//------------------------------// // 97. Tripartite - Part Fifteen // Story: Letters From a Little Princess Monster // by Georg //------------------------------// Letters From a Little Princess Monster Tripartite - Part Fifteen "How dare you!" hissed Starlight.  "You kidnap me from my town, drag me across the country, and throw me into this dismal bug-infested prison?  I demand you release me at once!" All around the creepy hive, Starlight Glimmer could feel the close examination of cold teal eyes in the shadows.  It had been hours since she woke up, dropped in the middle of this… courtyard of sorts like a bag of trash, and no telling how long it had been since her abduction.  The bugs had simply peeled the top of the gooey cocoon off her head and left her there, all alone with no way to get out of the rest of the changeling pod no matter how she struggled. Then nothing.  No interrogation, no threats, no execution.  Nothing.  It galled her right down to her hooves.  She was important!  She had almost reached her goal when the changelings came out of nowhere and overwhelmed her. They would pay when she got free. They would all pay dearly. A faint regular tapping drew her attention from thoughts of revenge as a shadowy purple foal came walking out of the darkness and proceeded reluctantly up to her gooey prison.  It was obviously the same little Twilight Sparkle who she had seen in Our Town, but she looked far different.  Terrible.  Twitchy.  Terrified. Of course it was a changeling.  They were all changelings.  Just another trick designed to humiliate her for whatever reason the twisted beasts were torturing her.  Starlight sneered at the fake alicorn, putting every bit of disdain into her voice that she was able. “Fake,” she practically spit.  “Is there even a real Twilight Sparkle?  Or have you changelings dreamed her up out of thin air?” “I’m real,” said the trembling little creature. After a period of silence, Starlight asked, “Well?  Where is the begging?  The pleading?  The heart-rending tale of angst and—” “I’m not Twilight Sparkle,” she blurted out.  “She’s real and I want to be like her but I can’t, no matter how hard I try!  She helped me trap you.  I never could have done it by myself.  I’m Peep,” she added through her trembling.  “Peep Sprout.” It threw Starlight for a moment.  She was all prepared to fight alicorns, but to have a changeling child come unglued in front of her shattered her set of prepared statements like a brick through a plate glass window.  “I don’t care,” she sneered instead.  “Go peddle your sob-story somewhere else.” “You do care,” insisted Peep.  “I could feel a little of it whenever you approached us in the village.  And the ponies cared about you.  A little.  They were afraid of you, or angry at you, or respectful of you, but they all cared.  Some.  You pushed that all away.  You wanted to think you were in control.  That you were too powerful to care about them.” There was a flare of green magic and the little violet alicorn was replaced by a changeling of similar size, only with faint shimmering highlights to her chitin in the dim greenish lighting of the cavernous room.  She plodded over to Starlight’s imprisoning pod and began to nip away the confining membrane, still sniffling like she was sick. “What are you doing?” asked Starlight, looking for the trap. “Letting you go.”  The little changeling nipped and spat as she worked, giving some welcome freedom to Starlight’s shoulders and speaking in short bursts between sobs.  “Twilight just arrived.  She’s afraid of you.  I’ll sneak you out.  Then she won’t have to face you.  Won’t be hurt.  If you escape.  To your friends in town.” “What friends?”  Starlight stepped out of the imprisoning changeling cocoon and tried to shake the goo off since her magic was still not working.  “I don’t have friends.” The little changeling nodded while helping clean the green goo from Starlight’s coat.  “Yes, you do.  When the ponies got their cutie marks back, some of them ran away.  Some wanted to hurt you, but others stood up and helped us keep them back.  Not many.  But friends.  I know what friendship tastes like,” Peep insisted with unusual seriousness. “They’re not friends,” spat Starlight.  “They’re nothing.  Just a bunch of losers who couldn’t make friends with each other because of their disgusting cutie marks.  I freed them of their shackles so they could be happy together.  Our whole town was—” “Miserable,” said the little changeling.  “You didn’t taste it, like chocolate-covered rabbit pellets.” That struck a sour chord in Starlight Glimmer, and she fairly bristled under her layer of changeling slime.  “THEY LOVED ME!  