//------------------------------// // 9. Meant to Be Spent Alone // Story: Trouble in Tiatarta // by RainbowDoubleDash //------------------------------// Witchweed. There was witchweed in Tiatarta, and it was being used to make false love. Liquid death to the Hive. Images of the innocuous flower hidden among its grass-like leaves plagued Chrysalis' mind. Visions of a cauldron somewhere boiling with the glowing pink liquid death. In her mind she saw dozens, hundreds of drones laying on the ground, eyes wide and yet barely seeing the world around them, giggling as they moved only to guzzle down more of the false love...curling on themselves and laughing as they starved, and Chrysalis in her mind saw it at eye-level with those drones because she was on the ground too, her own laughter echoed in her mind, her hoof reached out for more of the false love that was so sweet, so cloying, so delicious and filling and yet the hoof trembled and was weak because she was starving... The worst part of it all was that this wasn't her imagination. This was a memory. An old one, even for her...but just as vivid as ever. The witchweed had to be found, eradicated, now. Chrysalis hurried the two teenagers off and away from the town hall, out onto the beach. They were standing out in the open, easily observed by any skyclad officers that may have been sent by the mayor to keep an eye on them, but the same openness meant that they could easily ensure that nopony - or any other creature - was nearby to listen in on them. “Alright,” she said, “here's what we'll do. Tonight, Ocellus and I will disguise ourselves and - ” “Nope,” Smolder interrupted, crossing her arms. “We have a curfew.” Chrysalis stopped talking. She glanced to the drone, then the dragon, then back to the drone, then to the dragon once more. “...and...?“ she eventually managed to ask, feeling her anger abate just a tiny bit as some confusion broke through. Ocellus shifted. “W-well...Prince-General Pharynx was nervous about me coming here if there was trouble...so the deal was that Smolder would stay beside me the entire time we're in Tiatarta, and also that we'd follow an 8 o'clock curfew to be back to the Nook.” “Look, if it was me, I'd play hookie,” Smolder said with a shrug. “Ember doesn't have to know.” “But King Thorax would,” Ocellus said. She shook her head. “A-and he said that if I broke the rules he'd have to...well...do something about it. Something we'd all regret.” Chrysalis felt her eyes flutter as her brain struggled to process the idea that the drone seemed to be genuinely intimidated by Thorax. Thorax. “What, he'll put you in a time-out?“ She spat. “What could that giant green eyesore possibly threaten you with that would mean a single thing to you?“ Ocellus shivered, and stepped a little closer to Smolder. “Take me out of the School of Friendship,” she answered. “I...I've already run away twice before in the past, first when we first joined, almost caused a war...and then when the Tree of Harmony was destroyed, King Thorax came after me personally when that happened and I ran away. I don't want to push my luck.” Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Are you serious? We have a creature poisoning changelings and you’re worried about your bedtime?” Smolder had moved closer to Ocellus herself, putting a hand on her withers and lightly rubbing at the base of Ocellus’ neck where her fuzzy chitin was thin, trying to soothe her. “Look, Thorax seems great and all, but even he’s got to have his limits, and Ocellus doesn’t need to find them. Plus Pharynx threatened to do some pretty creative things to me if anything happened to Ocellus, and that probably includes convincing her to play hookie.” Chrysalis was pressing her hooves against her temples, millennia-old intellect still trying to wrap around what the two were saying. Thorax? Really? “Fine!” She exclaimed. “Fine. Fine. Plan still works in broad daylight, we’ll just be doing it in broad daylight. We track down Catrina and make her reveal the location of her witchweed, and destroy it. No witchweed, no false love, problem solved.” “Make her...?” Ocellus began to ask, though her eyes swiftly widened as what Chrysalis was implying hit her. “N-no! I won’t! No matter what Catrina might have done, we can’t hurt her!” Chrysalis’ eyes narrowed as she leaned down towards the drone. Smolder tried to get in her way, but one outstretched hoof with the strength of an earth pony inside of it held her back. “And what do you suppose we do, then?” She demanded. “Catrina attacked the Swarm. She’s an enemy of the changelings - your enemy, my enemy.” Ocellus wilted under Chrysalis’ gaze, at least for a moment. But