keep aloft a sheet of paper, floating in the air above her muzzle, just from the force of her exhaling breaths. A sudden knock on the door caused the rooms three awake inhabitants to pause in the middle of their work. “You can come in,” Twilight called out, “the doors unlocked.” The door cracked open. A light magenta coated hippogriff filly with a striped mane of light and dark sky blue, peeked her head in. Silverstream, a normally energetic student, looked slightly worried with her tufted ears folded back and a frown creasing her beak. “Good Morning Silverstream,” Twilight said as she walked around the side of her cluttered desk, “is something wrong?” “Ah, well, we aren’t really sure…” Silverstream said, letting her voice drift out. “We?” Twilight wearily asked. The hippogriff pushed the door open a little more revealing Yona, a young female yak from Yakyakistan and also a student of Twilight’s school. “Yona found something hanging up in a tree and brought it to school,” the ‘little’ yak said while she shuffled on her cloven hooves for a moment, causing her long pale cinnamon colored coat to sway from side to side. “Please tell me it wasn’t a bee’s hive,” Twilight said looking panicked, “and please tell me I don’t have an angry swarm of bees infesting the halls.” “No, not beehive,” Yona answered Twilight, “but it did have bug inside.” “Yona?” Starlight asked “if it was up in a tree, how did you get it down?” Once again the door creaked open a little more, brining another student of the school into view. Gallus, a juvenile griffin with brilliant cerulean blue fur. “I, ah, sort of got it down for her,” he said while looking off to the side with his azure eyes and scratching the back of his neck with his bright amber talons. “Just what kind of bug was inside?” Spike asked, hopping off his stool. “That’s the reason we came to get you…” another male voice said. The door opened fully, no longer concealing a fourth student; a spring green colored earth pony colt, with a messy mane of cyan and opal, named Sandbar. The last thing Twilight expected to find in one of her student’s dorm rooms was a little changeling nymph. Not only that, but one that looked like a miniature version of Chrysalis and was still clinging to her freshly shed cocoon, that was dangling from a hook on a hat stand. Currently the little changeling was glaring at another school student, Smolder, a teenage female dragon with burnt orange scales. When the dragoness took a step toward the nymph, the little changeling would buzz her clear blue wings loudly, as if instinctively trying to frighten away a predator. Then when Smolder, who was looking completely unimpressed, took a step backward, the nymph would silence her tiny wings. “Smolder, please stop doing that,” Twilight said to the dragoness as she entered the room. “It’s clearly agitating her.” “I keep telling her we aren’t going to hurt her,” Smolder said as she leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. “This is a very delicate–” Twilight suddenly stopped talking mid sentence when she noticed the shocked expression the little changeling was giving her. He completely forgot about the orange lizard when the new pony entered the room, a pony with a horn and wings. In that single instant his eyes widened and his pupils shrunk down to the size of a fang tip. He recalled the warning his mother had given about alicorns. “While there are a few other types of ponies, this will be the last one I’ll teach you about today,” Chrysalis said as the magical green fire swirled around her once again. “This, is the alicorn.” Unlike the last three ponies she had shown him, the one now standing in the center of the room was taller and had both wings and a horn. Her fur was just slightly darker than pink, with her wing feathers transitioning into a pale purple at the tips. The color of her long mane and tail was a triad of rose, violet and light yellow that curled up into itself at the ends. “Alicorns are very powerful,” the disguised Chrysalis said before opening up her large wings, “and should never be underestimated. Two are so powerful that they can move the sun and the moon across the heavens. They hold places of royalty in pony society and advocate what they call ‘harmony’. They use the promoting of ‘harmony’ as a way of twisting other beings perspectives to better match their own. Alicorns are one of the most dangerous enemies our kind has ever had the misfortune of dealing with, so be careful around them and don’t ever let yourself be fooled by them…” Twilight nearly jumped out of her hide from the shriek that the little changeling made and unconsciously opened up her wings while taking a quick step away. The nymph buzzed her small wings quickly and with a sound reminiscent of a large angry hornet, somehow managed to lift herself into the air. Looking like a oversized house fly that drank too much cider, the changeling hovered drunkenly about the room until landing on the far wall. “Where’s my mom?!” she yelled at Twilight with her little voice coming out distorted, as if two ponies where saying the same echoing words but speaking just out of sync. “Please calm down,” Twilight said as she took a few careful steps forward, “I’m not sure where your mom is but if–” “Get back!” the nymph cried out, her voice losing the dual tone quality and now sounding like a frightened child. “Go away!” “I swear nopony here is going to hurt you,” Twilight promised. “Please just calm down and we’ll–” Without warning the little changeling reached over and flung a picture frame that was hanging adjacent to her. It narrowly missed Twilight’s muzzle then shattered into pieces at her hooves, scattering broken wood and shards of glass across the floor. “I think I’ll wait outside,” Smolder said, slipping out into the hallway with her friends. Twilight looked down at the mess and the photo previously housed in the frame; it was of six of her students, five of which were now watching from the doorway. It gave her an idea. “Okay,” Twilight said as she backed away from the little changeling, “I’ll leave, see?” The little changeling visibly relaxed when Twilight passed the door frame, entering into the hallway and out of view. “Does anycreature know where Ocellus is?” Twilight asked the gathered students. “I think talking to another changeling might help to calm her down.” “But Twilight, Ocellus is a reformed changeling,” Starlight pointed out, “and that one is obviously not.” Silverstream attempted to stick her head in the room only to have to jump back when a book came rushing through the air at her. “Oh feathers…” Silverstream whined to Yona. “She is totally wrecking our room.” “Yak can out smash tiny bug,” Yona said, with a stern look on her muzzle. She peered over the room’s threshold and promptly received a face full of postcards from Mount Aris and Seaquestria. “My letters from home!” Cried out Silverstream. “Everycreature, just please calm down!” Twilight shouted, getting the assembled students and facility staff’s full attention. “Starlight, I know Ocellus is a reformed changeling but I want to find a peaceful way to sooth this situation,” Twilight explained. “She’s already anxious and I don’t want to have to use force to catch her unless it’s a last resort. Now who knows where Ocellus is?” “I think she’s helping Professor Rarity,” answered Sandbar. “Spike,” Twilight said to her assistant, “can you go find her and bring her back here?” “I’m on it,” Spike said with a salute before extending his wings and flying off down the hall in the direction of the classrooms. A loud crash came from the room. “And please hurry!” Twilight called out to him.