At the hospital the doctors cleaned my injuries and essentially glued my carapace back together in the places where it was cracked and bandaged the places they couldn’t. They also gave me an x-ray just to make sure I didn’t have any internal injuries, which I didn’t. Except for some muscle damage in my hind leg from where it had been gouged in the fight, but the doctors were able to patch that up to an extent.
When I was released, Twilight asked me about the Slaughterhouse Nine, since I’d mentioned them when we were discussing my Devouring Swarm spell.
It was only at that point I realized I hadn’t really told anyone about the Nine. The only one who might have known about them was Princess Luna, and that was because she’d seen them in my nightmares.
Remembering I’d promised Rainbow Dash I'd tell her about the Slaughterhouse Nine, I thought about inviting her to hear it. Then I remembered Spike would be at the library and was just a kid. The Slaughterhouse Nine really weren’t a safe topic to discuss with children. To be fair, most of my stories weren’t but the Slaughterhouse Nine especially.
So, after a brief discussion about it with Twilight, she decided to invite Rainbow and a few other friends of hers to hear the story. That way, they’d all get to hear the story at once and would all understand if I ever mentioned the Slaughterhouse Nine in conversation.
After dinner, I went back to my hive again and spent the rest of the day working on it while Twilight went to go talk to her friends and to work out a schedule when they could all take an hour or two out of their day to listen to me telling everyone about the most infamous group of psychotic murderers from Earth Bet.
Paranoid about changeling assassins trying to kill me in my sleep, I just slept in a secluded area of my hive.
The next day, Twilight arrived and told me she’d scheduled story time for Saturday at noon. And two days after that she came back with a package for me that was delivered to her library. It was my glasses. The princesses had noticed I was struggling to read or sign documents because of my poor eyesight and had me see an optometrist while I was in Canterlot. Since I hadn’t stayed in the city long enough to get my glasses while I was there, they just mailed them to Twilight since she was the only one who knew where my hive was besides Zecora.
I was still trying to work out a method of having my mail delivered to my hive directly without having to use Twilight as a middleman or creating a security vulnerability in my hive. The princesses insisted a teleportation system would be fine, or letting a unicorn in the post office know where the hive is so they could teleport my mail to me, but I was leery about both of those options.
A teleportation system meant anything and presumably anyone could use it to teleport straight into my hive. I’d seen changelings turning into rocks in the fight after the train derailment, so what was to stop them from turning into cardboard boxes and writing “To: Queen Weaver. At: Hive Weaver.” on themselves? It would be a Trojan horse situation. And if I told some random unicorn at the post office, who was to say they wouldn’t be kidnapped and interrogated to learn the location of my hive? I already hated the fact Twilight and Zecora knew where my hive was. I wasn’t willing to expose its location to more people, thus increasing the risk it could potentially be found.
So, for now, I just had to pick up any of my mail from Twilight’s library. Fortunately, I didn’t have much mail to begin with so it wasn’t a huge problem yet. Just minorly inconvenient.
Eventually Saturday came and I had to go to Twilight’s library to tell everyone about the Slaughterhouse Nine. Spike was out hanging out with the “cutiemark crusaders” for the day meaning we had the library to ourselves for a few hours.
In my human form, I walked through the door into the library and saw everyone already there waiting for me. All of them sitting around a big circular table.
“Hey, Weaver. So, are you ready to tell us about that army of serial killers you mentioned at the party?” Rainbow asked.
Walking over to them, I sat down in the one empty seat. “Yeah, but that’s going to be near the end… How do I start this…?”
“How ‘bout at the beginning?” Applejack suggested.
“Not as simple as you make it sound… Alright… The Slaughterhouse Nine. They are or were a group of super powered serial killers. They had different members at different points so I’m going to have to explain different names at different points. I’m going to be starting with their attack on Brockton Bay so I’ll start with the members they had at that time. There was Jack Slash, the leader of the group. He had the power to project the edges of sharp objects. So you could be on opposite ends of the street from him and he could still cut you. I’m not sure what the max range of his knives were or if he had a maximum range at all. But he carried a variety of knives so he could cut, slice, or hack through you in different ways as needed.”
I transformed into Jack Slash to show them what he looked like before quickly turning back.
“How did that work? Like, do you know the magic he used to do that?” Twilight asked.
I looked at her. “It wasn’t magic and that goes into Scion’s first appearance and how powers work in general which is a whole different topic. I’d rather focus on one thing for now. All you need to know is, no it wasn’t magic. Parahumans essentially just had superpowers. I personally had the power to control all of the bugs within a certain radius and I could do a lot with my powers. I even made my first costume out of spider silk.”
