//------------------------------//
// Getting to know the Ponies 
// Story: Meeting His Heroes 
// by origami 
//------------------------------//

Princess Twilight was writing everything that Thorax had just said down on the parchment in front of her.  The changeling sat there as she did so.  Princess Cadance, fully aware of how inquisitive Twilight could be come, decided to head off the train before it could really get moving.

"I think in all fairness," she begins, "Thorax should get to ask all of you some questions in addition to you asking him some of your own.  Since Twilight asked him a question already, how about Thorax asks you one of his own?"

Twilight stopped writing for a moment and looked at her friends.  "That's actually a good idea.  Anypony have a problem with Thorax asking us some questions?"

Almost everypony in the room nodded their heads.  The only one who didn't was Rainbow Dash, though she hadn't shook her head in disagreement either.

"Rainbow?" Twilight asked her.  "Are you okay with Thorax asking some questions?"

The blue mare looked at her friends for a moment.  Most simply looked at her waiting for her answer.  Applejack, however, was giving her a stern glare.  Eventually, Rainbow lets out a breath.

"I guess."

Twilight smiles.  "Okay, Thorax," she says as she faces the changeling, "since I asked you a question already, what would you like to ask all of us?"

Thorax had to sit there for a moment.  What did he want to ask all of them?  Surely there was something about them that he did want to know.

"How did you all meet and become friends?"

Twilight and her friends all looked to each other and smiled.

"Well," Twilight begins, "we all met during the preparations for Ponyville's Summer Sun Celebration.  It's basically a big party to celebrate the longest day of the year.  I'd actually been sent their to oversee preparations by Princess Celestia since she would be there to raise the sun in front of everypony there."

"I met everypony while checking off to make sure everything got done.  It all went well to start with, but when it came time for the princess to raise the sun-"

"Nightmare Moon showed up" Thorax interrupted.

"Yeah" Twilight confirms.  "She foalnapped the princess and declared her intentions of causing an eternal night.  I rushed to the library in Ponyville to find some info on some artifacts that we could use to fight against Nightmare Moon."

"The elements of harmony" Thorax inferred.

Twilight nodded and continued telling the story.  "My friends found me and confronted me, and I told them everything I knew.  They helped me find what I was looking for and it pointed us to the Everfree Forest and the Castle of the Two Sisters.  We went there, facing trials and tribulations along the way, and when we found the elements, Nightmare Moon appeared and destroyed them."

Thorax hears this and looks at Twilight in confusion.  "But you all have the elements."

"We do," Twilight answers, "but they're inside of us, and when I realized that, the elements were reformed into new ones, and we used them to cleanse Princess Luna of Nightmare Moon's influence."

"And you all became friends because of that?" Thorax asked.

"We sure did" Applejack interjects.  "Travelin' through that forest took our friendship and 'forged it in fire', as some ponies say.  Since that night, we've been thick as maple syrup."

In truth, Thorax had heard the story of how the six mares who became the new elements bearers had met, but hearing it from them somehow made it more special.

"Hold up a minute!" the raspy voice of Rainbow Dash cut in.  "How did you know about Nightmare Moon and the elements of harmony?!"

Her look of suspicion and accusing tone of voice underlined her distrust of Thorax, and stung the changeling, both figuratively and literally.  Nonetheless, Thorax gave a valid response.

"Infiltrators always bring information back from the various kingdoms.  A lot of them came back a day or so after the Summer Sun Celebration with newspapers detailing exactly what had happened."

The rainbow-maned pegasus blinked at the response, and her demeanor shifted back to a more neutral one, though not completely.

"Rainbow," Applejack admonished her friend, "that wasn't very kind of ya."

Rainbow looked at Applejack in disbelief.  "Hey!  It was a valid concern!"

Twilight glared at Rainbow and lit up her horn.  "Do I need to bind your forehooves again and put a muzzle on you?"

To make her point, a length of rope and a muzzle popped into existence beside her.

Rainbow looked at her friend with shock, and then conceded.  "Fine, I won't talk anymore."

"You can talk, darling" Rarity told her.  "You just need to be civil and stop accusing Thorax of being a no good.  Surely he must be some kind of decent and respectable creature if the princess and prince have allowed him to stay here with them."

"Thank you, Rarity" Princess Cadance chimed in with a smile.  "I can say that since the day he first approached us and requested that we allow him to stay here, he has been a very gracious guest and a very decent creature."

The room reflected on what the princess had told all of them.  Rainbow still had a hard time believing it, but there was already a little bit of doubt in her mind about this changeling.  The fact that they were all sitting and having a polite conversation with him was helping things along, even if her own participation wasn't exactly polite.

"Is it Thorax's turn to ask a question since Dashie just asked one?" Pinkie asked with a thoughtful look on her face.

Twilight giggled.  "I suppose, since he did give us some information about changelings we didn't really know, or at least we didn't know for certain."

She then turned to the changeling.  "Go ahead, Thorax.  You can ask us another question."

Thorax sat and thought for a moment about what question he wanted to ask the mares next.  In truth, most of what he wanted to ask them was about them and their lives specifically.  "Well, I honestly wanted to know more about all of you, since you're all something of heroes to me."

Twilight smiled.  "Well, we can certainly do that.  How about I start."

Twilight then began telling Thorax about her life and how she'd gotten her cutie mark during the entrance exam to get into Princess Celestia's school, how she'd become the princess's personal pupil, a very quick recap of the Nightmare Moon incident, and finishing up with a summary of what happened between her and Starlight, the lilac unicorn sitting beside Twilight.

