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// 3 - Nothing You Can Say But You Can Learn How to Play the Game 
// Story: All You Need is Love 
// by AugieDog 
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That old hissing click of a name—Pheropsoph—curdled her gut. "It's Sapphire Shores," she said through her teeth. "Maybe you didn't check the giant glowing letters on the marquee outside?"

The enforcer's ears twitched up beside his horns, nothing but glee in his scent. "Then you deny that you're the aforementioned agent of the deposed changeling queen?"

"Deny?" Sapphire stomped one front hoof and swept the other from side to side across her new audience. "I'll ask the noble kings and princesses here gathered: have I denied anything? Haven't I been polite and cooperative and naturally charming this entire evening? Haven't I behaved myself when we all know what I could've been doing to those guards and those kids and all the other folks y'all set out as bait for me if I was anything like the monster this jacked-up, wannabe shell stomper thinks I am?" She ended with her hoof pointing at the enforcer.

His ears were flat now, his grin a snarl. He even took half a step toward her before King Thorax set a hoof on his shoulder and said, "Pharynx."

Sapphire didn't see how one little word in that mild little voice stopped the enforcer, but it did. Maybe this king deserved a second look after all.

"I'll apologize, Ms. Shores," King Thorax said then, and his sheer and utter sincerity moved that second look idea straight to the top of Sapphire's list. "My brother's eagerness to keep the hive safe sometimes clouds his judgment."

The enforcer—Pharynx—pouted in a way that Sapphire would've called cute under any other circumstances and sat back with his forelegs folded across his chest. "I've got a job to do," he said with a sniff, "and I do it."

His Majesty patted Pharynx on the shoulder, then turned those big, liquid eyes on Sapphire. "So please let me be blunt, Ms. Shores. Were you once the changeling infiltrator known as Pheropsoph?"

To sass or not to sass wasn't really the question. The question was how much sass to employ... "I hope you'll understand," she said, polishing a hoof against the blue-and-white layered waistcoat she'd chosen for this encounter, "why I had to change the name. I mean, Pheropsoph?" She stuck her tongue out. "Chrysalis lacked the least crumb of music in her. It's why we never really got along."

The already quiet room went even quieter, and Sapphire gave Celestia a sideways look. "Pretty sure a certain princess knew all about this already, though."

Celestia's shrug barely jostled the shadows pooling under the pastel cascade of her mane. "I had suspicions. I chose not to act upon them." Her smile, though, made those shadows glow. "My love of music, I suppose."

"Your mistake," Pharynx growled again—Sapphire was starting to wonder if he could say anything that wasn't a growl. "But one of the rights granted to the New Changeling Hive in the treaty of—"

"Pharynx." King Thorax put more throat into the name this time, and Sapphire felt her own ears tuck into her mane. Yet another reason she didn't care for royalty: the pheromones they puffed around. She really needed to make some songs about this guy before he got any deeper under her skin. 

"Ms. Shores," he said then, and Sapphire stopped herself from issuing her automatic 'call me Sapphire' reply. At least all the nasty compulsion was gone from his voice, so she reluctantly awarded him another style point. "I know I don't need to tell you about the difficulties of being a changeling in Pony society especially after the most recent and hopefully final attempt by Her Deposed Majesty to impose her will upon Equestria."

This guy was way too soothing and way too easy on the eyes: Sapphire had to force herself to snort. "Y'know, I think I liked it better when Shell Stomper here was yelling at me." She jutted her chin at Pharynx. "Maybe you could arrest me and take me off to some nice cell somewhere before your Boss Bug gets me passing out?"

King Thorax's head drew back, his eyes wide.

Pharynx gave an actual laugh. "He is a little on the hypnotic side, isn't he?"

Sapphire shook her head with a low whistle. "Take him down three octaves, and he'd clean up on the R & B circuit."

That got a flurry of blinks from His Majesty and another laugh from Pharynx. "Well, we don't have a cell for you," the enforcer said, and something warm quivered there, the same sort of sweet, fragrant, pleasant and unnatural emotion Sapphire had first sensed from little Ocellus. "But we have set up a special Truth and Reconciliation Commission." Everything about him became serious. "If you'd like to keep operating on Equestrian soil, you need to convince the commissioner that you're no longer a danger to our Pony allies." His smile returned with its edge showing again. "And if you think I'm a hard ass..."

Half closing her eyes, Sapphire made a show of stretching her neck to check out his posterior. "Might be I'll need to do a little hooves-on research on that last point."

The two changelings blushed mightily, and with their fancy coloring, Sapphire found herself determined to cause this effect as often as she could manage it. Behind her, Luna whooped and Celestia chuckled, and when Sapphire glanced back to see how the rest of her audience was responding, she wasn't surprised to see Princess Cadance covering her smile with a hoof while Princess Twilight looked about as confused as King Thorax had earlier.

Yeah, Sapphire was gonna enjoy making music for those two ruling wallflowers...

Which meant she had to stay in Equestria, which meant she had to bamboozle some commissioner or other. But, well, she'd been a bamboozler the instant she cracked her eggshell, hadn't she?