Without their cutie marks, we had a happy town!  Everypony was equal!” “Except you.”  The little changeling’s featureless teal eyes seemed to be boring into Starlight’s head, and she fought back an urge to physically strike Peep Sprout while she continued spewing bitter hateful words.  “You were like our queen.  Better than all of us.  More powerful.  We couldn’t think for ourselves.  We did what she wanted, or else.  But everything we did only made things worse.  We were slaves to her will, until Twilight Sparkle k-k-killed…” The little changeling seemed to be having a bad case of hiccups, so Starlight lashed back, or at least she tried.  All she could think of was the growing number of calming and mental focusing spells she had been using on the more reluctant townsponies, and how they would react if they met her now, unable to even make a single spark with her horn and trapped with no way to run. “You stole their love.”  The little changeling could barely talk above a whisper, but at least she was not looking up at Starlight with those blank eyes.  Instead, she had found something absolutely fascinating on the ichor-stained dull stone floor, which she watched while continuing.  “We stole love too.  I was trained to stay next to couples in the park and play like a pony child while drinking in their extra love, or ask old ponies sitting by themselves about their past.  I took and took for our queen, and now… I don’t want to take any more, and I don’t know how to give.  You took ponies’ cutie marks.  They love their cutie marks, or they love something about their marks.  I can’t understand it, but Twilight says it can be really hard to understand, even for them.  You took it all.”  The little changeling finally looked up, but only to peer at Starlight Glimmer’s rear end where the green goo had dissolved away the makeup to reveal her own hated cutie mark.  “Are those… kites?” The chance remark pierced Starlight to the core, and she tried to conceal her raging anger while using her favorite lines for talking to foolish children who did not appreciate their youthful fortune. “Don't you remember what it was like before you got your cutie mark?  I mean I remember that time,” she added with far more pepper on her words than was appropriate due to her mis-step. “Life was so much better then.  All of your friends were just like you, with nothing to separate your lives.  You could do the same things, play the same games.  They didn't run off and leave you all alone.” Memories of the traitor being sent to Celestia’s school bubbled up in her mind like boiling acid, the brilliant scholar who undoubtedly had gone on to academic glory in some exalted professorial position while she had been stuck in the worthless town, stuck in the past, stuck with a father who had his own ideas of the proper role for a rebellious teen.  That part of her life was far behind her, buried under research and experimentation until she had developed the spell for removing and imprisoning the cutie marks which caused such discord and strife. She never missed the kites.  They were a part of her life long gone. After wiping away an imaginary tear and making a grand gesture into the darkness, Starlight continued with her best line, practiced and honed against dozens of young ponies.  “That's why I had to do what I do.  There are so many young foals like you… I mean ponies who have their lives torn apart by their supposed friends suddenly deciding they have a path that doesn't match yours.  Cutie marks divide us when we should be together.  I was born to bring ponies together so we can rise above our problems.  Let me help you.  It's my destiny.” “Your destiny is to hurt ponies?” “Help ponies,” countered Starlight, although she hesitated while looking at the sniffling little changeling.  “You don’t have cutie marks,” she put forward weakly. “We’re still different.  Even before, it was hard to think for ourselves” said Peep through her sniffles.  “Like this.  But I have to.  Or Twilight gets hurt even more.  She can’t stop.  She’ll try to meet you no matter how much pain it causes her.  Please, come with me.” The changeling hive was a twisted maze, but Peep Sprout led Starlight through the tunnels like she had a map tucked away in her head.  No other changeling stepped out to obstruct their path, and after a good deal of brisk trotting, Starlight had to consider that perhaps the hive was severely underpopulated, and it was only her mind that saw so many eyes peering down at them.  When she finally saw daylight at the end of their tunnel, she was tempted to gallop forward and leave the little changeling behind except for two things. First, she had a nagging thread of guilt over what Peep had said.  