"...Starlight then agreed to give friendship another chance, and now she's my own personal student."

"Wow" Thorax said as he took in her story.  "You really fought a centaur as big as a mountain?"

"I did" Twilight confirmed.  "The fight went to a stalemate and he offered my friends their freedom in exchange for the magic I had left in me.  Of course, I agreed and then we figured out how to get the last key for that box and we got a magic strong enough to purge the stolen magic from Tirek and banish him back to Tartarus."

"And you still trust that Discord guy, even after what he did?"

Twilight winced a little at Thorax's question.  "Not completely," Twilight answers, "but he's so far behaved himself and only caused some harmless pranks.  He actually made chocolate milk rain the other day in Ponyville during the school recess and all the fillies and colts were cheering his praise."

Pinkie snickered.  "You were enjoying it too, Twilight."

Twilight looked incensed.  "I did not!"

"Really sugarcube?" Applejack chimes in.  "How come y'all had that mason jug and funnel set up out front of your castle?"

"I..." Twilight began to say but paused when all of her friends gave her a knowing smile.  She then groans in defeat.  "Fine!  I took advantage of Discord's little prank to save some money on milk, but so was everypony else!"

"Just wanted tah hear ya admit it" Applejack said smugly.

Twilight hid her face in embarrassment as her friends laughed at the schadenfreude.  Even Thorax had to chuckle a little at the antics going on between the seven mares.

Eventually, Twilight got over her embarrassment enough to advance the conversation along.  "Who wants to tell Thorax about themselves next?"

Almost immediately, Pinkie's hoof shoots up.

"Okay, Pinkie, you can have a turn."

And she did.  Each of the other six mares talked about their moving to Ponyville.

Pinkie traveled there and only intended to stay for a little while before she moved to a larger city, but she fell in love with the town and quite liked working for the Cakes, so she decided to stay.

Applejack had always lived in Ponyville, but recalled how she'd gotten her cutie mark upon returning from Manehattan, where she'd moved to experience a more sophisticated life that she'd quickly become not fond of.

Fluttershy recalled her own cutie mark story, and said that she'd moved to Ponyville after she'd finished her schooling in Cloudsdale.

Rarity had also always lived in Ponyville; her family were one of the few unicorn ones in the predominantly earth pony town.  As a filly, she had similar desires to move to a big city such as Manehattan like Applejack did, but as she grew up, she fell in love with the town and decided to make it her home.

Rainbow Dash was the only one of the element bearers that didn't actually live in Ponyville.  She had what she called a "cloudiminium", but it was close enough to Ponyville she could fly there in a fairly short amount of time, even going at a comfortable pace and not like a bat out of Tartarus.

As for why Rainbow Dash was in Ponyville?  She works for the weather service, like a lot of pegasi do, and she was assigned to their weather team.

When it came to be Starlight's turn, she'd became rather embarrassed, and ashamed from what Thorax could tell.  Of course, he already knew the story from Twilight about the village she'd started and how much she hated cutie marks.  That was all in the past, of course, and the lilac mare was doing her best to embrace friendship between ponies of such diverse backgrounds.

"What about you Thorax?" Pinkie asked the changeling.  Her friends looked at her with stern glares, but the pink pony shook them off.

"What?  It's Thorax turn to answer a question."

Thorax chuckled  nervously.  "I, uh, guess it is" he conceded.  "So, you all want to know how I got here?"

Twilight nodded.  "As much as I would've preferred Pinkie not asking that question in such a way," she said while giving the party mare the stink eye, "I think we would all like to hear your story about coming to Equestria, and more specifically, the Crystal Empire."

Thorax looked at the mares before him, and then to Princess Cadance.  Sure, he'd told this story before, but he honestly wasn't a fan of having to tell it.

The princess heard his silent plea and answered it.

"Girls," she addresses the group, "Thorax isn't really that comfortable with telling this story.  I don't think we should force him to."

"Why not?!"

The voice of Rainbow Dash causes all the ponies there to turn and face her.

"We told him all of our stories," she argues, "so why shouldn't he tell us his.  It's only fair!"

Princess Cadance glares at Rainbow Dash rather sternly.  "It might seem fair to you, but I've heard Thorax's story myself, and making him have to tell it again would be most decidedly unfair."

Rainbow Dash stood her ground.  "I still want to hear it."

Princess Cadance was becoming rather cross with the pegasus.  She knew her to be stubborn, but to the point of being outright rude?

Then she remembered the facts that she'd been trying to ignore since Thorax was first accepted as part of the Crystal Empire: Thorax was a changeling, and the ponies in Equestria, Rainbow included, didn't like them.

Just as the princess was about to cut into Rainbow Dash for her rude behavior, Thorax's voice stopped her.

"It's okay" he told the princess.  "I'll... I'll tell them."

Princess Cadance turns to Thorax with shock.  "Thorax, you don't need to-"

Thorax cuts her off with a hoof.  "I know," he responds, "but all of these ponies would like to know, so it's only fair that I tell them."

Princess Cadance looks at Thorax with concern, but again the changeling waves her off.

"Really, it's fine."

Despite her concerns, she nods in agreement and allows Thorax to tell his story.

Thorax takes a few breaths before he begins telling the story of how he came to Equestria to find peace and harmony.

"It all started about a year or so after the attempt to invade Canterlot..."