“Er… I’m sorry for interrupting again, but spiders aren’t bugs. They’re arachnids.” Twilight corrected me.
I looked at her. “Twilight… I’m using the word bug as a broad term to make this conversation easier. I’m not using it in whatever proper classification the word refers to in a scientific context, since my powers didn’t really seem to care about that. I could control spiders, beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, worms, caterpillars, flies, bees, wasps, mosquitos, moths, butterflies, crabs, lobsters, shrimp, and just about every other kind of bug, insect, or whatever. I could see through their eyes, hear everything they could, and was aware of everything they felt or smelled.”
I shook my head. “Anyway, we’re getting off track.” I proceeded to finish explaining all of the members of the Slaughterhouse Nine and their powers. I transformed into each of them, as I was explaining them and their powers. The only one I didn’t turn into was Crawler because he was so big.
“They all sound so scary…” Fluttershy muttered, trembling a bit.
“Indeed… I can’t believe such an adorable little filly had such horrific powers.” Rarity commented.
“They were worse in person. Trust me. Anyway, after Brockton Bay was nearly destroyed by Leviathan, they decided to pay a visit.”
“Who’s Leviathan?” Pinkie Pie asked.
“An Endbringer. Endbringers are giant indestructible monsters with ridiculously strong super powers that would appear in turns every three months or so and destroy cities. They were impossible to stop or kill. Dozens of heroes and villains died trying to hold them off or drive them back every time they appeared, and our strongest capes could barely do anything to them. Anyway, the Slaughterhouse Nine liked to visit cities after the Endbringers showed up just to make everything worse for everyone. You might think I’m being hyperbolic, but no. That was genuinely their reasoning, as far as I’m aware. So after Leviathan showed up, it was our turn.”
I gave everyone an explanation of the events following the Slaughterhouse Nine’s arrival in Brockton Bay.
“So you were a supervillain?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“I started out wanting to be a hero. Then I decided to try to be a double agent to spy on the Undersiders so I could turn them into the PRT. Shit happened, I ended up realizing the ‘heroes’ could be just as bad if not worse than the villains, and ended up joining the Undersiders for real. Ironically, we did more good for the city than the heroes did. I left the undersiders and became a hero later because circumstances sort of forced me to. That’s actually where I got the name Weaver. Originally, the cape name the PRT gave me was Skitter. The Wards’ PR team wanted to rebrand me after I joined them so they gave me a new costume and changed my alias to Weaver. This is what I looked like in costume as Skitter… And this is what I looked like as Weaver.”
I changed between my first and second costumes.
“I had a third name later, though I only really heard it once after everything was over from the person who shot me in the head. At the end, when I was leading the fight against Scion, they called me Khepri.” I morphed into the costume I wore as Khepri.
“Wait, so Weaver isn’t your actual name?!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.
“It may as well be. And it is officially my name here in Equestria since that’s what everyone calls me. I don’t have a secret identity or civilian persona anymore. My dad was pretty much the only reason I kept up my civilian identity at all, and I’m pretty sure he died when the Apocalypse happened. Even if he’s alive though, I’ll never see him again. So when I met Luna in my dreams in the hospital, I let her decide what to call me since it doesn’t matter to me anymore. She decided Weaver sounded the best so it stuck.”
“You must tell us, what is your real name, darling?” Rarity asked, curiosity oozing off of her.
“My original name was Taylor. Or Taylor Hebert. My dad was Danny Hebert. He was the head of hiring and the spokesperson for the Dockworker’s Association.”
“So, do you mind if we call you Taylor? Or would you prefer it if we kept calling you Weaver?” Twilight asked.
“In public, call me Weaver. It’ll be less confusing for everyone. Otherwise you can call me any of my previous names. It doesn’t matter to me.” I told them. If I was being honest I didn’t like the idea of them calling me Khepri. That period of my life was a sore subject for me. But I couldn’t tell them that since I didn’t want to explain why it was a sore subject for me. So I’d just have to suck it up and deal with it.
I sighed. “Anyway, where were we?”
“You were telling us about the meeting between all the villain groups and the heroes to deal with the Slaughterhouse Nine.” Twilight stated.
“Right. That… Thank you, Twilight.” I picked up where I left off.
Eventually I got to the point where Brian was captured by Bonesaw. Everyone stopped talking and I could sense the fear, revulsion, and horror rolling off of them as I described what Bonsaw did to him and what she said she was going to do to me.
