//------------------------------// // Chapter 19 - A Bad Feeling // Story: A Changing Perspective // by Dragrace //------------------------------// Jack stood in awe. Had the minister just said that he was in control of the entire town? He was puzzled, mostly how a pony such as this would be able to make it to such a rank, especially one that serves royalty directly. The few ponies that did remain hadn’t seemed to notice either Jack’s wide open mouth, or the sinister smile Aegis had spread across his smug face. He may have been old, but it was obvious he was still in quite good physical condition, and he appeared to use his seniority to his advantage. Not knowing much about this newcomer, Jack already had a terrible feeling forming in his gut, he knew that the minister would completely abuse his power, and with the shield in place around the entire town there would be no possible way of telling the princess. The shield did in fact protect from both physical objects and magical abilities alike from either entering or leaving Ponyville. At least that’s what Jack assumed would happen. ‘There goes my flight practice for a while…’ Jack thought. ‘And magic, of course…’ Finally Twilight noticed Jack’s shocked expression, although she hadn’t taken notice of Golden Aegis’ dark grin. Approaching him, slightly concerned, Jack turned around to inquire about the newcomer. “Twilight, did you know about this guy before?” He inquired nervously, “I mean, like, had the princess ever told you anything about him?” “Celestia doesn’t tell me much about her personal life, which usually includes ponies working for her. To answer your question, I have honestly never heard of this particular stallion before.” Twilight responded, carefully scanning her eyes over the elder pony. Aegis gave her a frown, quickly alternating his gaze between both Jack and Twilight. The three remained silent for a while, each of them carefully looking at one another, before the awkward silence was finally interrupted by a hyper pink pony. “Ooh! Ooh! Another new pony in town! Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie, and we should totally have an awesome exciting welcome party! It’s only fair; Jack got one the other day! Him and his friends, well his friend, since his one friend was a changeling!” The pink mare exclaimed, barely pausing between each sentence. When Pinkie mentioned that one of Jack’s friends was a changeling, he gave him a dark sort of glare, and he was definitely building up suspicions against Jack. “From what I hear, changelings rarely travel alone…” Aegis mumbled, staring intently at Jack. “…Cake and Pin the tail on the Pony! It’ll be great! Oh and I love the purple bubble, it’s really pretty! We should totally make the entire party purple themed and…” Pinkie continued. Jack rolled his eyes. He rolled them for two reasons, the first being that Pinkie was getting carried away in another conversation that nopony was really paying attention to, and secondly because the minister had pretty much just convicted him of being a changeling. It was a fact that Jack was a changeling, but it’s rare for anypony to be arrested without any form of evidence, and there was no way he would cast the changeling detecting spell on him so soon. He hadn't acted anything like a changeling in front of anypony, really, and the only time he was seen as a changeling nopony saw him transform back into his stallion form. After another brief moment of silence, Twilight finally took a step forward, getting face to face with Aegis. “Hey, you can’t just go around accusing random ponies of being changelings. I’ve been around Jack for quite a while, and he seems like a pretty honest colt to me.” Twilight said, giving what looked like a death stare. “Hmph.” The minister let out a grunt, eying both Twilight and Jack once more. “I would expect the princess to pick a student that has some sort of logical reasoning, maybe she picked you because you needed the most improvement.” The minister retained his poker face, and Twilight’s expression changed from that of a little upset to a completely furious state. Her face turning a red color and a few small sparks were emitting from her horn. Jack noticed that things wouldn’t end well should they stay and continue their ‘pleasant’ conversation, so he decided to speak up. “Alright, it’s been nice meeting you Aegis…” “That’s minister Aegis to you.” He responded. “Rude…” Jack said under his breath. “But we really should get going, it’s quite late in the afternoon.” Looking up at the clock tower, the clock read 6:34. Jack, with an infuriated purple unicorn, slowly began walking away, Twilight continuously mumbling what seemed like curse words under her breath. Even as the two were leaving, Jack felt the eyes of the minister following their movements, until they had finally left the line of sight of Aegis. >---< Jack and Twilight were lying on the wooden floor of the library. Twilight was reading a dark blue book without a title on the front page, and had a pile of multicolored books beside her. She had already finished reading two of the books, and it still wasn’t night yet. ‘How is it even possible to read so fast…’ Jack thought. It was true, the sun would set around 7:30 that night, and she had read two full sized books of at least 600 pages in less than an hour. The windows were filled with a brilliant orange glow as the sun approached its final resting point. Biggs was sitting near the small table near the center of the room. His eyes were locked on those of Twilights, slightly moving back and forth with her eyes as she read. Twilight shifter slightly, almost as if she was uncomfortable, and gave a quick glance up to the red stallion before looking back at the page. “Can you please stop staring at me like that?” She asked, continuing to read the book. Biggs gave Jack a quick glance, and all Jack could do was nod in return. Jack still wasn’t quite settled after his encounter with the minister. His behavior was definitely not of which he expected of somepony of such a high rank. He was expecting him to maybe be a little cocky, but he seemed to have an ego of a God, and was intensely focused on power. He wanted to talk to Twilight about him, but couldn’t seem to think of the right words. Looking around the room once more, he noticed Biggs was no longer staring