//------------------------------//
// CH. 10 Reunion 
// Story: Werewolves of Knicknik 
// by Atuhor Name 
//------------------------------//


Reunion






Now Twilight was onto the strangest psychologist appointment ever. She was sitting in a room with an insane monster who was asking probing questions about her mental state. She wasn’t sure if this was something to bore her out of worrying about Naudia and letting that one question claw at her composure, or if it actually was a psyche evaluation.

"Have you noticed any increased violent tendencies lately?" it asked.

"I generally feel a strong inclination to punch you in the face." Twilight said the first one that came to mind.

"That's normal, anything other than that?"

“There was a time when I first saw Gwynn where I felt very angry.”

“And that lines up with the report you induced your first wereslime-werewolf transformation.”

“I can transform into a marewolf?” Twilight asked.

“No, a WERE-wolf, specifically one based on the maned wolf.” The thing pulled out a picture off of it’s clipboard and handed it to Twilight. “You should be able to turn into that using the same method you used to transform into a slime. That’s your in with the werewolves out in Knicknik, your homework is to master that transformation and your test will be keeping it up for however long it takes to fool the werewolves over there.”

The picture was Twilight in the kiddie pool, her cutie mark was absent but it was clearly Twilight as a tall wolf-like purple furred creature. Any other day of the week she wouldn’t have believed it but, she realized that she would have go to with the flow and the gun up against her head or she would go mad.

Just then her stomach growled at her.

“Now that you and Naudia are done with your initiations there will be a break for hamburgers before you begin magic lessons for your new type of magic.”

Twilight instantly perked up at that, she had forgotten she was supposed to learn new magic.

“But whats a hamburger?”

“Something that’s going to take some explaining, come this way, oh and here are some saddlebags copied from your own, made from a higher quality material and adapted for your pony-to-wolf transformation.” The thing pointed at what on initial inspection looked exactly like her saddlebags, but were clearly not as they looked brand new.

Twilight put on the saddlebags and before she and the First Administrator could walk through one of the doors it stopped.

“I would like to remind you Twilight that while you are here you are at the heart of my powerbase, you will be watched, you will have a great deal more freedom than you expect.” The thing pointed a finger at her. “But you will also be judged by your actions here, if you feel any heroic urges welling up inside of you, you need to remember where you are.

“Now lets meet up with your girlfriend, I’m certain you’re just chomping at the bit to find out how she’s changed.”

Twilight was not eager to go out that door, she looked at that door with a pit of dread opening up in her stomach.


-------------------


Outside the dummy hospital room resembled some kind of movie set, that was designed to be jettisoned into space at a moments notice. Lots of wood, some things Twilight sincerely hoped weren’t made of leather, and outside the hospital room she saw basically no metal at all. The scaffolding around the hospital room was made of bamboo tied together, the lighting had some sort of paper lampshade, it was like if you dropped somebody off in the middle of a jungle and told them “build me a movie set”. In keeping with that there was a lot of greenery around the place as well.

There were a lot of people outside the dummy hospital room, Twilight assumed they were people and there was something strange about everything. It was very hard to describe as she looked from one strange creature to the next, she could… tell things about them, just by looking, things she didn’t know before she looked at them.

The problem was she didn’t know what all these things meant but she learned? Knew? Variations on them whenever she looked at somebody new.

“I’m, seeing things? Knowing things?” Twilight looked up at the First Administrator. “Is this normal?”

“Normal for yunguaq yes, something about the way you existed before was blocking it out. We think it has to do with how Equestria just… is. You’re just going to have to learn how to read these things yourself with practice.”

Twilight gave him a questioning look.

“I’m not going to explain right now. We’ve been working on the best way to try and explain it without misunderstanding and everything about explaining it is going to be miserable if you misunderstand it.”

“Okay…”

That was when Naudia walked into the room talking with Gwynn Hall like they were suddenly great friends and she looked ecstatic about whatever had happened. There was also a large kangaroo rodent thing riding on her back that was looking around at everything as if it was trying to take in as much of the room outside as possible. If Twilight didn’t know any better she would have said “casing the joint”.

Twilight tried to examine Naudia for any changes external and other than the rat could find none, the only difference was in her attitude. It was like a gigantic weight had been lifted off her shoulders, Twilight could tell from the way she moved, before she seemed confident, now Twilight could tell without a doubt that she WAS confident in herself. The difference was undeniably appealing in Twilight’s eyes.

When Naudia actually noticed Twilight she practically galloped over to meet her, clearly very excited. When she got to Twilight she turned to show off the rat thing sitting on her back.

“Twilight look what I can do now!”

“So, uhh, they gave you a pet kangaroo-rat-ish thing?” Twilight looked a bit closer at it. “It looks like somebody combined a springhare with a rat and stuck on some extra bits.”

“Oh yeah, sorry I’m feeling a little bit scatterbrained right now. Here I’ll show you what I mean.”