when Chrysalis narrowed her eyes further, instead of driving her point home, it seemed to spark some inner resistance from the tiny drone. She swallowed, but leaned forward. “We can still try and learn more about Catrina,” she said, “but we can just ask her. Talk to her - ” “Talk to a creature who’s been poisoning us? Poisoned me?!” Ocellus didn’t back away. “Y...you didn’t let me finish! Smolder can’t leave my side, so I can’t disguise myself effectively. B-but...but you can. So - ” “So you and the dragon can find out where she is staying and then I can investigate it, yes, I know your plan. It's a stupid plan!” ”N-no it isn't! If we find out where Catrina is getting her witchweed, we can show Mayor Dusk. You can tell her everything you know about it. And if we find where Catrina is making the false love, if we find more than just a few vials, proof that she's been making it for weeks - ” Chrysalis snarled. ”If I find out where the witchweed is, I'm not going to show any creature. I'm going to burn it! Burn it and salt the land where it grew! And Catrina...she shouldn't be turned over to the ponies, she didn't do anything to ponies, she should be dragged back to the Nook and consumed!” Ocellus and Smolder both backed away in shock at Chrysalis' outburst. She realized she was breathing heavily, eyes wide, legs far apart and unicorn horn glowing - she was letting her fear of false love show. Snarling again, Chrysalis put a hoof to her chest, taking in a deep breath and letting it out as slowly a she could manage. Control. She needed control. She was letting her...her concern towards the false love get under her carapace. Concern, that's all it was. Deep concern. She had every right to be concerned, but she shouldn't be letting it control her. Ocellus shifted from one hoof to another herself, then stepped forward. She was trembling a little, but she was also looking straight on into Chrysalis' disguised eyes. ”We can't do it your way,” the drone said, her voice quiet and calm and steady. ”The Nook is trying to live alongside ponies. I...I know you don't care about that idea, but the changelings in the Nook do. We can't just take justice into our own hooves. It would ruin everything.” Chrysalis shot the best withering glare her unicorn body could manage at the drone - and was nonplussed when Ocellus didn't even flinch. She pressed on anyway. ”What do I care?” she demanded. ”Why should any bug care?” Ocellus looked down, closing her eyes. ”I...” she began. ”I want to tell you because it's better this way...but I don't think you think that. You...you said you missed the way things used to be, this morning. That you were good at it.” ”The best,” Chrysalis confirmed without hesitation. She couldn't believe she was explaining herself to a drone, but Ocellus only knew her as a drone. And besides, it demonstrated her control. ”But it's not just that. We used to be strong. Catrina shouldn't be a threat like this. Ecdysis has five hundred changelings under her command. She was an infiltrator, there must be other former infiltrators in the Nook as well. She should have come into Tiatarta weeks ago, found the culprit and removed the threat. These ponies couldn't have stopped her. It's what would have happened under Chrysalis. How can you tell me that this, the Nook quivering in fear and despair and doing nothing to defend itself, is better?” Ocellus didn't respond at first, instead biting her lip, her head still downcast and her eyes still closed. At length, however, she set her horn glowing. It was blue at first, but the drone grimaced and forced the magic to turn green. Jade fire consumed her for a few moments. When it faded, Chrysalis had to stifle a gasp and suppress a pang of recognition and nostalgia that went straight to her heart at what Ocellus had become: black chitin lacking in any fuzz. Legs full of holes. Exposed wings with no elytra. A short horn, and long fangs. A solid, spined, pointed frill down the back of her neck. A true changeling. Ocellus opened her eyes - the only part of her that stayed the same - and looked at her holed hooves as she sat back on her haunches, poking at a hole in one leg with the opposite hoof even as her wings flickered and buzzed against her back, a completely different sound than they normally produced. ”This...this was me,” Ocellus said at length as she finally lifted her head, looking at Chrysalis straight on. Even her voice had changed: a little higher and drier, with a slight warble to it. She looked at Chrysalis through a hole in her hoof before finally lowering it. ”This was me, and it was you, and it was every changeling. I don't miss it, even if you do...” she flicked