Fluttershy was sobbing. Applejack put on a mask of stoicism, but I could sense she was disturbed by the scene I was describing. Rarity had to excuse herself for a few minutes. Twilight actually set her paper and quill, which she'd been using to take notes, down and had to collect herself. Pinkie Pie's mane which had been steadily deflating the more I talked about the Slaughterhouse Nine, now hung fully limp on her head and she looked visibly upset. After describing what happened to Brian and retelling Bonesaw's words to me, verbatim, Pinkie actually rushed over to me and gave me a bone crushingly tight hug. It took a minute of calming her down and reassurances to get her off of me.
"What the buck?! This is a filly we're talking about right?! You did say Bonesaw was just a filly!" Rainbow Dash demanded.
"Yup. She was just a little girl at the time, and she still did all of that."
"How?! Why?! What the buck is wrong with her?! I... Agh! I just don't get how a filly could be so... so..."
"Irredeemably Evil?" Applejack finished for her.
"Yeah! Even Nightmare Moon wasn't that bad! Heck, even Queen Chrysalis wouldn't go that far! This is just so bucking wrong! How is a little filly worse than the most evil ponies in Equestria?!"
"Well, Bonesaw was being manipulated by Jack Slash. He was pretty much the sole driving force behind all of her atrocities. Everything she did was because he encouraged it or because she wanted his approval. She viewed the Slaughterhouse Nine as a big family with Jack Slash as the 'father' and the Siberian as the 'mother'. Not great parental figures."
"I hate this... It's sad and terrible and... hrg... I just wanna kick that dumb meanie Jack Slash! How could he make a little filly do such awful things?!" Pinkie Pie whined.
"As you'll come to understand, Jack Slash was probably the most evil bastard on the planet."
"If I had a chance I'd fly him up into the clouds and let him bucking drop." Rainbow growled.
"Rainbow Dash!" Twilight gasped.
"What?! You know he deserves it if he made a filly into a such a bucking monster! Just..." Rainbow Dash sighed. "I'm sorry, Twilight... But... Come on! You gotta see where I'm coming from! If anyone deserves it, it's totally that guy!"
"Gotta agree with Rainbow Dash. Jack Slash definitely deserves it... Trust me, if I could've put a bullet in his skull or had a massive swarm of bugs eat him alive, I would have. Never got the chance though, sadly." I told them.
After that the table descended into a grim silence.
When Rarity got back I continued. Finishing up their activities in Brockton, I skipped ahead two years to when they came back with an army of clones.
I skipped over the whole thing with Aster, not wanting to deal with the drama surrounding that decision. One thing I'd learned since arriving was that the ponies were incredibly naïve. There would be no way I could possibly convince them killing Aster was the only thing I could have done in that situation.
Then I had to explain Scion's rampage since it happened immediately after the Slaughterhouse Nine-thousand incident.. Not wanting to have to keep referring to it as "Scion's Rampage" I decided to call it the "Golden War". I also left out the whole thing about me controlling the bodies of every cape in existence.
"So, that's the Slaughterhouse Nine and the apocalypse or 'Golden War'. So if I mention any of them or Scion, now all of you know who I'm talking about. Any questions?"
"I've got one!" Rainbow Dash said, raising a hoof.
"Okay. What?"
"Why don't you write a book? You could totally turn your life on Earth Bet into a series like Daring Doo!"
I blinked, processing what she was suggesting.
Pinkie Pie, who had started recovering from how upset she was earlier perked up a bit now that the topic was changing. "That's a great idea, Rainbow! You should totally write a book, Taylor! Your life sounds horrible, having to deal with meanies like Bonesaw, Jack Slash, and Scion, but also super duper exciting!"
“Uh…” I looked around at the six ponies.
“Actually, yeah. I agree. Great idea, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight said with a smile.
“I know, right?! It’d be so cool!” Rainbow said excitedly.
“Not only that, but an auto-biography could be a great way to let everypony get to know who you really are and improve public sentiment, Taylor. Once they realize you weren’t originally a changeling and aren’t an evil monster like Queen Chrysalis, it should improve a lot of ponies' opinions of you drastically!” Twilight told me.
“Er… I’d rather not.” I responded uncomfortably.
“What? Why not?!” Rainbow demanded.
“Because there are certain things in my life that are very personal which I don’t want to talk about. Things that would leave big gaps in any auto-biography I could write, which people would constantly ask me about and demand explanations for. Not to mention the fact a lot of people would think I was lying. Sure Princess Luna can vouch for me, since she can apparently tell whenever someone’s lying, somehow, but that’s not going to convince everyone. Plus, I have to worry about Queen Chrysalis. I don’t want to give away too much information about myself. If I wrote an autobiography, she could buy or steal a copy and use what I wrote to figure out more about my personality and how I operate. From there she could devise better strategies against me. I would be putting myself in even more danger than I’m in already.”