The changelings had all been the same except for their queen, and the parallels with her own control over Our Town were hard to shake. Second, there was a pony blocking their path to the surface. This Twilight Sparkle was a tall mare, nearly as big as Celestia, with a flowing mane of rainbow colors.  She was also an alicorn, of course, and radiating a sense of annoyance with the current situation. “Peep Sprout.”  The alicorn pointed to a nearby passageway with one hoof.  “Get out.” “Please.  No.”  Peep fairly squirmed with discomfort.  “Can’t we just let her go?  You know how bad Twilight feels.  If she promises—” “I won’t,” declared Starlight, stepping forward.  “I refuse to relinquish my destiny.  I’m going to find more ponies who are hurting because of their cutie marks and free them.  You’ll have to kill me to stop me, changeling.” Peep Sprout sniffled a little more and bumped up against her flank.  “You don’t really mean all of that.  You’re pulling a Trixie.  Putting on a brave mask while being frightened inside.  You know what you’re doing is wrong.” That was far more true than Starlight wanted to admit, but she was trying to bluff a creature who could feel her emotions, and that was an unfair advantage.  The need for revenge felt so hollow now without the fire of vindictive anger to ignite her emotions.  The path back to a town of her own filled with markless ponies who obeyed her commands seemed like so much work for so little reward.  Where was the payoff?  What was her goal? “You’ve got all these emotions whirling around inside,” continued Peep.  “They’re bottled up.  Hurting you.  Friends help.  I thought if I could maybe go with you—” “No!” snapped Starlight.  “I don’t need anypony!” “That’s what I thought,” said Peep with a sniffle.  “Then I met Twilight Sparkle.  She was afraid of me too, but she needed me as much as I needed her.  She was my first real friend.  Now I have so many of them and I almost can’t imagine what it was like before.  Like you are.” “I’m fine! “Twilight isn’t!”  The big teal eyes of Peep Sprout filled with tears all over again.  “You need her to be your friend.  You won’t admit it.  She’s not strong enough to try.  So I’ll do it for her.  I’ll go with you.  If I can’t tell you how important friendship is, I’ll show you.” Starlight could not find any angry words to fire back at the despondent changeling.  A bug child, completely and totally different than a pony, was willing to sacrifice so much for a friend.  It cut the legs right out from under her major belief that shedding differences would bring ponies together, the pillar of her whole life for the last five years.  She could not even discount the revelation as a myth because the proof that broke her theory into burning splinters was standing right there, crying onto the cold stone floor at the thought of hurting a friend so different than herself.  That kind of pain could not be falsified.  Starlight had felt it herself when Sunburst had been taken away, and it had eaten away at her heart every day since.  Even diverting that pain into revenge had done nothing to resolve it, but the contrary. If the large changeling disguised as Twilight Sparkle had not been blocking her path to the outside world, Starlight would have bolted out into the sunlight and kept running until she collapsed.  For the first time in a very, very long time, Starlight Glimmer was afraid.  Not of something or somepony else.  Afraid of herself and the horrid mistake she had made. She could not admit the truth to herself.  In a hive full of emotion-eating monsters, a pony child had made a friend.  It both terrified and intrigued Starlight, and must have affected the bigger changeling as well, since she shook her head ever so slowly from side to side and looked right at Starlight with a compassionate gaze that seemed to shine right through her like glass. “He is smarter than he seems at times,” said the faux Twilight Sparkle.  “Particularly when he and his friends are in town, plotting minor crimes.” “I-I don’t care,” blurted out Starlight, feeling terribly unconvincing.  “I’m leaving, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.  You’ll have to kill me to keep me here.” “No,” said the changeling.  “Killing you would be quite unpleasant.  Instead, I have brought you a present.” “Starlight!”  It was an unfamiliar voice calling out in the darkness, but somehow familiar at the same time, and accompanied by the clatter of hooves against the cool black stone of the narrow corridor’s floor.  