at Twilight, but staring at the sleeping Owlicious instead. Perched by a small window near the library’s entrance, the owl stood carefully watching guard outside the window. Or sleeping, just conveniently facing the window. It was hard to determine if the owl was awake or not because neither Jack nor Biggs could see the feathered face. “Hoo!” The owl hooted, the face still fixed upon the window. “Oh, Owlicious, you’re awake!” Twilight said, carefully rising to her legs once more. “I was just doing some research on changelings, mostly because I wanted to beat the minister to discovering the changeling.” “Hoo?” The owl hooted once more, finally turning her head around. “The minister, Golden Aegis.” Twilight said. “Hoo!” “Protective spell caster of the princess, he’s VERY important…” Twilight said sarcastically. “Hoo.” “The minist… Oh forget it…” “You know, when the owl says ‘who’ she isn’t asking ‘who’, but she’s hooting. That’s all owls can really ‘say’,” Jack said using hoof quotes, “If you even call that speaking.” Twilight was already back into reading, so deep into reading it appeared she hadn’t heard him speak. She had moved into a book called ‘Changing Anatomy – The Anatomy of a Changeling’. Jack was actually interested in the book as well, he wanted to know what he looked like on the inside (not really, he hated guts and gore) and how his body worked the way it did. He rose from the floor, giving a careful stretch of his body, which attracted the eyes of everypony (and owl) in the room. Looking around the room once more, Jack finally noticed what was missing. Spike. >---< The front door to the library opened, and Spike walked in with a glass of punch in his claw. He had a few streamers around his neck, and there was glitter all over his scales. “You guys are missing an AWESOME party!” He said, throwing his hands into the air and spilling his punch on the floor. “Oh shoot!” Twilight exclaimed. “We almost forgot about Pinkie’s welcome party! She’ll be devastated if we don’t show up!” “I wouldn’t really say ‘devastated’…” Jack said, “I’ve never really seen her upset, and I don’t think she’s really capable of being upset.” Twilight gave Jack a glare before continuing, “Well, she would be upset, everypony knows she just bottles up those emotions deep inside. You never know what would happen if too many emotions would build up inside of her…” There was ANOTHER awkward silence. Jack had experienced plenty of awkward moments through his visit, and the awkwardness seemed to be less significant every time. Maybe he was just getting used to the awkward moments; maybe it would be a regular thing for him. ‘At least I can’t get a cutie mark in awkwardness…’ Jack thought. As he looked back up, he found everypony to be gone, including Biggs. The door had been left open, as if they had expected him to close it on the way out. “Whatever.” He said out loud, letting out a sigh. He walked towards the door, carefully closing it behind him as he left the Tree-brary. Looking around the streets, it was definitely dark already, although most of the housing still had lights on. Wandering down the streets, he saw a familiar pointed shaped hat’s shadow in a nearby building. It wasn’t far from town hall, so more than likely this was where the minister had been staying all night. Carefully approaching the window, he saw another shadow of a pointed hat enter the room. ‘What? Is there TWO of him or something? I need to find out what’s going on…’ Jack thought. He was finally close enough to the window to clearly see the figures beyond, and he was sure to keep his head low to prevent himself from being spotted. Looking around to see if there were any other ponies, he peered back into the window. >---< “I can’t go to a party, unless it’s a formal party. I refuse to go to a party that would diminish my social status!” The older pony said. Jack’s eyes carefully scanned the room. There was a small bookshelf in the back right corner, with a small desk right beside. The desk held a small green patch of felt with an ink quill at the top. There was a small painting above the desk, but it was hard to make out. The floor was covered by a bright red rug with golden brims, and the only entrance to the room was a small doorway of the left wall. The minister, with his greyish white hair and beard flowing carefully as he paced back and forth through the small room, was clearly talking to the other pointed hat figure, who had just left the room. “You can’t look suspicious. I would still recommend going, although personally I would not go.” Said a voice. The voice seemed so familiar; it was that of a mare, one that had a certain distain to it. The voice made Jack grind his teeth a little. He knew the name of the mare, but he just couldn’t quite put the name to the voice alone. The other figure with the pointed hat re-entered the room. She had almost the exact same hat as the minster, but it was a vivid purple color with light blue and light yellow stars. ‘Not Trixie…’ Jack thought. ‘Does she have anything to do with this?’ “You should still be glad I let you into my humble abode.” Aegis said, frowning blatantly towards Trixie. “I do not accept visitors past dark, and in this town I want to refuse just about every visitor.” “Do you want me to remind you WHY you have your position, minister?” Trixie responded, giving an evil grin. The minister let out a little laugh before he responded. “And do you want me to remind you how you got run out of Ponyville the first time?” Trixie’s face turned red, and she turned away from the minister. Jack finally realized that Trixie wasn’t wearing her cape. He guessed she wore the cape because her tail was so short. “I guess you don’t need me then.” Trixie said, letting out a small “Hmph” afterwards before walking out the small door. ‘Well, it’s good to know that Trixie isn’t involved in this…’ Jack thought. “My plan does still involve you, Trixie…” The minister said quietly, and Jack was barely able to make out the words. The minister then began to approach the window, and Jack wasn’t prepared to run. He quickly looked around to find a place to hide, although the area was void of any nearby objects. Turning and preparing to run, he heard the window slide open and felt the light pour onto his backside. “Well, well.” Aegis said, “Now what do we have here?”