Twilight seemed to have a reaction to that, a small twitch, but she kept on walking without looking back towards Chrysalis. "Why do you ask?"
Chrysalis walked a little faster, to be at her side as she spoke. "Someone tried to break into my house, yesterday. Or at least I think that's what happened. I heard sounds during the night, and in the morning I found signs against the door and near the windows, like someone had tried to force them open."
"Are you sure it wasn't just some wild animal?"
"So far from the forest? Someone else would have noticed it too. And no other houses had any signs, I checked," Chrysalis replied. "I'd taken home copies of some test results to check them over again. I think someone might have noticed that."
Twilight shook her head. "I think you're being paranoid. Why would anyone do something like that?" But her expression was uncertain, and Chrysalis could see that.
"Princess, you should know better than all of us that not every creature is as nice as we would wish them to be," Chrysalis replied. "The research conducted in the laboratories here could be very dangerous in the wrong hooves. There must be someone out there who wants it for themselves, we can't rely only on the good will of those who enter these walls."
"We have security measures," Twilight replied, almost snapping back.
"But are they enough?" asked Chrysalis.
Twilight was silent for a few moments. Just enough for them to reach their destination. "I suppose, perhaps we could tighten security further. I didn't want it to feel like another burden on those working here, but you do have a point." She began to cast the necessary spells to open the door to the room where scales were stored.
Chrysalis didn't listen to her. She'd gone tense the moment she'd looked up and seen the door, and she was forcing herself to be ready for what was coming through her building unease. One mistake and it could all be over for her, but that was why she needed to be focused. She took deep breaths, quietly readied the spell in her horn, and waited as Twilight opened the door.
She almost fired as the inside was revealed to her. As she'd planned. But something stopped her. Not anything she saw though. There was nothing to see inside the room anyway, even if that wasn't unexpected.
A second more of nothing, as Twilight began to walk in, it would have been just enough for Chrysalis to consider casting the spell anyway just to get rid of one purple alicorn. If she'd actually been paying attention to that still. But she'd been frozen in place from the moment the door had finished opening, not for something she'd seen but for something she'd heard.
"I'd be disappointed, if it hadn't been so predictable."
It almost sounded like Twilight had spoken, but Chrysalis had learned to tell the difference. And she'd learned what to expect from the tone the words had been spoken in.
She'd never learned how to take it, though. And as she was slammed against the nearest wall, every nerve and muscle and bone in her body burning with agony, the only thing she could do was scream, and pretend her tears were just a result of the pain.
Twilight turned in time to see Chrysalis fall to the ground, her disguise coming undone. An instant later, a scale landed next to the changeling, and a portal opened from it, swallowing Chrysalis.