out her tongue a little and turned to look at Smolder, ”and even if you think it looks cool.” Smolder opened her mouth, considered, but then shrugged. ”I like the real you better, though,” she said. ”I know.” Ocellus smiled at the reassurance, then turned back to Chrysalis. ”So this was me...but it's not me anymore. If I wanted to I could look like this all the time, be this all the time. And if you wanted to, you could do it too. Pretend to be the old you. But that's all either of us would be doing.” She shook her head. ”Pretending. I can't go back to the way I used to be, and no matter how much you want, Nonchalant, you can't either.” Blue fire traced its way across Ocellus, revealing her true blue form. She breathed a sigh of relief, rubbing her legs as though checking for holes, then standing and walking up to Chrysalis, looking up into her disguised eyes. ”And...we can't. Changelings, the Hive, the Swarm...we can't go back to what we used to be. Not just in looks, I mean, things will never be the same again. Chrysalis exposed us at Canterlot - ” Chrysalis opened her mouth to begin objecting, to exclaim that she had won at Canterlot if not for the ponies and their cheating magic, but Ocellus was somehow faster, reaching up and putting a hoof to Chrysalis' lips, ” - and it doesn't matter why she did it and it doesn't matter why it didn't work. The other races know about us now, know where we live and what we can do. We can't go back to the way things used to be. So we have to move forward and try and find a way to get along with the other races. We have to change.” Chrysalis stared down the length of the hoof and leg at her mouth, changing back into her Reformed drone form - because it had sharper teeth and she wanted to bite Ocellus for her impertinence. But the moment she did, restoring her full changeling senses in the process, she was hit by the emotions coming off of Ocellus. She'd expected a smug sense of superiority for the new paradigm. She had not expected remorse. Ocellus felt genuine sorrow for Chrysalis-as-Nonchalant. It wasn't pity, for it lacked the tinge of disappointment. It was just sadness, and a touch of desperation - a desire to be able to reach Chrysalis. And then Ocellus leaned forward and hugged her. Chrysalis went rigid - had she been frozen as a block of stone she would have been more mobile. She didn't know how long she stood there with the tiny changeling pressed against her, hugging her, begging her to see things her way, smelling and tasting of remorse and sorrow and empathy and compassion...stirring something inside of Chrysalis herself... Chrysalis suppressed a shiver as she fought a three-front mental battle against the insipid, soft emotions trying to find purchase within her, the outpouring of empathy from Ocellus trying to worm its way inside of her, and most insidious of all, the reasoning Ocellus had given her, the argument she had made. She extricated herself from Ocellus' grasp with some effort, pushing her fellow changeling away - though she left one hoof on Ocellus' withers as she took in a deep, steadying breath, then exhaled. She crushed the emotions inside of her. She brushed aside the outpouring of others from Ocellus. But the words... The teenage bug... ...she... ...had a point. She wasn't right, exactly. Of course she wasn't right, she was only a fraction of Chrysalis' age and experience. But she raised a good point. Changelings had...changed, not just in body, but their entire situation. Thinking it through, if Ecdysis had swarmed Tiatarta...well, the ponies would know, and know exactly where to strike. And even if Ecdysis and her five hundred bugs abandoned the Nook...ponies knew about changelings now, knew them as more than myth and legend. They were facts. They could look for, and find, any new hive that Ecdysis tried to establish, and they could also turn on the Badlands Hive because they knew where that was too, and it was no longer protected by Chrysalis' throne. So Ecdysis and Thorax would have to take the changelings and flee far to escape the ponies' wrath. Was it worth it, when what prompted it was just a few dozen love-drunk bugs who would recover on their own in a matter of days? ”...fine,” Chrysalis said slowly. ”Fine. You may be right. Even...even if Catrina simply disappeared without evidence, the ponies would blame the Nook. It's not prepared to defend itself. And the situation could...escalate.” Ocellus let out another relieved sigh, and smiled at Chrysalis. She reached up and put a hoof on Chrysalis' own, gripping it slightly in her pastern. ”Right. That's the reason.” ”Don't patronize me, bug.” Chrysalis snapped, withdrawing her hoof