None of what I told them were lies. However, I left out the real reason I didn’t want to write an autobiography. I didn’t want to write about what I did as Khepri. I could try to lie, but I didn’t know if Luna’s apparent lie detecting powers extended to text. Plus, the situation with Aster would definitely not earn me any points with anyone. I could see the headlines now. “Queen Weaver mind controlled an entire world and sent her victims to die!” and “Queen Weaver murdered a foal in her previous life!” It would be a PR nightmare and would absolutely turn public sentiment against me. Especially if anyone thought I might still have my master powers. If they did, I might very well be put in the “too scary to be left alive” category. I felt like I was pretty close to being placed there anyway.
I could see and sense the enthusiasm draining out of the ponies.
“Aww… Dang it…” Rainbow grumbled.
“Well, shoot. Ain’t nothing for it then. I feel like there’s more ya ain’t tellin’ us. Felt like you were leavin’ stuff out when you were tellin’ us about those murderers too. But I’ll leave it be. I assume you have your reasons.” Applejack stated.
“Uh… Thanks…” I said, unsure how to react to that. It did raise a bunch of questions in my mind, however. Did Applejack have lie detecting powers too? Did lie detecting powers count lies by omission? Were the Princesses aware I hadn’t told them everything? Why hadn’t they mentioned it if they were? I didn’t like the potential implications here.
“‘Course. Anyway, this was…uh… interesting… but I gotta get back to the farm. I don’t got many chores today but I still got some things that need doin’. So I’ll see ya’ll later, girls.” Applejack said, getting up.
Everyone else followed her lead, getting up and saying their goodbyes. Thus leaving Twilight and I alone.
“Applejack said you left stuff out. Is that true?” She asked.
“Everyone has their secrets, Twilight. Like I said, there are some things that are very personal which I don’t want to talk about. I’d appreciate it if you’d respect my privacy. Anyway, have you made any progress in finding non-lethal spells for me to try to work on?” I said, changing the subject.
“Oh! Yes, I have! I have a whole list of non-lethal spells for self defense we can try to practice.” Her horn glowed and there was a flash of light as a piece of paper appeared in front of her.
We went to a safe spot outside of town to try practicing some of the spells, trying to figure out which of them could easily be translated from unicorn magic into changeling magic and which would take more work to translate or couldn’t be translated at all.
Finding a couple I was confident I should be able to work with, I started working on translating them over and practicing with them.
When the sun started to go down we went our separate ways.
Over the next two weeks I spent my time practicing various different forms of magic. I finally managed to enchant a crystal to burn. I couldn’t make the flame very big yet, but it was a start on my way to making proper weapons and defenses. I did manage to figure out how to make crystals work something like flash bangs, minus the bang. Apparently it was possible to make crystals produce sound, but I was still figuring out how that worked. So for now I only managed to figure out how to make the crystals produce a really bright flash without any sound.
In my efforts to try to replicate my powers from back on Earth Bet, I did manage to figure out how to use magic to control insects. Though it wasn’t nearly to the same scale as I used to be able to. Nor was I connected to their senses in any way. My natural empathic abilities as a changeling helped to an extent, but it wasn’t in any way comparable. Nor could I make the bugs feel love for me to feed on, much to my continued frustration. I really wanted a better and more sustainable food source than the ponies and insects were my greatest hope in that regard. I could make them feel a mating instinct, essentially lust, but not love. And despite the succubus comparisons I couldn’t actually feed on lust, convenient as it would be. It seemed they weren’t capable of feeling love in the same way more complex and intelligent creatures could.
I could potentially feed on the love of animals but they were a lot harder to control than insects. Still it left open the possibility of breeding animals to feed on their love instead of feeding on ponies. Having dedicated livestock would be convenient for feeding myself and my kids, and we could potentially sell meat to the Griffons later, but that was something for the future. I couldn’t exactly raise livestock very easily out in the Everfree, especially when I needed to keep my hive hidden, plus I needed to study mind controlling magic more so I could force the livestock to feel love for myself and my future kids to feed on.
Still, my limited control over insects was good enough that I was able to collect a few dozen spiders from the Everfree and use them to start producing spider silk fabric on a small scale.
After talking to Twilight about it she suggested I use star-spiders because not only was their silk strong, but it was apparently naturally beautiful too, and they could produce a surprisingly high quantity of it. So, after the two of us went out and found some star spiders in the Everfree, the first thing I did was start using them to make a length of fabric. It took a few hours of work over the course of multiple days, but once I had what I thought was enough I gave the fabric to Rarity to pay her back for the dress she gave me, which unfortunately got destroyed. She wanted to buy the fabric from me at first, but I managed to convince her to let me use it to pay her back for the dress. We did, however, work out a deal as she wanted to buy more of the fabric from me in the future. Thus I finally established a small source of income.