It made Starlight Glimmer uncomfortably aware that she had not immediately convinced Peep Sprout to lead her out of this infernal changeling prison and into the world, but had instead been tricked into monologuing like some cheap comic book villain who could be turned to the forces of good by a dramatic speech from a hero.  It made the last words she had heard from Twilight Sparkle echo around in her head like a roaring gong. You’re not the monster.  I’m about to do a terrible thing, far worse than you can imagine. You’re the hero. I’m the monster who needs saved. My father and the rest of the changelings will take you to their old hive where you’ll be safe. Please. Save me.” Starlight tried to summon her magic again, but was unable to even make a spark, so she turned horn-first in the direction of the pony approaching from behind the false Twilight Sparkle… …and froze. She knew that look, a face that she had not seen on a unicorn in over a decade.  Sunburst Flare had frequent panic attacks when things went wrong, and as markless foals, they managed to have at least one glorious wrong happen every day.  Friends through disaster, they were inseparable, at least until the book avalanche that threatened to squash her, and the resulting blasted cutie mark on his flank that sent him to Celestia’s ultra-special school, where he vanished like a snowflake into a blizzard. This was not the friend of her youth, but an older pony with a scraggly beard, and it took several heartbeats for Starlight to recognize the differences that years had put on his face.  He looked terrible, terrified, tattered, and strangely naked as he dodged around the changeling and skidded to a halt almost within touching distance. “Starlight!” he gasped.  “Oh, please let you be Starlight Glimmer, please, please, please!  Not a changeling.  Not a pregnant changeling.  There are so many pregnant changelings here and they all think I’m a doctor to help them with delivery and I don’t know anything about birthing changelings and I’ve never even read a book about it, and…  Starlight?” “You’re not a changeling?” said Starlight slowly.  “You have to be a changeling.  Sunburst Flare is at Celestia’s school, probably a professor by now in some class full of squabbling students—” “I flunked out,” gasped the disguised changeling.  “Eight years of pure misery and stress before it caught up with me.  I couldn't go back to Sire’s Hollow and face everypony so I took a job in the school bookstore.  I stock books.  And occasional magazines.  I never even saw a changeling before yesterday and now…” Sunburst fairly burst into tears and flung himself onto her shoulder, wailing as if he had been mortally wounded.  “I didn’t ask for this!  I didn’t want to be a hero and birth an alicorn and a hippogriff and all the changelings here!  I’m not a doctor!  I’m a bookseller!  We don’t even have a section on foalbirth in the store!  But Princess Cadence was in such pain and the foal was going to die and all I could think of was what you would do in my place and I tried as hard as I could and she lived.  I mean they both did and I think I could have handled that but then Princess Cadence started to— Excuse me.” Sunburst turned to one side, faced the ground, and began to dry-heave, giving Starlight a good look at his disgusting cutie mark, the same mark that she had loathed for years.  It was stained and dirty, with all the hairs around it matted flat as if he usually wore a cloak over the thin spot on his back.  It was a precise detail that a changeling would have a difficult time matching, which only made Starlight more uncomfortable, moreso when she considered just what he had been saying. “You helped Princess Cadence give birth,” she said almost absently, “and a hippogriff?  I thought they were mythical.” “Pony,” managed Sunburst between retching fits.  “Raped by a griffon.  Windigo, I think.  Terrified of the foal.  Oh, please tell me you’re not pregnant!” She almost laughed with the bitter irony of it.  She had been so busy with her town, crafting plans on freeing all of Equestria from the tyranny of their cutie marks that she had never even thought about romance.  And mentally controlling a stallion into doing that...  “No.” “Oh, thank you, thank you.”  Sunburst spat, still trembling like a leaf, and turned back to look at her through smeared glasses that nearly obscured his wide eyes with just a hint of teal around the edges.  The color tweaked something inside of Starlight, a feeling long forgotten and buried under layers of revenge, how the color always made her think of their wonderful times playing Dragon Pit and other games, which she was always careful to lose on occasion… …and the same color in the eyes of the little changeling child, sitting to their sides with her tear-filled eyes closed to near slits and the beginnings of a look of pure bliss starting to spread across her insectile features. “No,” stated Starlight.  “We’re not… Stop that!” “It’s so sweet,” sniffled the little changeling.  “It’s like friendship, but different somehow.  All sweet and gooey like—” “Stop it!”  Starlight glared hard enough that Peep Sprout opened her eyes and took a half-step back.  “You’re taking something that belongs to me!  You just got done saying you didn’t want to take emotions from ponies, and you’re doing it to me!” “Oh!”  Peep Sprout swallowed and trembled.  “I’m sorry?  Only I’m not.  I didn’t know he was your friend when he arrived and I didn’t know he was special to you or I would have brought him to talk you out of your evil plan like something Twilight Sparkle could do because you are just—”  She made a tiny squealing noise like a kitten, which was very difficult to ignore while Starlight was paying attention to her… ...friend. Sunburst’s head had never been screwed on too tightly as a foal, but he kept her from curling in on herself and turning bitter and hateful like she had once he departed for Celestia’s cursed school.  Her faded tattoos were not obvious anymore now that she quit shaving portions of her coat, and the piercings had almost all grown back together.  Daddy said it was ‘just a rebellious phase’ caused by youth and inexperience, nothing that a little time would not cure. She hadn’t seen Daddy in five years.   The feeling of Sunburst’s tears running down her neck brought all of the stress and worry about his welfare to the surface, leaking out around the edges of her iron control and she began to cry also, wrapped up in the trembling grasp of her oldest friend. Monster really wanted the big changeling to be unable to find the hive after his thousand years away.  Unfortunately, Thorax seemed quite confident about where the hive was and how to get there.  So she remained quiet during the train trip… Well, as quiet as being with her friends could be.  She ate a snack from the meal car, which sat in her belly like a stone, and stared out the window as the terrain slowly changed from snow to sand.  She could not even bear to talk with the dark mare who her tutor had saved from the windigo.  There was a chill in her innards that even her friends could not fully thaw, like the chill of the ferocious monster had not totally been shaken from when she had been surrounded by bound ponies and griffons.  They had been afraid of a monster for good reason, a monster they had allowed into their own homes and nearly destroyed them for their acceptance. And she was going to confront Starlight Glimmer, who had become a monster in her own way. Monster could not forget the feeling of Our Town as she controlled Peep Sprout through the zebra spell.  The dismal air of the place.  The eyes looking sideways at them.  The overwhelming sensation of fear, slowly fading as the other changelings abducted the citizens one at a time.  It was their role to act as a distraction, which they did well until all that was left was Starlight.  It was a role that Peep had been frightened about filling, but he stepped forward without hesitation and held it together during the entire performance.. Some of the captured ponies fought, while others accepted being grabbed with a certain creepy degree of anticipation, but the foals were the worst.  They just sat in place, barely reacting as the mind-controlling spells were unwound and taking their new freedom with little energy. After Starlight had been captured, they were sent to Ponyville by the changelings.  She would have to meet with them later.  Encourage them back into being themselves again.  It would be… fun making more friends.  Far more fun than facing Starlight. At least the hive was a good distraction from her brooding.  It was a fascinating place.  Under its natural camouflage, it only vaguely resembled the temporary hive in the Everfree that she had blown to splinters, but that resemblance still brought chills down her back with the joy she had felt at the destruction.  The deaths. “Not Twilight,” she muttered to herself. “Monster. Monster kill. Animal.” The entrance, or at least the entrance they used, was disguised as well as the rest of the hive, only visible by the half-dozen or so changelings who greeted their arrival and held the doorway open for them.  Her father was among them, comfortable in his zebra disguise as if it had become second nature to him, but looking concerned at her relative lethargy. “Why the long face, child not of my race?” he asked once they had gotten a few minutes privacy.  “Starlight Glimmer was easy enough to catch, and is awaiting your presence when you have… recovered from your journey.  She’s mad,” he added.  “Angry, that is.  None of the other changelings want anything to do with her shouting words of doom, so they put her in the middle of the old throne room.” “I… can’t do this,” murmured Monster beneath her breath. “You can’t do this now,” said Tallgrass.  “You’ve been through quite the experience.  She will wait.” “She can,” said Monster quietly.  She peered around her father to get a look at the way her friends and the changelings were getting along, so different from each other but getting along so well.  “I can’t.  Have to do it now.  Today.  Won’t be able to tomorrow.” Tallgrass was getting better at hugging at the appropriate times, although he was still hesitant and awkward.  He had a nice mushroom-musky scent to his coat that brought back memories of her time in the Everfree after particularly bad episodes when she would retreat to the Home’s root cellar and sort various herbs and fungi. “Tell me about it,” he said just as quietly once the hug broke up from mutual inexperience.  “The Windigo and the Crystal Empire.  You’ll feel better afterward.  That’s what I’m supposed to say as a father, right?  I’m new at this.” “You do…” Monster thought.  “Fine,” she added.  “When sister is born…  Don’t tell Sunburst.” One dark eyebrow lifted, and a sparkle of mischief danced in Tallgrass’ eyes. “Don’t,” she cautioned firmly.  “He birthed Cadence.  And a hippogriff.  Must have been frightened.  Helped anyway.  Braver than he looks.  Needs a friend.  But still scared.” “Much like my little filly,” said Tallgrass, giving her a gentle pat on the hoof.  “Sit and talk.  * * * Tallgrass was right.  She could not talk very much about the Windigo and the Crystal Empire, but what few words she managed to share took the edge off her misery.  When he slipped away on an important task, her friends helped even more.  They gathered around to introduce several younger changelings, all of whom were radiating varying degrees of awed reverence and respect.  Most of it was due to her reputation, but she suspected part of it was from her ebon black coat, courtesy of King Sombra’s destroyed dark magic.  She blended in well, and the changelings respected her desire for a little space, although one slightly older changeling seemed rather disappointed that she did not want to autograph his notebook like all three other alicorn princesses had. And so it was that she eventually found herself hiding behind an ornamental fruiting fungal structure inside a larger cavern, sipping from a cup full of tart lemonade.  It made good cover for a few minutes of relative privacy, except for the much younger changeling who had already staked out the hiding place for herself. It was a bit of a surprise for Monster, because she had planned for a few minutes of private brooding.  The smaller changeling child seemed likewise caught unaware, and backed up into the enclosed pocket of fungal filaments much like Monster had once hidden inside a bush rather than face Apple Bloom. “Don’t be afraid,” Monster managed carefully, only to see the young changeling burrow backwards a little further until she stopped.  Rather than terrify the child any more, Monster turned to leave, only to have the little changeling move forward slightly and sniff. “You’re afraid of me,” she said.  “Papa says I should be afraid of you, but you don’t look dangerous.” Monster shook her head.  “Sometimes dangerous things look pretty.” “You don’t look pretty, either,” said the little changeling.  “You’re all fuzzy.” Monster had seen so many things in the forest, furred and fanged and scaled.  For a changeling child, surrounded by so many of her kind for all of her life, fur would be weird.  But changelings were flexible, able to understand things far beyond their upbringing in short order as they grew up and were trained.   “Peep Sprout can turn into a dragon, although he can’t breathe fire,” she responded for the lack of anything really insightful to say. “Dragons are scary,” said the little changeling, turning her head a bit to peer at the knot of excited changeling children with a dragon in the middle, telling the story of his returning the Crystal Heart as he had done several times so far.  “Except for Spike.  He’s brave.  And cute.” Monster had never really heard Spike called cute by somepony who had not known him for a while.  The first reaction of most ponies was normally fear, dwindling to caution after a few hours.  Although Rarity was rather enamored by him, but she was probably an outlier on the graph. “He can be scary,” admitted Monster.  “Trixie said he once grew as big as a house and scared the whole Royal Guard.  