quickly. She felt the loss of Ocellus' own hoof on her own unusually keenly. It annoyed her. She reinforced her emotional defenses with that annoyance, glaring at Ocellus. It continued to lack the desired effect of cowing her into submission. Off to the side, Smolder cleared her throat, reminding the two changelings that she was there. Or Chrysalis, at least, she doubted Ocellus forgot about her friend's presence.. ”Okay, so we're going with Ocellus' plan,” Smolder said, ”but I think we should probably wait a day in either case. If Mayor Dusk is going to have skyclad officers following us the last thing they're gonna want to see is us having this little meeting and then going straight for Catrina.” Ocellus looked back to her friend. ”W-well, no, we should deal with Catrina as soon as possible - ” ”No, the dragon's right,” Chrysalis said, and almost immediately gagged - an action that was about one-fifth authentic and four-fifths a distraction from what had just happened. She put a hoof to her mouth, going through the motions. ”Ugh, saying that has an aftertaste...but she's right. If we're not just going to disappear Catrina then we have to move slowly.” ”But - ” ”But nothing!” Chrysalis snapped. ”I'm not even supposed to be dealing with this. I'm supposed to be on vacation! Getting away from everything!” She used a hind hoof to kick sand away from her. ”The Nook can survive another day without me.” She didn't wait to hear if Ocellus or Smolder had any objections, and would have ignored them anyway. She turned around and launched herself into the air, transforming into a pegasus for extra speed and getting away from... ...from whatever had just happened on the beach. Chrysalis returned to her hotel room, adopting her Nonchalant disguise before entering the lobby and heading straight for her room, then assuming her true form once she was safely within and placing the shadow's home on her bed. She'd been carrying the shadow's home and the room key within her elytra and within herself when she transformed, a neat trick she'd learned centuries ago. She was fairly certain she remained the only changeling capable of such selective shape-shifting. The hotel room inside was silent. Not quiet. Quiet was what the Nook had been last night in the depths of night. Quiet was a whispered conversation, the sound of breathing, the shifting and rustling of life making tiny noises that filled the air. Silence was no words at all. A held breath. Utter stillness. Chrysalis hated silence. She turned on her room's overhead fan. The tiny mechanical whirring and the gentle whoosh of air was something to fill the room with just a tiny bit of noise. It helped...a little. Alright, so she'd gotten away from the teenagers. She was leaving the Nook behind for now as well, focusing on herself, because that was the entire point of the vacation she was supposed to be on. And...and the Nook was full of traitors anyway, she reminded herself. Traitors and betrayers and mutineers and any other synonym she could think of for what they'd done. Turned on her. Abandoned her! Why did she even care if it came under attack? Shouldn't she just leave it to its fate? She felt the shadow's eyes on the back of her neck keenly. One wall in the hotel had a mirror, and she glanced at it, and saw the shadow sitting on its barrel upon the bed, staring at her. ”Oh...read a book or something!” Chrysalis snapped, using magic to tear open her suitcase and throw some train-station jangle dreadful at the shadow. It landed atop the bed, and the shadow glanced down at it, but then back up. “What?” The shadow’s head titled to the side. Her horn glowed blue and she pushed the book away from her, then resumed looking at Chrysalis. “If you have something to say,” Chrysalis growled, “then just say it!” She stomped up to the bed, glaring down at the shadow, looking it straight in the eye. “I tolerate your silence because you’re normally easy to read. But if you’re just going to stare at me then speak!” The shadow was silent. “I may have lost my form, my home, and all my changelings, but I haven’t lost you! I am still your Queen! I created you! So speak!” The shadow’s head tilted to the other side, but its lips didn’t move. Chrysalis felt herself snarling. She lashed out with a hoof, but it passed harmlessly through the shadow. Eyes that looked like Twilight Sparkle’s bore into her. “What do you want?!” Chrysalis screamed. The shadow regarded her outburst. It tapped a hoof on the jangle-dreadful novel, while it’s other hoof tapped Chrysalis’ chest, her heart. “How...I’m feeling? You want to know how I’m feeling?” The shadow nodded. “Idiot! I’m angry! Can’t you tell?” The shadow