She gave herself a shake, took a stance that showed off the long, lean lines of her physique to their best advantage, and made her voice just about husky enough to haul a sled. "So who's this commissioner I need to convince?"

Pharynx's grin when he turned to King Thorax had a whole different sort of edge to it than before. "I'll just escort her over there, then." He pointed that grin at Sapphire. "We've got him all set up right down the hall."

Blinking, she had to drop the stance: she couldn't hold it for too long without falling over sideways anyway. "Down the hall? You mean...here? In the arena?"

"Oh, yeah." Pharynx started for the suite door. "We didn't want to keep you waiting."

Something prickled in her middle, and it took her a heartbeat to realize it was stage fright.

Just then, though, Celestia's voice flowed warm and gentle over her ears. "All will be well, Sapphire. Merely tell the truth as you experienced it."

And because she couldn't let some princess get the last word... "Truth, huh?" Cocking her fetlocks into about half a strut, she followed Pharynx through the door. "Hope this commissioner doesn't mind a little song and dance, then. 'Cause there's nothing I know truer than that."

She stepped out into the hallway, and the place was so dark and quiet, she had to look twice in both directions before she could find Pharynx heading off to her left. "Song and dance?" he was saying. "He'd probably be okay with that, actually." His eyes glowed slightly when he looked back at her. "As long as you mean a literal song and dance. 'Cause you try to lie to him or bluff him or spin things to make yourself look good, he'll just plain shave you bald."

It took a little effort to keep her hoofsteps firm as she caught up with him. "I'm gonna guess that's the voice of experience?"

He shook his head. "Not personal. But I've seen deep-cover operatives on the floor weeping, and this guy just sitting there with his eyes half closed." Pharynx shivered, a sour emotional note plucking Sapphire's ear. "I don't wanna know how he does it, but he's damn good."

Every sassy comment seemed to dry right up inside her, and then he was stopping before an office near the end of the hall, the door labeled Lighting Manager. Green magic wavered between his horns, reached out to touch the knob, and he turned another of his completely serious faces toward her. "All you hafta remember, Hot Stuff, are the words 'truth' and 'reconciliation.'" The door clicked, and he pushed it open. "You give us the first, and we give you the second."

Her every instinct yelled at her to bolt for the fire escape. But, well, she'd been ignoring her instincts for longer probably than this Pharynx had been alive. Squaring her shoulders, then, she walked through the door: no strut, no slide, no jive. Just walked inside—

And saw a little white rabbit lounging on a cushion on top of the desk against the wall maybe three paces away, the office small and cramped with bookshelves.

She blinked at the rabbit. It didn't blink back, its attention—and teeth—wholly engaged in a carrot about as long as the rabbit was tall that lay on the cushion beside it.

Glancing behind her at the grinning Pharynx, she said, "Either you've got a way different sense of humor than I thought, or I'm missing something."

"Angel Bunny?" Pharynx said, still grinning in the doorway. "This is Agent Pheropsoph, the one we were telling you about."

The hair along Sapphire's neck rose like a thunderstorm was rolling in, and when she turned to the desk, the rabbit was looking at her, disdain billowing from him like some toxic fog: again, it took a fair amount of effort for her not to step away.

Not a regular rabbit, looked like...

Pharynx's voice reached her through her confusion. "Ocellus, the nymph you met earlier, first got to know Angel here when she was volunteering at Fluttershy's animal sanctuary. Turned out that, when she changed into a rabbit, she could communicate with him. And he loves to communicate. I think you can sense how strongly he projects his emotions?"

Sapphire managed to nod, still trying to catch her breath. The rabbit—Angel, Pharynx had called him, a name as unsuited to this monstrosity as Sapphire's original name had been to her—Angel had reined in the poisonous cloud he'd been emitting just a bit, but his active ill feelings toward her still came out strongly enough to make her stomach roll.

"So we made a deal," Pharynx was going on behind her. "Some of us bunny it up with him a few times a week, and he lends us his services whenever situations like you come up."

Her stomach twisted at a sudden thought. "I ain't changing into any rabbit," she more choked than said. "Not for you, not for him, not for anypony!"

"Good."

She snapped her head around to see if he was mocking her, but Pharynx was just nodding. "All we want you to do is tell your truth: what you did, how and why you did it, who you did it to, all like that. You talk, he'll listen. You play it absolutely straight with him, he'll play it absolutely straight with you." He fixed her with his pretty, pretty lavender eyes. "That clear?"

Not trusting her voice, she gave him a nod of her own.

His lips curled into a smile that she found herself really wanting to taste: she'd been avoiding changelings since the Big Shift, but now—

First things first, of course. "You wait outside," she told him, focusing on those eyes and those lips. "I may need a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after this."

Even his smirk was unfairly cute, then he was stepping out into the hallway and closing the door.

Silence filled the little office, and Sapphire breathed it in. "All right, Mr. Bunny," she said, slowly turning back to face him. "I was built to remember, and I got the whole thing right up here." She brushed the tip of a hoof against her forehead. "Parts of it I don't like very much, though, so you get yourself ready." Gritting her teeth, she lowered her head so she was looking at him through her eyebrows. "'Cause I'm only gonna do this once."