Shortly after that I started feeling a bit weird. Not wanting to go to the doctors again, I went to Twilight instead. She ran some tests to try to figure out what was wrong and deduced that I was beginning the process of molting.
So I spent the next few days hiding in my hive. The process wasn’t painful, but it was a bit uncomfortable. Especially since the process made my perpetually present hunger even more intense than usual for a brief period. This came as a shock to me but when it was over, my arm had completely regrown. Unfortunately my new carapace still had to harden so my body was soft and overly sensitive for a couple more days. But I had the leftover carapace from my molt which I could break apart and glue together to make carapace plates I could use in armor, just like my first costume.
It had been about a month since Chrysalis had made her first move and nothing else had happened yet. It was starting to worry me. I’d noticed some odd activity in the Everfree, so I assumed she was trying to locate my hive, but I hadn’t managed to find or capture any of her spies yet. Surprisingly, the news about the train derailment had spun me in a positive light. There was witness testimony that I’d tried to take control of the situation and lead the changelings away from the train to protect the civilians. In a couple of the papers, they did have testimony from the Pegasi from the Royal Guard which tried to paint me as a monster who tortured my enemies to death, but it was largely overshadowed by the other testimonies.
Royal propaganda at its finest, I assumed. And, interestingly, it was working. I noticed the ponies in Ponyville warming up to me a bit more after the positive press I'd been receiving.
Regardless, I had just about finished my planning and preparation and was about ready to head to Griffonstone to go talk to Ambassador Gruff. I had mainly been holding off until I finished making a new suit of spider-silk armor, just in case I had to participate in any major battles. My suit was stab and slash resistant, which would protect me from swords and spears, let alone beaks and claws. It wouldn’t save me from something like a hammer or a mace, but even medieval plate mail struggled with that and I couldn’t afford platemail anyway. So I’d just have to make do with what I had. My new suit was about a third of the way finished, so it wouldn’t be long until I was ready to head out and re-establish the Kingdom of Griffonstone.
I was working on trying to build a proof-of-concept for my flamethrower when I sensed a source of emotions appear in my hive.
I set the crystal and mechanism I was working on down, and made my way through my hive to the source of emotions.
“Hello, Twilight. What’s up?” I asked.
“Hey, Taylor! Sooo… You know that test Princess Celestia called me to Canterlot about?” She asked.
“Yeah. What about it?” I asked.
“Well, apparently my test is to help Princess Cadance and Shining Armor find a way to save the Crystal Empire. So, my friends and I are getting ready to go up there. We don’t know how long it’ll take. So that means, if you stayed here, you would have to go without food for awhile. We don’t want to make you go hungry, so uh… We have two solutions! First, you can come with us. Maybe you could help us out somehow! Or, you can stay with the Princesses in Canterlot for a couple days. Which would you prefer?” Twilight asked.
I looked at her for a moment. “I have two questions. What’s the Crystal Empire, and what are you saving it from?”
“The Crystal Empire is an empire that was banished by a curse a thousand years ago. It just reappeared. As for what we’re saving it from… Uh… I don’t really know yet? We have no idea what to expect…” Twilight said with an awkward smile.
“You don’t know? Why didn’t you ask Celestia while you were in Canterlot? If they’re sending you to save it, then they should have some idea of how and why it’s in danger.”
Twilight winced. “Um… I… didn’t think of it at the time? I sort of… thought them not telling me might have been part of the test…”
“If it is, then either they’re both fucking morons or they’re actively trying to get you killed. You don’t send someone into a potentially dangerous situation without giving them basic information about what they’re going to be up against. Even for a ‘test’. Especially not when you’re sending a civilian… Ugh… If Shining Armor and Cadance are there, why are they even sending you in the first place? No offense, but what good can an untrained civilian do? Are you trying to find a solution to some natural disaster? Is there some issue they need your magical expertise to deal with? Please tell me you at least have some details. Don’t tell me they’re sending you in completely blind.”
“Uhhh…” She looked and felt awkward and nervous.
I facepalmed. “I’m sort of tempted to stay in Canterlot just so I can yell at them… I’ll go with you. There’ll be less of a chance of me causing a diplomatic incident by insulting the Princesses that way, and I can at least try to help if the situation’s actually dangerous. So, when are we leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning at ten.”
“Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow morning then, Twilight. For now, I have some things I need to get ready.” I told her, turning and walking away.
“Alright, see you tomorrow!” Twilight called out to me.