pressed both its front hooves against Chrysalis’ heart, leaning forward a little. “I have every right to be angry! Furious! I had everything! I had a throne, I had legions of servants. I had Equestria itself in my grasp twice! I ruled the changelings for a thousand years. I brought Celestia herself low. I had power! I had control! I had focus and purpose and now look at me, LOOK AT ME!” Chrysalis whirled around, glaring at the full-length mirror as magic consumes her body. Blue fire burned away her orange mantle of fur and her too-big mane and her cream, fuzzy carapace and showed black chitin and green eyes and a mouth that sported a pair of needle-like fangs. She tromped up to the mirror, glaring at her old self. “You had everything!” she screamed at her reflection, her old self. “But you failed! You’re an utter failure! I should shove you in a pod. I should drain you of love for this...this incompetence! You failed! You FAILED! I FAILED!” Chrysalis took in deep breaths as she stared at herself in the mirror, eyes wide. “I failed before,” she said to herself. Defended herself. “I’m old. Failures happen. But there was always...always another way. The failure was never this...this total.” Blue fire consumed Chrysalis. She was looking at her new true self again. She ran a hoof through the orange mantle of fur. Her long purple wings buzzed. She keenly felt the tiny fuzz that covered her carapace. Finally, she turned around and looked back to the shadow. “I don’t have a throne. I don’t have subjects. I don’t have my own body. I don’t even have my hunger, the one thing I thought I could never lose. And...a-and...Ocellus...is right. Things...h-have changed. And there’s no way to change them back. All I'd be doing is pretending. But if I don't pretend, then what do I have left?” The shadow got up from the bed and came over to Chrysalis, sitting beside her, looking into the mirror. The shadow’s horn glowed blue and carried over the jangle-dreadful. She put a hoof in it again, opened it to the very first page, then tapped a hoof against Chrysalis. Chrysalis understood. “A very, very long time ago,” she explained, “I was smaller. Smaller than you, only a little bigger than a normal changeling. And I woke up for the very first time. I was trapped in fluid, drowning. I pounded and bit and tore my way from my prison and found that the world was a cave and I had been trapped in a rotting tree, and that cave was full of creatures that almost looked like me...but I had two things they didn’t.” She lifted a hoof and pointed to her eyes. “I could focus. See one thing at a time, remove distractions.” She tapped her snout, breathed in, “and I had this. I’m the only changeling with a nose. Isn’t that strange? But it’s not just for show. I can smell normal scents as well as a pony. And I can scent emotions at a much longer distance, and parse them better, then any changeling.” Chrysalis shook her head. “We were born starving. The other changelings were already attacking each other, trying to consume each other, but didn’t know how, and changelings couldn’t feed on other changelings. But me...I could smell food somewhere else. I flew out of the cave. There was a traveling pony, an earth pony. I drained her. I saw she was traveling on a path and I followed the path back to a small village of unicorns. I lurked in the shadows for the next few days, ate my fill...then returned to the cave. The changelings there had never thought to leave. They hadn’t noticed me leaving and couldn’t smell the food outside of it. They were weak. Could barely move. “So...I went back to the unicorn village. i seized one of them, an old stallion, and dragged him back to the cave. Threw him to the others. They fed. I fed them. I was the reason they had food. I’d been followed, though. The unicorns came after their missing pony. We fought back...and lost. Of course we lost. We didn’t know anything about ourselves yet. Didn’t know how to shapeshift or how to use magic. Didn’t even know how to speak. So the unicorns overpowered us easily and drove us into the wilderness. “But they didn’t destroy us. In the wilderness we learned. We learned how to use magic like the unicorns had. How to change our bodies. How to create cocoons. We lurked in that forest for months, feeding on animals, on pony caravans...” Chrysalis drifted off. She could barely remember those days, because they’d been a blur of instinct and hunger and misery punctuated by bare moments of success and gluttony when things had gone right. Pure survival, and nothing more. Slowly learning how to imitate ponies, first their forms, then the sounds they made. Gradually understanding the sounds, learning