And then Naudia split into a heap of bouncing happy little rats just like the one that had been sitting on her back.

Twilight froze.

A single hair plinked out of place like a cut guitar string.

The next thing Twilight heard was:

“I think she passed out standing up.” From Gwynn.

“Yeah. I think this all was a bit too much of a shock for her.” Naudia’s voice. “Don’t worry I know what to do here.”

Twilight fully came back into awareness to find Naudia nuzzling her with no strange rodents in sight.

“Wha…?” Twilight asked.

“I’m sorry about that Twilight, I was just so excited that I forgot to explain.” Naudia said. “I was converted into a yunguaq like you but an ‘itumeyuk’ instead of a wereslime, I can split into 50 of those redback rats.”

“We had an easier time working with Naudia’s conversion because she’s a magical creature than we did for yours.” The First Administrator said.

“Buuu…” Twilight tried to fully start up her brain. “But why are you so happy about that? Why would turning into rodents make you this happy?”

“That’s not what is making me so happy, at least not directly.” Naudia said. “The conversion has outright removed the need for me to eat emotions! The world seems brighter!”

“But, you split into 50 rats?” Twilight phrased it like a question.

“If it means I no longer have to eat emotions I will take it!” Naudia beamed with happiness. “I’m already thinking of ways that can be useful as well, you want to know what else I can do?!”

“Lets save that for later,” The First Administrator interjected “I think both of you need to eat something to eat.”

“Yeah.” Twilight said.

“ABSOLUTELY!” Naudia beamed so much she might as well be glowing. “First real food dinner date with Twilight!”

The first administrator gestured off in a direction and as they walked Twilight hung back with Naudia. She needed to talk this latest revelation over with her.

“So, uhh…” Twilight didn’t know where to start. “You seem extremely happy with this transformation.”

“I’m starting to get the impression that you’re not.” Naudia said defensively.

Twilight looked away.

“I don’t know.”

Naudia let her stew a moment with a hostile silence.

“I’ll be right up front with you Naudia, I’ve read communication is key to a relationship and I can’t hide this from you.” Twilight sighed before plunging onwards into the abyss. “I’m not okay with all of this, I was a pony as best I knew last week, you were a changeling and things were mostly going fine.

“But now,” Twilight waved a hoof at everything around her. “We’re stuck up in this against our will and I’m pretty sure we’re on the wrong side of this, and it’s distressing for me to feel like you’re just… ignoring all of this.”

That did stop Naudia, literally, Twilight had to walk back to wait for her.

“I didn’t think of it that way.” Naudia said after a long pause once they started walking again. “The moment I woke up in that room I knew what it was for, whatever organization from space that has the reins right now knows exactly what to do with them. But my gut instinct here is that there is something going on here that we haven’t been told yet, and I can’t fully judge the situation until we find that out especially with how little we know, I mean do you remember how huge that thing we docked with was?

“As for why I’m so happy, I don’t think I can express to you enough how huge it is for changelings to not need to eat love.” Naudia scratched her chin. “In fact I can’t, it’s impossible but I can show you the tip of the iceberg. You remember that carved box I showed you right?”

“The one that glowed to show a profile of a changeling? That was a long time ago now.” Twilight said.

“She and her egg died of starvation because of a bad harvest. They were not alone, some changelings just couldn’t handle the rations we had to give them.”

Naudia let that sink in.

“That’s the situation changelings have been in for over a thousand years. There isn’t much indication to changelings today as to how long this break in the drought will last. They have to trust ponies but this generation likely never fully will, not as a whole.

“But for the first time ever this cycle has been broken. I was right to avoid the path my mother took, and now I can see the path forward out of the darkness of this cycle and we will not only retain how we look but we will be stronger as well, in my lifetime we will see the last corrupted changeling transformation, and it isn’t because we will see the last changeling.”

That left Twilight with a lot to mull over and they walked in silence for quite some time.	 As they were making their way up some stairs Twilight spoke up.

“I don’t like this situation, Everything about it smells wrong.” Twilight said to Naudia. “But I can’t hate something that has helped you out to this degree, even if the whole springhare rat thing is still…”

There really weren’t words for describing the feeling of “your girlfriend can now split into 50 rats, and you have turned into a slime-werewolf.”

They reached the top of the stairs and into a surreal Manehattan-like subway. The whole thing was set up as if somebody significantly more advanced and more primitive than ponies had set it up. There were stunning signs made up of glowing flowers blinking on and off like any electric light, little hole in the wall shops and stands selling all manner of things, vending machines of odd types listing prices in aci, and plants, lots and lots of plants a feast for the eyes of tropical greenery.

Metal and stone clearly didn’t have much of a place in this world, muscled out by wood, leather, bone, fabric and other natural materials. Twilight eyed the leather and bone with disgust edged with suspicion, it looked wrong in ways that was unusual, it didn’t look like gryphon leather or ancient gryphon bone artifacts should.

