“Come along, fillies!” Tabula Rasa declared, leading the group of fillies into the Royal Gardens.
Tabula Rasa was a disguised changeling. Apple Bloom knew this for a fact.
Worse, the desperate hunger of his emotions revealed him as a changeling nymph, one of the outlaw Chrysalis’ poor victims, brainwashed into carrying out her every sick and twisted whim.
Applejack had taught her everything she had known about the Reformed Changelings’ greatest threat.
Tabula Rasa was therefore extremely dangerous, and if Apple Bloom could have possibly passed her information on to any trustworthy changeling, she would have done it in an instant, before wiping her hooves of the matter.
But there were no trustworthy changelings around; the mental communication that Chrysalis used on her nymphs only worked because of the underdeveloped nature of their brains, so Apple Bloom was unable to use telepathy to call for help. Instead, she was stuck helplessly watching and praying that they weren’t all going to end up cocooned by the end of the night.
“Hey Apple Bloom! Could I ask you something?” Scootaloo asked from a hollow in a nearby bush.
Apple Bloom took in a nervous breath and walked over to her friend. “What is it?” she asked in a falsely calm voice, being reminded of who she had to protect from the dangerous nymph.
Tabula Rasa was a disguised changeling. Twist knew this for a fact.
It was the very reason why she was so special to the Apple Clan, after all: the ability to just know who was a changeling or not.
She couldn’t read a changeling’s emotions. No more than she could read a pony’s emotions. And she certainly couldn’t read their thoughts.
All she could do was control the emotions she projected. So, she thought friendly thoughts and started looking around for Apple Bloom or any other Apples to introduce her.
“Hi, are you Twist?” Sweetie Belle asked, suddenly getting in her face. “I noticed that you’ve been off on your own.” She hooked a hoof around Twist’s arm. “I think some introductions are in order.”
“Um…OK,” Twist said reluctantly as she allowed herself to be led, being reminded of the fact that there were plenty of non-changelings around, and so she had to be cautious in what she said and did. To protect those changelings from being exposed. “Where are we going?” She then put a potion bottle inside Sweetie’s saddlebags.
“What is that for?” Sweetie asked, opening the bag to take a peek at the orange potion.
“Homework for Zecora,” said Twist. “Don’t let it sspill, please.”
The changeling Thorax, in his disguise of Tabula Rasa, didn’t really have anything to do. Each group that he had brought into the Gardens had immediately found something useful to do. They had congregated into groups that seemed to be happy. Or had gone off individually to explore.
Thorax knew these gardens. Had wandered here for hours at a time disguised as the groundskeeper, to try and work out what to do with his life. It was in fact the only way he could work out what to do with his life. Changelings only possessed normal intelligence while in disguise. It was an unfortunate weakness of changelings, with only the Queen being immune.
Thorax recognized that by Queen Chrysalis’ standards he was quite broken, in that he actually cared about his food, the ponies of Equestria. His standard disguise of Tabula Rasa was a filly sitter, and Thorax frankly thought he was better at this job than the original Tabula. After all, Thorax had only been able to catch him because Tabula had been passed-out drunk in an alley in the early morning hours of his first day working in Canterlot. Thorax suspected that he was a better filly sitter than he was a changeling infiltrator. It was a miracle that he hadn’t been caught before now.
There was one of his pony charges that he cared about more than any other: the earth pony servant filly Polished Pewter. Pewter was the personal servant of Golden Peytral, and therefore the worst-suffering of all the fillies in Canterlot. At least that was Thorax’s opinion based on his limited contact with ponykind.
And so, when the Ponyville ponies split up and Golden Peytral had walked away from Polished Pewter and the other followers of the countess-in-waiting, Thorax had decided to let the other groups be, to hover around Golden Peytral’s group, and see what he could do to cheer his favorite pony up.
“What is it?” Apple Bloom asked as she entered the grove.
“Where are we going?” Twist asked as she was led into the same grove.
Apple Bloom looked with shock and fear at Twist. She had forgotten what Twist knew about changelings, and what she could do. If she knew what Tabula Rasa was, she might give everything away.
Twist looked at Apple Bloom and was shocked to see that fear on her face. She followed her eyes to the distant form of Tabula Rasa, and she tried to figure out why Apple Bloom would be so worried about another changeling.
(“Apple Bloom, we’re noticed that you’ve been avoiding Twist,” Scootaloo said.
“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure you two walked to school together on your first day. What happened?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Neither Apple Bloom nor Twist noticed anything the two of them had said.)
The idea struck Twist like a thunderbolt: What if Tabula Rasa was like Babs Seed? Worse, what if Mr. Rasa was…evil? And as a natural reaction to this thought she hid all of her emotions away.