what they meant, learning language. Learning reproduction, how to grow the tiny swarm. Learning mortality, that the other changelings died and she didn’t. Individual bugs were transitory. She was eternal. And everything that changelings were, she had made them. The shadow regarded her. It reached out with both hooves, pressing them to Chrysalis. “What?” She demanded. “What do you want?” The shadow shook its head, then nodded at Chrysalis. “What do I want?” The shadow nodded. Chrysalis' reaction was immediate, visceral, pure. “Revenge! It’s all that’s left to me. I want to take Starlight Glimmer and wrap her in a cocoon and drain her by inches. A little more every day until she’s nothing more than a husk!” The shadow waved a hoof, as if to ask, what do you want? “I want to take Thorax and pull his stupid antlers from his head. Make him watch as I drain the love of every single traitor in the Badlands and leave their meat for carrion birds! Leave him with just enough so he feels it when the vultures start to tear open his carapace!” What do you want? “I’ll go to Canterlot. The love and power of the Hive will make me more than capable of obliterating Celestia. Brushing aside Twilight Sparkle. I’ll destroy every one of her friends! Then I’ll do the same to The Crystal Empire, to Cadance and Shining Armor and Flurry Heart!” And then what? “I’ll burn the fields of Equestria so the ponies starve! Salt their land so nothing grows here again! They’ll starve like I’ve starved! They’ll wither before me and I will laugh!” And then? “Then! Then...” Chrysalis' mouth opened and closed on its own a few times, but no sound came out until she forced herself to keep speaking. “Then...my revenge will be complete,” she said. Even to her ears, it sounded lame. She pressed on anyway. “Then I’ll have taken everything from every creature that’s wronged me. Then I’ll...” Chrysalis fell silent. Then she’d...what? Take a vacation? Go to some tropical paradise and lounge around for the rest of eternity? Spend her days sitting in a hotel room with nothing but the shadow for company? The shadow shrugged. Yes, probably. Chrysalis glared at the shadow. “Then I’ll rule the ponies instead.” You had the absolute loyalty of a race you molded yourself for a thousand years, and they turned on you in an instant once another creature offered them more and better food. You think the ponies won’t turn on you? “Then what else is there?” The shadow was silent. Chrysalis wasn’t even sure if it had spoken at all, or if that was just her own mind. Before Chrysalis could speak again, the shadow shrugged, then disappeared back into its home. Chrysalis stared at it for several long minutes, because she knew what she’d see if she looked back to the mirror. But eventually, she had to look...and in the mirror, just as expected, she saw her old self. Black, smooth chitin. Green eyes. Holed legs. Thin hair that behaved itself rather than poofing around her. Blue wings without elytra. Chrysalis stared at her old self’s face, which stared back with the same expression, one that was impossible to read. Finally, Chrysalis looked at her old self’s wings, then back at her own. She stretched them and buzzed them. “Mine are longer,” she informed her old self. Queen Chrysalis - the real one and the one in the mirror - scowled. But she couldn’t deny the truth. Chrysalis spent a few hours reading from the jangle-dreadful novel, trying to ignore the sight of her old self in the mirror, and the faint ringing in her ears from a nearly silent room save for the mechanical whirring of the fan overhead. By the time she left, “afternoon” had transitioned into “evening”, with the sun sinking down towards the horizon. She wandered from the hotel and out into TIatarta's streets almost in a daze. She wasn’t sure where she was going. She was hungry - physically - but she had no way of knowing what was love poisoned and what wasn’t. She eventually solved the problem by going to the beach, wading out into the water, and transforming herself into a seal. She caught several fish. That was cathartic, at least a little. After an hour of this she left the water and returned to her Nonchalant disguise, hunger satiated and yet having no idea what to do. It was supposed to be “nothing”. That was what a vacation was for, after all. But really, was that any different than what she’d do once she got back to Grogar’s little Legion of Doom? Conquer Equestria...and then? Taking over the Nook had lost its appeal too. Those bugs were conditioned to despise her, and even if they could get over that...she could take it over, become a Queen again. Wrest control of it from Ecdysis and spit in Thorax's eye, take