Then there were the yunguaq, no two of them were alike, all of them were strange, fruit bat creatures ambled along beside some sort of flamboyant flowering plant rabbit humanoid. Their clothing and what they carried varied massively, anything from beachwear that left most of them exposed to tight cut tailored suits inlaid with a golden amber, and anything, ANYTHING in between. Twilight swore she saw somebody with a cowboy hat, a poncho and a skirt richly covered in designs Rarity would have done terrible things to be able to make.

Some of them were carrying around strange things as well, plates made of banana leaves with food Twilight barely recognized, grass baskets, a bindle covered in ants each an inch long or more. Twilight even saw one of them leading a giant turkey with a saddle and at least six extra transparent glowing heads. There were people carrying and looking at one of those flat bugs the first administrator head the legs folded out to display an even larger screen. 

Everything there was just a massive sensory overload and culture shock for Twilight and Naudia.

And if there was any doubt about the identity of who they were following they were utterly crushed as the crowds instantly parted anywhere the First Administrator decided to walk without him even having to say a word. They barely even gave a second glance at the First Administrator as if getting to work was more important.

Now Twilight and Naudia did get odd looks, the yunguaq tried to hide it to some extent but clearly a winged technicolor unicorn and a bug-horse were out of the ordinary.

“We aren’t taking the subway today, we’ll be taking an aerial route, while I know you both can fly I would appreciate if you would refrain until you understand the air space.” The First Administrator said.

They followed him up through another set of stairs and out into daylight and a skyscraper city street.

Twilight and Naudia looked up.

Before they could fully take in the organic skyscrapers around them they were forced to take in that they were looking up at more city space, fields and terrain, as the sky and clearly miles away above them. Along with a great vertical bar artificial sun that ran through the center.

Then they looked down at the canal beachfront tree city they were standing in. Trucks and cars floated above them made of lacquered wood and other organic materials. Gigantic rodents as big as a cart floated by carrying cargo containers. Every material used was obviously organic and obviously purpose grown.

The city in front of them was oddly designed to face the city streets around them with stairway access for the floating cars. The storefronts themselves resembled a mishmash of colors gaudily advertising anything from arcades to clothing stores in grafted wood seamlessly integrated with glass storefronts. This wasn’t some kind of nature preserve that was meant to live in harmony with the trees around them. The trees were put together and shaped like skyscrapers, given lots of unnatural corners and light up signs made of flowers, greenery made in service to the building rather than in concert with it.

And the street itself was strange, since cars flew it was a beach-side canal complete with boardwalk. There were even lots of street vendors standing around peddling anything from t-shirts to Tamales. Planted in the boardwalks periodically were various tropical plants and palm trees. Walking out into the perfect tropical air Twilight understood why there was an abundance of swimsuits and lighter clothes as everybody lived on a beachfront.

Twilight also noticed something that had been nagging at her mind a bit, everybody who passed by them was flawless? Twilight didn’t want to use the word ‘perfect’ here. Thinking about it for a moment Twilight figured it out, everybody walking by her looked like they had designed themselves in some way. Nobody looked too old, nobody had so much as a five o’clock shadow or scraggly haircut that didn’t look on purpose.

Twilight followed the first administrator into some kind of black, wooden flying car with tinted utterly black windows. She recognized the general shape of the car from the other Equestria. It was parked floating next to the boardwalk. Twilight noted that still even on this crowded street everybody gave the First Administrator ample room even if they barely acknowledged his presence.

The inside of the car was strange, there was no drivers seat and it was decorated in that leather material the other Equestria seemed to like. Twilight and Naudia found themselves sitting across from the first administrator and Gwynn Hall and desperate for somewhere to look other than the First Administrator.

They settled on looking out at the cityscape around them as it flew by. Twilight opting to lean into Naudia to get a better view of the outside.

Twilight could not get over how much the cityscape looked like somebody had wanted to say “future” and “tropical” and all they had to work with were plants and glass. The city didn’t have lampposts instead lamps were attached to the side of palm trees with no visible power source. All of the storefronts went up 5-6 stories tall with not only stairs but places where somebody could jump up and down floors, trucks packed mid-air unloaded directly to the fifth floor.

“Why is there so much wood, and plants?” Naudia asked.

“At one point in the past we thought that the future would be metal and robots, skyscrapers made of steel. Then we discovered what we would likely build those robots out of and the perspective changed.” The First Administrator said. “The strongest easy to get a hold of material is carbon, the major component in diamond and graphene, it was then when ‘carbon based lifeform’ and ‘future robot’ began to blur.

“What you see outside is the result of thirteen billion years of development on that technology, the perfect melding of technology and magic.”

Twilight felt the flying car come to a stop. They had parked right outside of what Twilight thought was a hayburger restaurant.

She was wrong.