He didn’t mean to.  He’s very nice.  He just got caught up by what he really is inside.” That seemed to discomfort the changeling child.  She squirmed against the frilly fungal ‘bush’ like she wanted to tunnel through it and escape, finally blurting out, “What if I’m still a monster inside?  I mean everybody else soaked up all the love when Queen Chrysalis was killed and it changed us all inside but I think I can still feel a little bit of my old self inside.  My father, he says ‘Ocellus, you are just imagining things again.  Use that splendid imagination for something good.’  But it still feels funny in my tummy.” Monster nodded.  It felt good to be in her comfort zone, and the words flowed far easier than when she was talking to older ponies.  It made a good distraction from the crippling fear she had about talking to Sunset Shimmer… No, Starlight Glimmer.  Discord had mentioned Sunset in passing, and the name seemed to stick in her head so Monster could not help but worry about her too.   Starlight was the pony imprisoned in the hive, and would wait until after Monster calmed down and could be Twilight Sparkle in some small manner again, much as she was trying to do now. “Ocellus doesn’t sound like a monster name.  You have to change a lot to become a monster.  Maybe… you just got a bad bit of love when all the changelings… changed.  Do you have any friends?” “No.”  The little changeling looked up with worried teal eyes starting to show the faintest signs of impending tears.  “We never had friends before, and I’ve never been able to make them.  How did you make your first friend?” “It was difficult,” admitted Monster after considerable sorting through the ragged chunks of her earliest memories.  “Very difficult.  I made my first friend in school.  Moondancer was just as shy as I was, but together we could do things we never could apart.  There were four of us by the time we took our test to get into… Celestia’s school.” The words came slower now, obscured by the swirling memories of destruction and power.  Monster swallowed the last gulp of lemonade and continued because if she stopped, she never would be able to speak of it again. “I failed.  Destroyed the tower.  Thought I had destroyed my parents and my friends.  Nearly destroyed myself.  Became a monster living in the forest.  Killing.  Destroying.  All I could feel was pain and anger.  Zecora found me.  Helped me.  It took years. I nearly destroyed her too, many times.” “Wow.”  Ocellus was watching in wide-eyed fascination, barely blinking.  “She’s the zebra in the pictures Featherweight was showing, right?  The stripes are really hard.  Peep can’t even do them quite right.” The childish observation yanked Monster out of her gloomy spiral, making her give out a brief snort of laughter instead.  Featherweight had captured Tallgrass in a photo back when he was first trying his zebra disguise, and Zecora had insisted on keeping a large copy on the wall of their house. “Zecora, more than a friend,” said Monster carefully.  “My mother.  Everything but birth.” “Birth is icky,” said Ocellus.  “My mother is pregnant again like a bunch of other changelings.  It was really nice of you to bring us a pony who knows how to do birthing stuff.  Was he the next friend you made after Zecora?” “No.”  Monster could not help but smile as the calming memory swept over the chaos in her mind.  “Bloom.  Brought me books.  I helped with her homework.  She introduced me to her friends.  They became my friends too.  And we met others who became friends too.  Friends are stronger together.” “Changelings were all together,” said Ocellus slowly.  “It was a terrible time.  So much hunger, and it was getting worse.”  She thought for a while.  “Ponies are so much different than each other.  Is that the secret?” “No secret.”  Monster did not like to bring the conversation back to her upcoming test, but she had to, and her voice was still working right so it must have been the right thing to do.  “Starlight Glimmer tried to make a town.  Make all the ponies the same.  It failed too.  We need to combine our strengths and weaknesses to be stronger.  Start small.  Like us.” Ocellus wrinkled up her nose and stuck her tongue out briefly.  “It… tastes a little like friendship.  If I can make a friend out of a pony, do you think I can make a friend out of a changeling?” They talked for a while longer, and then some more before Twilight Sparkle took her new friend to go meet with Starlight Glimmer. * * * Of course, finding Starlight was harder than they expected.  She was not in the main throne room where they found the dripping remnants of her imprisoning cocoon, or in any of the side rooms where she might have been hiding.  