the changelings there and...fly somewhere else...and make a new Hive, probably in a worse location than the Nook but isolated...and then? Chrysalis hadn’t known that she could hate two words more than “Starlight Glimmer”, but, here she was. She went to a club and tried to lose herself in music. Something called salsa. That worked for an hour, or at least she spent an hour telling herself it was working. But while her body went through the motions and she even smiled and winked at a handsome stallion and got him to dance with her, inside, it was just empty. Eventually she just stopped pretending and walked away, ignoring the stallion’s protestations. It was, frankly, a relief when she spotted a certain Abyssinian entering a large building done up to look like an ice cream sunday bowl, calling itself the Chill Spot, carrying a large satchel that looked somehow familiar as she entered it. Catrina...Chrysalis pushed the cursed words and then from her mind as her eyes narrowed. Right now, she had something she could focus on: the destruction of the witchweed. She could not allow the plant to exist, a way for false love to be created. She could resist its scent better than any changeling, but if she tasted it... Of course, her relief gave way when she noticed another pair entering the Chill Spot: Ocellus and Smolder, moving with all the clandestine grace they could muster...which was to say, with the grace hippopotamus having a stroke in a maternity ward. It was simply not possible for any being to look more like they were trying to follow a creature without being noticed. The annoyance that welled up inside of Chrysalis at least broke her malaise finally. She ducked into an alley long enough to transform, emerging as a gray-coated unicorn teenager with a yellow mane, tail, and eyes. Then she headed towards the Chill Spot, grumbling to herself as she did. I take back everything I thought about Ocellus' capabilities as an infiltrator, she groused to herself. She could have turned herself into a hat for Smolder to wear. Or a pony and just remain within ten feet of Smolder or whatever is the minimum distance. Idiot. Speaking of - Smolder, you moron, waiting until tomorrow was your idea! I should have known Ocellus would try and butter you up and of course you fell for it... The image of Ocellus trying to “butter up“ Smolder was at least amusing, given the changeling's apparent lack of subtlety, and helped put a smile on Chrysalis' disguised face as she entered the Chill Spot. She wasn't exactly sure what she had been expecting. The ice cream wasn't a surprise; there were booths along the wall near the entrance, and a counter where ponies were ordering it. But the fact that the building also made room for a huge public, heated bath threw off Chrysalis, plus a wall further back contained directions towards a massage parlor, sauna, mud baths...the Chill Spot was a joint ice cream parlor and day spa. A Sun-day spa, one might say. Chrysalis had spent a thousand years eating ponies, and yet she still didn't get them. The changeling queen pushed her thoughts aside as she scanned the spa for signs of her quarry. She just managed to see an orange, scaled tail turn down a hallway that led to the sauna, and grunted as she set off after it. “I really hate that dragon,” she mumbled to herself, throwing an arbitrarily large amount of bits at a desk-pony who sat near the entrance to the day spa section of the Chill Spot. She ignored his asking if she wanted any change and instead headed straight for the sauna, reaching it just as the door closed. “Idiots,” Chrysalis hissed, walking up to the door and opening it. “Morons, foals, waste of chitin and scales...” The heat and humidity of the room hit Chrysalis instantly, of course. Stepping into the sauna presented Chrysalis with a wood-walled room, but the steam made it hard to tell how big it was or who else was in here - she couldn't see the opposite wall, nor even either side one. Chrysalis wasn't entirely certain but she was pretty sure that meant that too much steam was being used. Maybe the Chill Spot should stick to ice cream. She walked into the sauna, peering against the steam. Eventually she saw a trio of dark spots, figures, and headed towards them. She found herself looking at Smolder and Ocellus facing Catrina, who had disrobed and was sitting on a bench with her arms up and over the side and legs crossed, tail swishing casually...and already looking directly at Chrysalis as she came in through the steam. Chrysalis had retained her natural scent receptors, and breathed in deep. From Catrina, she got the exact same smug superiority that she's scented in Mayor Dusk's office, while from the teenagers, she could smell... ...Nothing? What? The two were clearly there, they were too real to be illusions or dummies...so where were their emotions? “Good evening,” Catrina said, “your majesty.” Chrysalis recovered from the lack of emotional scent coming from the teenagers, focusing on Catrina, or starting to. But then what the Abyssinian said hit her. “What did you call me?