//------------------------------// // Discoveries // Story: The Changeling empire // by red reaper //------------------------------// Twilight could not believe her eyes, the cute and innocent young fillies have become bounty hunters. The fillies untied the unicorn and alicorn' mouth their, "Apple Bloom? Scootaloo? Sweetie Belle?" "How do you know our names?" Apple Bloom asked as she pointed her knife to Twilight's throat. "Apple Bloom!" Scootaloo pointed the earth filly's knife away from the unicorn's throat, "Don't threaten her, she is an alicorn!" "And there is a great price over her head," Sweetie Belle added. The two fillies agreed with Belle. "Whoever is paying you girls, it's not worth it," Twilight said to the fillies, trying to push them from the greedy path. "Whoever is paying you to take her, is he paying you to take me as well?" Starlight asked. "No," Sweetie Belle answered. Starlight sighed in relief, "But the General will probably give us a bonus on bringing a unicorn." "The General?" Twilight asked, "You cannot trust Eclipse, he betrayed Equestria!" "Yah have a better idea?" Apple Bloom laughed. "Yes," Twilight answered, "Where I come from, you do not care about money, but about helping others. If you will help us, we will make things right." The three fillies laughed to the words of the alicorn, but Twilight continued, "Apple Bloom, where I came from, you live in a farm with your sister, and brother, and granny smith, Scootaloo, you have a fan club about Rainbow Dash, and Sweetie Belle, you love to sing, and you love Rarity more than singing." The fillies stopped laughing, and they looked at each other with sorrow. Apple bloom walked to the three tied creatures, and with her blade, she untied them, and Sweetie Belle walked toward Twilight with tears. "If we help you, will you wake us up from this nightmare?" "Yes," Twilight answered and she hugged the three fillies as Starlight watched and smiled. When Twilight looked at the purple unicorn, she quickly turned her head to the other direction. "So," Starlight asked, "Do you know the way out?" General Eclipse returned to Ponyville. The metal pony arrived with his unicorn slave to the town entrance, where his division of golden changeling waited for him. Eclipse walked through the town towards his fortress. Ponyville that once was a green and happy town now is a military base, full of changelings, diamond dogs, and dragons. The ponies that once lived there, are now the slaves of the General and the food source of his changelings. The trees of the Everfree forest were dead and the animals are now the fighting pets of the arena, keeping the slaves happy. The ponies and the changelings bowed as the General and his division walked through the destroyed houses, and Eclipse loved it, he enjoyed to see the fear on their faces as he walked there, but what he loved the most is to see the young unicorns that he orphaned shaking their legs at the sound of his cybernetic hooves. After the parade of terror he orchestrated, he arrived at the black fortress he called home. "Rarity, inform the doctor that I am here and tell her to activate the memory scanner," Rarity bowed before her master and she ran to through the hall that was full of armors and pony's skulls. After an hour, Rarity returned to the throne room of Eclipse. The cyborg's mechanical shell was lying on the wall, empty, next to a collection of unicorn horns, and the pony was on his tank that was filled with hot water that hides his mutilated body. "Is the scanner ready?" The General asked from his healing tank, and Rarity nodded and pushed the armor to The tank that started to lower itself and four mechanical arms took the body and the armor and the soon enough, Eclipse's blood-red eyes were seen through his golden mask. Eclipse exited the medical chamber and went to a room filled with computer screens, and in the middle of the room, there was a chair. "Hello Doctor," General Eclipse greeted the mare unicorn that was hidden in the shadow behind the control panel of the machine, as he sat on the chair. "Hello General, what do you seek to rewatch?" the Doctor asked. "The attack on Zecora's village," The cyborg answered, "You must search a lavender alicorn." "An alicorn?" The Doctor asked, confused. "Just started the scan." The Doctor did as she was told and the chair attached to the cyborg's head. The screens turned on and they showed the attack. The General's eyes searched every corner of every screen, trying to locate the alicorn. "There!" The General shouted, "Zoom in towards the tree where the purple unicorn is attacked." The Doctor pushed on some buttons on the panel and the picture zoomed in, showing the alicorn helping a purple unicorn. "It is impossible," The Doctor gasped in disbelief. "Scan the two mares and search them in our reserves, I want to know where are they and where did they come from!" The Doctor did as Eclipse told her and she scanned the mares' bodies. As the scanning was taking place, a changeling General, wearing golden armor entered the room. "General, our division in the tunnel has lost, Captain Kyborn has been killed." Eclipse did not enjoy the news, the General stormed out of the chair and his mechanic claws extracted from his right golden hoof, and he took the guard by the head, smashing it like it was a mango. "Doctor, update me on every news about our little friends. I am going to hunt." Eclipse left the room as Rarity came after him, cleaning the changeling's headless corpse. Pinkie, Fluttershy and the rest of the ponies left the tunnels as they walked through the mountain roads to the closest resistance base. "We should have stayed and searched for them," Fluttershy said to Pinkie. The pink mare sighed and she turned to her yellow friend. "Listen, Fluttershy, we cannot risk our ponies to search for them, it is too dangerous." "But she could be the one," Fluttershy insisted, "She could be the one who will defeat Chrysalis!" "We cannot risk our fight for mare stories," Pinkie told Fluttershy. "But-" Fluttershy's mouth was covered by Pinkie's hoof. "We are surrounded." "By who?" Fluttershy asked. Before Pinkie could answer, groups of griffons, dragons, and ponies leaped out of the mountains and they circled the group of ponies. "Bounty hunters," Pinkie gritted her teeth. An orange mare with blond mane and a left scarred eye came to Pinkie, smirking. "Well, Well, Well, what have we here?" The mare asked her crew, "Let's see how much bits Eclipse will pay for the resistance of Everfree."