In the end, it took another changeling as a messenger to inform them of where their elusive quarry was not-hiding. It was nearing twilight when Monster and her new friend made it to the outside of the hive where Starlight Glimmer was holding onto a string with a kite high in the sky on the other end.  Right next to her was Sunburst Flare, huddled up like she was a pillow and occasionally reaching out to touch Starlight as if he feared she had left.  The two of them had a certain synergy in their position, as a broken branch might have when the two parts were rejoined, or a glass vase nudged accidentally off a shelf and rejoined, awaiting a glue pot and a patient hoof. Peep Sprout was entranced by the way the kite bobbed and swooped at the end of the string, but not so distracted that he missed Monster arriving at the cave entrance.  He gave a nervous glance, which Starlight picked up on instantly and looked in the same direction. “Twilight?” she asked. When Starlight did not get an immediate answer, she adjusted in a way that only served to make Monster more aware of her intelligence. “You must be Twilight Sparkle,” she said quietly.  “Despite appearances.”  Peep Sprout twitched in reaction and looked at Monster with wide eyes, which ever so slowly narrowed down to his normal expression.  He did not say anything, but returned his attention to the wobbling kite at the end of the string. “I… really don’t know what to say,” started Starlight in an echo of what Monster was thinking.  “I was so angry for so many years.  I wanted revenge for something that was my own fault.” “It was my fault too,” said Sunburst.  “I should have kept in touch instead of hiding my shame.  A letter could have… I don’t know.” “Everything I worked for,” murmured Starlight.  “Everything I sweated over, all the time and effort I spent on revenge.  Wasted.  I can’t even be angry about it, angry with anypony but myself.  You didn’t ruin my plan.  I did.” Monster was uncomfortable to say the least.  She had expected a fight. “Peep Sprout told me about your three tests.  Discord.  King Sombra.  The Windigo.  And me.  Well, that’s four, I suppose.  And you beat them all?” Monster nodded, since she did not trust her voice to adequately describe the failures she had along the way. “Why?”  Starlight Glimmer waved the one hoof she was not using to hold the kite string.  “Without you and your changeling friends, I would have incapacitated Princess Celestia and Princess Luna at the same time the Windigo began to rise.  Princess Cadence would have been incapacitated in the Crystal Empire—” “She would have died,” blurted out Sunburst.  “King Sombra’s shield was too strong.  When Shining Armor broke through, it gave me enough slack to…”  He stopped abruptly and swallowed several times. “Sitter,” murmured Monster.  “Why would Discord use me to save them?  He’s chaos.” “True,” said Starlight.  “But ponies are odd.  They think chaos and order are opposites.” “Aren’t they?”  Monster thought about the strange mismatched creature, and how he had acted around her friends.  “I thought he was an enemy.  Like you.  Am I wrong also?” “The three most difficult words to say.”  Sunburst rose up almost as if he had been poked with a pin, but Starlight continued, “I was wrong.  I was blinded by my hate, and almost destroyed thousands of lives.  All because I believed that differences divided us, and it took a changeling child to show me the way.” Peep Sprout fidgeted and looked away, unable to even make one of his normal eccentric comments, so Monster brought her inner Twilight Sparkle to the surface and tried to cover for him. “Friends make friends. That’s the real power of friendship. I could make friends my entire life and never touch everybody in one town, but my friends make friends, like Scootaloo  and Diamond Tiara—” Monster considered her words “—will probably be in the future.  Or like the lemonade business.  Dozens and dozens of ponies who had fun with their friends this summer and earned some pocket money in the process.” “I can’t be one of your friends,” said Starlight.  “I’ve hurt too many ponies.  It only makes sense to keep me imprisoned here with the changelings for the rest of my life.  You can never trust me.  At any moment, I could turn against you.  My destiny is in your hooves.” Monster considered Starlight’s words for a long, long time.  Then she removed a tattered, dirty card from her mane and floated it over to her. “No.” Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. Your Lucky Numbers are 8 1 18 13 15 14 and 25 (Flim-Flam Novelty Company inc. No actual fortune included.)