“No!” Apple Bloom cried out in a strangled voice, seeing the exact emotional reaction she was afraid of. “I’m pretty sure he hasn’t noticed what you are yet. But if you do that…”
“Do what?” Scootaloo asked.
Apple Bloom was reminded yet again that she was in the presence of ponies that she had been ordered not to reveal her secret to. “It’s…um…”
“Tabula,” said Twist. “He’sh a bad…” She looked at Apple Bloom, then looked away in fear of what she had almost revealed.
Sweetie frowned at Twist’s guilty glance, then looked over at the pony, who was busy comforting a filly. “Really?” she asked. “How do you know?”
“We can just—” Apple Bloom caught herself. She hung her head as she said, “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?” Scootaloo demanded of Apple Bloom, lifting her head up to force their eyes to meet. “You promised Sweetie and I that we would be the best friends ever. That nothing would ever be a secret between us.”
Apple Bloom felt like she was being flayed alive. “Except for this,” she said, feeling their friendship fraying. “I’m not allowed to tell anypony about this.”
“Not allowed by who?” asked Sweetie. She looked over at Twist. “You’re in on it,” she concluded.
“I…what? No, I’m not,” Twist blustered.
She failed to convince anyone.
“Why can she know but not us?” Scootaloo asked, tears in her eyes. As a filly with trust issues, who feared sometimes that her parents had finally abandoned her for good, this was a supremely important matter to her. The dying of friendship that Apple Bloom felt came mostly from her.
Apple Bloom, having no answer that would satisfy Scootaloo, instead turned to Twist. “Quiet happiness,” she instructed her. “You can project enough of it to cover all of our other emotions.”
“OK,” said Twist, closing her eyes. She was a little disappointed that her father had never told her of this “covering” ability; one more way that she could be useful to the Apples. But she was grateful that Bloom had trusted her, and she put a hint of that gratitude into the emotion she projected, so Bloom could see it.
“What are you two talking about?” Scootaloo demanded. “Is this some kind of secret code?”
Twist opened her eyes. “What if we have to do ssomething?” she asked. “What if he already ssuspectss you?”
“Why aren’t you answering me?” Scootaloo asked, getting angry.
Apple Bloom took in a nervous breath. This was all getting out of control. She had an answer for Twist’s question, but it was a very dangerous answer, one that potentially gave Twist and her father incredible power over changelings. And then she saw that Silver Spoon had joined the conversation who knows how long ago, and that a suspicious Tabula Rasa was walking right towards them. He was raising some kind of shield spell, despite his appearance of being a pegasus.
With a sigh, Apple Bloom released her control over the situation. “Hate,” she told Twist. “You can really hurt us…hurt him, with hate.”
Sweetie looked back and forth between Bloom and Tabula. She was beginning to realize that the two had something in common.
Sweetie had been developing certain suspicions after reading that entry on Sirens. Especially after the Babs Seed incident: The way Apple Bloom had been conflicted the whole week on whether to do something or not regarding the strange things Babs was doing with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. The strange thoughts she herself had when around Babs, and how they only seemed strange after Babs left. And how everything had gotten better the moment Apple Bloom had confronted her cousin about things neither of them were willing to come out and say.
Sweetie was preparing herself to say something about these suspicions.
Apple Bloom was paralyzed with terror over the permanent damage she might have done to the Clan.
Scootaloo was done with Apple Bloom forever.
Twist was hyperventilating over the loaded weapon that had just been metaphorically placed in her shaking hooves.
Silver Spoon had an awful lot on her mind: A strong suspicion that there was something seriously wrong with Golden Peytral, based on conversations with her terrified minions. Sympathy for Tabula Rasa on seeing his actions towards Golden’s chief victim. Fear for what might have happened to Diamond Tiara at Golden Peytral’s hooves, and a growing determination that she should enlist Tabula to intervene. Which was just now interrupted by confusion over the conversation between those CMC losers and that Twist “sssuper-loser” that brought Tabula’s goodness into question and, for reasons that her conscious mind could not yet understand, brought back hints of the stark terror she had briefly experienced in the aftermath of the Babs Seed experience.
Thorax felt like he was going to be sick. He was going to have to cocoon all five of these fillies and drag them down to the hive, never to be seen again. Given the madness he felt behind him from Golden’s return to her coterie, he felt confident that he could do this without being caught.
Although…the madness wasn’t just coming from behind him. It was also coming from the five fillies, and, and…every pony he could read in the whole of Canterlot.
What was going on?
And then he dropped to his knees as the sickness came upon him. Because what was going on was that he was drowning in Changeling Poison. Otherwise known as “hate”.