“ Catrina glanced at her claws, checking them for dirt. “Attack.” Aggression filled the air as Smolder and Ocellus whirled on her, the dragon exhaling bright magenta flames. Despite Chrysalis' dual shocks, one thousand years of survival instinct meant that it wasn't the slightest impediment as she ducked down under the gout of flame. With her disguise useless, she sloughed it off, taking on her true form and rising with her horn glowing blue. “Betrayal!” She exclaimed, stepping forward and smacking Smolder away from her. She heard hooves on the floor and spun around, seeing Ocellus charge at her while letting out a war-hiss, aggression that Chrysalis didn't think the tiny changeling had even been capable of pouring off of her. Chrysalis' reach was longer and she had something to the effect of fifty or sixty times the teenager's years worth of experience in reacting to surprises, though. Her horn glowed and she seized the changeling. Ocellus continued to scrabble and hiss, however... ...no, not Ocellus, not really at least. Ocellus wasn't capable of this level of vitriol. Catrina had done something to her, and to Smolder as well. Poisoned them in some new way. Turned them against her - forced them against her. “Hhhzzzkkk!” Chrysalis exclaimed, throwing Ocellus into Smolder as she tried to stand, though with her new realization she made sure to hold back her full force. They didn't deserve her full wrath. Catrina did. Chrysalis' telekinesis was already reaching out behind her. She hadn't seen Catrina leap, but she knew it was coming, and a glance behind her confirmed that, indeed, she had the Abyssinian held in her blue aura. She squeezed. “You are an idiot,” Chrysalis growled, pulling Catrina towards her but making sure her claws remained out of reach. “Two charmed teenagers and a middle-aged Abyssinian? You knew who I was and you thought that would stand the slightest chance against the Queen of the Changelings?!” Catrina didn't look perturbed at all. Instead, she her chest heaved, and she spat at Chrysalis...but it wasn't saliva. It wasn't a hairball, either. It was a glob of greenish-black ooze, and that shocked Chrysalis enough that she didn't move in time as the glob struck her right front hoof and splattered across it and the ground, the glob instantly cementing itself in place and clinging to Chrysalis' chitin. Chrysalis' jaw dropped as she looked to Catrina. The aroma of smugness had given way to naked agression. “You're a changeling?!” She demanded. Ocellus emerged from the steam then, heaving and spitting out ooze at Chrysalis. The queen deflected it with telekinesis, but Smolder then leapt out from behind Ocellus - spitting ooze of her own, splattering it across Chrysalis' right hind leg. Chrysalis let out a hiss as she threw Catrina at the imposter teenagers just as the three were readying more ooze, slamming them into one another with much less gentleness than she had managed previously, She set her horn glowing, blasting at the rapidly calcifying ooze. But the three were made of sturdier stuff than Chrysalis had anticipated and had recovered quickly, charging back through the steam, horking up more ooze. Chrysalis telekinetically caught the ooze in the air and lobbed it back at the trio, striking them in their chests with enough force to send them away once more... ...but then she felt something tap on her withers, and the odor of smug superiority was back in full force. She turned with one of her free hooves sweeping out, but the creature, another Catrina, slipped out of her reach and held a palm that was full of yellow powder, exhaling and blowing the stuff into Chrysalis' face. Chrysalis sputtered and coughed as she inhaled it, falling awkwardly as her legs suddenly gave out, her horn's magic flickered and died. Her eyelids suddenly felt like lead as darkness crept at the edge of her vision. “By the way, no, I'm not a changeling,” Catrina said, as she was joined by her doppelganger. Catrina looked her up and down. “And no, they're not...entirely. Not bad, though, hmmm?“ The false Catrina, Ocellus, and Smolder all glowed with pinkish flames - but blackness claimed Chrysalis's sight before those flames cleared. The last thing she heard was Catrina clapping her paws together. “Take her to the mirror.”